At age 16, Pavel Stepchenko joined the school of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs as a student, and by age 23, he had already retired, becoming the country;s youngest pensioner. Retirement is traditionally associated with old age, and while today’s youth dream of retiring young to focus on living their best lives, that usually means retiring by age 40 or so. Well, one Russian youth managed to do something most of us can only dream of – retire with a full pension in his early 20s. Pavel Stepchenko’s story is an unusual one. He enrolled in the educational institution of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs at age 16 and after five years of diligent studies, he began working in the territorial division of the internal affairs system. The young man from Donetsk only worked there for two years, because at age 23, he officially retired, taking full advantage of a special provision stating that for each month of service during a period of martial law, a person received three months of credited length of service. Read More »

El Marco, a small rustic bridge connecting the Spanish village of El Marco to the Portuguese village of Varzea Grande, is the world’s smallest international bridge. Crossing the 19ft (6 meters) long and 4.7ft (1.45 meters) wide El Marco wooden bridge, you’d think you were just crossing a small stream in a rural area of Western Europe, but you couldn’t be more wrong. By taking these few steps over El Marco, you are not only crossing from one country into another, but you are also changing time zones, as Spain operates on Central European Time (CET/CEST), while Portugal follows Greenwich Mean Time (GMT/BST). You can think of it as the easiest way of time-traveling. Read More »

A journalistic investigation by the Chinese newspaper The Paper revealed the widespread commercialization of “fake meats”, such as fox or raccoon meat being sold as beef, mutton, or rabbit to restaurants. The Paper reports that in Chinese areas known for fur production, such as Tangshan, Hebei, Weifang, Linyi, or Shandong, animal farms resell fox and raccoon ‘white strips’ (carcasses with the internal organs and subcutaneous fat removed) all over the country, passing them off as beef, mutton or rabbit. Some vendors even go through the trouble of braising and grilling their fake meats before freezing them and selling them to restaurants to make them even harder to tell apart from meats meant for human consumption. Experts warn that the hormones and medicines used in the breeding of animals for fur, but also the pathogens they carry make these meats extremely dangerous. Read More »

Known as the Garbage Mountain of Delhi, Ghazipur Landfill covers an area of about 70 acres (over 50 football) and is almost as tall as the iconic Taj Mahal. Established in 1984, on the outskirts of Ghazipur, in the eastern district of Delhi, Ghazipur Landfill reached its maximum capacity in 2002, but it has since grown into a small mountain up to 72 meters high. It is already one of the world’s largest landfills, but it continues to receive hundreds of tons of garbage from Delhi every day and is expected to grow even more. Consisting of more than 14 million metric tonnes of waste, Ghazipur Landfill has long been a plague on the millions of people who call Delhi home. The stench it emanates is almost unbearable, especially in the summer, fires routinely break out engulfing the surrounding area in a thick, toxic smoke, and its winding slopes sometimes collapse burying people and vehicles under millions of tons of garbage. Read More »

A Swiss motorist was fined over $100,000 for driving too close to the car in front of him on the motorway. That’s about double the worth of the car he was driving. Switzerland is notorious for its strict driving laws and staggering fines. The European country is one of the few where fines are calculated according to the taxable income of the offender, to ensure that they are felt by the poor and rich alike. For example, a fixed $300 fine may bother someone earning minimum wage, but for a millionaire, it’s like a drop in the ocean. In Switzerland, the wealthier you are, the more you pay, even for minor offenses, which leads to unlikely scenarios where people are fined huge sums of money, sometimes more than what their cars are worth. Case in point, a Swiss lawyer who was fined over $110,000 for driving too close to the car in front of him on a motorway. Read More »

Efecan Kultur, a Turkish Tiktoker who rose to prominence for his “mukbang” binge eating streams, tragically lost his life at the age of 24 due to obesity-related health complications. The “mukbang” trend, in which people costume copious amounts of food on camera to the delight of their fans, originated in South Korea but quickly spread all over the world raising concerns about obesity and mindless food waste. With more than 156,000 TikTok followers and 12,000 Instagram followers, 24-year-old Efecan Kultur was one of Turkey’s most popular mukbang streamers, but his popularity came at a cost. As he continued ballooning in size, he started experiencing various health problems, including heart disease, and in October of last year, he announced that he would be going on a diet and avoiding extra salt to try and lose weight. Sadly, earlier this month, the 24-year-old died as a result of his obesity. Read More »

Chinese people desperate to get rich by any means necessary are putting their faith in bags of “bank soil” sold online as wealth-bringing talismans. Bank robberies usually involve cold harsh cash or gold ingots, but several Chinese banks have recently become the target of an unusual type of theft, that of soil from potted plants or from around the buildings housing them. Several online shops in the Asian country are selling small bags of ‘bank’ soil as get-rich-quick talismans that can cost as much as 888 yuan ($120), and demand for the unusual products is steadily increasing. Some sellers boast a “999.999 percent success rate in generating wealth,” while others record the harvesting process to guarantee the authenticity of their bank soil. Read More »

The Murmansk branch of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia political party made the controversial decision of gifting meat grinders to mothers of soldiers killed in the war with Ukraine to celebrate International Women’s Day. Over the past three years, the meat grinder has become a symbol of the Russian military’s high casualty rate in its assault on neighboring Ukraine, so the decision of the United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region to celebrate mothers whose sons died in the war by gifting them meat grinders on March 8 can be considered questionable, at best. Photos published on the party’s social media account last Wednesday show the executive secretary of the Polyarnye Zori United Russia branch, Anna Makhunova, alongside Maxim Chengaev, representative of the “Defenders of the Fatherland in the Murmansk Region Foundation” posing next to women who lost their sons in the war against Ukraine, smiling and holding meat grinders. Read More »

