Ciccio, a 12-year-old German shepherd, whose owner passed away two months ago, visits the church she used to frequent and where her funeral was celebrated, patiently waiting for her to return.

The people attending the church of Santa Maria Assunta in San Donaci, Italy have received a lesson in love and loyalty from a dog that for the past two months has been coming in for the daily mass, hoping his beloved owner would return. Local Maria Margherita Lochi, 57, had adopted Ciccio years ago, after she found him abandoned in the fields near her home. She was an animal lover who had taken in several stray cats and dogs, but her connection with Ciccio was special. Apparently he felt the same way, as even though Maria died two months ago, the dog keeps coming back to the place he last saw her. She would walk with him to the church, for the daily Mass, and the priest would allow him to wait patiently at her feet. He was even there with Maria’s loved ones at her funeral. But Ciccio seems to have a tough time letting go, and he comes back into the church each day, as soon as he hears the bells calling in the faithful for the Holy Mass. He just sits by the side of the altar, quietly, hoping Maria will come back…

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Every model agency has strict criteria based on which they select their workforce, and so does the Ugly Models Agency. As the name suggests, of course, you have to be ugly. Well, ‘unusual-looking’, to be more specific. Ugly Models is one of the world’s biggest character model agencies based out of London. The bold and unique company has managed to place its models in some top assignments, including James Bond films and Marks and Spencer ads. Literally anyone can apply at Ugly Models, ranging from size 6 to 30, and 18 to 100 years old.

Case-in-point is Dell, one of the top models at Ugly Models. He got into the modeling business only a few years back, totally by accident. He was actually delivering a package at the agency when owner Marc French spotted him and asked for a few test shots. And everything just snowballed from there. According to Marc, “Dell is not a conventional good-looking boy, you know, he’s got buck teeth, sticking out ears, he’s not what people say is normal-looking, because he’s quite ugly, really. But ugly in a great way and I love his features. I mean, I think he’s quite striking.” Sure enough, Dell is not the kind of guy you would expect to see on a catwalk. “I don’t see myself as ugly,” he says. “I see myself as tall, dark and handsome. I’m a model, innit? When I was growing up, I never thought I was going to be a model. People just made fun of me when I was young and all that.”

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Milagros Caninos, or Miracle Dogs, is a very special canine shelter in Mexico City. For years it has been a true paradise for dogs suffering from terminal illnesses, are blind, paralyzed or have been tortured and abandoned on the streets of Mexico’s capital.

Patricia Ruiz, the founder of Milagros Caninos lost her pet dachshund, Clavo (Spanish for “Nail”) in 2004. She knew the meaning of his life – to love her and her family, to play with her children, to bring joy to their lives – but she couldn’t understand the meaning of his death. Like she would have done for any lost member of the family, Patricia posted a eulogy in the newspaper as a symbol of the love and respect she had for Clavo. After that, she started getting all these emails from like-minded people, who shared her pain at the loss of their four-legged companions, and that motivated her to become involved in rescuing animals. She first rescued one dog, then another, and so on, to the point where she needed a place to keep them all. Her eyes and ears were always focused on pain, so she ended up with a number of animals suffering from severe illnesses like cancer, were paralyzed, or had been tortured or drugged by humans who didn’t share her compassion. So she founded Milagros Caninos, a haven for dogs in extreme situations, in need of special care and attention. That’s when she understood the meaning of Clavo’s passing…

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While the whole world is obsessed over getting thin, it seems there are far-flung places in the world today where fat is still considered a thing of beauty. Not in a good way, though. In the West African nation of Mauritania, it is so important for girls to be fat that they are sent away to fat camp – the opposite of the western version – during school holidays, to put on oodles of weight.

According to women’s rights campaigner Mint Ely, girls as young as five are subjected to the tradition known as Leblouh each year. Leblouh is an attempt to groom young girls for potential suitors, involving the consumption of gargantuan amounts of food; even vomit, if it refuses to stay down. Ely says that in Mauritania, a woman’s size indicates the space she occupies in her husband’s heart. So to make sure no other woman can ever have room, girls are sent away for Leblouh at special farms where older women will administer the necessary diet. It’s rather appalling to know that 5, 7 and 9-year-olds are expected to consume a daily diet of two kilos of pounded millet mixed with two cups of butter and 20 liters of camel’s milk. Their daily consumption comes up to a whopping 16,000 calories.

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These days, the world is going crazy over smartphones, but in Japan, people who engage in extramarital relations remain faithful to a seemingly outdated mobile phone which does a great job of keeping their affairs private. It’s even been nicknamed the “uwaki keitai” or “infidelity phone”.

The Fujitsu “F-Series” flip-phones are not coolest-looking or most feature-full mobiles you can buy in Japan, but they remain very popular thanks to some very efficient stealth privacy features that help people cheat on their partners without being caught. According to a recent article by the Wall Street Journal, not even the latest smartphones come close to the aging Fujitsu, when it comes to keeping their private business private. Apparently, the F-Series “private mode” is a layer of invisible security that does a perfect job of hiding incoming calls and messages from contacts marked as private. The only visible signal that lets users know they’ve been contacted by one such contact is a subtle change in the color or shape of the battery or antenna icons. The changes are practically undetectable by the untrained eye, and even if someone might get suspicious, the private mode can only be turned off by a secret combination of keys, to make concealed calls, text messages and voice mail available.

