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Former US First Lady Michelle Obama offered a glimpse into her marriage of over three decades as she revealed that her idea of a perfect date night with Barack Obama is one spent quietly at home with good food, candles, and conversation.

In an exclusive interview with People Magazine, Michelle said, “We’ve been married 32, 33 years...I always forget. Sorry, honey.”

She explained that after years of working and living together, their most meaningful moments are simple and intimate.

“When we’re both happy about date night, we’re at home. We just have a nice dinner, candles lit, music, we talk. We don’t talk for the whole day because we’re in the house together all day, right? We work from home,” she added.

Michelle said that to keep things special, she and Barack deliberately save their conversations for dinner. “When we are going to have a really special night, it’s like, ‘Don’t talk to me. Save it for dinner.’ He’ll be like, ‘Did you talk to the girls?’ and I’ll say, ‘I did, but we’re not going to talk about it until date night.’”

Occasionally, the couple steps out for dinners in Washington, DC, but Michelle added: “I am too old; I can’t do dinner and a movie. I will fall asleep in the movie. So it’s like, ‘Let’s pick one’.”

The interview comes months after Michelle, in April, addressed speculation about her marriage to the former US president. In April, she publicly pushed back against rumours of a split, calling out how people assume relationship troubles when women choose independence or time apart.

Rumours of a rift began earlier this year when Barack Obama attended former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral without Michelle, followed by her decision not to attend Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration. But the former First Lady made it clear that was just her setting personal boundaries.

(Source - India Today)

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a recall on thousands of cans of Coca-Cola products on Thursday, Oct. 23.

The FDA said in a report that the recall is due to a "potential presence of foreign material (metal) in the product." The sodas being recalled are 12- and 35-packs of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, 24- and 35-packs of Coca-Cola and 12- and 35-packs of Sprite. As of publication, the recall is only in effect for Texas.

The potential metal fragments found in the cans can lead to illness or injuries when ingested, according to EatingWell.

PEOPLE has reached out to Coca-Cola for comment.

The recall falls under Class II, so the impacted products could lead to temporary health issues, the outlet reported. People who have ingested the contaminated soda products listed are advised to contact their healthcare provider immediately.

The recall was initiated by Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages on Oct. 3. The FDA did not provide guidance on how to properly discard the recalled products, and Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages did not issue a news release with the recall. However, customers are advised not to consume the products, per USA Today.

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The following UPC and lot codes are affected by this recall:

• Coca-Cola Zero Sugar (12-pack) with UPC 49000042559 and lot code FEB0226MAA
• Coca-Cola Zero Sugar (35-pack) with UPC 49000058499 and lot code FEB0226MAA
• Coca-Cola (24-pack) with UPC 49000012781 and lot code JUN2926MAA
• Coca-Cola (35-pack) with UPC 49000058468 and lot code JUN2926MAA
• Sprite (35-pack) with UPC 49000058482 and lot code JUN2926MAA
• Sprite (12-pack) with UPC 49000028928 and lot code JUN2926MAA or JUN3026MAB

Coca-Cola recalled additional products in March. 864 units of 12-packs, meaning more than 10,000 cans, were included in the recall. The recalled products were distributed in Illinois and Wisconsin, per the report, with product codes listed on the FDA’s website. The March recall also fell under the Class II category.

(Source - People.com)

In a move that could reshape online content creation, China has introduced a new rule requiring influencers to have official qualifications before discussing “sensitive” subjects such as medicine, law, education, or finance online.

The new influencer law, which came into effect on October 25, mandates that creators must show proof of their expertise — such as a degree, professional license, or certification — if they wish to post about regulated topics, Morocco News reported.

According to the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the regulation aims to curb misinformation and protect the public from false or misleading advice. Platforms like Douyin (China’s version of TikTok), Bilibili, and Weibo will now be responsible for verifying creators’ credentials and ensuring that posts include proper citations and disclaimers.

For instance, creators must clearly state when information is sourced from studies or when their videos use AI-generated content. The CAC has also banned advertising for medical products, supplements, and health foods, to prevent covert promotions disguised as “educational” content.

While officials say the new rule is about building trust and ensuring accuracy, many critics view it as a new form of digital censorship. By limiting who can discuss certain subjects, they warn, the government might be silencing independent voices and narrowing the scope of public debate.

Experts also point out that the definition of “expertise” remains vague and subjective, giving authorities greater power to decide who gets to speak online.

The debate comes at a time when influencer-driven information has become a powerful alternative to traditional experts. From health advice to financial coaching, creators often earn followers by appearing relatable and trustworthy — even without formal qualifications.

However, the downside is clear: misinformation spreads quickly when complex topics are oversimplified or misrepresented online.

