A Spanish man stands accused of taking advantage of an overly-religious old woman by posing as her Lord and Savior and asking her to deposit money at His ‘Church of Heaven’.

Could you say ‘no’ to God? What if He called you directly to ask for a favor? Esperanza, an elderly woman from León, in northwestern Spain, could not refuse God when He called her on her telephone and told her to put her savings in His ‘Church of Heaven’, because it offered better interest than earthly ones. The woman never once suspected that she was being scammed, as she was convinced that she was a ‘chosen of the Virgin’ long before receiving the call, so getting a direct call from the Almighty didn’t really seem that strange. Over six years, Esperanza followed God’s instructions and deposited around 300,000 euros in a small drawer at a local convenience store, convinced the money would end up at a heavenly church…

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An Indian man who spends his days asking people for pocket change on the streets of Mumbai has been dubbed the ‘world’s richest beggar’ by Indian media who claims he is worth over $1 million.

While many people in India toil long hours every single day for a few hundred rupees, Bharat Jain, the so-called ‘world’s richest beggar’, reportedly makes between 2,000 and 2,500 rupees every day by asking generous people for handouts. Jain has been begging at busy Mumbai locations like Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus railway station (CSMT) or Azad Maidan for many years now and has accumulated quite a fortune. His net worth is expected to be around 7.5 crore ($1 million), and includes a 2-bedroom flat in Mumbai worth 1.2 crore, and two shops in Thane that rent for 30,000 rupees per month. His monthly income is estimated to vary between 60,000 rupees ($731) and 75,000 rupees ($914), which is apparently a lot more than most employed Indians earn.

Photo: Brijesh Nirmal/Unsplash

According to the Economic Times, Bharat Jain did not afford to pursue any formal education and resorted to begging to earn a living. His kids, on the other hand, will not be following in his footsteps. They have already completed their education in convent schools and are already employed. Jain’s family constantly advises him to stop begging as they can afford to live comfortably without it, but he continues to hit the streets almost every day.

Bharat Jain has been making news headlines in India for his less-than-meager earnings since 2015 when his reputation as a wealthy beggar started growing. His name has since been mentioned constantly by Indian media looking for the next viral news story.

The title of ‘world’s largest gas station’ belongs to a 74,000-square foot Buc-ee’s In Tennessee with 120 gas pumps and 350 employees.

Buc-ee’s, the world-famous giant gas station chain that dominates roads across the American south, operates dozens of gas stations, but none as big as the recently opened one near Sevierville, Tennessee just off of I-40. Buc-ee’s is known for incorporating megastores into their massive gas stations, but this newest one really takes the cake! At 74,000 square feet, the world’s largest gas station features a massive shopping center, a full barbecue restaurant, spacious bathrooms, and a massive rest area. And, like any respectable gas station, it has plenty of gas pumps, 120 to be exact.

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Chinese netizens have been reporting the presence of high-tech urinals capable of conducting quick urine sample tests at shopping malls, scenic spots, and other busy urban areas.

Photos of a strange-looking urinal at a mall somewhere in Beijing’s business district have been doing the rounds online and sparking heated debates. Apparently, it features a digital display complete with a built-in payment processing unit that allows users to have their urine tested after relieving themselves. The urinal presumably has hidden sensors that analyze the urine for a bunch of markers, including calcium, glucose, protein, ketone bodies, ascorbate, and others. The information displayed on the screen suggests that the developer has obtained some patents for the urine testing technology, but the accuracy of the results is a matter of contention…

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In what many are calling a real-life Bollywood movie script, an Indian man married his wife to her lover after catching them cheating.

In the 1999 Bollywood classic Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Ajay Devgn’s character, Vanraj, finds out that his wife is in love with another man and decides to unite them. It’s one of India’s most famous love stories and one that was recently replicated by a scorned husband who, upon learning about his wife’s infidelity, arrange the union of the spouse to her lover. The unusual incident took place in Nardiganj, a village in India’s Bihar state after villagers caught a young married woman visiting the home of her lover while her husband was away. They beat the man, who was also married with three children and had decided to drive the pair from their village, but then the woman’s husband returned and came up with another solution.

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The Lemon Melon is a newly-developed type of melon that apparently combines the sweetness and aroma of the melon with a slight sourness reminiscent of a lemon.

Japanese horticulture company Suntory Flowers reportedly spent five years developing the lemon melon, breeding it from a type of melon originally imported from overseas. The process involved a lot of trial and error and took about five years. During the development period, horticulturists experimented extensively with a number of factors, including cultivation methods and harvest times. The final product, which is apparently blended with actual lemons, is juicy and sweet like a melon but slightly sour like a lemon, making the perfect fruit to enjoy on a hot summer day.

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Doctors in Singapore were shocked to discover an octopus lodged in a man’s esophagus while performing a gastrointestinal examination to see what was causing him to vomit.

The unnamed Singaporean man first realized something was wrong when he started vomiting following a meal that happen to include a raw octopus. When he realized that he also had trouble swallowing, the man panicked and quickly decided to pay a visit to the Tan Tock Seng Hospital emergency room. Doctors there quickly conducted a CT scan, which revealed a super-dense mass in the man’s esophagus, but they couldn’t be sure what it was without attempting an invasive procedure called esophagogastroduodenoscopy, which involves inserting a small, flexible tube with a camera at its end down the person’s throat. That’s how they discovered that the man had a whole octopus stuck in his throat.

