An international network of scammers was recently dismantled after allegedly creating a fake version of India’s Professional Cricket League, with farmers posing as players, and broadcasting games live to unsuspecting betting enthusiasts.

When it comes to betting scams, the one recently dismantled in Gujarat’s countryside sounds pretty hard to beat. A criminal group coordinated by a “mastermind in Russia” allegedly created a fake version of the Indian cricket IPL, with farmers and unemployed men posing as players of teams like the Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians or the Gujarat Titans in games broadcast live on YouTube to unsuspecting betting punters in Russia. The games looked real, but the players acted on command, hitting a six, a four, or getting out as directed.

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A Chinese woman reportedly spent the last decade of her life writing hundreds of bogus Wikipedia entries on Russian history and contributing to hundreds of others.

Wikipedia is nothing less of an online treasure! Whether you’re looking up general information out of pure curiosity, or you’re writing an important paper, Wikipedia almost always delivers the best results. But it’s not a perfect system, and this recent story from China is a perfect example of that. According to online reports from several established news sources in China, a mysterious woman is allegedly responsible for one of the biggest hoaxes in Wikipedia’s history – over 200 made-up articles on Russian medieval history, complete with fake locations, events and characters created over a period of 10 years.

This bizarre story began a while back, when Yifan, a Chinese fantasy novelist, started browsing Chinese Wikipedia as a source of inspiration for his new book. Focusing on Russian medieval history, the writer stumbled over the great Kashin silver mine, originally owned by the Tver, an independent state from the 13th to 15th centuries, and then by the Grand Duchy of Moscow, until it closed down in the 18th century, due to its resources becoming exhausted.

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Scientists at the University of Chicago have developed a new algorithm that forecasts crime with up to 90% accuracy by analyzing data and learning patterns.

Minority Report is a very popular sci-fi film about a special police unit that can arrest murderers before they commit their crimes with the help of three clairvoyant humans called Precogs, which can visualize impending homicides. It’s a brilliant film, if you like sci-fi murder mysteries, or you’re simply a fan of Tom Cruise, but the reason we bring it up in this story is that a team of researchers claims to have come up with a real-world, AI-powered system that is also able to predict crimes with an accuracy of 90%. And their systems doesn’t require Precogs, just past data so it can predict the future.

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Police in Nigeria recently released 77 people, including young children, from the basement of a church where they had been waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ for several months.

The raid on the Whole Bible Believers Church in the Valentino area of Ondo Town came after a local mother approached police about the disappearance of her kids and told them that she suspected they had gone to the church. When they entered the place of worship, policemen found 77 people being kept in the basement by the Pastor and his deputy, who had told them that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Authorities claim that the church encouraged people to “stay behind” and wait for the Rapture, and some of them are believed to have lived in the church for several months.

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A so-called ‘career exam taker’ in China was investigated by authorities for allegedly acing the world’s toughest university admittance exam three years in a row and reportedly earning $300,000.

The Gaokao is a notoriously difficult university entrance exam that many Chinese spend years, sometimes decades to pass. The King of Gaokao, for example, has been trying to get into his dream college for 25 years now, but China’s top schools are just too tough to get into for the vast majority of Gaokao takers. Then there are the lucky few that manage to get into these elite learning institutions, like Peking University or Tsinghua University, and finally, there are the ‘career exam takers,’ who earn high sums of money by acing the world’s toughest university exam year after year.

Because the Gaokao is so ridiculously hard to ace, many reputed schools in China offer their students considerable monetary prizes for getting into the country’s top-rated universities. And because there is no limit on how many times a student can take the Gaokao, some exceptionally-gifted individuals get to earn a nice living by simply acing the exam years in a row.

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A Japanese man who spent a whole year fishing small pebbles out of the soles of his sneakers may have inspired a new bobby in his home country.

Neruno Daisuki, an illustrator and manga artist from Japan, recently got his five minutes of fame on Twitter after showing off the collection of pebbles and glass fragments he fished out of the soles of his shoes over the last year. You know, small stones get stuck in the grooves of our footwear soles all the time, but who would ever think of collecting them? Well, this guy did, and after a year of painstaking work, Daisuki showed off his collection of 179 pebbles, 32 glass fragments, and 1 nut.

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A company in Russia’s Leningrad region recently laid a small section of strawberry-scented asphalt as an experiment to help solve the problem of unpleasant odors.

I don’t know if you’ve ever smelled hot asphalt when road sections are being laid or fixed, but it’s not the most appealing odor in the world. Luckily, we may not have to put up with it for much longer, as companies are beginning to come up with solutions to this issue. Just a few months after a Polish company came up with floral-scented asphalt to improve working conditions for the people working with it on a daily basis, a Russian company has successfully laid a 700-meter-long stretch of road using strawberry-scented asphalt.

