South Korean television channel MBN recently introduced its viewer’s to the Asian country’s first ever AI-powered news anchor, an eerily realistic version of human anchor Kim Ju-ha.

Developed by MBN in partnership with artificial intelligence  production company Money Brain, South Korea’s first AI-powered news anchor was reportedly shockingly similar to her human inspiration. Not only did it have the exact same look and voice of the popular presenter, but she also mimicked the small gestures that Kim sometimes makes, like fiddling with a pen while reporting the news. During a broadcast on November 6, AI Kim even shared a conversation with real-life Kim Ju-ha to compare their voices, which apparently freaked out a lot of people.

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James Blackwood, a retired Mounted Police Officer from Nova Scotia, calls himself a “Raccoon Whisperer”, a worthy title, considering that he has been feeding dozens of them every night, for over two decades.

Blackwood and his furry friends recently became the talk of the interwebs, after a video showing the pensioner getting mobbed by a about two dozen raccoons, as he feeds them grapes and hot-dogs. This one video has been viewed 10 million times on YouTube, in the last two weeks, and has turned the retired RCMP officer into an overnight sensation. Truth be told, he already a healthy following on YouTube, with over 200,000subscribers, but those were mainly racoon and animal lovers, now the whole world knows about the Racoon Whisperer.

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After struggling to stay open during the Covid-19 pandemic, a sushi restaurant in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture, has found success with an ingenious “macho delivery” service that involves using buff bodybuilders as delivery boys.

Masanori Sugiura, a third-generation owner of the 60-year-old sushi restaurant Imazushi in the city of Anjo, started working out at the gym when he was in his 20s, but he never imagined that his hobby would one day help him keep his family business afloat. The trained chef had seen his profits plummet from the usual 100 million yen ($940,000) for the April-June quarter, to just 10 million yen, because of the coronavirus, and at one point had cut his staff from 50 to just four. But then he had a wacky idea to put his muscles to work as a way of attracting new business, and the “Delivery Macho” service was born.

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In a country that eschews confrontation and frowns upon public display of passion, bold entrepreneurs eager to take up the burden of ending a romantic relationship on a client’s behalf can make a fortune.

The Wakaresaseya, literally “breaker-uppers”, are professional agents that specialize in destroying relationships, be they marriages or affairs, for a fee. After taking on a contract these unlicensed operatives stop at nothing to achieve their goal, which includes extreme measures like entrapment, financial burdening and lying. Wakaresaseya are viewed by some in Japanese society as immoral, but they have been around for decades and their services are more popular than ever.

Wakaresaseya services, many of which are tied to private detective agencies, are often advertised online and cater to both married people seeking a reason to leave their spouse, and married individuals who know about their partner’s infidelity and want to end it without getting involved. Prices reportedly vary from a couple of hundred dollars for simple cases, to upwards of $150,000 for high-profile cases where discretion if of the upmost importance.

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A bizarre love triangle between a 75-year-old woman, her 52-year-old ex-son-in-law and her 56-year-old daughter has sparked controversy in Russia after their story went viral this month.

Galina Zhukovskaya, 75, from St. Petersburg, Russia, married Vyacheslav Zhukovsky, a man 23 years her junior back in 2010, but it wasn’t the age difference between them that made their union controversial in the eyes of the world. The problem was that Vyacheslav had been Galina’s son-in-law after being married to her daughter, Elena, for three years. The couple broke up shortly after his realese from prison, allegedly due to Elena’s infidelity. Vyacheslav, found refuge with his mother-in-law, and the two tied the knot in 2010. They’ve been together ever since, but Galina claims that her daughter has always been envious of their relationship and has been trying to break them up.

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At just 27 years old, Li Jiaqi is already one of the most successful online personalities in China. He specializes in selling makeup, particularly luxury brand lipsticks, which has earned him crazy nicknames “King of Lipstick” or “Iron Lips”.

With over 40 million fans on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, and millions others on various other social networks, Li Jiaqi is perhaps the most sought after beauty vlogger in all of China. Whatever product he chooses to promote turns into an instant hit, and companies are desperate to work with him, but he remains mostly focused on makeup, lipstick in particular. It’s not really the kind of career you would expect a young man to venture into, especially in a traditionalist country like China, but his success is proof that unconventionality can be an advantage. That’s how Li Jiaqi looks at it, anyway. He says that most people doubted him at first, saying that he could never sell to a female audience, but he had always been confident that he had an advantage over female beauty vloggers – stamina.

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This is the story of a middle-aged woman from the UK who decided to end her unhappy marriage to pursue a fairy-tale romance in an online video game which ultimately resulted in a real-life wedding.

Kelly Sexton was 37 when she first started playing Second Life, an online simulation game where players customize their avatars and live out their fantasies. She was suffering from fibromyalgia, ME and non-epileptic attack disorder (NEAD), and Second Life proved a welcome escape from the troubles of daily life. She was married at the time and had four children, so she never really considered the idea of falling in love with a stranger and starting a new life, albeit an online one. But that’s exactly what happened.

On New Years Eve 2016, Kelly’s avatar, Selena, was approached by a tall, dark-haired, buff male avatar who started pole dancing in front of her. She found it very funny, so she started flirting with him.