Some Chinese users have welcomed the law, saying it could bring more credibility to online discussions. “It’s about time people with actual expertise led the conversation,” one Weibo user commented.

But others fear it could stifle creativity and limit open discussion, turning social media from a space of free exchange into one of state-controlled expertise.

The debate around the impact of social media influencers isn’t new — but a recent study by the University of Portsmouth has cast fresh light on the darker side of this booming digital culture.

According to the research, social media influencers — or SMIs — can pose psychological, health and security risks, suggesting that tighter regulations may be needed to protect users and consumers.

While influencers have transformed global marketing by shaping buying behaviour, brand strategies and even social trends, the study highlights the growing ethical and psychological costs behind the glamour.

Researchers found that influencer-driven content often promotes misinformation, unrealistic beauty ideals, harmful products, and a toxic comparison culture, leading to deceptive consumption patterns and increased privacy vulnerabilities.

The report arrives at a time when influencer marketing is projected to reach $480 billion by 2027, with brands increasingly depending on creators to build trust and engagement online. Yet, experts warn that without proper oversight, the influence of these digital personalities could come at a high emotional and social price.

(Source - Dailymirror)

The Thai government is set to hold talks with Sri Lanka on October 28 to bring back two elephants that were gifted by Thailand, following reports of poor living conditions and alleged mistreatment.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE), Suchart Chomklin, wrote on his Facebook page yesterday, October 23, that he plans to fly urgently to Sri Lanka amid growing concerns about the welfare of the two Thai elephants, Plai Pratu Pha and Plai Srinarong.

Concerns were first raised last year by the Reclaim Thai Elephant group. The group’s coordinator, Yuwanuch Kiattiwong, together with 50 members, visited the MONRE to submit an official letter urging the government to take action over the elephants’ poor living conditions.

According to the group, the elephants, which were originally gifted by Thailand, have been forced to work excessively and deprived of proper welfare standards. The animals were reportedly kept in chains at all times and beaten. The group called for their immediate return to Thailand to ensure a better quality of life.

In his Facebook post, Suchart explained that he, PM Anutin Charnvirakul, and other Thai government agencies are closely monitoring the situation and have not ignored the issue.

Suchart stated that he had discussed the matter with PM Anutin, who approved diplomatic efforts to coordinate with all relevant agencies to bring the elephants home. However, he noted that the process may take some time.

In the meantime, Suchart, along with relevant officials and veterinarians, will travel to Sri Lanka to assess the elephants’ health and living conditions. The team will also advise local caretakers to provide proper care while diplomatic discussions continue.

The Director of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, Attaphon Charoenchansa, confirmed that he will accompany Suchart on the trip.

Attaphon stated that if negotiations are successful, officials plan to follow the same model used for the return of Plai Sak Surin, another elephant previously gifted to Sri Lanka and successfully brought back to Thailand in 2023.

According to a report by The Standard, Plai Pratu Pha was the first elephant sent to Sri Lanka in 1979 when he was 12 years old. He currently resides at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth in Kandy.

Plai Srinarong was sent in 2001 together with Plai Sak Surin. While Plai Sak Surin has already been rescued and returned to Thailand, Plai Srinarong remains at an elephant shelter near the Kirivehera Temple in Kataragama.

(Source: Thaiger)

In 2022, 1.72 million deaths in India were linked to air pollution, a 38 per cent jump since 2010, according to the 2025 Global Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change. The grim finding underscored how the country's dependence on fossil fuels and sluggish transition to clean energy are costing millions of lives each year.

The report, prepared by University College London in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), estimated that around 1.72 million Indians died from anthropogenic air pollution, primarily due to exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5).

In 2024, India endured an average of 19.8 heatwave days, 6.6 of which would not have occurred without human-driven climate change. Each Indian faced 366 extra hours of extreme heat compared to the 1990s, the report revealed.

The toll was devastating: the country lost 247 billion potential labour hours, translating to income losses worth USD 194 billion, the Lancet report stated. Agriculture accounted for two-thirds of this total, leaving millions of farm workers and outdoor labourers exposed to both economic and health shocks.

The climate impacts went well beyond heat. Between 2020 and 2024, smoke from wildfires killed an average of 10,200 people a year in India, marking a 28 per cent jump since the early 2000s. Extreme droughts have worsened, too. The share of land hit by severe dry spells has risen by 138 per cent since the 1950s, with over a third of the country now experiencing at least one month of drought every year.

Rising temperatures have also made India more vulnerable to disease. The potential for dengue transmission has nearly doubled since the 1950s, while the coastline suitable for Vibrio bacteria, which is responsible for severe waterborne infections, has expanded by 46 per cent. More than 18 million Indians now live within one metre of sea level, at growing risk from storm surges and rising seas, the report added.

