Latest news with #Kera
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Beauty queen sold ‘fibre' gummies laced with laxatives
A Vietnamese beauty queen and social media influencer has been arrested for promoting a fake supplement laced with laxatives to her millions of followers. Nguyen Thuc Thuy Tien, a 27-year-old former winner of the Miss Grand International beauty pageant, was detained in Vietnam for consumer fraud on Monday after pushing the gummies, which she claimed were rich in fibre, across her social media platforms. At the time, Thuy Tien had a combined following of nearly 11.5 million people. Thuy Tien produced the gummies, which launched at the end of 2024, as part of a joint venture called Kera Supergreens Gummies with fellow content creators Pham Quang Linh and Hang Du Muc. The three influencers, who are active across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok, would regularly livestream themselves promoting the gummies and claiming that they each contained an equivalent amount of fibre to a plate of vegetables. In livestreams, Thuy Tien would often refer to the gummies as her 'brainchild' and take credit that the 'Kera candy comes from me personally'. She even said that she developed the product because 'I myself cannot eat vegetables' and would recommend 2-3 pills per day for young children and pregnant mothers. However, a few months after the release, one customer decided to send the supplement to a lab to be tested and found that each gummy contained only 16mg of fibre, a fraction of the 200mg that had been advertised. They also found that the product was 35 per cent sorbitol, which is used as a laxative. According to police, over 135,000 units of the product were sold to more than 30,000 customers, generating revenues exceeding VND17 billion (approximately £489,112). The three influencers were initially fined in March and apologised, but the following month Pham and Hang Du Muc were arrested alongside other representatives from Kera and its manufacturer, including the head of quality assurance and head of production. Thuy Tien, a well-known celebrity in Vietnam, was not arrested until Monday, but she wiped several of her social media accounts in March. During the investigation, Thuy Tien reportedly admitted that she initially had 'good ideas' for the product and has been eager to 'participate in the management'. 'When you are a famous person, your responsibility is very big. People will buy this product a lot because of you,' she was quoted as saying in her defence. Thuy Tien has received numerous accolades from Vietnam's ruling Communist Party, including a certificate of merit from the prime minister and the Outstanding Young Vietnamese Faces award presented by the central committee of the Ho Chi Minh communist youth union. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
The Star
20-05-2025
- The Star
Vietnam arrests former international beauty queen over alleged customer deception
Nguyen Thuc Thuy Tien rose to fame after winning Miss Grand International 2021 in Thailand. - Instagram HCM CITY: Nguyen Thuc Thuy Tien, 26, former Miss Grand International 2021, was arrested on Monday (May 19) by the Ministry of Public Security's Police Investigation Agency over allegations of consumer deception linked to the controversial 'Kera vegetable candy' scandal. Tien is being investigated for 'deceiving customers' under Clause 2, Article 198 of Vietnam's Penal Code. The case involves several high-profile individuals, including social media influencers and senior executives from Asia Life Corporation and Che Em Rot Company, who are accused of producing and falsely advertising substandard health food products. Investigators allege that Tien held a 30 per cent stake in the venture that manufactured Kera candy, a product marketed as a healthy substitute for green vegetables. The remaining 70 per cent was owned by her business partners, Nguyen Thi Thai Hang (known as Hang Du Muc) and Pham Quang Linh (known as Quang Linh Vlogs), both of whom were arrested in early April on similar charges. Nguyen Thuc Thuy Tien (second from left), seen alongside other suspects arrested by the Ministry of Public Security's Police Investigation Agency. - Courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security Authorities accuse the company of using deceptive marketing claims — such as 'one piece equals a plate of vegetables' — while failing to disclose key ingredients, including sorbitol, which constituted 35 per cent of the product and caused a laxative effect. The raw materials used were also found to be of lower nutritional value than advertised, with actual vegetable powder content under 1 per cent despite packaging that claimed 28 per cent. The misleading promotional campaign was widely disseminated across social media platforms. Tien, who has more than 2.6 million followers on Facebook, appeared in livestreams and posts promoting the candy as safe and beneficial for both children and adults. She later deleted these posts after users raised concerns about the accuracy of the claims. According to police, over 135,000 units of the product were sold to more than 30,000 customers, generating revenues exceeding VND17 billion (approximately US$670,000). Several executives from Asia Life Corporation have also been indicted for 'producing counterfeit food,' including Truong Thi Le and Tran Thi Le Thu, who are currently in custody. Others, such as Pham Thi Diem Trinh and Nguyen Pham Hong Vy, have been released due to pregnancy or child-rearing responsibilities. In April, Tien was fined VNĐ25 million (US$1,000) for failing to disclose sponsorship and advertisement obligations in her online promotions of the product. Nguyen Thuc Thuy Tien rose to fame after winning Miss Grand International 2021 in Thailand and was previously recognised by the Ho Chí Minh Communist Youth Union as one of Vietnam's outstanding young figures in the arts. Beyond pageantry, she has appeared in several music videos and films, including the upcoming movie Chot Don alongside actor Quyen Linh. Her arrest has shocked fans and drawn widespread media attention, underscoring growing public concern over false health claims and celebrity endorsements in Vietnam's rapidly expanding, social media-driven e-commerce market. — Vietnam News/ANN
