For the Past 7 Years, 100% of Seniors at This School Have Been Admitted to College

Urban Prep Academy, an all-male charter high school in Chicago, has set the bar really high for learning institutions in the US. Despite getting most of its students from the Windy City’s lowest income neighborhoods, it has managed to achieve and maintain a 100 percent graduation rate for nearly a decade. But even more impressive is the fact that every senior in the past seven years has gone on to attended college on a scholarship.

Most recently, the entire class of 2016 celebrated ‘College Signing Day’, with each student announcing the college or university he has chosen to attend. The class has collectively received over 1,500 college admissions, with over $15 million in scholarships and grants. “It’s a great day,” said senior Rudolph Long, speaking to CBS Chicago. “I feel great. We all made it. We all come from good environments so to see us all going to college is nice.”

The all-African-American, all-male charter high school’s unprecedented success has been attributed to its unique mission – to elevate the students’ self esteem while focusing on test scores as well. While most successful schools have stringent admission criteria, Urban Prep makes no distinction between applicants. Any Chicago resident is welcome to apply. A lottery selects 450 students out of approximately 1,500 applications each year, to attend Urban Prep’s three campuses in Englewood, West, and Bronzeville.

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Woman Sues Starbucks for $5 Million for Putting Too Much Ice in Iced Drinks

Putting too much ice in iced drinks could potentially cost businesses millions of dollars, as Starbucks is learning the hard way. Chicago resident Stacy Pincus has filed a $5 million class action lawsuit against the coffeehouse chain for filling coffee cups with too much frozen water.

Pincus is alleging that although the company sells beverages in Tall, Grande, Venti, and Trenta sizes, there’s so much ice in them that customers are only getting half the amount they actually pay for. In addition, she’s accusing the chain of charging more for iced drinks than for hot drinks, which she believes is a huge rip off. The lawsuit mentions that in 2014, iced tea was actually the most profitable product on the Starbucks menu.

“In essence, Starbucks is advertising the size of its cold drink cups on its menu, rather than the amount of fluid a customer will receive when they purchase a cold drink – and deceiving its customers in the process,” the court documents filed by Pincus states. They also mention that while the Venti is supposed to be 24 ounces, the actual amount of the drink served is as little as 14 because “large pieces of ice take up more space.”

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Taiwanese Restaurant Charges $300 for a Bowl of Beef Noodle Soup

Beef noodle soup might not be the most glamorous dish you could order at a restaurant, but a serving of the comfort food can certainly leave you feeling satiated. Is it worth a whopping $300, though? Because that’s what a bowl of the ‘world’s best noodle soup’ costs at this popular Taiwanese restaurant.

In case you’re wondering, the soup doesn’t contain bizarre ingredients like diamonds or dirt, and it isn’t infused with healthy stuff like collagen or anthocyanin. It’s a simple beef bowl recipe, albeit one that Chef Wang Cong-yuan has spent the past 26 years researching and perfecting. The special beef noodle soup is currently served at his small 40-seat restaurant, Niu Ba Ba (Daddy Cow), in Taiwan.

“From the age of forty, I have focused on making a good bowl of beef noodles,” Wang said. “It’s quality over quantity. My ultimate goal is to make the world’s best beef noodle soup.”

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Twin Sisters Sleep with Plush Toys, Sell Them on Instagram for $333 a Piece

A pair of identical twin sisters from Los Angeles have come up with a bizarre way to make money – they’re ‘sleeping’ with superhero figurines and then selling each one for a whopping $333. In a bid to boost sales, they’re also posting highly suggestive photographs on Instagram of each night spent with a figurine.

Allie and Lexie Kaplan, 22, are working in collaboration with ‘The Most Famous Artist’ Matty Mo, who rose to fame after making $50,000 in one weekend by selling cash on Instagram. The figurine collection, named ‘The Boys Toys’, features seven fictional characters – Batman, Mario, Pikachu, Yoda, Chewbacca, The Hulk, and Darth Vader. The sisters revealed that they purchased the figurines for a total of $130 from LA’s Toy District and are selling each one for $333. According to The Most Famous Artist online shop, they are all sold out.

“Each ‘Boy Toy’ is signed on the tag and includes a signed Certificate of Authenticity sealed with kisses and a framed picture of us with the ‘Boy Toy’. And yes they smell like us,” the twins wrote on Instagram. “We are taking over @themostfamousartist this week to launch our new project ‘Boy Toys’. We slept with each one of them and have the pictures to prove it. This week we are going to tell you all about each ones dirty little secrets.”

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Chinese Shepard Has Been Living by Himself in Abandoned Village for the Last 10 Years

Living by yourself can be scary and daunting, but this Chinese man has managed to survive in complete isolation for 10 long years. Liu Shengjia was recently discovered living all by himself in the completely abandoned village of Xuenshanshe, in northwest China’s Gansu Province, after his mother and brother’s death over a decade ago.

Xuenshanshe village was once home to about 20 families, but was slowly abandoned by its residents as resources became scarce. Families ended up moving away to towns and cities in search of work, and those left behind eventually passed away. By 2006, he was left alone to take care of his bedridden mother and younger brother, both of whom died within a year, making him the only inhabitant of the village. Anyone else in his position might have left for better prospects, if only for fear of losing their mind to loneliness, but Liu stayed behind and made a life for himslef.  “In the beginning, I wasn’t able to sleep at night while listening to the howling of wild dogs,” he admitted, speaking to the People’s Daily. “But after I started to tend a few sheep and they’ve become my companions, I slowly got used to living alone.”

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Man Builds House with Hole in the Floor Over Pond So He Can Fish Every Day

Oklahoma native Paul Phillips loves fishing so much that he dug up his own pond and built a house over it. This allows him to engage in his favorite hobby on all three sides of the porch, but the real highlight of the place is the secret fishing hole inside his living room. The unusual trap door arrangement allows him to relax in his rocking chair and fish indoors to his heart’s content!

When he started constructing the house in September 2014, Phillips began attracting the attention of neighbors who were completely fascinated by his idea. It eventually got covered by local media and his love for fishing made international headlines. Speaking to News On 6, he explained that the project came about solely because of obsession with catching fish. “I love to fish, I fish every day,” he said.

But it wasn’t until he experienced an unpleasant interruption while engaging in his beloved hobby that he actually came up with the idea for a house built over a fish pond. He happened to be fishing at Lake Oologah one day when a man came over and told him and told him that it wasn’t allowed and he had to stop. This irritated him to no end and that’s when he decided to build his own fishing-paradise. He thought to himself: “One of these days I’ll have a place of my own where nobody can tell me I can’t fish there.” Phillips got to work soon after the incident – he rented a bulldozer, dug up a large pond, and later built a 1,850 square-foot house off to one corner of the pond. The carpenter who worked on the house, Randy Aschlerman, said he’d never built anything like it before, but it turned out to be one of the most fun projects in his career.

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