A Taiwanese man sparked controversy on social media after complaining about getting a pay cut for spending too much time in the bathroom during work hours. The disgruntled employee, identified only as ‘Mr. A.’, recently took to Facebook to voice his frustration and disappointment at having part of his monthly salary withheld by the company he works at, for having spent too much time in the bathroom the previous month. The man admitted to spending a whopping 49.5 hours in the toilet, which amounts to about two hours of bathroom time per day, but said that his employer failed to inform him that his wages could be cut for taking too long toilet breaks. The Taiwanese man posted his story on the Blame 2 Commune Facebook Group, asking the other member for advice on how to proceed. He clarified that he had worked 22 days as an intern last month, for a total of 195 hours and an hourly salary of 160 yuan. However, on pay day, he noticed than about 4,400 yuan had been deducted, so he decided to take up the matter with human resources. Read More »

For years, Aprilia Santini Manganang and the Indonesian Women’s Volleyball Association had been fighting off accusations that she was actually a man, but this year, Manganang was finally confirmed to actually be male. A member of Indonesia’s national women’s volleyball team, Aprilia Manganang also played in several local club teams in Indonesia, as well as in Thailand. She led the Jakarta Electric PLN women’s team to become the champion of the Proliga in 2015, 2016, and 2017. In 2019, she became champion again with the Jakarta PGN Popsivo Polwan team, before transferring to the Generali Supreme Chonburi-E Tech team in the Thai Volleyball League and winning the championship that same year. Manganang won multiple Most Valuable Player awards in her career, and helped the Indonesian national team win the bronze and silver medals at different editions of the Southeast Asian Games (SEA). But her amazing achievements were always put into question, because of haw she looked. Read More »

Einstein Café, a popular coffee chain operating in several middle-eastern countries has come under fire for sparking a controversial trend of replacing paper cups with baby bottles. It all started with Einstein Café, a dessert chain with branches in countries like the UAE, Kuwait or Bahrein. One day, allegedly inspired by pictures of trendy-looking bottles shared on social media, it changed the paper cups it usually served its drinks in with plastic baby bottle complete with transparent silicone teats. No one expected the change to have a huge impact on the business, but according to company management, everyone wanted to try the new bottles, even calling to book tables in advance. Read More »

A website that maps Japan’s noisiest and most annoying neighborhoods to help people avoid public nuisances when looking for a place to live has sparked controversy, with many accusing it of criticizing normal behavior, like children crying or speaking loudly. While Japan is still sometimes portrayed as this serene, and calm land, in reality it is one of the nosiest countries on the planet. With over 90% of its 126 million-strong population living in urban areas, noise pollution is a part of daily life, and it’s no wonder that many are valuing peace and quiet more than ever. Japan has even coined a special term that describes the kind of person who talks loudly and generally acts as a public nuisance, completely disregarding the people around them. They are called “dorozoku” or “street tribe”, and they are the focus of a controversial online platform that maps Japanese neighborhoods likely to be plagued by them. DQN Today is the brainchild of a 40-something freelance web developer from Yokohama, who has allegedly been working from home for the last 12 years. Back in 2016, after finding himself unable to work on some days due to the constant ruckus made by noisy children hanging around his home, the man, who preferred to remain anonymous, decided to create an online crowdsourcing website where people could map and share their experience with dorozoku. Read More »

The Polar Bear Hotel, part of the Harbin Polarland theme park in Heilongjiang, China, opened its gates this week to full bookings and criticism from animal lovers, after it was reported that all the rooms offer guests round the clock viewing of a polar bear enclosure. Marketed as the world’s first “polar bear hotel”, the newest attraction at Harbin Polarland was jointly designed by famous Russian designer Kozylenko Natalia Yefremovna and Japanese theme park designer Shuji Miyajima. It’s built around a small polar bear enclosure, allowing guests to look at two captive polar bears both from the ground floor and from any of the 21 rooms available. The concept has attracted a lot of attention, both from people willing to pay a premium to book a room, and from animal activists who accused the establishment of profiting from the animal’s misery. Read More »

In a landmark divorce ruling, a Chinese court ordered a man to pay thousands of dollars to his ex-wife, as compensation for housework performed during their five-year marriage. According to court papers, the man, identified only as Chen, filed from divorce from his wife, Wang, last year, after a five-year marriage. Although reluctant to grant him the divorce at first, the woman later requested that he compensate her for all the work she did as a full-time housewife during their marriage, adding that he had not participated in raising their child and “barely cared about or participated in any kind of domestic chores”. Recently, a Beijing family court ruled in the woman’s favor, sparking a heated debate in China. Read More »

Indonesian police are investigating the strange case of a 25-year-old woman who claims that she gave birth just an hour after a gust of wind got her pregnant. The young woman, identified as Siti Zainah, ahs become the subject of widespread ridicule in Indonesia after claiming to have been impregnated by a gust of wind, on February 10. Furthermore, Zainah added that she gave birth to a baby girl just an hour after the alleged impregnation. According to several Indonesian news outlets, the 25-year-old was relaxing at home in Cianjur, West Java, with her first child, when she felt the wind enter her body. A few minutes later, she went into labor. Read More »

