A Chinese man bored with his daily life recently got detained for posting a “wanted order” in his name on social media and bragging about the countless crimes he had allegedly committed.

Can you imagine being so bored that you start posting made-up crimes online and posting as a criminal mastermind, hoping to get some kind of attention? That’s exactly what a man from northern China did last month, taking to social media to spread lies about himself, including that he had recently extorted 30 million yuan ($4million) from a company, that he owned a firearm and ammunition, and challenging people to find him if they wanted a 30,000 yuan ($4,000) reward. His post went viral, but it also caught the attention of Chinese law enforcement monitoring social media, and he ended up behind bars for his unusual stunt.

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Shikoku Bank’s leadership has come up with a bizarre way of reassuring clients of its commitment – promising to pay with their lives if found guilty of ‘financial irregularities’.

Banking executives are always held to high ethical standards, considering that they handle the wealth of thousands, sometimes millions of people, but while they face serious punishment in case of fraud or embezzlement, they aren’t quite expected to pay with their lives. That is not the case with the management of Shikoku Bank, a financial institution whose top 23 executives, including President Miura, signed a blood oath requiring them to commit seppuku if found guilty of engaging in financial irregularities, embezzlement or other fraudulent activities. Rooted in the code of honor of Japan’s samurai era, the bizarre pledge posted on Shikoku Bank’s website went viral sparking reactions varying from admiration to disbelief.

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A 26-year-old South Korean man was recently sentenced to one year in prison for deliberately binge eating in order to become obese and be declared unfit for mandatory military service.

Military service is no trivial matter in South Korea. It doesn’t matter if you’re a globally-known singer, a successful actor, or a billionaire; if you’re a healthy adult male between the ages of 18 and 35, you have to spend at least 21 months in the army. The most you can do is postpone the compulsory service, but you’ll have to go through it at some point. However, if you are declared unfit for service because of health issues, you’re off the hook. One young South Korean man allegedly tried to avoid serving in the military by binge eating and becoming obese. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out quite as he had planned and he now has to spend a year behind bars.

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An Indian family recently went viral for their decision to send their old Suzuki Wagon to the grave rather than the scrapyard in a lavish burial ceremony attended by around 1,500 people.

They say you shouldn’t get too attached to material possessions, but try telling that to the Polara family in Padarshinga Village, Gujarat, who recently said goodbye to their 18-year-old Suzuki Wagon R by laying it to rest in a lavish burial ceremony attended by over 1,500 locals. The Polara believed the popular hatchback to be their “lucky” car so they wanted to say goodbye to it properly, rather than abandoning it at a scrapyard after nearly two decades of faithful service. Patriarch Sanjay Polara told reporters that he owns several more expensive cars, including an Audi, but credits the old Wagon R for being instrumental in achieving prosperity for his family, so he wanted to do something special for it.

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A popular Chinese clothing store sparked controversy by showcasing its products on female models walking on treadmills rather than old-fashioned mannequins.

You could say the marketing team at Chinese designer brand store ITIB was thinking outside the box when it decided to replace plastic mannequins with live models walking on small treadmills. The official explanation was that the new way of displaying garments really allowed customers to see how they fit when moving rather than in a stationary position, but few doubted that it was just an ingenious gimmick meant to draw attention. The plan worked perfectly, as videos of the young models mounted on small pedestals outside ITIB flagship store in Hangzhou spread like wildfire on social media, while crowds of people gathered to watch them walk on their little treadmills. However, what the designer collective brand probably didn’t anticipate was the wave of criticism regarding the “dehumanization” and exploitation of the young models.

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An elderly California woman who thought the noises coming from beneath her home were made by animals was shocked to find a naked man leaving under her house.

A 93-year-old woman from Los Angeles’ El Sereno neighborhood recently got the shock of her life after realizing that the bizarre noises she had begun to hear from beneath her home over the last few weeks were not made by animals but by a man who had settled there. The woman and her family usually heard strange noises under the house during the night, so they assumed they were made by dogs or wild animals passing through the crawlspace, but last Thursday the noises became particularly louder and seemed to be made in response to them walking through the place. They began to suspect that something wasn’t right, so they called the police, who found a naked man who appeared to have been living under the house for quite some time.

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Sweden’s minister for gender equality and work life allegedly suffers from an irrational fear of bananas that prevents her from coming anywhere near the popular fruit.

Paulina Brandberg first mentioned her banana phobia in a since-deleted 2020 tweet, describing it as “the world’s weirdest phobia,” but the issue recently resurfaced and made national news in Sweden after The Expressed newspaper published a series of leaked emails that revealed the strength of her aversion to the yellow fruit. Brandberg’s staff have been going to great measures to ensure that the 41-year-old politician does not come into contact with the fruit, messaging people and venues she was scheduled beforehand to inform them about her phobia, and making sure no rogue bananas make an appearance.

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Four Los Angeles-area residents were recently arrested and charged with insurance fraud after allegedly using a bear suit to make it seem like their luxury vehicles had been damaged by a wild animal.