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Canadian Jason Schron loves VIA trains so much that he actually spent four and a half years and $10,000 building his own genuine replica of a 1980s VIA train cart, accurate down to the tiniest details, right in the basement of his home, in Vaughan, Ontario.

“The train is where I feel most at home,” Schron says. It’s where I feel most at peace. Especially when it’s hurtling along at 85mph with the snow and rain pelting down outside – it’s the perfect place to be.” But since he could’t really ask his family to live in a real train, he settled for the next best thing – building his own VIA train cart replica in the basement of their house.  “I’ve always wanted to have a VIA train in my basement since I was a kid,” the Canadian rail-geek admits, so when it was time for him and his wife to buy a house. he would always say no if the place didn’t have a basement big enough to accommodate his dream replica. And after they found a suitable space, he dedicated around 2,500 hours over the course of four and a half years to getting every detail of the 1980s VIA cart just right. Making it look authentic was as difficult as you can imagine, and Jason says he had to scrap everything and start over three times, but it was all worth it for the model train company owner. Now he’s known as the “the guy with the train in his basement” and he even posted a video on YouTube showcasing his impressive replica.

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A Seattle-based woman by the name of Beautiful Existence (her legal name) has set a very strange challenge for herself this year – she plans to eat food and drink beverages only from Starbucks for all of 2013.

No, she’s not addicted to Starbucks products. Beautiful Existence just likes to set year-long challenges for herself. For example, in 2011, she only bought stuff from Goodwill stores. But there’s more to it than that. Beautiful wants to document the experience on her blog and show the world how communities benefit from Starbucks. “The company pays good benefits for part-time workers. That’s where my money is going,” she says. “We’re really lucky and I would say actually spoiled as Americans because we have all these different eating options,” Existence adds. “You go to all these other countries and they don’t have these luxuries. Really? Is it really going to be that hard for one year of my life to limit my menu? We’ll find out.”

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Don’t you hate it when total strangers invade your personal space by getting a little too close for comfort? By wearing the high-tech Spider Dress you can now send them a message in the shape of a creepy artificial spider leg pressing against their body.

Netherlands-based designer Anouk Wipprecht has designed one of the scariest garments I have ever seen. Aptly-called the Spider Dress, this piece of wearable design features animatronic arachnid limbs that react to external stimuli, in this case – nearby movement. When someone gets to close the wearer, the creepy spider legs start dancing on the shoulder pads, pushing the person away. You might just give them a heart-attack, but you’ll finally be able to enjoy your personal space in however crowded a space. Created in collaboration software engineer and hacker Daniel Schatzmayr, the Spider Dress’ robotic components use sensors to detect when someone gets too close. The scary tech-fashion design was showcased last November, at the VIVE LE ROBOTS / Cafe Neue Romance in Prague, during the EU Robotics week

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You would think that handling snakes is an activity limited to the snake-charmers of India. After all, the handling of such venomous creatures is naturally associated with the mystical cultures of the East. But you will be surprised to know that the practice exists in the U.S. as well, and has been present here for the past 100 years. ‘Snake handling’ or ‘Serpent handling’, as it is called, is a religious ritual followed in a small number of Pentecostal churches in the U.S., with origins in 20^th century Appalachia. The belief behind the practice dates back to antiquity, and followers quote the Gospel of Mark and Gospel of Luke for support:

And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. (Mark 16:17-18)

Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. (Luke 10:19)

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A group of three self-confessed nerds hired a photographer to create a calendar that would appeal to fellow gamers and vintage technology fans. The 2013 Nerd Dreams Calendar recently went on sale in Germany but is available to geeks worldwide.

Are you a big fan of iconic devices like the Atari ST, Commodore C64 or Steve Jobs’ NeXT Cube? Would you like to see them in the hands of attractive girls that don’t have to take off their clothes in order to attract attention, and more importantly, share your passion for nerdy stuff? Then you’re bound to appreciate the new Nerd Dreams Calendar for 2013, imagined by a group of German nerds tired of having their interests passed up by calendar makers. They created their very own company, Nerd Dreams, hired a photographer and put together the calendar they’ve always wanted, making sure every photo was “suitable for work”. “We sub-contracted everything that had nothing to do with computers,” said Henning Schneider, one of the brains behind the nerd calendar, so the models were provided by an agency, and the pictures were taken by photographer Anna Schnauss in Frankfurt. Nerd Dreams 2013 features girls sporting geeky glasses and playing with old gadgets, as well as girls dressed as iconic video game characters like Lara Croft.

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There’s a new way to beat your addiction, but it hurts, a lot. Psychologists at a Siberian drug clinic are using corporal punishment to help drug, alcohol and even sex addicts get their lives back. The bizarre treatment involves lashing patients’ buttocks with sticks and canes.