Fossil fuels remained the central culprit. India spent USD 48.5 billion on fossil fuel subsidies in 2023, outstripping its carbon revenue. Coal continued to dominate, powering 72 per cent of the country's electricity and nearly half of total energy supply.

In 2022 alone, fossil fuels were responsible for nearly half of the 1.72 million pollution-related deaths, including 3,94,000 attributed specifically to coal burning. The resulting economic loss from outdoor air pollution was valued at USD 339.4 billion, or 9.5 per cent of GDP.

Household air pollution, mostly from solid biofuels used in rural kitchens, continues to claim thousands of lives silently. The mortality rate stood at 113 deaths per 1,00,000 people in 2022, and rose to 125 per 1,00,000 in rural India, where 58 per cent of energy still comes from wood, dung, and crop residue.

Furthermore, livestock and dairy production accounted for 65 per cent of agricultural emissions, which have risen 13 per cent since 2000. India lost 2.33 million hectares of tree cover between 2001 and 2023, including 1,43,000 hectares last year alone. Urban areas are greying, too. Of 189 major cities, 124 now have low or very low greenness, and average city vegetation has declined by 3.6 per cent since 2015.

Even as climate awareness continues to grow, the pace of India's clean energy transition appeared to be slowing. The country's preparedness for a low-carbon future slipped by 2 per cent in 2024. Fossil fuels still supply 96 per cent of energy for road transport, while electricity contributes just 0.3 per cent, the Lancet report highlighted.

(Source - Indiatoday)

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday imposed Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia for the first time in his second term, targeting oil companies Lukoil and Rosneft as his frustration grows with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war.

The U.S. Treasury Department said it was prepared to take further action as it called on Moscow to agree immediately to a ceasefire in Russia's war in Ukraine, which began in February 2022.

"Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. "We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions."

The sanctions are a major policy shift for Trump, who had not put sanctions on Russia over the war and instead relied on trade measures. Trump imposed additional 25% tariffs on goods from India in retaliation for it purchasing discounted Russian oil.

The U.S. has not imposed the tariffs on China, another major buyer of Russian oil. A $60 price cap on Russian oil imposed by Western countries after Russia's invasion has shifted Russia's oil customers in recent years from Europe to Asia.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday he had canceled a planned summit in Hungary with Putin because it didn't feel like it was the right time. Trump also said he hopes the sanctions on Russian oil companies will not need to be in place for a long time. Trump said last year that he likes to remove sanctions quickly because of the risks to the dominance of the dollar in global oil transactions that the measures can bring. Russia has often asked for payments in other currencies.

'CAN'T BE ONE AND DONE'

Trump's measure on Wednesday followed Britain's sanctioning of Rosneft and Lukoil last week.

Analysts said the measures were a big step but long overdue.

"This can't just be one and done," said Edward Fishman, a former U.S. official who is now a senior research scholar at Columbia University. He said the question will be whether the U.S. now threatens sanctions on anyone doing business with Rosneft and Lukoil.

Jeremy Paner, a former sanctions investigator at the Treasury Department and now a partner at law firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed, said the absence of banks and Indian or Chinese oil purchasers in Wednesday's sanctions "will not get Putin’s attention."

A senior Ukrainian official, however, said the step was “great news” and that the two Russian energy companies were among U.S. sanctions targets proposed by Kyiv in the past.

The Russian embassy in Washington and the Russian mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the sanctions.

(Source - reuters)

Paul Biya, the world’s oldest serving head of state, has been re-elected as President of Cameroon for an unprecedented eighth term.

In the recently concluded presidential election, Biya secured 53.7% of the vote, reaffirming his decades-long political dominance.

Now 92 years old, President Biya expressed gratitude to the people of Cameroon for once again placing their trust in his leadership.

In an official statement issued following his victory, Biya pledged to continue working with unwavering commitment to build a peaceful, united, and prosperous Cameroon.

Services of Snapchat, Canva, Signal, Perplexity, Duolingo, and Open AI —website and apps used by millions every day across the world— were down on Monday. The disruption appears to be linked to an outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

In a brief notification, AWS said it was seeing “increased error rates” and delays with “multiple AWS services”, according to The Independent.

The update said that AWS is experiencing problems at its facilities in north Virginia and issues are affecting Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Elastic Computer Cloud — services that allow other companies to rent storage and computers to run their platforms.

“We’re aware many users are currently unable to access Coinbase due to an AWS outage,” said Coinbase.

(firstpost)

A tragic incident has been reported from Maharashtra, India, where a female doctor has died by suicide after accusing two police officers of repeatedly raping and harassing her over a period of five months.

In a message written on her left arm, she blamed Police Inspector Gopal Badge for her death, stating that his continuous physical and mental torture had driven her to take her own life. She also mentioned another police officer, Prashant Banker, accusing him of subjecting her to mental harassment.

