A Chinese woman with severe vitamin D deficiency caused by excessive sunscreen use suffered a bone fracture just by rolling in her bed.

Doctors at the XinDu Traditional Medicine Hospital, in Chengdu, China, recently reported the unusual case of a 48-year-old local woman who had apparently suffered a bone fracture just by casually rolling in bed. According to Dr. Long Shuang, tests performed at the hospital showed that the unnamed woman’s vitamin D levels were extremely low, which had accelerated bone loss and caused the onset of severe osteoporosis. Further investigation revealed that the patient had avoided sunlight since childhood, rarely wearing short-sleeved shirts and always applying sunscreen when going outside. Her case was presented as a warning for other sunscreen enthusiasts who might be overusing it and thus affecting their bone health.

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Enhanced Games, a sports competition where performance-enhancing drugs are not only allowed but encouraged, will be held for the first time in May next year, in Las Vegas.

Ever wondered how much better top human athletes could be if they were allowed to use performance-enhancing substances in competitions? Well, in May of next year, these questions will be answered, as the first edition of Enhanced Games kicks off. Marketed as an event designed to remove the stigma of using PEDs and to safely push the limits of human athletic performance, Enhanced Games has rightly been nicknamed the “Olympic Games on Steroids”. Originally announced as a concept in 2023, the Enhanced Games will host its first ever edition in May of next year, in las Vegas, with eight different events in swimming (50- and 100-meter races in freestyle and butterfly), track (100-meter sprint and 100/110-meter hurdles) and weightlifting (snatch, clean and jerk).

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A Mexican bank has been accused of lacking sensitivity after insisting that a bed-bound 96-year-old woman be brought to a physical branch to confirm her identity in order to release her pension.

Photos and video clips of an elderly woman being transported to a BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria) bank branch in Oaxaca, Mexico, on an ambulance stretcher have been going viral on Mexican social media and sparking outrage among the general public. 96-year-old Fidelia Vásquez Nuño cannot move due to her advanced age and various illnesses, but despite her son’s attempts to file the necessary paperwork with the bank to verify her identity, she had to be brought to a local branch to correct a glitch in her biometric registration that had prevented her from cashing her pension for six months.

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The pheasant-like hoatzin is the only bird species that ferments its food, an unusual digestive system that also makes it the stinkiest bird in the world.

The hoatzin is a very strange bird. Native to the backwaters of the Amazon, its chicks are born with clawed wings, it is the last surviving member of an ancient bird line believed to have branched off on its own around 64 million years ago, and its diet consists only of plants, which is very odd for birds. But this living oddity is most known for its strong manure-like smell, which has earned it the nickname ‘stinkbird’. The hoatzin is the only known bird species with a foregut fermentation system similar to the one found in cows, which releases significant amounts of methane via constant burping. The smelly burps and particularly stinky droppings give the hoatzin its signature odour.

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Australian scientists have discovered that mutton birds on Lord Howe Island have so much plastic in their stomachs that they clackle and crunch under slight pressure.

Lord Howe, a tiny volcanic island on Australia’s east coast, is home to around 500 humans and over 44,000 shearwaters, aka mutton birds, a species of long-winged seabirds. It’s one of the last places you would expect to be affected by plastic waste, but Australian scientists have made a startling discovery – the birds on Lord Howe Island are so full of plastic that the little stomachs crackle and crunch when pressed. Last month, a team directed a mutton bird and found that almost a fifth of its entire body weight was plastic. Until then, the most plastic they had ever found in one bird was 403 pieces in 2024, but that record was blown away on their most recent visit to the island.

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A 47-year-old woman from Western France has been speaking with a distinctively English accent ever since she had her tonsils removed 14 years ago.

Laetitia, a cashier from Montval-sur-Loir, in France’s Sarthe Department, doesn’t speak English. She only knows some basic words that she learned in school decades ago, but hearing her speak in her native tongue would have you believe she was born in England. For 14 years, Laetitia has been speaking with an English accent that makes most people think she is Anglo-Saxon. But the truth is much stranger – the 47-year-old woman has been stuck with her English accent ever since she woke up from a tonsil removal surgery. Her children had gone through the same procedure before, and they talked in a nasal voice, but it went away after a few days, so she wasn’t too worried in the beginning, but as the weeks passed, her weird accent remained just as strong.

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The Harrisons Malayalam Plantation in Varandarappilly, Kerala, is home to India’s most beautiful cricket ground, a hidden oasis in a sea of green canopy.

A remote cricket ground in Kerala, India, has been getting a lot of attention online because of its unique location, tucked away in the center of a lush tree plantation. Seen from the air, the breathtaking site looks like a clearing in the Amazon rainforests of South America, but it’s actually one of the hidden gems of Kerala, aka ‘God’s Own Country’. Originally set up by the Harrison Malayalam company decades ago, as a place where its plantation workers could relax, the remote cricket ground, accessible via a narrow, tree-lined road that is invisible from above and on most maps, has become a sanctuary both for plantation employees and locals.

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Chinese doctors were recently baffled by the curious case of a young woman who suddenly became unable to speak English, a language she had been fluent in.

