Amaropostia stiptica, a.k.a. the bitter bracket fungus, isn’t toxic, but it tastes like it could kill you! Scientists have discovered that it contains a substance so bitter that even the tiniest amount triggers your bitter taste receptors.

As its name suggests, the bitter bracket is a bitter, inedible fungus, but the research team from the Leibniz Institutes of Food Systems Biology and Plant Biochemistry in Germany didn’t expect to discover the world’s most bitter compound while analyzing it. This mushroom grows attached to trees in secluded forests throughout Europe, Asia, and North America, but because it is not very noticeable, it is often overlooked. However, it recently attracted a lot of attention from the scientific community because of a compound called oligopolyn D, which scientists claim is a clear contender for the title of the most bitter substance in the world.

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A 31-year-old Russian man was recently convicted to 4.4 years in a penal colony for promising to urinate on a symbol of the Russian military in a comment he posted on social media.

The incident that led to the conviction of 31-year-old Alexander Panasenko occurred in May of 2024, when the Kremerovo native took to social media to taunt Russian authorities. Commenting on a VKontakte post that reminded everyone that the Russian State Duma had voted into law fines and even imprisonment for damaging the St. George ribbon, Panasenko wrote “I bought it, and I’ll piss on it. And I don’t care who gets offended by it.” The comment didn’t sit too well with Kremerovo police, and the offender was quickly arrested and charged with desecrating the symbol of Russia’s military glory. A Kremerovo Regional Court recently sentenced Panasenko to four years and four months in a penal colony and banned him from posting anything on the internet for three years.

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A Japanese bus driver with 29 years of experience on the job lost his $84,000 retirement package after being caught stealing $7 in passenger bus fares.

In 2022, while checking dashcam footage, members of the Kyoto Municipal Transportation Bureau spotted one of the Japanese city’s bus drivers pocketing a 1,000-yen bill, instead of putting it into the fare processing machine, as per standard procedure. When confronted about the incident, the man denied responsibility, but was eventually fired, and his retirement fund of more than 12 million yen was cancelled. The unnamed driver sued the city of Kyoto, but a Supreme Court ruling upheld the city’s decision, arguing that the man’s behavior could erode the public’s trust in the local transportation system.

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An 80-year-old woman from Yekaterinburg, Russia, can call herself lucky to be alive after falling from the window of her sixth-floor apartment and landing on top of a parked car.

The accident occurred last Thursday, as the unnamed octogenarian was cleaning the windows of her apartment. A single moment of carelessness was enough to send her tumbling down from the sixth floor onto a neighbor’s car. The shocking fall was captured by CCTV cameras and has been making the rounds on Russian social media ever since. Amazingly, mere moments after landing on the roof of the parked car, the 80-year-old woman manages to climb down and walk away, seemingly unscathed. She subsequently asked a neighbor for help and was admitted to a local hospital to ensure that she was alright.

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A number of hair salons in China have introduced AI-powered shampooing machines that can reportedly wash and rinse clients’ hair in just 13 minutes.

The AI revolution is just starting, but it seems the hair care industry is already using artificial intelligence to automate the hair-washing process in hair salons. According to several Chinese news outlets, AI-powered hair-washing devices have been spotted at hair salons in various districts of China’s Guangzhou Province, with some referring to their growing popularity as an “AI-shampooing craze”. The innovative machines reportedly rely on infrared sensors to detect the user’s scalp and then select the right shampoo and shampooing method based on the person’s hair type.

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At least seven cases of cholera in Germany and the UK have been linked to the use of water from a popular “holy well” in Ethiopia, which happened to be contaminated with Vibrio Cholerae bacteria.

In February of this year, European authorities were on high alert regarding a cholera outbreak after three people in Germany and four in the UK fell ill with the contagious disease. A quick investigation found that two of the German patients and three of the UK patients had traveled to Ethiopia a month prior, and some of them visited a holy well called Bermel Giorgis in the African country’s Quara district. Named after Saint George, Bermel Giorgis is considered a holy site by members of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church who drink the water and wash their faces with it to benefit from its supposed healing properties. The European visitors reportedly did the same, and the German travelers and at least one of the UK visitors brought some holy water back with them and shared it. Before long, they started exhibiting symptoms like watery diarrhea and vomiting.

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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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