China’s state news agency Xinhua unveiled two very realistic looking AI news anchors that can “tirelessly” report the news 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, from anywhere in the world.

We’ve known that robots and artificial intelligence were coming for our jobs, but somehow I never thought news anchors would be among the first to be replaced. However, if the two AI broadcasters who made their debut last week during China’s annual World Internet Conference are anything to go by, the future of human news anchors looks very bleak. The newest additions to Xinhua’s team of broadcasters not only look disturbingly realistic, but they can also move their mouths to match the audio, blink, nod their head in emphasis, or raise their eyebrows. But their most important quality is that they can work 24/7, both on the agency’s website and on social media platforms, greatly “reducing news production costs and improving efficiency”.

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A 35-year-old Japanese man who shunned romantic relationships with real women after being humiliated and bullied by them recently married a popular virtual pop-star named Hatsune Miku.

Akihiko Kondo had been planning his dream wedding to the love of his life since March, and on November 4 the two finally tied the knot during a ceremony in Tokyo attended by around 40 guests, including a member of the Japanese Parliament. Unfortunately, his mother, refused to attend the event and so did all of his other relatives. Not being there on her son’s big day may sound cruel, but Kondo’s mother apparently couldn’t accept the fact that he would rather marry a two-dimensional virtual idol rather than look for love in real life. Akihiko Kondo married Hatsune Miku, an animated 16-year-old hologram with huge anime eyes and aquamarine pigtails, because he simply wasn’t interested in real women.

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A 69-year-old Dutch man who claims to feel much younger than his actual age has gone to court to make himself legally 20 years younger.

Emile Ratelband, a media personality and self-described “positivity guru”, recently told a court in Arnhem, Holland, that he did not feel comfortable with his true age and compared his desire to have it legally changed with that of people who identify as transgender. Ratelband said that he would gladly renounce his pension to ensure that there were no unforeseen consequences, and tried to convince the judges that slashing two decades from his real age would have a hugely positive impact on all aspects of his life.

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Three managers of a home improvement firm in Zunyi, China, were recently arrested for subjecting employees to extreme punishment, including forcing them to eat cockroaches, for not meeting their sales goals.

The arrests came after an employee of the unnamed company took to social media to complain about the humiliating punishments he and his colleagues were being subjected to by management for failing to meat their goals. His post included a video of a topless man standing in a center of a room and being whipped with a belt by his boss, while his workmates watched. Footage also shows people drinking cups of yellow liquid which some have alleged is urine. The video was later deleted, but screenshots started circulating online, and the police were notified about the troubling punishments.

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Aigali Supugaliev, a 63-year-old man from Kazakhstan, almost gave his relatives a heart attack when he returned home two months after they had buried his body. And while stories of people showing up after being presumed dead by their families have made news headlines before, Aigali’s one is particularly bizarre because his death had been confirmed by a DNA test.

It all started on July 9, when Aigali Supugaliev’s relatives reported him missing from his village of Tomarly, in Kazakhstan. They had no idea that the unmarried man had been offered a four-month job on a distant farm, as he had not bothered to inform them about it, so when a decomposed body was discovered near his house, everyone feared the worse. The corpse was reportedly in such a bad state that Aigali’s family couldn’t identify it by physical traits, so a DNA test was commissioned. Believe it or not, the test showed that there was a 99.29% probability (the highest this kind of test can give) that the discovered body was that of Supugaliev, so an official death certificate was issued, and the man’s brother organized a funeral.

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Real Madrid, one of the world’s most popular football clubs is currently testing TV urinals in the men’s bathrooms of their stadium, Sandiago Bernabeu, and it’s not the only one.

One would think that the management of the Spanish club is trying to make it easy for fans to follow the action on the field even when going to the bathroom, but according to several news reports, the screens installed in the urinals have nothing to do with football and everything to do with generating revenue. Apparently, the footage played on these screens will focus mainly on advertising, instead of showing the live game on the pitch, and there’s a good reason for that – it’s much more profitable.

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A Michigan woman spent five days stuck in her own bathtub after becoming unable to reach the handrail she normally used to pull herself out. She was rescued thanks to a vigilant postman who noticed that she wasn’t picking up her mail as usual.

54-year-old Alison Gibson became a prisoner in her own bathroom on October 15. She lied down in her bathtub as she normally did, but after finishing her bath, the woman found herself unable to reach the metal handrail she used to pull herself back up. She apparently had her back turned to it and there was no way for to grab a hold of it, so she was basically stuck there. To make matters worse, she had left her phone in another room, so she couldn’t call anyone for help.

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Japan has a culture of long working hours, but even in this generally tough and stressful working environment some companies stand out because of the complete disregard for their employees’ well-being. They are known as “black companies” and anyone who has ever wanted to experience what working for such organizations is like, without actually getting a job at one, can find out by applying for a special event called “The Black Holiday”.