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A Chinese man who has dedicated most of the last 22 years to trying to find his abducted son finally managed to find his son in a city 560 miles (900 kilometers) away.

On October 9, 2001, Lei Wuze left his home in Yueyang, Hunan Province without knowing that it would be the last time he would see his son for over two decades. The man left his 4-year-old boy, Yuechuan, playing under the supervision of one of his neighbors. The woman later told police that they had met a suspicious man on the street who had later laid a trap for the boy and abducted him when she wasn’t paying attention. Lei was devastated, but he never lost hope of one day seeing his boy again. He immediately embarked on long trips in and around Yueyang, holding pictures of his son and stopping people in traffic to ask if they had seen him. Years passed, but Lei Wuze persisted, and this year, his resilience finally paid off.

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Featherless chicken is a relatively new breed of poultry created through selective breeding in order to combat a very common problem – overheating. However, the so-called ‘naked chickens’ have yet to become mainstream.

Commercial broiler chickens are genetically prone to eat more and gain weight very fast which causes their body metabolism to operate at higher temperatures than that of other chicken breeds. Their hearts operate at up to 300 beats per minute, and while the rapid weight gain makes them perfect for the ever-growing meat industry, it also creates a very big problem – overheating. Raising broilers in hot climate regions requires expensive coolers to keep the birds’ temperature in check, but what if there was a more economical way to keep birds cool without using vast amounts of energy? That was the idea that led to the creation of the controversial featherless chicken.

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Australia’s Phil Gore recently set a new world record at the 2023 Dead Cow Gully Backyard Masters Ultramarathon by running a whopping 425 miles (685 kilometers) in four days.

The Dead Cow Gully Backyard Masters is billed as a ‘race with no finish line’ by its organizers, and that makes sense because the format requires runners to complete a loop of 6.7km every hour and the race continues until only one runner remains. This year’s event was held on a farm in Nanango, 112 miles northwest of Brisbane, Australia. The endurance race began at 7 am on Saturday, June 17th, and ended four and a half days later, when there was only one person still running, Australian Phil Gore. After running the 6.7-km lap no less than 102 times, he was finally declared the winner.

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An 81-year-old Russian woman with ties to the criminal underworld of Krasnodar was recently arrested for ordering the killing of a criminal investigations detective.

Lyudmila Ryabykh is not your average grandmother. Not only does the 81-year-old have a strong connection to members of Krasnodar’s organized crime, but she once threatened to kill a paramedic with a sawed-off shotgun and she recently placed a hit on a local detective that apparently rubbed her the wrong way. The pensioner was caught red-handed after ordering the killing of an officer from the Krasnodar police department and paying part of the reward for proof of his death. Unfortunately for her, Ryabykh didn’t know that her criminal associates had revealed her plan to the authorities, and she now risks spending the rest of her days behind bars.

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Pinanga subterranea, a new species of palm discovered by researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens, is one of only two known plants that exclusively fruit and flower underground.

There are more than 2,500 species of palm known to science, but Pinanga subterranea, a new species discovered on the tropical island of Borneo, is the only one that flowers and fruits only underground. The plant and its sweet fruits are well-known to the island’s indigenous population, but it has somehow been overlooked by scientists until now. Dr Paul Chai, a Malaysian botanist and namesake of the palm species Pinanga chaiana was the first to spot the underground-flowering palm, and in 2018, Kew scientists Benedikt Kuhnhäuser, Peter Petoe and William Baker took some samples for research purposes and discovered the plant’s amazing abilities.

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An international team of scientists has reportedly created a genetically-modified ‘superbanana’ that contains significantly more nutrients, especially vitamin A.

Vitamin A deficiency has been plaguing poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia for hundreds of years, inhibiting children’s growth, causing blindness and significantly weakening their resistance to deadly treatable diseases such as diarrhea and measles. The World Health Organization estimates that 190 million preschool-aged children worldwide are deficient in vitamin A and that malnutrition accounts for 6% of early childhood deaths in Africa alone. Luckily, a cheap and viable solution to malnutrition and vitamin A deficiency, in particular, may be available in the very near future…

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The Sol e-book reader is a new and innovative e-book reader that you wear on your face, just like a pair of sunglasses.

If the humble Kindle isn’t just isn’t good enough anymore and you’re looking for the next big thing in the e-book reader space, you may want to check out the Sol e-book reader, an intriguing device shaped like a pair of sunglasses. Somewhat similar to a VR headset, the Sol is a much more simplistic gadget designed solely as a hands-free e-reader. Weighing only around 100 grams and shaped like a pair of black sunglasses, the Sol was created for a more comfortable reading experience, like reading a book while lying down. But, before you ask, no, you will not be able to flip pages with your eyes or the power of your mind…

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A Brazilian lawyer is currently under investigation after allegedly spending over 13,000 Brazilian reals ($2,700) at a shopping mall, and then claiming that someone had kidnapped him and used his credit card.

On May 19th, Rodrigo Barcelos de Oliveira, a lawyer from Rio de Janeiro, stormed into the 16th police precinct of the Brazilian city to report a serious crime. He told officers that earlier that day he was driving down the Avenida das Américas road when he was approached by two armed men on motorcycles and forced to pull over in the parking lot of Barra Shopping Center, a mall in the west side of Rio. There, one of the men took his credit card and spent five hours shopping around, while the other guy held him at gunpoint. He gave the men the PIN code to the card and they used it to the limit set by the bank. The kidnappers then left with the purchased products, his jewelry, phone, wallet and wedding ring.

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