A Michigan teen was recently convicted to eight months in prison for reporting a false bomb threat on a cruise ship to prevent his girlfriend from going on a cruise without him.

In January 2024, a few minutes after the Carnival Sunrise cruise ship left the port of Miami, Florida, for Jamaica, Carnival Cruise Lines received a mysterious email that read: “Hey, I think someone might have a bomb on your sunrise cruise ship.”  This simple one-liner set in motion a costly security operation that involved both the US and Jamaican Coast Guard and the thorough search of the Sunshine’s more than 1,000 rooms. After several hours of delay, the Sunshine was able to continue its journey to the Caribbean, but that wasn’t the end of the story. Authorities managed to trace the email to a 19-year-old man in Michigan who later admitted to reporting the false bomb threat, claiming that he was trying to prevent his girlfriend and her family from going on the cruise without him.

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A Spanish woman who had been claiming disability pension for an inability to speak following a work-related incident 16 years ago has been exposed as a fraud by a private detective.

In 2003, a woman working at a supermarket in Andalucia, Spain, was attacked by a customer. Following the traumatic incident, she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and the loss of her ability to speak. After reviewing her case, Social Security granted the woman a permanent disability pension, but because this was a work-related incident, the insurance company was deemed responsible for the costs. Years later, as per regular procedure, the insurance company reviewed her case and found some irregularities, which prompted further investigation. A few years ago, it hired a private detective who discovered that the woman spoke normally but continued to cash her disability payments.

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Christiano Wennmann was making pizza at a trendy New York pizzeria when he was first noticed by a famous fashion designer’s assistant. Now’s he’s walking the runway at big fashion events and posing for magazines.

24-year-old Christiano Wennmann became an overnight sensation in the fashion modelling world after owning the catwalk at this year’s Paris Fashion Week for New York designer Willy Chavarria. He was making pizza at Scarr’s, in New York’s Lower East Side, when he was noticed by one of Chavarria’s assistants, just weeks before the big fashion event, and asked to model the designer’s underwear collection. Things only got crazier from there, as Chavarria and his team loved him from the very start and immediately asked him to come to Paris. Obviously overwhelmed, the young pizzaiolo realized this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and accepted. Now, he’s one of the hottest male models in the business.

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Scientists are trying to understand how a herd of goats not only survived but thrived on an isolated island in northeastern Brazil for over two centuries without any known fresh water source.

It’s not clear how exactly the goats originally wound up on Santa Bárbara, one of the five volcanic islands that make up the Abrolhos archipelago, about 70 kilometers off the coast of Bahia, but scientists believe they were brought and left there by colonizers. Livestock like goats, pigs, and poultry made for a reliable food source, but they were usually left behind when colonization failed. Their presence on Santa Bárbara Island has been documented for more than 250 years, according to historical records, which is remarkable if we take into account that the small island has no known fresh water sources. Despite this “inconvenience,” the goats thrived on the dry, windy island to the point where they had to be relocated in order to protect endemic plants and animals.

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A 20-year-old Indian man is accused of having eloped with his 40-year-old soon-to-be mother-in-law only 9 days before his wedding.

Rahul and Shivani, a young couple from Aligarh, in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, were all set to be married on April 16. Invitations had been sent out, relatives had confirmed their attendance, but just 9 days before the big day, disaster struck. The 20-year-old groom got cold feet and disappeared, but he didn’t go alone; he eloped with Anita, the 40-year-old mother of his bride-to-be. To make matters worse, the pair also took the couple’s savings as well as Anita’s family savings, leaving Shivani and her father penniless.

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An increasing number of young adults in China is opting to live in hotels full-time because it is more cost-effective and more convenient than renting or buying a home.

Last year, we wrote about a family of eight living full-time in a luxury hotel in Nanyang, China’s Henan Province. Their story made international news headlines at the time, but it was anything but unique. In reality, a growing number of people are negotiating long-term stays in hotels all across the country because it is not only cheaper than renting or buying a home, but it beats having to deal with landlords, signing dodgy contracts, and even having to pay utilities or do any kind of cleaning. The biggest drawbacks are not being able to redecorate or cook, but for many young adults in China, those are not deal-breakers at all.

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An 80-year-old woman in Turkey risks spending over 4 years behind bars for hitting her 18-year-old granddaughter on the arm with a house slipper during an argument.

Asiye Kaytan lives with her granddaughter, Vural, in the Topraklık neighborhood of Denizli, in Southwestern Turkey. Ever since the girl’s parents split up, the 80-year-old woman has been trying to protect her, sometimes even from herself. Last year, on August 9th, after Vural came back from work, she told her grandmother that she was going out with some friends. Fearing for her safety, the old woman said she wouldn’t allow it and even locked the door to make sure Vural couldn’t go out. At one point during their argument, the young woman tried to unlock the door, and Kaytan grabbed one of her house slippers and slapped her on the arm with it. Vural instinctively retaliated by hitting her grandmother on the head with her phone. Kaytan started bleeding, and the frightened girl forgot all about partying and called an ambulance. Little did they know that what started as a family feud would eventually turn into an international news story.

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Scientists from Finland and the United States have developed a special type of chewing gum that can ‘trap’ and neutralize some influenza and herpes viruses.

When asked to think about the best thing to fight the flu and herpes with, most people probably wouldn’t say ‘chewing gum’, but according to a new study published in the Molecular Therapy journal, the humble chewing gum could prove extremely effective at fighting off certain viruses. A medical-grade gum made primarily from lablab bean powder ground from the seeds of the Lablab purpureus species, which contain a natural viral trap protein called FRIL, has shown great potential for neutralizing certain types of viruses, including influenza and herpes-causing viruses, in lab tests.

