An Englishman who had his luxury SUV stolen from his driveway less than 60 hours after driving it home claims the dealership assured him that the vehicle was “unstealable”.

John, a 45-year-old man from Warwickshire, UK, bought a £183,000 ($227,000) Range Rover 2024 SV Edition One from a dealership in Coventry on December 14, last year. The limited edition SUV (only 550 units were released in the United Kingdom) featured £10,000 graphite wheels, a luxurious high-tech interior, and all sorts of interesting features, like seats that vibrate to the sound of music playing inside the car. John knew that it would attract unwanted attention in a country where the number of luxury vehicle thefts have been increasing in recent years, but he claims the dealership told him that the car featured a new Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) security upgrade that made it unstealable. Less than 60 hours later, John’s car was stolen from his driveway.

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A VW Golf abandoned in the short-term parking area of a Berlin airport for a whole year has made international news headlines after racking up a whopping 201,480 euros ($209,124) in parking fees.

Airport parking fees are notoriously high, and Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport is no exception. The first ten minutes in the facility’s short-term parking area is free, after which it costs $11 for 30 minutes, $23 per hour, and $552 per day to park your car there, a significant chunk of change for any motorist. Now imagine parking a car there for a whole year. Unless you’re talking about an ultra-expensive luxury vehicle, you’d probably be better off just leaving the vehicle there than paying the ludicrous parking fees. Which is probably what the owner of a gray Volkswagen Golf told himself after leaving the car parked there since January of last year.

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An English engineer spent almost 750 hours turning an old Yamaha R6 motorcycle and several hundred pounds of spare steel into the world’s fastest penny-farthing bike.

Popular during the 1870s and 1880s, the penny-farthing bicycle is considered a symbol of the late Victorian period and the ancestor of the modern bicycle. Its odd name was inspired by the size difference between its front and rear wheels, with the British penny coin being considerably larger than the farthing. The iconic bicycle was only in style for about a decade, until the invention of the modern bike, which proved much safer, more comfortable, and easier to ride, but there’s just something about the odd look of the penny-farthing that still fascinates people. Case in point, this young engineer from Swindon, England, who spent hundreds of hours converting a 20-year-old motorcycle into the world’s fastest penny-farthing.

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China’s capital city of Beijing is all set to host an interesting half-marathon that will set thousands of human runners against dozens of bipedal robots developed by some of the world’s leading robotics companies.

This coming April, the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (E-Town) will be hosting an interesting running event for both humans and human-like robots. 12,000 people are expected to take part in the event alongside dozens of bipedal robots developed by major robotics companies, including Tesla, Boston Dynamics and 1X, making this one of the strangest half-marathons in history. Participating robots will need to have a human-inspired appearance, be between 0.5 and 2 meters tall (so no giant mechs allowed), and have the ability to run or at least walk on two legs. The winners, be they human or robot, will receive prize money depending on their performance.

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A Malaysian man has sparked controversy on social media by announcing an ingenious service where he rents himself out as a “villain” that harrases clients’ partners, allowing the latter to pose as heroes by confronting him.

Earlier this month, 28-year-old Shazali Sulaiman took Malaysian social media by storm by announcing a “villain for hire” service that would allow clients to show off their masculinity and make a big impression on their partners or romantic crushes. After being told that his unkept long hair and biker clothing make him look like a gang member, Sulaiman was inspired to start a service that relied on his physical appearance to make a profit. For a fee, clients can set up a time and place where he would show up to pick on their partner, thus giving them a chance to intervene and pose as a hero or a knight in shining armor.

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For the longest time, New York’s Upper Fifth Avenue held the title of ‘the most expensive street in the world’ but it was recently dethroned by Montenapoleone, an upscale shopping street in Milan, Italy.

Every year, American firm Cushman & Wakefield publishes a global index that ranks the world’s most expensive shopping areas by the rent prices they command. Fifth Avenue has been ranking first out of 138 leading retail destinations around the world for many years, but last year, it was surpassed by Montenapoleone, the most popular luxury shopping street in Milan. Not only is this short street a magnet for tourists interested only in window shopping, but it also attracts some of the wealthiest people around the globe, many of who spend at least 2,500 euros ($2,600) per purchase, the highest average receipt in the world.

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A female Chinese influencer has been urging men to wear Adam’s Apple covers to highlight gender inequality and promote women’s rights.

Zhu Miaolin, better known as Ah Miao on Chinese social media, recently sparked a bizarre craze in her home country, urging her male friends to wear Adam’s Apple covers to protect what she describes a “sensitive area” of the male body, in the same way that women wear bras to conceal their breasts. Proposed as a unique way to empower women and shine a light on gender inequality in China, Ah Miao’s initiative went viral and spurred the production and sale of Adam’s Apple covers.

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A Chinese man who refused the Government’s generous offer to buy his property for the construction of a new motorway now finds himself living in the middle of said motorway.