She further stated that over the past five months, one of the police officers had raped and sexually harassed her multiple times.

Although she had filed a complaint with the police regarding these incidents in June this year, no action had reportedly been taken.

Following her death, the duties of the accused police officers have been suspended, and reports state that they have fled the area. Authorities are currently conducting investigations based on the details found in the note on her arm.

The Maharashtra State Women’s Commission has ordered an inquiry into the police’s negligence and has instructed that strict action be taken against the accused.

A fire on Tuesday at a garment factory in Bangladesh and an adjacent chemical warehouse killed at least 16 people and injured others, and the death toll could rise, an official said.

The cause of the blaze wasn't immediately known, fire service director Tajul Islam Chowdhury said.

"Sixteen bodies have been recovered from the second and third floors of the garment factory," he said, adding that the number of deaths could rise as recovery operations were continuing.

The fire broke out at around midday on the third floor of the four-storey factory in the Mirpur area of the capital Dhaka, before spreading to a chemical warehouse storing bleaching powder, plastic and hydrogen peroxide, Talha Bin Jashim, a fire department official said, citing witnesses.

Firefighters brought the factory blaze under control after nearly three hours, though the fire at the warehouse continued.

Grief-stricken relatives gathered to search for their loved ones, some clutching photographs.

In front of the blackened ruins, a father searched desperately for his daughter, Farzana Akhter. “My daughter worked there. When I heard about the fire, I came running. But I still haven’t found her....I just want my daughter back.”

Chowdhury said the owners of the factory had not yet been identified. “The police and the army are trying to locate them,” he said. He added that neither the garment factory nor the chemical warehouse had approval or any fire safety plan.

Based on the initial findings, he said the garment factory had a tin roof with a grilled door that was kept locked. “The workers couldn’t reach the upper level,” he said

“The chemical explosion caused a flashover that released toxic gas, leaving many unconscious and trapping them inside. They couldn’t escape either upward or downward.”

He said the victims were so badly burned, DNA testing may be the only way to identify them.

Poor fire and building safety standards lead to dozens of such disasters in Bangladesh each year, and past accidents have tarnished the country's garments sector, which employs 4 million people and makes up more than 10% of the country's gross domestic product.

In 2012, a fire at Tazreen Fashions that supplied global brands, killed 112 workers.

A year later, the eight-storey Rana Plaza building collapsed, killing 1,135 garment workers and triggering a wave of public outrage around the world about the human cost of cheap clothes.

In a condolence message, Bangladesh’s interim government head Muhammad Yunus expressed deep sorrow and urged authorities to investigate and support victims and families.

(Source -reuters )

Queen Sirikit, the Queen Mother of Thailand, has passed away at the age of 93.

She was the mother of the current King, Maha Vajiralongkorn, and had been receiving treatment at a hospital in Bangkok when she passed away last night (24).

According to foreign reports, she had been in ill health since 2019.

She was the wife of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Thailand’s longest-reigning monarch, who passed away in 2016.

Barron Trump is being pitched for a top job at TikTok.

The 19-year-old first son — who was credited for helping his dad, President Trump, reach younger voters — would be perfect to help lead the social media giant once it’s transferred to American investors, according to the president’s former social media manager, Jake Advent.

“I’m hopeful President Trump will consider appointing his son Barron and maybe other young Americans to TikTok’s board to help ensure it remains an app young people want to keep using,” Advent, whom the president playfully nicknamed “TikTok Jack,” told the Daily Mail.

Barron, who has just moved back into the White House while he attends classes at New York University’s DC campus in the nation’s capital, has yet to comment on the proposition.

Trump credited his son for guiding him on reaching a younger audience and helping him win his latest election.

Barron’s mother, first lady Melania Trump, previously said her son was instrumental because he “knows his generation.”

Trump signed an executive order last month approving the transfer of the video platform’s US operations to a consortium of American-based investors after speaking with Chinese President Xi Jinping. TikTok is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance.

The president made his own triumphant return to TikTok on Monday after a nearly year away.

“To all of those young people of TikTok, I saved TikTok, so you owe me big,” Trump said in a video post.

“Now, you’re looking at me in the Oval Office, and someday one of you are gonna be sitting right at this desk, and you’re gonna be doing a great job also.”

Former President Joe Biden signed bipartisan legislation in April 2024 that gave ByteDance the option of reducing its stake in TikTok to 20% or facing a blanket ban inside the United States.

Both Biden and Trump delayed implementation of the ban — with Trump arguing it would increase the power of US social media giants to censor political content.

Vice President JD Vance said that under the new deal, TikTok’s algorithm will be controlled by the American investors.

(Source - New York Post)