“Operation Bear Claw,” as this ingenious insurance fraud scheme was subbed by California authorities, began in January of this year, when the four suspects claimed that a bear had entered their 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost while it was parked in Lake Arrowhead and caused extensive interior damage. The area is located in San Bernadino, a region famous for its large black bear population, but the video footage supplied to the insurer by the suspects themselves was more than a little shady. It showed a furry animal entering the back seat of the Rolls Royce and scratching it, but something didn’t add up. For one, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife says that the only bears in the state are black bears, and this was light brown, but its movements weren’t very bear-like either.

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A seasonal ice skating rink in Milton Keys, England, has been getting a lot of attention because of a bright pink iPhone stuck under two inches of ice.

Skaters at the Willen on Ice skating rink in Milton Keys will sometimes stop in the middle of the giant ice rink to stare at something under the ice – a bright pink iPhone. It has become a sort of tourist attraction after the BBC and other UK media outlets reported about it online. Apparently, one of the workmen setting up the rink this year lost their smartphone and had to borrow their daughter’s iPhone for a day only to forget it in the middle of the ice rink right before it was flooded with water and frozen overnight. The next day, some of his coworkers spotted it while inspecting the ice, but they could do nothing but laugh at his misfortune, as damaging the ice was out of the question.

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An elderly Thai woman desperate to keep her drug and gambling-addicted son away from temptation installed an iron jail cell inside her home.

After more than 20 years of living in constant fear of her drug-addicted son, a 64-year-old woman from Thailand’s Buriram Province took extraordinary measures to protect herself and her neighbors. She recently had contractors build a jail cell inside her home where she could confine the 42-year-old man when he became violent. She told police that she had tried everything to save her son over the years, including several rehabilitation attempts in over 10 different centers across the country, but nothing worked and he became increasingly violent as time went by. To make matters worse, at one point, the son became addicted to gambling as well, which only made things worse.

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A 12-year-old Massachusetts boy has tragically lost his eyesight to a nutrient-poor junk food diet that caused his optic nerves to atrophy beyond any hope of reversal.

The New England Journal of Medicine recently documented the case of a 12-year-old boy suffering from autism who ultimately went blind because of a junk food diet based mostly on burgers, fries, ranch dressing, donuts, and boxes of sugary juice. The boy had been diagnosed with autism and suffered from an extreme phobia of certain food textures, so his parents found it impossible to introduce vital nutrients into his diet. Earlier this year, the unnamed boy began experiencing vision problems in the hours of the morning and in the evening, but his eyesight was fairly normal during the day. However, his vision started degrading at a rapid pace, and in six weeks’ time he could only move around if his parents helped him navigate obstacles. Then, one night, he woke up screaming that he couldn’t see.

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A Singapore family court recently issued a partial domestic exclusion order against a woman who had allegedly been forcefully entering her adult brother’s room at odd hours of the night to clean.

On October 31st, two Singaporean siblings obtained court orders against each other following a bizarre legal dispute that left the judge scratching their head. A woman managed to get a protection order against her brother who had reportedly physically assaulted her, while he got a domestic order banning her from entering his room, which happens to be why he assaulted her in the first place. A third sibling told the court that tensions between the two had been rising for years, particularly because their sister would come into the brother’s room in the middle of the night to clean it, infringing on his privacy and preventing him from sleeping. One day, the man just snapped.

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A severely sick Chinese man was pushed to a local bank branch on a hospital bed by his family in order to confirm his identity for a money transfer.

A video that has been doing the rounds on Chinese social media shows a woman struggling to push a man on a hospital bed in a Shandong Province bank after being told that the only way to access his account was to confirm his identity in person. Despite explaining to the bank manager that the account holder was hospitalized because of severe health problems, the family was told that the only way to access their account was to bring them there in person. The man was so sick that he could not move on his own, but even evidence of his hospitalization failed to convince the bank staff, so they had no choice but to figure out a way to bring him in for identity confirmation.

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A 28-year-old Greek man was recently convicted of causing a disturbance by repeatedly trespassing on his neighbors and smelling their shoes.

The unnamed man was arrested on October 8th after one of his neighbors in Sindos, a small town about 15 kilometers (9 miles) west of Thessaloniki, spotted him in their yard just before dawn sniffing the shoes they had left outside to air. This was not the man’s first time trespassing on private property for the same bizarre reason, so the neighbor called the police. Upon hearing the 28-year-old man’s explanation and the testimony of one of the neighbors, the Single-Member Misdemeanor Court of Thessaloniki issued a suspended sentence of one month in prison, with three years of probation.

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A 19-year-old London woman managed to fulfill her dream of being a doctor without actually going to medical school simply by walking into a hospital and posing as a physician.

Kreuena Zdrafkova, a Bulgarian-born woman living in West London’s Ealing district, had always dreamt of becoming a doctor and recently decided that she wasn’t going to let a minor detail like lacking any medical training stand in her way. Earlier this year, she put on a white robe and rubber gloves, confidently walked into Ealing Hospital and started acting like one of the physicians there. Throughout the day, she was seen examining medical instruments, getting into an ambulance and even administering an unknown substance to a patient, without anyone noticing that she wasn’t really a doctor. She was so confident that she could pull off her dream job long-term that she came back to the hospital three days later, this time with a stethoscope around her neck.

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