A few years ago when Chinese authorities knocked on his door in Jinxi, a town southwest of Shanghai, offering to buy his two-storey house for a fair bit of money and three other properties, Huang Ping decided to play hard-to-get in hopes of getting an even better deal. Unfortunately, his bet didn’t pay off, as the Government simply decided to build around his property instead of giving in to his absurd demands. In the end, all the other property owners in the area sold their land to the Government, leaving Huang isolated in the middle of a soon-to-be-inaugurated highway.

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A young Chinese woman has been getting a lot of attention for her ability to act as an android using a special costume, robotic movements and an expressionless face.

At a time when companies are investing billions into robotics and artificial intelligence to make robots appear more human, one young woman is trying her best to impersonate a robot. Known as “robot girl” on Chinese social media, the young woman first attracted attention last August, during the 2024 World Robot Conference in Beijing, where along with another female model she posed next to a hyper-realistic humanoid robot, confusing the hell out of the audience, most of whom didn’t know which one of the exhibits was human and which was a robot. She has since gained a lot of notoriety in China and is now a popular content creator and the country’s leading “robot girl”.

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A 10-year-old boy reprimanded by his father for not completing his homework took revenge on his parent by calling the police and telling them that his father was hiding forbidden drugs.

The bizarre incident took place earlier this month in China’s Yongning County. After being severely scolded by his father for not completing his homework on time, a 10-year-old boy stormed out of the house and went straight to a nearby store and asked if he could use the phone. The fifth grader dialed 110, China’s emergency number, and asked to speak to the police, claiming that he had proof his father was concealing poppy shells, considered an illegal drug, at home. Then he waited calmly for the police to arrive and let them home so they could conduct a search and confirm his story.

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A Vietnamese hospital recently reported the extremely rare case of a 24-year-old man who had a wooden chopstick lodged in his eye socket for three weeks without noticing.

The unnamed man was admitted to the Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Vietnam’s Can Tho Province when he came in with symptoms of pain and swelling in his left eye. The 24-year-old patient told doctors that he had been experiencing the symptoms for about three weeks but they had gotten worse in recent days. He had previously sought medical help at another facility in his hometown, but after assessing his vision and checking for foreign objects, they prescribed medicine that proved ineffective. This led the man to the Can Tho University Hospital, where doctors once again confirmed that he had 10/10 vision, with no signs of eyeball injury. However, the left eye did appear swollen and there was a small pus discharge from the corner of his left eye. A subsequent CT scan showed that he had a 9-cm-long foreign body lodged in his eye socket.

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Chinese robotics startup Engine AI recently launched a new humanoid robot that stunned everyone with its natural human-like gait which many attributed to CGI.

Major robotic companies around the world have been trying to replicate the smooth human gait in their humanoid robots for decades, with relatively modest results, but last October, Chinese company Engine AI unveiled the SE01, its most advanced humanoid robot yet. Featuring an advanced end-to-end neural network system, the SE01 robot learns to walk like a human in a simulation, getting feedback for how well it does and constantly improving over time. It is powered by dual processors from Nvidia and Intel and features three stereo cameras that help it navigate and interact with complex environments.

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Infinity Studio is a Shanghai-based company that specializes in hyper-realistic silicone statues and busts based on popular movie, cartoon and video characters.

There are plenty of studios producing high-quality silicone collectibles, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find one better than Infinity Studio. Founded in 2014 in Shanghai, China, the company quickly established itself as the go-to source for the most realistic-looking statues and busts of pop-culture characters, securing licenses for popular franchises like Dragon Ball, Batman, Wonder Woman, Predator, as well as Chinese culture classics like Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Although some of its most impressive works sell for thousands of dollars, you really get what you pay for!

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Located in the basement of a department store in Kawasaki, Japan, the world’s smallest escalator only has five steps and measures 83.4 centimeters (32.8 inches).

The escalator is one of humanity’s most useful inventions, allowing people to effortlessly travel between floors in places where elevators would be impractical, but the world’s smallest escalator is actually a useless oddity that holds no real purpose than to claim the Guinness record for the world’s smallest escalator. Known as the ‘Petitcalator’ or ‘Puchicalator’, this unusual contraption is located in the basement of More’s Department Store in the city of Kawasaki and is considered more of a tourist attraction than a useful piece of technology. Yes, it’s useable, but it measures just 83.4 centimeters so it offers no real benefit to whoever is riding it over traditional stairs.

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A Chinese company has come under fire for installing surveillance cameras in the restroom too see which employees spent too much time on bathroom breaks and posting offenders on ‘wall of shame’.

Many Chinese companies have long been trying to discourage workers from spending too much time in the restroom by various means, like installing countdown timers on bathroom stalls or limiting bathrooms breaks to one per day. A Shenzen-based tech company took things even further by reportedly installing hidden surveillance cameras in its restrooms to monitor employees’ activity and then shaming those who wasted too much time there by posting screenshots of them for everyone to see. A spokesperson for the Lixun Electro-Acoustic Technology Company admitted that employees were surveilled in the company restroom, but claimed that the measure was meant to discourage time wasting during work hours.

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