A 23-year-old Russian woman has become a mother of 11 in just 10 months time, after turning to surrogates in order to have as many babies as possible, as quickly as possible. Christina Ozturk only gave birth once, at the age of 17, when she had her first daughter Vika, but after marrying millionaire husband Galip Ozturk, 56, she was keen on building a big family with him, so she turned to surrogate mothers to have 10 babies in just 10 months. The couple’s first child together, Mustafa, was born in March of last year, while their most recent addition to the family and tenth child together, Olivia, was born last month. Christina and Galip don’t know how many children they’ll end up having together, but they definitely don’t plan on stopping at 10. Read More »

Virtual reality has the potential to change our lives in a number of ways, one of which is apparently the possibility to reunite with loved ones who have passed away. South Korean television MBC recently started broadcasting season two of its hit documentary,  너를 만났다 (“I Met You”), a unique program that uses state-of-the-art VR gear and software to reunite people with their departed loved ones and allow them to make one more memory together. The network spends months on each case, putting together an emotional reunion in virtual reality, but while the response from the public has been generally positive, there are critics who describe it as emotionally manipulative. Read More »

Single parents separated from their former partners are allegedly turning to controversial “recovery agencies” to get their children back from former spouses that take them abroad without permission. Normally, when parents separate, custody of the children is settled by a judge, along with visitation hours and rules, but sometimes one party doesn’t want to play by the rules, and that’s where agencies specialized in child retrieval come in. Most operators of such controversial services claim they are an essential tools for desperate parents with no other means of retrieving their beloved children from dangerous situations, but some sources claim that that isn’t always the case. Some recovery agencies allegedly don’t put in the time and effort to objectively research cases, and downright kidnap kids for parents, even if they don’t have custody rights. Louise Screene (pseudonym, to protect her identity), recently told Mail Online the shocking story of how she saw her two children kidnapped from arm’s length by a recovery agent paid by their father. Following her divorce from Andrew (not his real name), Louise agreed to share custody of their two children, even if that meant they had to travel between the UK and the Middle East, where Andrew had moved. Read More »

American rapper Lil Uzi Vert recently shocked his fans by posting photos of himself with what he claims is a $24 million pink diamond embedded in his forehead. Lil Uzi Vert had announced plans to have the ultra-rare and expensive precious stone embedded in his forehead last week, when he posted that he had spent years paying for the pink diamond. Uzi, whose real name is Symere Woods,  is known to have a penchant for expensive watches, jewelry, and luxury cars, but this pink diamond, if real, is his most prized possession yet. That’s part of what compelled him to have it attached to his forehead, apparently. Read More »

A Ukrainian fitness model has come under fire from animal lovers after photos of her tattooed pet Sphynx went viral on social media. Elena Ivanickaya, a fitness enthusiast and Instagram model, first sparked controversy in 2017, when she announced that she had had her pet hairless cat, Yasha, tattooed, even posting photos of the sedated animal during the procedure. Her decision was labeled as animal cruelty and caused so much outrage that the story eventually made international news headlines. But instead of backing off and let things blow over, Ivanickaya defended her decision and continued to post photos of the tattooed feline on her social media post. Those pics once again went viral recently, and people are once again showering the Ukrainian with criticism. Read More »

A 16-year-old girl known as “China’s youngest plastic surgery addict” claims to have undergone no less than 100 invasive cosmetic procedures over 3 years, in a bid to improve her looks. Zhou Chuna, a young Chinese influencer with over 300,000 followers on microblogging platform Sina Weibo, has built her online career on plastic surgery, documenting her extreme transformation from a normal-looking girl to a doll-like idol over a period of three years. She’s not the only girl to have turned to cosmetic enhancements at a very young age, but Zhou Chuna’s case is considered unique because of the sheer number of procedures she has had done (around 100) in a relatively short period of time (3 years). Despite claiming to have experienced severe side-effects due to her addiction to plastic surgery, like memory loss and permanent scarring, the 16-year-old says it’s all worth it. Read More »

If you want to make it as a glamour influencer on social media, you have to look the part, and one way to achieve that is by using fake books as decorations. French Instagram superstar Maddy Burciaga has come under fire for allegedly promoting fake expensive books are the perfect props to decorate one’s home. In an Instagram story, the 27-year-old shows off fake copies of Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent books, adding that the real books are quite expensive in bookshops and boutiques. But if you’re not actually interested in reading the books, but just want to show off to your followers, you can just get these blocks of cardboard that look like books, for just a fraction of the price. Her promotional campaign didn’t go as planned. Burciaga, who rose to fame after appearing on a number of French television shows, like “The Angels”, or “The Villa of Broken Hearts”, commands a following of over 2.4 million people on Instagram alone, so her Insta story quickly went viral, and garnered generally negative reactions. Read More »

A former beauty pageant winner from Guinea has taken a Swiss skin-care product company to court for allegedly ruined her once healthy complexion and ruining her modelling career. 25-year-old Mariama Diallo, who previously won Miss Guinea, Miss West Africa and participated in the Miss World pageant, had a successful modelling career until three years ago, when trying a new skincare product left her face full of blemishes and scars. She has been struggling to find work since 2018, as the healing process has been very slow and no company would hire her. Diallo has now taken the manufacturer of the product she claims ruined her career to court. Read More »