Eleven schools in the Chinese province of Guizhou have introduced micro-chipped uniforms that track and monitor the students even beyond school grounds.

Developed by local company Guizhou Guanyu Technology, the smart school uniforms feature two microchips embedded into the shoulder pads which allow both the school and the children’s parents to monitor their activity at all times. A GPS system tracks their movements and an alarm informs both teachers and parents whenever a student leaves the classroom or school grounds without permission, or if he falls asleep during classes. The smart uniforms also allow students’ parents to monitor their purchases at school and set spending limits via a mobile app.

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A California family recently notified police about a strange man who had expressed his love for their high-tech doorbell in an explicit manner, after security camera footage showed him licking the doorbell button for no logical reason.

The Dungan family had just returned to their Salinas home last Saturday morning when they decided to check the security footage. They had been automatically notified about unusual activity on the premises the night before, but they had been out of time. When they first started getting notifications from the security system, David Dungan thought it was just his stepson coming home from work. One thing’s for sure, the family weren’t expecting a strange man making out with their doorbell button. And yet, that’s exactly what the footage showed.

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A German pastor thinks he may have found a an effective way to approach the men in his community and it involves one of his greatest passions, whisky.

53-year-old Thomas Eschenbacher, a Franconian pastor from Hammelburg, in Bavaria, has long been looking for ways to approach men and talk to them about God and the Christian faith. It’s not the easiest thing to do, especially in this day in age, but Eschenbacher thinks whisky may just be the solution to his problem. A big fan of the Scottish spirit, the pastor noticed how easy it was to start a conversation about whisky during a leisurely whiskey tasting evening with friends, and decided to use the same catalyst to get through to men in matters of religion. He  recently announced that he was organizing a “whisky retreat” for men and all the 30 available spots were sold out almost instantly.

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Xiao Wang was only 17 years old when he decided to sell one of his kidneys in order to buy the iPhone 4 he couldn’t otherwise afford. After the operation Wang was told he was going to have a normal life with just one kidney, but almost eight years on, the 24-year-old is permanently disabled and dependent on dialysis.

Back in 2011, the iPhone 4 was Apple’s flagship smartphone and a status symbol at Xiao Wang’s school in Chengzhou, China. However, he came from a poor family who couldn’t afford to buy him the trendy gadget, so he decided to sell one of his healthy organs in order to get his hands on enough money to buy the coveted device. With help from a middleman, Wang got in touch with shady characters who specialized in trading organs on the black market and agreed to sell one of his kidneys for 22,000 yuan ($3,200), more than enough to buy the iPhone 4 he so badly desired. Unfortunately, this foolish decision would completely ruin his life.

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Netherlands-based startup SpaceLife Origin wants to send a pregnant woman 250 miles above the Earth to give birth to the first extraterrestrial baby in history, in the name of science.

Should our planet ever become unable to sustain human life, our species’ only hope would be to leave and settle elsewhere, be it a haven floating through space or another planet. But in order for this exodus to be a success, we first have to learn how to reproduce in space, and the founders of SpaceLife Origin want to get the ball rolling by sending a pregnant woman into space and having her give birth in zero gravity conditions. It sounds like a crazy idea, especially since humanity is a long way from becoming a spacefaring species, but SpaceLife Origin believes that our long-term survival depends on it.

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How long do you reckon you could last in solitary confinement and total darkness? How about for a prize of $100,000? One daring poker player bet his friend that he could spend at least 30 days in such extreme conditions and underwent a high stakes 30-day experiment to prove it.

It all started last fall, as a friendly discussion between friends. Australian poker player Rory Young asked his buddy and fellow poker enthusiast Rich Alati how long he thought he could last in a small, dark room without any human interaction. Alati’s answer of 30 days seemed unrealistic to Young, and from there the stage for an unusual “prop bet” was set. Prop bets are designed to test the mental toughness of card players away from the poker table, and usually have very high stakes. This one was no different, with both players depositing $100,000 of their own money in an escrow account and agreeing to pay the other side if they lost the bet. Alati stood to win $100,000 if he managed to spend a full month isolated in a small, dark room, and Young would pocket the same amount if his friend quit before the deadline. The game was on!

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A 19-year-old volunteer firefighter from western Pennsylvania was recently charged with arson, criminal mischief and risking catastrophe after allegedly setting two houses on fire out of boredom.

Last month, police in Munhall, a community located about 8 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, arrested Ryan Laubham, a local volunteer firefighter, for allegedly setting fire to a pair of occupied homes on December 3 and 10. After interviewing witnesses and checking CCTV footage, authorities identified Laubham as the prime suspect in both cases, and he himself admitted to the crimes, saying that he had set the houses on fire because he was bored.

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Blood transfusions have been used to save lives for decades, but now one startup wants to use the medical procedure to combat the effects of aging by injecting older people with young blood. The treatment is called “Ambrosia”, after the mythological food of the Greek gods, which granted whoever consumed it longevity or immortality.