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Man vs Fat is a weight-loss phenomenon sweeping the United Kingdom and helping soccer fans lose weight and improve their fitness by getting involved in their favorite sport.

Soccer, or football, as we Europeans call it, is the most popular sport in the world, but nowhere is it more loved than in its birthplace – England. To say people there are crazy about soccer would be an understatement; with over 140 individual leagues, containing more than 480 divisions, and around 7,000 professional clubs, it’s safe to say that soccer truly is at home in England. People love to play it, love to watch others playing it, either in stadiums or from the comfort of their own homes, love to talk about it in pubs, it’s just a big part of daily life. So I guess it makes sense that soccer be so effective in helping to curb the country’s very serious obesity problem.

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A Ugandan man whose farts can allegedly kill mosquitoes six meters away claims to have been offered deals by companies looking to turn his flatulence into commercial insect repellent.

Joe Rwamirama, a 48-year-old man from Kampala, in Uganda, says he eats ordinary food and that his farts smell no worse than anyone else’s, but to insects, like malaria-transmitting mosquitoes, the gas he passes is deadly. Joe’s insect-repelling farts are famous around town, and people know that whenever he is around, mosquitoes magically vanish. Some say that the man’s farts have evolved to fight mosquitoes.

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While most human identification technology companies choose to focus on facial recognition, one Chinese startup claims to have developed  much more accurate identification system based on micro traits of veins within human hand.

Developed by MELUX, AirWave is an incredibly efficient identification system that is said to be a million times more accurate than facial recognition technology. There are only 80 to 280 feature points on the face that artificial intelligence can asses when scanning an individual, but AirWave is able to scan more than a million micro-feature points in the palm of the hand in under 0.3 seconds, making it virtually impossible to cheat. A simple swipe of the palm over a special sensor is all that’s required to get an ultra-accurate authentication and/or authorization in real time.

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It’s considered the most contaminated site in the southern hemisphere and one of the most toxic in the world, but for some reason tourists just can’t stay away from the abandoned mining town of Wittenoom, deep in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara region.

In its heyday, between 1930 and 1966, Wittenoom was home to around 20,000 people, most of whom worked in the now abandoned nearby mines, extracting deadly asbestos every day. Today, it’s a ghost town surrounded by large ‘Danger’ signs designed to keep people as far away as possible. Even though asbestos mining ceased decades ago, Wittenoom is still surrounded by around three million tonnes of asbestos residue, enough to make the air there potentially deadly. The place is so dangerous that last year the Australian government decided to compulsorily acquire the properties of the last three people living in the area, just to get them to safety. And yet, there are thousands of tourists visiting Wittenoom every year and proudly posting photos of it on social media.

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Doctors in Shenzen, China recently performed an emergency endoscopy to remove a 13-centimeter metal spoon from a woman’s duodenum, after she accidentally swallowed it while trying to dislodge a fish bone from her throat.

The reckless patient, known only as Lily, reportedly swallowed the stainless steel spoon before the Qingming Festival on April 5, but didn’t bother going to the hospital until four days later, because she didn’t feel any pain in her stomach. She had apparently tried to use the metal spoon to remove a fish bone that had become lodged in her throat, but it accidentally slipped from her fingers and she ended up swallowing it. Talk about things going from bad to worse, right?

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Ed Stafford, a former British Army captain and renowned adventurer recently embarked on a 60-day challenge that saw him sleeping on the streets of various cities in Britain. His experiment was meant to highlight the plight of homeless people, but he was shocked to find that begging can be more lucrative than he had ever imagined.

Stafford, who is known as the first person to walk the entire length of the Amazon river, spent 60 days sleeping on the streets of cities like London, Manchester and Glasgow, and observing the lifestyle of real homeless people for a TV documentary soon to air on Channel 4. Although the adventurer admits that he did observe drug addiction problems among the homeless and heard some truly heartbreaking stories from them, what really shocked him was  how much money some of these beggars made – up to £200 ($260) a night – and the amounts of free food they received from passers-by and volunteers.

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Poppy farmers in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh are forced to guard their fields day and night in a desperate attempt to fend off large groups of opium-addicted parrots who get high off the narcotic effects of poppy seeds.

Scattered rains have already affected poppy production in Neemuch district, but farmers here say that the increasing number of opium-addicted parrots that pillage their crops on a daily basis are making things even worse. Using loudspeakers and firecrackers to keep the birds at bay has failed and the farmers’ appeals to local authorities have fallen of deaf ears, so people have no choice but to guard the poppy fields day and night. But even so, the birds still come to get their fix dozens of time a day.

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A Malaysian woman ended up with a pet duck after buying a fertilized egg from a restaurant and using a makeshift incubator to hatch it instead of eating it.

39-year-old Erica Lim, a creative professional from Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia, recently sat down with online magazine Star2 to talk about life with a pet duck in a high-rise apartment building. She spoke about Daisy’s love of water, her friendly and adventurous nature, and how she adapted to life in the big city, but Erica’s most interesting revelation was the story of how the duck came into this world. Apparently, she was meant to be eaten as “balut”, a controversial Asian snack that consists of a cooked partially-developed duck embryo.

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