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Lightning kills most of the trees it strikes, but scientists have discovered a tree species that not only survives lightning strikes but thrives as a direct result of them.

For the longest time, there was a consensus in the scientific community that lightning could only have negative effects on trees. In the best case scenario, a struck tree barely survived, and in the worst case scenario, it was blown to smitherines. But as scientists kept venturing into uncharted territories like the Amazon rainforest and gathering data on new species, theories about lightning-resistant trees began to appear. However, it wasn’t until about a century ago that evidence of such “super trees” was discovered. Today, scientists know of at least one tree species that not only shrugs off multiple lightning strikes in its lifetime but actually attracts lightning and uses its destructive power to kill surrounding trees and hog all the sunlight and surrounding nutrients for itself.

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A Chinese man who had developed a habit of smelling his dirty socks after wearing them for a whole day has been diagnosed with fungal lung infection.

A middle-aged office worker from Chonqing, whose name was not revealed by the media, was recently admitted to the Southwest Hospital of the Army Medical University with a persistent cough. The man told doctors that his cough had worsened in recent days despite taking cough syrup and that his eyes had become bloodshot, which prompted him to seek medical assistance. After conducting CT and MRI examinations, doctors found suspicious shadows in his lower right lung, and a subsequent bronchoscopy showed that the patient suffered from a fungal lung disease caused by an Aspergillus infection. Upon questioning him about the possible causes of the infection, the doctors learned that the man had developed a habit of smelling his own dirty socks.

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A 48-year-old man and his son, 18, were recently arrested for reportedly defrauding around 100 restaurants in France’s Toulon region in the last 3 years, using a very well thought-out tactic.

Skipping out on the bill at a restaurant isn’t exactly unusual, but doing so about 100 times in a span of 3 years definitely is. On April 3rd, police in Toulon, France, arrested a 48-year-old man and his son on suspicion of defrauding dozens of eateries in the region by leaving without paying the bill. According to a recent investigation, the father-son duo had been using the same tactic successfully for three years, posing as average patrons who simply didn’t have any cash on them and whose credit card didn’t work. The father would apologize for the inconvenience and leave his ID or social security card as collateral until he returned to settle the bill. Only he never came back, opting instead to declare his card stolen and have it reissued.

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Siddharth Nandyala, a 14-year-old teenager from Dallas, has developed an AI-powered smartphone app called Circadian AI, which can detect heart disease within 7 seconds based only on sound.

It’s safe to say that Siddharth Nandyala is not your typical 14-year-old. He is the world’s youngest AI-certified professional, holding certifications from both Oracle and ARM, and he is poised to revolutionize cardiovascular disease detection with an AI-powered smartphone app capable of detecting heart disease in seconds by analyzing heart sound recordings. Circadian AI reportedly uses advanced algorithms that analyze heart sounds picked up by a smartphone and quickly provide a diagnosis that could save the user’s life. The innovative app has been tested on over 15,000 patients in the US and 700 patients in India, with an accuracy of 96 percent.

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A mountain resort in Jianxi, China, has invested millions of dollars into a massive network of giant escalators to allow people to reach its mountain peaks effortlessly.

The pain and effort of reaching the top of a mountain used to be part of the whole hiking experience, but at the Lingshan Scenic Area in Eastern China’s Jianxi Province, one will soon be able to reach a 1,500-meter-high summit simply by riding on a bunch of outdoor escalators. Aimed at allowing anyone to reach the popular mountaintop and take in the beauty of the surrounding area, this massive project was kickstarted in 2022 and is scheduled for completion next month. Recent photos and videos shot on location show dozens of interlinked escalators from the foot of the mountain all the way to the top. Although this isn’t China’s only mountain escalator installation, it is considered one of the largest and most complex.

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A 26-year-old Chinese programmer who got a vigorous neck massage to relieve pain narrowly avoided permanent paralysis after suffering a stroke.

Xiao Zhang (pseudonym), a young IT professional from Changsha, China’s Hunan Province, often suffered from neck pain due to spending many hours at his desk. After learning that traditional massage could help relieve neck pain, he decided to try it out at a local massage parlor. Everything was going great until he felt a sharp pain in his neck during a more vigorous maneuver by the massage therapist, which was shortly followed by a strong headache. He didn’t think too much of these symptoms, but the very next morning, he woke up with numbness and weakness of the left side of his body, as well as slurred speech. Scared, the 26-year-old rushed to the Second People’s Hospital of Hunan Province, where he was diagnosed with a secondary cerebral infarction.

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After being spotted by a Russian photographer in Bangkok, a young street sweeper became an overnight sensation in her native country and landed various modelling gigs with established brands.

The movie-worthy rags-to-riches story of Noppajit “Meen” Somboonsate began last month when the 28-year-old single mother of two was noticed on the streets of Bangkok by Russian photographer Semyon Rezchikov. Meen was out doing her job as a street sweeper and didn’t even notice when Rezchikov, mesmerized by her natural beauty, took a photo of her from a distance. He later approached her to show her the photo and commend her on her beauty. He filmed the whole encounter with his phone and later posted it on his TikTok where it quickly went viral. People were blown away by the beauty of the young street sweeper and wanted to know more about her. Before long, she was being approached by media outlets and modelling agencies.

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