It only takes two hours to have two liters of plasma from donors aged 16 to 25 into your body, but according to Ambrosia founder Jesse Karmazin, the results are nothing-short of miraculous. He once called it “plastic surgery from the inside out“, told one reporter that while the transfusion doesn’t grant immortality, it “comes pretty close”, and told another journalist that just one infusion of young blood “dramatically improves people’s appearance, their memory and their strength”. The company even ran a medical study that officially ended in January of 2018, but despite boasting about its “really positive” results, Ambrosia Medical has yet to make those results public. And that’s what makes this treatment so controversial in the eyes of many health experts – no one has ever offered any solid proof of its efficacy.

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Japanese design studio CWF has created the “Backpacker’s Closet”, a backpack so large it can literally be used a closet or even to carry a grown person around.

Measuring 100 cm in length by 68 cm in width, the Backpacker’s Closet features a maximum holding capacity of 180 liters (48 gallons), making it ideal for carrying a young adult. And if you’re worried about the shoulder straps snapping under the weight, don’t be, as this accessory is not only designed to withstand the advertised maximum weight, but also features padding and an extra middle strap to reduce stress on the wearer’s back and shoulders.

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A viral video of a South-African man barking like a dog after allegedly being bit by a canine infected with rabies has sparked a heated debate on African social media.

The video went viral after being shared by Instagram influencer and entertainer Tunde Ednut. In it, a young man wearing an oxygen mask and lying on a hospital stretcher can be heard barking incessantly. The man holding the camera states that he is filming a “beast like you’ve never seen before” with the permission of the patient’s father, adding that the barking is caused by the rabies virus. The young patients had allegedly been bit by a rabid dog around two weeks before and, despite getting the anti-rabies vaccine, he stopped talking and started barking instead. The narrator of the video claims that the patients exhibited other bizarre symptoms associated with rabies, like foaming at the mouth.

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Gourav Mukhi went from being celebrated as the youngest goal scorer in the history of the Indian Super League to being suspended for six months, after authorities found that he wasn’t actually 16-years-old, but 28.

Mukhi’s troubles started back in October, when the Jamshedpur FC striker scored a “historic goal” against Bengaluru FC. Not only was it a crucial equaliser for his team, but it made him the youngest scorer in the history of India’s soccer league. He was only 16 at the time, or at least that’s what his documents showed, but all the attention made people look at him more closely, and some started expressing doubts about his age online. It didn’t take long for evidence of his deceit to come out, as only three years prior, he had been suspended from the National U16 Football Championship, for being much older than he claimed. So if he was older than 16 three years ago, how could he be 16 now?

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Police in the Russian city of Sevastopol are scrambling to find the vandals responsible for destroying over a dozen speed cameras in the last month.

Reports of damaged stationary speed cameras and the solar panels that power them started coming in at the start of December, and police soon realized that these weren’t just isolated incidents. Someone was targeting them and even getting creative with the means of destruction. First, they started by shooting the cameras with metallic pellets fired from air guns, then they moved to sledgehammers, tearing down the concrete posts the speed cameras were mounted on, and recently they even began setting the expensive cameras on fire. Sevastopol authorities claim that the capture of these vandals is now inevitable, but with 16 destroyed speed cameras reported so far, police has yet to arrest any suspects.

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Japanese fashion design studio Mimi recently launched a collection of insanely realistic snake-print stockings that make your legs look like real snakes and, if social media feedback is any indication, they’ll soon be challenging animal print for supremacy in the fashion world.

Mimi claims its new snake pattern designs put all previous models to shame as they are based on scans of real snakes adapted to fit human legs. The upper portion is designed to mimic snake scales, while the part that goes over the foot replicates a snake head that changes its expression whenever the wearer moves their toes. Some of the pairs are even designed to make the back of the legs mimic the snake’s abdomen to enhance the optical illusion.

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A Chinese man was recently arrested and charged with fraud for impersonating a police officer. He’s definitely not the first person to do that, but what makes his case special is that he managed to convince everyone around him that he was a real police officer for 12 years.

41-year-old Wang Feng had always wanted to be a police officer, but never actually trained or studied to become one. That didn’t stop him from pretending to be one for over a decade, though. It all started in 2006, when Wang’s brother was involved in a debt dispute case and needed a lawyer. To make sure that his brother’s counsel gave 100% in court, Wang met with the man and pretended to be a police officer at the Haiyan Baibu Police Station, in Baibu Town, China’s Zhejiang Province. The ruse actually worked, which made Wang Feng want to try it on others as well. Soon, he started telling friends and acquaintances that he had become a police officer, bought a fake uniform, handcuffs, and even had a fake ID done.

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Australian celebrity chef and Instagram wellness guru Pete Evans has come under fire for saying that “sungazing”, the act of looking directly at the sun, is a one of the best forms of free medicine.

“Every day I love to immerse myself in an experience within the cleansing ocean water as well as a brief gaze into the radiant light of the early rising or late setting sun,” Evans posted on Instagram. “These simple, yet powerful practices have got to be two of the best forms of free medicine on the planet for body, mind and spirit.”

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