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Many people will have wished Andy Burnham well when he became Prime Minister a week ago. It's in all our interests that he doesn't make a complete hash of things.

The English girlfriend of one of Argentina's World Cup stars has revealed the gifts that Lionel Messi gave to the entire squad after the tournament.

Sara Gilson, 43, was fatally shot by her husband Jeremiah 'Shawn' Duffey, 48, in a horror murder-suicide when he broke into her home in Owasso, Oklahoma on July 23.

Police are investigating payments from Fiona Cottrell - the mother of 'Posh George' Cottrell, who secretly bankrolled his close ally Nigel Farage.

Pensioners, widowers and hard-working homeowners living on Britain's 'most eroded coastline' face being left with nothing as properties are demolished amid council fears they could end up in the sea.

I contacted my pension administrator to check if the amount I get includes my added voluntary contributions, as there has never been any mention of them on correspondence.

Abdul Ballout rammed a van into a crowd at Berlin's annual Christopher Street Day Pride parade on Saturday.

The desperation of being unable to find work is no longer confined to characters such as Yosser Hughes, the Liverpudlian tarmac-layer in TV drama Boys From The Blackstuff.

From today, girls will only have to wear a branded top instead of a full uniform, so that they can 'express themselves' with their own styles.

Word up

Lazaro Lesteiro-Diaz, 26, a Florida rapper, was arrested just hours after a search warrant at his home uncovered a room investigators described as being 'full of Cuban Santeria/Voodoo witchcraft.'

Conducted by Twinings, the survey found that almost half (47 per cent) of Gen Z say tea has replaced alcohol as the thing they reach for before big moments.

Forget ordinary hotels! These incredible stays include UFOs, cranes, ice suites and even a former jail.

Beach patrol teams have issued a warning after a "difficult" rescue in which four people got into difficulty in the water off the coast of Clacton, Essex.

Beach patrol teams have issued a warning after a "difficult" rescue in which four people got into difficulty in the water off the coast of Clacton, Essex.

Her parents and doctor are now facing legal battles after 14 psychiatrists and doctors wrote to the Dutch public prosecutor asking for an investigation into the euthanasia.

Dmitry Medvedev, number two to the dictator on Russia's security council, also threatened use of the new nuclear underwater drone Poseidon.

Gemma Atkinson showed off her rock hard abs in a mismatching bikini during her sun-soaked two week family holiday on Sunday. 

"The rise of TikTok, Instagram Reels and Amazon storefronts has created a new kind of white-collar exit strategy," reports Bloomberg. Workers ditch office jobs not to become celebrities, necessarily, "but to piece together an income online through brand deals, affiliate links and highly personal videos documenting everyday life." In many cases, the followers necessary to sustain a living are smaller (and more attainable) than people might assume. A small but loyal audience can now generate enough income to rival a midlevel salary. Welcome to the middle-class creator economy. Last year, 25-year-old Abi Platock balanced a corporate marketing job in New York while posting online in her spare time. She built her audience by posting one or two videos a day, offering career advice, beauty tips and daily vlogs. "I signed my first brand deal in the four-figure range, and for me that was just such a big eye-opening moment," Platock says of her partnership with deodorant brand Secret. She had 8,000 followers on TikTok at the time. "You can totally make it work without having hundreds of thousands of followers." Platock, who now has roughly 25,000 followers across platforms, has signed about $25,000 in brand deals so far this year and expects her annual creator income to reach around $50,000 by yearend. Her experience reflects a broader shift in advertising. Brands are increasingly moving money toward so-called microinfluencers — smaller online personalities who have less than 100,000 followers. "They are hiring a bunch of microcreators at scale instead of hiring a handful of macrocreators for what could potentially be the same cost," says Ali Grant, co-chief executive officer of the Digital Department, a creator management company. And they perform where it matters most: engagement. An engagement rate of 3% is considered strong, and some microinfluencers exceed 10%, Grant says of the closely watched metric that tracks how often followers interact with content through likes, comments, shares and saves. Microinfluencers average a 3.2% engagement rate, almost triple the 1.1% rate for macroinfluencers (more than 1 million followers), according to growth marketing agency ATTN... A TikTok partnership with a creator who has around 50,000 followers can run a brand more than $3,500 for a single post, Grant says; with 10 times the followers, that fee might just triple, to around $10,000.... The influencer marketing economy ballooned to a projected $33 billion in 2025 up from $1.7 billion in 2015. The segment gained momentum after the COVID-19 pandemic, as dissatisfaction with traditional work pushed many to reconsider conventional career paths, says Brooke Duffy, a professor of communications at Cornell University. "They realized the trade-offs in terms of the investments of time, energy and human capital were not necessarily worth sacrificing so much of one's personal self for," she says. Success online can bring greater freedom — and even higher pay than many traditional office jobs, which have a median US salary of $69,000, according to Glassdoor. But the middle-class hustle still requires constant effort to maintain. The career has no promise of lifetime longevity. And unlike traditional workers, creators have no predictable paycheck or job protections, making career stability elusive. Roughly 57% of 3,000 surveyed full-time creators earn below a living wage from content creation, according to a report last year from Influencer Marketing Hub. Income from social media can fluctuate wildly from month to month, driven by shifts in algorithms, sponsorship cycles and platform trends. "You could have a month where you make zero dollars, or you could have a month where you make $10,000," Platock says. The article cites Gallup Poll data released last year that found employee engagement in the U.S. had fallen to its lowest level in a decade [with engagement defined as "the psychological attachment workers have to their work/team/employer]. "Among the hardest-hit groups were Generation Z and workers in finance and technology. Broader workplace challenges, including rapid organizational change, hybrid and remote work transitions, and rising employee expectations are considered drivers of the overall trend." "For many workers, influencing can seem like a better deal; flexible schedules and independence wrapped in a veneer of creativity and fun. Almost 60% of Gen Zers say they'd become an influencer if given the opportunity, according to a 2023 survey from Morning Consult."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

So much for Microsoft and CrowdStrike’s plans for consistent names across the industry