The CL1 is an innovative biological computer that combines living cultured human brain cells with silicon hardware in an advanced computer case that also acts as life-support for the cells. Australian biotech company Cortical Labs recently made international news headlines by announcing what it calls “the world’s first code deployable biological computer.” The innovation behind the CL1 consists of placing brain nerve cells cultured from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) on a silicon chip. These cells respond to electrical signals, forming networks that process information similarly to a living brain. These responses are recorded and analyzed by AI software allowing it to learn faster than traditional artificial intelligence systems. Cortical Labs believes that integrating biological elements like neuron-based systems can improve efficiency in tasks that traditional AI struggles with, such as decision-making in unpredictable environments and situations. Read More »

Chilean-born artist Marco Evaristti has come under fire for trying to starve three little piglets to death as part of a controversial art installation meant to raise awareness about animal welfare. Marco Evaristti sparked controversy when he originally announced plans for his “And Now You Care?” exhibition, but he really attracted criticism both from animal rights activists and the general public when it actually became a reality. Located in a former butcher’s warehouse in the Meatpacking District of Copenhagen, “And Now You Care?” featured three little piglets on a pile of hay, trapped in a cage made up of two metal shopping carts and surrounded by paintings of slaughtered pigs and the Danish flag. It was already an unsettling display, but it was his plan to only give the piglets water and let them starve to death that really shocked everyone.

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A 19-year-old Chinese girl has gone viral after posting a video demonstrating her unusual ability to pop her kneecaps out and then back in painlessly because of a condition she was born with. The unnamed girl from Jiangssi claims that she never even knew her kneecaps were special until schoolmates saw her popping them out of their sockets randomly and then casually popping them back in. Some of them freaked out and told her to see a doctor, but her knees had been like this for as long as she could remember. Nevertheless, she decided to follow her friends’ advice and see a doctor, who confirmed that she had congenital “patella dislocation”, which caused her patellas (kneecaps) to pop out randomly and pop back in just as easily. The physician said that the condition was rare in girls, but reassured the youth that, as long as it didn’t cause her pain or impede with day-to-day activities, it wasn’t a problem. Read More »

Norwegian robotics company 1X recently announced the NEO Gamma, an AI-powered bipedal humanoid robot that can perform multiple household chores, such as carrying laundry, cleaning windows, and vacuuming. We’ve seen some important breakthroughs in robotics over the last few months, including STAR1, the world’s fastest bipedal robot, or SE01, a bipedal robot famous for its smooth walking, but in terms of day-to-day utility, the offerings have been lacking. But that is all about to change according to Norwegian Robotics company 1X and its most advanced creation yet, the NEO Gamma, a humanoid butler capable of performing various household chores like cleaning vacuuming, and even serving tea. To make it seem more human, the company teamed up with Shima Seiki, a Japanese manufacturer of knitting machines, to create a soft and smooth suit that conceals the robot’s metallic body.

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A Chinese man reportedly needed emergency surgery after rupturing his facial artery by incessantly picking his nose. The man’s bizarre case was shared online by his wife in the form of a short clip documenting his experience in the hope that it may dissuade other avid nose-pickers from indulging in their favorite pastime too much. Hailing from Xianyang City, Shaanxi Province, the unnamed man had reportedly always loved picking his hose. Whether he was standing, sitting down, or lying in bed, he would always be exploring his nostrils with a finger. Only recently, his obsession with nose-picking came back to bite him. One day, while picking his nose as usual, the man triggered a serious nosebleed that simply couldn’t be stopped, despite his and his wife’s best efforts. Read More »

The HR manager of a Shanghai technology company was imprisoned for defrauding his company of millions of dollars by “hiring” dozens of fake employees and collecting their salaries. The People’s Procuratorate of Minhang District, Shanghai recently released a “White Paper on the Prosecution of Duty-Related Crimes by Company and Enterprise Personnel in Minhang District” featuring a list of duty-related crime cases involving enterprise personnel handled in 2024, one of which attracted the attention of newspapers all over the country. Back in 2022, employees in the finance department of an unnamed Shanghai technology company discovered something strange: Xiao Sun, an employee who had been with the company for half a year and had perfect attendance throughout that whole period, seemed to be a complete mystery to everyone. No one had ever seen them in person or knew anything about them for that matter. The investigation that followed uncovered a massive fraud orchestrated by a single HR manager. Read More »

A textile worker in Brazil’s Goias state stands accused of poisoning a co-worker’s water bottle after quarreling with them over what the woman considered an unfair promotion. The incident occurred last month at a textile factory in Abadia de Goias, a town in the Goiânia Metropolitan Region. Police claim that the 38-year-old suspect was caught by CCTV cameras tampering with another worker’s drink container before the latter drank from it and felt a burning sensation in her throat. Subsequent analysis of the container found a high concentration of a potent solvent in the water, which strongly suggests that the perpetrator wanted to poison their co-worker. Witnesses testified that the two women used to be friends, but their relationship went sour after the victim received a promotion that didn’t sit too well with the prime suspect in the poisoning case. They fought all the time and they had allegedly had an argument prior to the solvent poisoning. Read More »