Chinese media recently reported about a new high-tech laser assault rifle that can allegedly fire an energy beam that cannot not be seen by the naked eye, but can cause “instant carbonization” of human tissue from up to half a mile away.

Called ZKZM-500, the laser rifle was developed by scientists at the Xian Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shaanxi province, and is apparently ready for mass production, with the first units scheduled to be given to anti-terrorism squads in the Chinese Armed Police. It has been described as a non-lethal weapon that can be used in various situations, like hostage situations, where police would fire it through windows at targets and temporarily disable them while other teams moved in to free the hostages. It definitely wouldn’t be the first time that a sci-fi technology became reality, but in this particular case, many believe that laser rifles are still impossible in real life.

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Big sporting events like the World Cup are supposed to bring people together in support of their favorite teams and players, but for one Russian couple married for 14 years, the 2018 World Cup was reason for divorce.

40-year-old Arsen and his 37-year-old wife, Ludmyla, are both big football fans. In fact, they met in a Chelyabinsk sports bar during the 2002 World Cup, and they bonded over their mutual passion for the sport. The fact that they were fans of two rival Moscow football clubs, Spartak Moscow and CSKA Moskow, didn’t stop them from getting married, but last week, it was their love for the two biggest rivals in modern football history – Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo – that ended their 14-year marriage.

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Polish environmental group EkoLogiczna recently had to pay a massive phone bill, after the SIM card in a GPS tracker they put on the back of a white stork, so it could collect data about the bird’s winter migration route, got stolen.

In April 2017, members of EkoLogiczna fit Kajtek, a white stork, with a GPS tracker so they could monitor his migration route to Africa, as well as his feeding habits. In the next year, the bird flew around 6,000 km and EkoLogiczna was able to collect the data they wanted, but in February of this years, something weird happened. On his way back from Africa to Poland, Kajtek stopped in Sudan, and “for unknown reasons” remained in the area for over two months, “travelling 25 kms in different directions during the day”. Then, on April 26, they lost the signal completely.

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Some people find it hard to cry when their loved-ones’ die, but wailing and mourning are a big part of funerals in the African country of Ghana, as it is indicative of the deceased’ social standing or how beloved they were by their family and community. So it’s no wonder that some Ghanaians are willing to pay professional mourners to cry on their behalf.

Ami Dokli is the leader of one of the several groups of professional mourners in Ghana. In a recent interview with BBC Africa, she said that some people cannot cry at their relatives’ funerals, so they rely on her and her team to do the wailing. Dokli and the other women in her team are all widows who, after their husbands died, decided to come together to help others give their loved-ones a proper send-off to the afterlife. But crying for strangers is not the easiest thing in the world, so professional mourners charge a fee for their services, the size of which is in direct relation to the size of the funeral. If it’s a big funeral, their tears cost more.

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The head of a Russian advertising agency tasked with creating large building facades to promote the 2018 World Cup in Russia has come under fire for using one of the nearly 50-meter-tall facades to pay tribute to his wife, by using her as the model.

Ivan Panteleev, director of advertising agency Novatek Art has been criticised by street artists and members of the general public for putting a giant portrait of his wife Daria on a building facade funded by the Moscow city budget. Four murals were commissioned and co-sponsored by the city’s public relations committee in 2016, to remind the people of Moscow of the upcoming (now ongoing) World Cup, and some people didn’t like that Panteleev used his wife, of all people, as the model for one of the giant artworks.

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Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, head of Iran’s Civil Defense Organization, yesterday told members of the press that Israel has been stealing Iran’s clouds while also working to ensure that whatever clouds do make it into Iranian air space are unable to release rain.

Relations between Iran and Israel have always been tense, but I doubt anyone imagined one side would go as far as to accuse the other of stealing their clouds. Well, that’s exactly what happened yesterday, when, during a press conference, Iranian General Gholam Reza Jalali said that his country’s prolonged drought has been caused by foreign interference, more specifically by Israel and “another country”. Jalali tried to back up his claims by citing a survey showing that all mountainous areas above 2,200 meters between Afghanistan and the Mediterranean are covered in snow, except those in Iran.

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Indonesian media has been buzzing with news of a woman declared missing over one and a half years ago, after being swept away by a large wave, who was allegedly found alive three days ago,on the same beach that she disappeared from, and wearing the exact same clothes she was wearing on the day of her disappearance.

52-year-old Nining Sunarsih was on vacation in Sukabumi, West Java, when she was swept away by a strong wave on Citepus Beach, and carried out to sea by strong currents. At the time, eyewitnesses said they heard the woman screaming and waving her hands for help, but they were too scared to go in after her. Search and rescue operations didn’t find any sign of her, until a week after the tragic disappearance, when a dead body was discovered in the area. They asked Nining’s family to come and identify the body, and even though it was reportedly in very bad condition, her relatives were convinced that it wasn’t her, because it lacked a distinctive birthmark on the abdomen, and the fingernails looked very different.