It’s hard to imagine anyone ever wanting to experience what it’s like for a ‘black company’ is like, but especially so on Friday, November 23, when Japan celebrates Labor Thanksgiving Day. It’s a national holiday and a rare opportunity to enjoy a long weekend free of work-related stress. But I guess that’s exactly why the organizers of The Black Holiday chose this date for their special event. What better way to emphasize just how bad working for a black company can be then having you do it on your day off, right?

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An amazing community in Seal Beach, California, have been helping the owner of their local donut shop spend more time with his ailing wife by buying all of his products so he can close hours earlier than usual.

John and Stella Chhan have been running the modest Donut City donut shop on Pacific Coast Highway for almost three decades, but a few weeks ago some of their regular customers noticed that part of the duo was missing. John was still boxing and bagging donuts behind the counter, but Stella was nowhere to be found. She had suffered a debilitating aneurysm at the end of September which had left her unable to communicate or move for several weeks. Even though she had started to speak again, the woman was still recovering in a rehabilitation facility, and John went to be with her every day after selling out. But their local community decided to help them spend more time together.

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A pet husky recently got his owner in trouble after escaping its enclosure, going into a neighboring farm and spending an entire night killing chickens.

Chinese media reports that the owner of a chicken farm in Ningguo, China’s Anhui province, burst into tears on the morning of October 29, after going to check on the birds and finding the coop littered with lifeless bodies. The first thoughts that went through his mind were that someone had killed most of his chickens out of spite, or that some wild animal had made its way inside and decimated the birds. But after checking around his farm for clues, the man actually found the perpetrator – his neighbor’s husky dog with a dead chicken in its mouth.

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A Russian scientist working at the Bellingshausen research station on King George Island, in Antarctica, was charged with attempted murder after he stabbed a fellow colleague with a kitchen knife for allegedly revealing the endings of books that he was reading.

55-year-old Sergey Savitsky and Oleg Beloguzov, 52, had been working together at Russia’s remote Bellingshausen for four years and they were both known to their colleagues as professionals. However, on October 9th, Savitsky reportedly took a kitchen knife and plunged it into Beloguzov’s chest, in what has been referred to as the first known attempted murder in Antarctica, ever. It will probably go down in history as one of the strangest as well, as investigators recently revealed that a possible explanation for the crime could be the spoiling of book endings.

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A 79-year-old who spent most of her time begging at a train station in Hangzhou, China, was recently ousted as a relatively rich pensioner who lives in a 5-storey villa and owns several retail stores and rental properties in the city.

The woman’s story made national news headlines last week, after staff at Hangzhou’s East Railway Station started broadcasting an unusual message from loudspeakers warning passers-by not to fall for the granny’s story because she is not what she appears to be. In a surprising turn of events, even the woman’s son told reporters that their family is considerably wealthier than the average family in China. They live in a lavish villa, own several properties, some of which they rent to local business, and he himself manages a family factory. The man added that he told his mother to stop begging numerous times, but she refuses to listen.

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The simplest way to describe Chrom is as a nail polish for your teeth. It lets you color your chompers in 10 various colors, doesn’t smudge and lasts for up to 24 hours.

If you’re bored with your pearly whites, or just want them to match the color of your fingernails or your outfit, you can now use an innovative ‘tooth polish’ to paint them any way you like. The formula for Chrom was reportedly created by dentists and consists of a grain alcohol base and pigments similar to high-quality coloring. It doesn’t stain the teeth, it’s not permanent and it doesn’t have any taste so you can enjoy your favorite foods while looking freaky.

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A self-described “whimsical scientist” locked himself in a small air-tight plastic foil tent with 200 plants to see if they could covert CO2 into oxygen fast enough to keep him alive.

Kurtis Baute sealed himself in a 3m by 3m plastic-wrapped biodome in his brother’s backyard in British Columbia, Canada, last week, but he announced his audacious plan to his YouTube fans, in August. He hoped to find out if by surrounding himself with plants, enough of the CO2 he breathed out could be converted into oxygen to allow him to survive in the sealed enclosure for at least three days. Unfortunately, he had to abort the experiment after only 15 hours, as CO2 levels reached a dangerous point where he risked suffering brain damage or even falling into a coma.

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Chihuahua Julep, a cocktail bar that opened in central Helsinki, Finland, in August, has banned patrons from using smartphones inside the venue to encourage real-world social interaction.

Initially, the owners of  Chihuahua Julep only encouraged visitors to put their smartphones away so that the light from their screens wouldn’t ruin the bar’s ambience, but after seeing that those who followed the recommendation seemed more relaxed and at the same time more engaged in conversations with their friends, they decided to impose an outright ban on handhelds. Now, anyone wanting to enjoy a drink inside the venue must store their phone inside a box on arrival.

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