Last week, Wan Feng, the director of the Department of Neurosurgery at Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital in Guangzhou, China, posted a video of a 24-year-old woman who had suddenly fallen ill during class one day and developed a very curious symptom – the woman had been proficient in English prior to the classroom incident, but after, she could only speak Mandarin and Cantonese. The young woman could still read and understand English perfectly, but for some reason, she could no longer speak the language at all.

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The small city of Carmel-by-the-Sea is famous for requiring visitors to get an official permit in order to legally walk in heels higher than two inches.

Carmel-by-the-Sea’s infamous high-heel permit sounds like an urban myth, but it’s a real, official requirement in the Monterey city. If your heels are over two inches in height and have less than one square inch of bearing surface, it is illegal to wear them in public without first getting a permit from the city hall. The permit is issued free of charge, and many visitors get it simply as a souvenir, even if they don’t plan on walking in heels. The certificate has every nice, official look, it is issued in the name of the person making the request and is signed by one of the city clerks on duty.

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A Chinese woman was allegedly forced to take off her heavy makeup after facial recognition scanners at an airport failed to confirm her identity.

A short clip showing a young woman using wet wipes to clean her face of makeup while being scolded by airport staff went viral on Chinese social media last week, sparking all sorts of humorous comments. According to the boarding pass shown in the video next to the woman’s ID, the video was shot in September of last year, at Shanghai Airport, but only recently attracted attention online. During the short clip, the woman holding the camera (presumably an airport official), scolds the young girl, telling her that she needs to wipe off all the makeup until she looks like the picture on her identification document.

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A 25-year-old Japanese man who spent most of his time looking down at his phone eventually became unable to raise his own head and was diagnosed with ‘dropping head syndrome’.

The rare case report published a couple of years ago in the medical journal JOS Case Reports detailed the disturbing consequences of holding one’s head bent down for hours on end over long periods of time. The patient, a 25-year-old Japanese man who spent most of his time playing on his phone, had developed a large bulge at the back of his neck and could no longer lift his own head using his neck muscles. Before seeking medical help, the man had reportedly experienced serious neck pains and had difficulty swallowing food, which caused him to lose weight rapidly. Eventually, his neck became s weak due to the unnatural position that he became unable to lift his head.

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A Haitian woman who had lost family members to a violent criminal gang took her revenge by poisoning 40 gang members with tainted empanadas.

Haiti has long been at the mercy of violent street gangs, and many families have suffered tragedies at the hands of these ruthless criminals, but few ever dared fight back out of fear for their loved ones’ safety. But vigilantes do exist! One woman in the Kenscoff district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city, made international news headlines after carrying out a massacre in the ranks of a local gang that had reportedly been responsible for the deaths of several of her family members. A respected street vendor specializing in pâtés, a Haitian version of empanadas, the woman recently offered dozens of gang members free pâtés as thanks for “protecting her neighborhood”. In reality, she was carrying out revenge against the people who had terrorized and killed several of her family members.

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Kansai International Airport welcomes tens of millions of passengers every year, but it has developed a system that ensures none of their baggage ever goes missing.

Losing a piece of baggage is always a risk at airports. For example, in the US, data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows that domestic flights lose about 3 million bags every year. With hundreds of millions of individual bags to handle, losing some of them seems like an inevitability, and yet, one busy airport in Japan claims to have never lost a piece of baggage in its three decades of operation. Kansai International Airport, which serves the city of Osaka, opened in September 1994, to relieve the overcrowded Osaka International Airport and has been welcoming millions of passengers per year ever since. The staff at Kansai Airport pride themselves on being extremely efficient at handling passenger baggage, so much so that they have never once lost one.

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A French motorist may have broken the record for the longest time driving a vehicle without a valid license, insurance, or technical inspection – over 28 years.

Last week, a routine traffic stop turned out to be a memorable bust for a motorized police unit in Rhone, France. After checking the license plates, the traffic cops pulled the vehicle over for an expired technical inspection. But this turned out to be the least important offense the driver was guilty of. Upon checking his papers, the policeman realized that the vehicle didn’t have insurance either, and worst of all, the driver’s license had been revoked in 1997. The man casually told the officer that his driver’s license had been revoked over 28 years ago after being caught driving under the influence of alcohol, and he simply hadn’t bothered to reapply for it, comparing his old license to “an expired but still edible yogurt”.

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A well-respected family in the UK was recently awarded compensation of $100,000 by a restaurant that had publicly accused them of leaving without settling the bill.

In July of last year, Peter and Ann McGirr, along with their children Peter Jr and Carol, visited The Horse & Jockey Inn in the Peak District, England. It was a pretty uneventful affair; the family ordered ribeye and gammon steaks and washed them down with ales and lagers before leaving for their home in Omagh, Northern Ireland. Only shortly after their departure, The Horse & Jockey Facebook page posted a video of the McGirrs’ allegedly leaving the establishment without paying the £150 ($200) bill. The family was soon making national headlines for allegedly dining and dashing, which negatively impacted their otherwise great reputation, so they found themselves with no choice but to sue the inn to clear their name.

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