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A Chinese woman recently got a lot of negative feedback after taking to social media to complain about her deceitful boyfriend who, it turns out, didn’t own an expensive Porsche Cayenne, but a cheap Chinese knockoff worth ten times less. This was apparently a deal-breaker for her, and she just had to dump him and expose him as the fraud that he was…

In a series of posts on Chinese social network Weibo, the young woman recounted the events that led to her breaking up with her seemingly rich boyfriend. The pair apparently met just over two weeks ago, at a party. They didn’t exactly hit it off, as he kept a lo-profile during the party and didn’t talk to many people. However, when she was about to leave, he told her that they lived in the same area and offered to give her a ride home. She recalls feeling shocked to see that his car was a Porsche Cayenne which she knew cost around $220,000, and wondering why such a rich guy behaved so humbly. In her post, the woman admits to having become interested in him after seeing his car.

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New Jersey-based masseuse Dorothy Stein is known as the back-biting masseuse because one of her controversial technique involves sinking her teeth into her clients to “tenderise” their muscle and promote blood circulation.

Dr. Dot, as rock legend Frank Zappa nicknamed Stein in the 80’s, when she used to massage bands just to get into shows, was encouraged to use her teeth as a massage tool by her mother, at a very young age. She was only five when her mom asked her to give her a massage for the first time. However, her hands weren’t strong enough at the time, so her mother asked her to bite her instead. It apparently worked, because over four decades later, Dorothy Stein is still using her chompers to tenderise her clients’ muscles and promote blood circulation.

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An Indian woman and her four daughters have confessed to hiring contract killers to have their husband/father murdered because he refused to let them wear jeans.

The lifeless body of Meharbaan Ali, a police sub-inspector, was found in a sewage canal in Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh, just 250 meters from his home, on Sunday. An investigation began and it didn’t take long for local police to figure out that the man’s family may have been involved in his murder. Circuit cameras installed in the area and a thorough verification of each family member’s call history helped inspectors crack the case and ultimately get a confession out of the wife and her four daughters.

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Butchers in France have recently asked police to better protect them and their shops against vegan activists who seek to impose their meat-free lifestyle on the entire nation,

In a letter to France’s Interior Minister, Jean-Francois Guihard, president of the French Confederation of Butchery, Butchers and Delicatessens (CFBCT), requested better police protection for the 18,000 professional butchers in the country, many of whom have become the targets of vegan activists. In April, seven butcher shops in Hauts-de-France were sprinkled with fake blood, and a butcher shop and a fish shop had their windows broken and their facades vandalized with the spray-painted inscription “stop to speciesism“.

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Ren Keyu, an elementary school student from Leshan, in China’s Sichuan province, is only 11-years-old but already measures 2.06 meters and thinks he may just be the tallest 6th grader on the planet.

The average 11-year-old Chinese boy measures 1.453 meters, according to data released last year, but Ren Keyu was that height when he finished kindergarten. At 2.06 meters tall, he just towers over his classmates and requires a special chair just to be able to sit at his desk comfortably. Teachers mistake Ren for a much older student and ask him to return to his own classroom, the first time they see him, some students make fun of him for his unusual height and people often stare at him in the streets, but the 11-year-old hopes that his stature will be an advantage for once, as he tries to get his name into the Guinness Book of Records. He wants to apply for the record of world’s tallest 6th-grader.

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A Chinese man recently made national news headlines for his years-long struggle to find a suitable wife. He claims to have asked around 80,000 women if they wanted to date him over the last eight years, but got rejected no less than 80,000 times. Ouch!

31-year-old Niu Xiangfeng has been described as a “dating madman” for his aggressive approach to finding a life-partner. He first made the news in 2013, when photos of him walking through the streets of Beijing while holding a sign that advertised his desire to find a wife along with his links to his social media profiles went viral online. His father died of cancer a couple of years prior and he felt like he needed to get married and start a family. Things didn’t turn out the way he had hoped, and five years on, he is still looking for Mrs. Right.

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It’s no secret that Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters idolize him, but we have yet to hear about any of them worshipping him as a god. Interestingly, that’s exactly what an Indian man has been doing for the last three years, and he’s not even a Trump supporter.

Bussa Krishna, a 31-year-old farmer from the remote village of Konne, in India’s Telangana state, prays to a photo of US President Donald Trump several times a day. He makes offerings of vermilion, turmeric and flowers to the photo and carries it with him wherever he goes, openly declaring his devotion to his unusual deity. Krishna claims that being called mad by family and friends for worshipping Trump the same way as Hindu gods ha only strengthened his resolve, and he now hopes to build a temple dedicated to the US President.

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A 23-year-old woman from Khalapur, India, is risking the death penalty for poisoning the food at a relative’s housewarming party in an attempt to kill attendees who made fun of her dark completion and cooking skills.

Police in Khalapur claim that 23-year-old Pradnya Survase confessed to mixing snake poison into the dal served to some of the guests at a feast hosted by one of her relatives. She was trying to kill her husband and some of her in-laws, who she says had been mocking her dark skin and cooking skills for years. Unfortunately, poison doesn’t discriminate, and her assassination attempt put 88 people in the hospital, five of whom eventually lost their lives.

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