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A Bolivian woman was recently arrested for throwing hot water on her sleeping husband’s genitals because he was allegedly dreaming of another woman.

The shocking incident happened last week in the Bolivian city of La Paz. According to the scorned wife’s testimony, her 45-year-old husband was sleeping and allegedly declaring his love to another woman in his sleep. Enraged, the woman went into the kitchen, brought a pot of water to a boil and then simply threw it on his genital area for his “transgression”. According to police sources, the man was hospitalized with second-degree burns on his privates as well as on his arm and back.

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In case the name ‘car-jitsu’ wasn’t clear enough, this new contact sport that’s getting a lot of attention on Russian social media is basically jiu-jitsu in a car.

If you were to make a list of the most awkward places to grapple and wrestle in, the car would probably rank pretty high, and that’s precisely what makes car-jitsu so intriguing. Invented a couple of years ago by Vikentiy Mikheev, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Judo black belt and a professional mixed martial arts fighter, car-jitsu challenges practitioners to subdue their opponent in the small confines of a car. Everything inside the car – including the seat belts, steering wheel, mirrors and chairs – can be used to gain an upper hand in the match, but, just like in regular jiu-jitsu, hittinh is not allowed.

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Tired of seeing his family’s money being donated to the local church, an exasperated Russian man set the place of worship a blaze in a feat of rage.

On the morning of June 26, a fire broke out at the Church of St. Basil the Great in the village of Pargolovo, Russia’s Saint Petersburg district. The fire quickly engulfed the wooden roof and walls of the building, and the entire place would have probably burned to a crisp until the firefighters arrived, if the parishioners didn’t put the fire out themselves. Still, the damage was considerable, and local news outlets reported that many of the locals had tears in their eyes as they looked at their local place of worship. But that sadness quickly turned to anger directed at the man responsible for the devastation.

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Imagine waking up one day and finding out that your face is associated with the phrase “worst person you know” on the internet. It sounds like a nightmare, but for one Spanish man, it’s real life.

Josep Maria García, a 42-year-old man from Catalonia, Spain, had no idea he had become a global internet meme until he received a call from his brother-in-law telling him not to panic but to search the phrase “worst person you know” on Google. As soon as he hit the search button, paranoia washed over him. His face was everywhere! Trying to figure out why he had become the face associated with the negative phrase, García eventually realized that it was all connected to a being event in 2014 when his brother-in-law took a test photo of him to check the lighting, which he then uploaded to Getty Images as a stock photo.

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A man who lost his iPhone 10 months ago while canoeing on a river in England was shocked to have it returned in working order by someone who spotted it on the bottom of that same river.

Earlier this month, Miguel Pacheco was canoeing with his family on the River Wye, in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, when he spotted something blue in the water. It turned out to be an iPhone covered with mud and full of water, but instead of throwing it back in, Pacheco decided to take it with him and see if it still worked. Chances were low, considering where the phone had been found, but after using an air compressor to dry it out and placing it in the airing cupboard overnight, Miguel Pacheco was shocked to see the charging icon pop up on the screen when he plugged it in.

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A Chilean man who was accidentally paid 286 times his salary last month resigned from the company and vanished after promising to return the money paid in excess.

Someone in the human resources department of Chile’s largest producer of cold cuts, Consorcio Industrial de Alimentos (Cial), must be sweating profusely right now. By accident, they paid an employee 165,398,851 Chilean pesos ($180,000) last month, instead of the 500,000 pesos ($542) they were entitled to, and now that person apparently doesn’t want to give the money back. They have resigned from their position and vanished without a trace, leaving the company no other option but to lawyer up and try to recover their losses.

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Vietnam is reportedly dealing with an increasing number of serious medical issues caused by fat-dissolving injections sold by shady beauticians and cosmetic treatment clinics.

Targeted weight loss and fat loss, in particular, are incredibly difficult, as most reputable fitness experts will tell you. They require a lot of physical exercise and a calorie-restricted diet, and not even those may not be enough without the right genes. But that’s something that many people just aren’t ready to accept, which is why their turn to ‘snake oil’ solutions that promise to deliver the results they desire. Such is apparently the case with many Vietnamese women who spend small fortunes on injectable fat-dissolving serums that end up putting their lives at risk and leaving them with permanent scars.

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A Japanese company is selling hyper-realistic dragonfly-shaped pendants that it claims can keep mosquitoes and other pesky insects away without any chemicals.

Did you know dragonflies are among the most successful predators in the animal kingdoms? It’s true, they have a predation success rate of about 95%, and insects apparently fear them so much that the mere sight of a dragonfly causes them to run or fly for their lives. At least that’s what the makers of this popular dragonfly-shaped pendant want their clients to believe. That’s because they are not selling it as a cool accessory for insect enthusiasts, but as a mosquito and bug repellent. Just put the pendant around your neck or somewhere where it’s very visible, and you won’t have to worry about pests anymore.

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