UK regulator warns influencers
LONDON • Celebrities and influencers who endorse products without labelling their social media posts as paid-for by brands were warned yesterday that they were breaking the rules as Britain's regulator launched an investigation into the trend.
Recommendation from celebrities and social media influencers who have millions of followers is a growing marketing strategy for brands, but the UK Competition and Markets Authority said that such endorsements could mislead customers.
It said it had seen posts that appeared to promote items or offer a celebrity's personal endorsement of a product, without it being clear whether the post had been paid for by the brand in question.
REUTERS
Bolivian mum hangs her 3 kids
LA PAZ • A 25-year-old Bolivian woman hanged her three children after making them record goodbye messages to their father on video, police reported yesterday.
She hanged her one-year-old baby and her two other children, aged four and seven, late on Tuesday after a series of arguments with her husband, state prosecutor Oscar Vera told Los Tiempos newspaper.
Police said the mother, who left a letter alleging mistreatment by her husband, was being treated in intensive care in hospital after taking poison. She had become distraught over her husband's drinking.
Police said they had placed the father under preventive arrest.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Aussie drought set to get worse
SYDNEY • The drought sweeping through large tracts of Australia is set to intensify over the next three months and is fuelling unseasonal winter bush fires, the leading meteorological agency and a fire official said yesterday.
The Bureau of Meteorology forecast of more warm, dry weather suggests hopes for a reprieve from what farmers describe as the worst drought they have ever seen are unlikely to be realised before the Australian summer.
The report forecast below-average rainfall for large parts of Australia until November, the early part of the southern hemisphere summer. Firefighters in New South Wales were battling 81 grass and bush fires yesterday.
REUTERS