“We cane the patients on the buttocks with a clear and definite medical purpose – it is not some warped sado-masochistic activity,” Professor Marina Chukhrova told The Siberian Times. Apparently, there are some sound scientific principles behind these beatings. Chukhrova and fellow practitioner Dr German Pilipenko claim addicts suffer from a lack of endorphins, known as the “happiness hormones”, and the excruciating pain stimulates their brains to release endorphins into the body, making them feel better about themselves without having to use any other stimulants. “The caning counteracts a lack of enthusiasm for life which is often behind addictions, suicidal tendencies and psychosomatic disorders,” Pilipenko says. He admits their technique gets a lot of skepticism from fellow doctors, but insists the pain acts as an injection against stress. Read More »

A macabre gambling trend has taken off in Taiwan’s thrid largest city of Taichung. Doctors, nurses and even the families of terminally ill cancer patients are placing bets on when the sick will die, for the chance to win three times the wagered sum.

It’s sick what some people will do for money. According to various news reports, a sinister gambling trend has sprung up in Taichung, Taiwan- people are actually making bets on how long incurable cancer patients in the city’s hospitals have to live. And we’re not talking about isolated cases of morally-challenged gamblers looking to make some money through any means possible, this is a full-fledged underground industry industry worth over $30 million. On a single Taichung street there are over 60 so-called “senior clubs” posing as charity organisations for the elderly that are nothing more than gambling dens challenging punters to place their bets on whatever cancer patient they think is the most likely to die within one month. What’s even more disturbing about this practice is that doctors, nurses and even family members of the terminally ill patients are also eager for a piece of the action.

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Yu Youzhen, a millionaire from Wuhan City, China, has been making headlines recently, after it was discovered she works as a street cleaner, for a 1,420 yuan monthly salary, in order to set a positive example for her two children.

During the 1980s, Yu Youzhen was just an average vegetable farmer in the Hongshan District Donghu Village Huojiawan, working hard with her husband in order to save some money. After years working from dawn till dusk, they became the first family in the village to own a 3-storey house. At the time, a lot of people were coming to Wuhan looking for work, and many of them needed a place to stay, so Yu started renting the spare rooms in her home. Each room would bring about 50 yuan every month, and the resourceful woman used the extra earning to build even more houses and add more floors. After several years, she had three 5-storey buildings, most of which were rented out. Construction regulations were loose in China, and everyone was building houses, but Yu Youzhen really lucked-out when, according to the policies of requisitioning and redevelopment of land, she and her family were compensated with 21 apartments for the houses they had built in Huojiawan. She wasn’t the only one, of course, but she personally witnessed how fellow villagers squandered away their fortunes on gambling, drinking and even drug use, so she made it a goal to set a good example for her kids and act responsible.

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Datta Phuge, a chit fund businessman from Pimpri, India, refers to himself as “The Gold Man of Pimpri” and in order to live up to this image, he has recently commissioned a 22-karat gold shirt weighing 3.2 kilograms that’s bound to make some Western rappers green with envy.

According to India Today, gold-obsessed businessmen and politicians are nothing new in India. Not long ago, a man by the name of Ramesh Wanjale was spotted wearing 2 kilos of gold, then NCP functionary Samrat Moze wore 8.5 kilograms of gold in the form of jewelry and ornaments, but chit fund Datta Phuge found a way to one-up them both. He had a team of 15 goldsmiths working 18 hours a day for over 15 days in order to finish a 3.5 kg woven gold shirt. “The gold shirt has been one of my dreams,” Mr Phuge told Indian newspaper the Pune Mirror. “It will be an embellishment to my reputation as the ‘Gold man of Pimpri’”, Phuge said. His extravagant garment consists of 14,000 gold flowerrings, interwoven with one lakh spangles. It was assembled on a fabric base of imported white velvet, and comes with six Swarovski crystal buttons and an intricate belt, also made of gold.

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“Merry Christmas! You are now the proud owner of an iPhone.” Who wouldn’t want to find a message like that next to their Christmas gift, right? Only in the case of 13-year-old Greg Hoffman, from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, this was only the beginning of an elaborate 18-point contract he had to abide by in order to keep using his brand new Apple iPhone.

Greg Hoffman had been begging his parents for an iPhone for a whole year, so when he finally fond it under the Christmas Tree, he was the happiest 13-year-old in the world. Only his joy was short-lived, for with the popular smartphone came a contract put together by his mom, Janell, which conditioned the use of the gadget. The first of 18 points in the contract made things very clear for Greg. It read: “It is my phone. I bought it. I pay for it. I am loaning it to you. Aren’t I the greatest?” His first reaction was “Why? Why did she really have to do this?”, but his mother revealed her motives on ABC’s God Morning America: “What I wanted to do and show him [is] how you could be a responsible user of technology without abusing it, without becoming addicted”. Although she ultimately admitted the 18-point “document” was created partly in jest, Janell Hoffman wanted to help her son avoid many of the pitfalls that both smart phone using teens and adults fall prey to, and teen behavior expert Josh Shipp agrees with her. “You wouldn’t’ give your kid a car without making sure they had insurance,” he says. “And so giving them a cell phone or a computer without teaching them how to use it responsibly is irresponsible on the part of the parent.”

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