The Guardian
09-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
A moment that changed me: I brought a baby gorilla home – and learned so much about being a parent
It was 2016, and I'd been a zookeeper for seven years. I lived with my partner and two stepchildren in a Victorian terrace house in Bristol. We'd met when her kids were four and eight, so I had not experienced the early baby stages, the sleepless nights, nappies and bottle-feeding. But that was about to change. On 15 March, I parked my car outside the house as usual, but rather than bowling inside to shower and eat, I unclipped the car seat and carried a baby gorilla into the lounge. Afia had been born by emergency C-section at Bristol zoo after her mum, Kera, developed pre-eclampsia. I first took her home when she was four weeks old. On the couch, she nestled in the crook of my arm and clutched my thumb with a delicate fist of wrinkled grey fingers. The trust in her dark eyes snapped awake an instinctive devotion in me – the foundation of the bond that grew between us. I worked with a family group of seven western lowland gorillas at the zoo. Classified as critically endangered, they are at imminent risk of extinction in the wild. The captive population is managed collectively across Europe by a specialist team: zoos don't own the species they keep, or sell them, but rather they maintain the genetic diversity within the population by moving animals from one collection to another. I followed industry-wide husbandry guidelines, but what we were doing with Afia had never been tried in the UK before. As a gorilla keeper, I was now part of the team that would hand-rear her. Hand-rearing is a rare part of zoo keeping and the goal is always to reunite the baby with its own kind as quickly as possible. As gorillas rely on their mother's milk for three years, the aim with Afia was to try to get her back with her mother or, failing that, train one of the adult females to become her surrogate mum. Afia would need to be acting like a normal gorilla infant by the time we introduced her into the troop; if we could achieve this within a year, she wouldn't remember travelling in the car each night or sleeping in a bed with a duvet. Baby gorillas develop more quickly than humans, so my parenting ride lasted just seven months. I wore a string vest, to replicate a gorilla's fur, as the first thing Afia needed to learn was to hang on to me wherever I went. She slept on my chest at night, clung to me in fear at unexpected noises, and I helped with her first stiff-legged steps. By day, we spent time with the adult gorillas, particularly with Kera, Afia's mum. Adult gorillas are dangerous animals, which meant we would never go into the enclosure with them. Kera remained separated from the rest of the group and struggled to recover from the C-section. Our interactions were through grilled windows and doors in the gorilla house, but Kera was so sick and unresponsive that no maternal bond with Afia could be formed. Soon, Afia began to ride on my back, furry arms clamped around my neck. She could climb and was trying to master swinging from one rope to another. I recognised her facial expressions – sleepy, solemn, inquisitive – and she had full trust in me, knowing that I would keep her safe. At six months, she was running around the lounge and throwing her toys about. My favourite expression was her play face, a grin that we both knew meant diving off the sofa and wrestling. I would take up my regular spot on the floor and wait for Afia to push the coffee table up against the couch so she could climb on to it more easily. She would spend the next hour leaping on to me or the cushions she'd chucked nearby. My own family group had to be hands off, as part of the hand-rearing protocol. The kids mentioned later they felt waves of irrational jealousy. When I was rolling around on the floor, Afia chuckling with gorilla laughter, my partner said: 'I can see now what sort of parent you'd have been for the kids at that age.' We ate dinner together as a family, Afia on my lap, enthusiastically drumming her hands on the kitchen table and making grabs for the cutlery. The gorilla troop eats together at the same time, so sharing meals needed to be the norm for Afia, and she would look around the table at us all, squishing fistfuls of steamed sweet potato through her fingers. After dinner, she'd slump across me on the couch, asleep, briefly waking up for a bottle-feed before bed, where she would snuffle and belch cheesy milk breath over me. In bed, Afia had started off sleeping on my chest, but now she was older, she would slide off to snuggle next to me, or roll over and throw a hairy arm over my partner instead. That's how the routine went, until we arrived at our final night together. Afia sensed my sadness and slept with her head wedged under my chin. For the first time, I felt as if I'd lied to her. Kera had recovered, but as she continued to show no maternal instinct towards Afia, we were about to begin introducting her to a surrogate mum, an older female with plenty of experience. My sped-up baby and toddler experience had fast-tracked me to a point that I'd yet to go through with the human kids: a taste of how it will feel when they, too, leave home. It changed the way I thought of my own family, with a realisation that the troop as we know it will disperse, our roles as parents steadily replaced by a desperate and fragile hope: that you've done all you could, and that life will be kind to them. Gorillas in Our Midst by Alan Toyne is published on 10 April (Summersdale Publishers, £10.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply. 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