A seasoned paraglider miraculously survived a rare and dangerous phenomenon that saw him being sucked up by clouds to an altitude of 28,210 feet (8,600 meters).

Photos and videos of Chinese paraglider Liu Ge trying to keep his cool (pun intended) as he experienced dangerously low levels of oxygen and temperatures as low as -40 degrees Celsius (-40° Fahrenheit) went viral on social media this week. In them, the experienced paraglider’s clothes and face are covered with ice, and he struggles to breathe and keep from passing out because of the low oxygen. On May 24th, Liu Ge took off from about 3,000 meters in the Qilian Mountains, on the border between western Gansu and northeastern Qinghai, but as he was paragliding, a cumulonimbus cloud appeared behind him and he ended up being lifted higher and higher, above the clouds.

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A Texas rheumatologist was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a cruel health care fraud scheme that involved diagnosing hundreds of healthy people with chronic diseases that required expensive and dangerous treatments.

Jorge Zamora-Quezada M.D. of Mission, Texas, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud, several counts of healthcare fraud, and conspiracy to obstruct justice and received a sentence of 10 years behind bars and three years of supervised release. For years, the 68-year-old rheumatologist falsely diagnosed patients with chronic illnesses to bill for tests and treatments that they didn’t need, for his own enrichment. Evidence presented by prosecutors showed that his fraud scheme involved over $118 million in false claims and the payment of over $28 million by insurers, which allowed him to fund an incredibly lavish lifestyle. By profiting off of innocent victims, Zamora-Quezada was able to amass a sizeable fortune, including 13 real estate properties, a jet, and a Maserati GranTurismo.

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A group of squatters who illegally took over a house on the outskirts of a village in Spain’s Burgos Province has installed an alarm system to prevent others from breaking into their illegally occupied home.

The people of San Miguel de Pedroso, a neighborhood in the village of Beldorado, are on high alert because of squatters who not only took over an unoccupied house in their community but also installed an alarm system there to prevent others from breaking in like they did. According to some local residents, “they have placed a sign belonging to the company that installed the alarm in the building” to prevent what happened to the owner of that house from happening to them. Some locals suspect that the squatters had been eyeing the property for some time, and after learning that no one had lived there for about two decades, they decided to move in. Now people are afraid that their houses could be at risk of being illegally occupied by strangers.

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The CEO of a Dutch weather forecaster recently suggested that Belgian wind farms are inadvertently “stealing” wind from his own country’s wind farms in the North Sea.

In an interview with Belgian broadcaster VRT, Remco Verzijlbergh, the CEO of Dutch weather forecasting service Whiffle, claimed that Belgian wind farms in the North Sea have an advantage over Dutch ones because of their placement, adding that they are effectively “stealing” Dutch wind. Verzijlbergh claimed that Belgian wind farms are taking up to 3 % of wind energy from Dutch installations, adding that wind speeds measured behind a wind turbine are measurably lower. He clarified that the phenomenon is purely accidental because of the location of the wind turbines, pleading for better coordination between countries in the near future.

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A UK woman started suspecting her husband of cheating after checking the data on her electric toothbrush companion app and noticing that they were brushing at odd times of the day.

Paul Jones, a British private investigator with over a decade of experience, recently recounted one of his most unusual cases. Catching a cheating partner in the act is rare, but rarer still is catching them cheating with the help of an electric toothbrush. And yet, it can happen! One of Jones’ clients, a married mother-of-two who was trying to improve her children’s brushing habits by monitoring their electronic toothbrush use via a smartphone app, noticed that the brush was being used at strange times of the day when her kids were supposed to be at school and her husband at work. After making sure her kids were indeed at school, she confronted her husband, who claimed to have been away at work all day.

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A Chinese woman with severe vitamin D deficiency caused by excessive sunscreen use suffered a bone fracture just by rolling in her bed.

Doctors at the XinDu Traditional Medicine Hospital, in Chengdu, China, recently reported the unusual case of a 48-year-old local woman who had apparently suffered a bone fracture just by casually rolling in bed. According to Dr. Long Shuang, tests performed at the hospital showed that the unnamed woman’s vitamin D levels were extremely low, which had accelerated bone loss and caused the onset of severe osteoporosis. Further investigation revealed that the patient had avoided sunlight since childhood, rarely wearing short-sleeved shirts and always applying sunscreen when going outside. Her case was presented as a warning for other sunscreen enthusiasts who might be overusing it and thus affecting their bone health.

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A Mexican bank has been accused of lacking sensitivity after insisting that a bed-bound 96-year-old woman be brought to a physical branch to confirm her identity in order to release her pension.

Photos and video clips of an elderly woman being transported to a BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria) bank branch in Oaxaca, Mexico, on an ambulance stretcher have been going viral on Mexican social media and sparking outrage among the general public. 96-year-old Fidelia Vásquez Nuño cannot move due to her advanced age and various illnesses, but despite her son’s attempts to file the necessary paperwork with the bank to verify her identity, she had to be brought to a local branch to correct a glitch in her biometric registration that had prevented her from cashing her pension for six months.

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Australian scientists have discovered that mutton birds on Lord Howe Island have so much plastic in their stomachs that they clackle and crunch under slight pressure.

Lord Howe, a tiny volcanic island on Australia’s east coast, is home to around 500 humans and over 44,000 shearwaters, aka mutton birds, a species of long-winged seabirds. It’s one of the last places you would expect to be affected by plastic waste, but Australian scientists have made a startling discovery – the birds on Lord Howe Island are so full of plastic that the little stomachs crackle and crunch when pressed. Last month, a team directed a mutton bird and found that almost a fifth of its entire body weight was plastic. Until then, the most plastic they had ever found in one bird was 403 pieces in 2024, but that record was blown away on their most recent visit to the island.

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A 47-year-old woman from Western France has been speaking with a distinctively English accent ever since she had her tonsils removed 14 years ago.

Laetitia, a cashier from Montval-sur-Loir, in France’s Sarthe Department, doesn’t speak English. She only knows some basic words that she learned in school decades ago, but hearing her speak in her native tongue would have you believe she was born in England. For 14 years, Laetitia has been speaking with an English accent that makes most people think she is Anglo-Saxon. But the truth is much stranger – the 47-year-old woman has been stuck with her English accent ever since she woke up from a tonsil removal surgery. Her children had gone through the same procedure before, and they talked in a nasal voice, but it went away after a few days, so she wasn’t too worried in the beginning, but as the weeks passed, her weird accent remained just as strong.

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Chinese doctors were recently baffled by the curious case of a young woman who suddenly became unable to speak English, a language she had been fluent in.

Last week, Wan Feng, the director of the Department of Neurosurgery at Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital in Guangzhou, China, posted a video of a 24-year-old woman who had suddenly fallen ill during class one day and developed a very curious symptom – the woman had been proficient in English prior to the classroom incident, but after, she could only speak Mandarin and Cantonese. The young woman could still read and understand English perfectly, but for some reason, she could no longer speak the language at all.

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The small city of Carmel-by-the-Sea is famous for requiring visitors to get an official permit in order to legally walk in heels higher than two inches.

Carmel-by-the-Sea’s infamous high-heel permit sounds like an urban myth, but it’s a real, official requirement in the Monterey city. If your heels are over two inches in height and have less than one square inch of bearing surface, it is illegal to wear them in public without first getting a permit from the city hall. The permit is issued free of charge, and many visitors get it simply as a souvenir, even if they don’t plan on walking in heels. The certificate has every nice, official look, it is issued in the name of the person making the request and is signed by one of the city clerks on duty.

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A 25-year-old Japanese man who spent most of his time looking down at his phone eventually became unable to raise his own head and was diagnosed with ‘dropping head syndrome’.

The rare case report published a couple of years ago in the medical journal JOS Case Reports detailed the disturbing consequences of holding one’s head bent down for hours on end over long periods of time. The patient, a 25-year-old Japanese man who spent most of his time playing on his phone, had developed a large bulge at the back of his neck and could no longer lift his own head using his neck muscles. Before seeking medical help, the man had reportedly experienced serious neck pains and had difficulty swallowing food, which caused him to lose weight rapidly. Eventually, his neck became s weak due to the unnatural position that he became unable to lift his head.

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A Haitian woman who had lost family members to a violent criminal gang took her revenge by poisoning 40 gang members with tainted empanadas.

Haiti has long been at the mercy of violent street gangs, and many families have suffered tragedies at the hands of these ruthless criminals, but few ever dared fight back out of fear for their loved ones’ safety. But vigilantes do exist! One woman in the Kenscoff district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city, made international news headlines after carrying out a massacre in the ranks of a local gang that had reportedly been responsible for the deaths of several of her family members. A respected street vendor specializing in pâtés, a Haitian version of empanadas, the woman recently offered dozens of gang members free pâtés as thanks for “protecting her neighborhood”. In reality, she was carrying out revenge against the people who had terrorized and killed several of her family members.

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A French motorist may have broken the record for the longest time driving a vehicle without a valid license, insurance, or technical inspection – over 28 years.

Last week, a routine traffic stop turned out to be a memorable bust for a motorized police unit in Rhone, France. After checking the license plates, the traffic cops pulled the vehicle over for an expired technical inspection. But this turned out to be the least important offense the driver was guilty of. Upon checking his papers, the policeman realized that the vehicle didn’t have insurance either, and worst of all, the driver’s license had been revoked in 1997. The man casually told the officer that his driver’s license had been revoked over 28 years ago after being caught driving under the influence of alcohol, and he simply hadn’t bothered to reapply for it, comparing his old license to “an expired but still edible yogurt”.

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A well-respected family in the UK was recently awarded compensation of $100,000 by a restaurant that had publicly accused them of leaving without settling the bill.

In July of last year, Peter and Ann McGirr, along with their children Peter Jr and Carol, visited The Horse & Jockey Inn in the Peak District, England. It was a pretty uneventful affair; the family ordered ribeye and gammon steaks and washed them down with ales and lagers before leaving for their home in Omagh, Northern Ireland. Only shortly after their departure, The Horse & Jockey Facebook page posted a video of the McGirrs’ allegedly leaving the establishment without paying the £150 ($200) bill. The family was soon making national headlines for allegedly dining and dashing, which negatively impacted their otherwise great reputation, so they found themselves with no choice but to sue the inn to clear their name.

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