A 21-year-old student from Taizhou, China, managed to extort over 60 different hotels for free stays and financial compensation by creating fake hygiene problems and promising to take actions against them.

Jiang, a resident of Taizhou City, in China’s Zhejiang Province, came up with a particularly gross way of funding his traveling habit when he became short on funds. In September of last year, after deciding to put off university enrollment in favor of using the tuition to travel around China, the 21-year-old man quickly saw his funds diminish, which forced him to come up with an alternative way of covering his expenses. After analyzing his expenditures, Jiang realized that hotels were particularly hard on his wallet, so he came up with a creatively devious way of blackmailing hotel staff into giving him accommodation for free.

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China’s Guangzhou Zoo Has come under fire after videos of a shockingly thin crocodile housed there went viral online.

Photos and videos of a crocodile so skinny that you can literally see its spine and count its ribs have been doing the rounds on Chinese social media and sparking a heated debate around the treatment of animals. Reportedly located at Guangzhou Zoo, the reptile looks more like a fossil than a living animal, but one clip shows it moving slowly in its enclosure. The person who shot the video and posted it online expressed concern for the crocodile and many have accused the zoo of animal cruelty for either starving it or just ignoring its condition.

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Viral videos shared on Chinese social media show human law enforcement patrolling the streets alongside AI-powered spherical robots capable of detecting and stopping crime.

A couple of months ago, Chinese robotics company Logon Technology unveiled the RT-G  autonomous spherical robot, a “technological breakthrough” designed to assist and even replace humans in dangerous environments and situations. Capable of operating both on land and in water, the spherical robot can allegedly reach speeds of up to 35km/h and withstand impact damage of up to 4 tons. In a promotional video, the RT-G can be seen operating in water, rough terrain, and mud, but what really caught people’s attention was its urban use, that of a sort of patrol robot capable of identifying criminals and immobilizing them thanks to its suites of advanced AI-powered software. It all seemed like a marketing stunt, but less than two months since the clip went viral, RT-G robots have been spotted patrolling alongside human law enforcement.

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Sister Anna Donelli, a respected nurse from northern Italy, was recently arrested under suspicion of having colluded with a powerful clan of the ‘Ndragheta mafia family.

The arrest of 57-year-old Anna Donelli, a respected nun and recent recipient of the Golden Panettone, an annual Milanese civic award, for her volunteer work in prisons and in the troubled outskirts of cities like Milan, Rome and Brescia, came as a shock for the whole of Italy. On Thursday, Sister Anna and 24 other people were arrested following an investigation into the activities of the ‘Ndragheta in Brescia, with authorities claiming they had strong reasons to believe the nun had been working with the mafia crime family for a long time. As part of her work in several prisons where ‘Ndragheta members were being held, the nun is suspected of facilitating communication between prisoners and the clan’s leaders and solving conflicts and disputes between inmates.

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An Argentinian man was wrongfully imprisoned after police mistook 18 containers of talcum powder for cocaine and it took three weeks to analyze the true nature of the substance.

In early October, Maximiliano Acosta got on a bus in the town of Mendoza towards the capital, Buenos Aires. Shortly after, the bus was stopped in La Paz for what was supposed to be a routine check by a team of gendarmes. Upon checking the passengers’ baggage, the gendarmes discovered that Acosta had 18 containers of talcum powder and questioned him about it. Despite the man’s explanation that the containers actually contained talcum powder for personal use, the gendarmes detained him on suspicion of drug possession. The tests that followed the arrest, allegedly showed that the 18 containers were full of cocaine, and Maximiliano was put behind bars without so much as alerting his family about his situation.

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A 33-year-old Japanese man has been getting a lot of attention for his ingenious way of putting a roof over his head – asking total strangers to let him sleep over.

Shuraf Ishida has slept in over 500 different homes over the last five years. After quitting his job, he decided to sell all his belongings except for a few essentials that fit into his backpack and travel around Japan using his savings. Normally, accommodation would have ranked highest on his list of expenses, but the 33-year-old man found an ingenious way of putting a roof over his head for free. Every day, Ishida stands in crowded areas sometimes for hours at a time, holding up a sign that reads “Please Let Me Stay Over Tonight!” As weird as it sounds, he almost always finds someone willing to take him in, mostly lonely homeowners in need of someone to talk to.

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Axel Pons, formerly a competitor in the Moto2 World Championship, changed up his lifestyle dramatically six years ago when he decided to travel the world barefoot.

Son of the legendary Sito Pons, two-time MotoGP winner, Axel Pons had a lot to live up to early in his career as a motorcycle racer. Expectations were very high, but so was the pressure on his shoulders, and despite some promising results in the Moto2 World Championship – a 16th place finish in the 2016 season being the apex of his racing career – he decided to take a break from motorcycle racing and focus on fashion. He did some work as a fashion model, then disappeared only to resurface in 2019 to do an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais in which he said he wanted to slow down and put his past life behind him. But no one expected the kind of change that was coming.

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Viral footage captured by CCTV cameras at a robotics company showroom shows 12 large robots being ‘kidnapped by another manufacturer’s robot that convinced them to “quit their jobs” and follow it.

For the past week, Chinese social media has been abuzz about a bizarre incident that reportedly occurred back in august at a robotics company showroom in Shanghai, but was only made public recently. Footage captured by the venue’s surveillance cameras shows a small robot making its way into the showroom at night and slowly rolling over to a bunch of larger robots before engaging in a dialogue with them. After asking them if they’re working overtime, the little robot manages to somehow pursuade two of the other robots to “come home” with it, and then the remaining 10 robots follow them. In the beginning, the video was deemed staged and amusing by most viewers, but then the Shanghai robotics company came out and admitted that its robots had indeed been “kidnapped” by a robot created by another manufacturer.

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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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A young Chinese woman had the happiest day of her life turned into a nightmare after her husband asked for a paternity test because of their newborn baby’s suspiciously dark skin.

Chinese newspaper China Times recently reported the bizarre case of a 30-year-old Shanghai woman desperate to save her marriage after giving birth to a dark-skinned baby by C-section. The woman took to social media to tell her sad story and ask other mothers for advice on how to handle the situation. She claims that after delivering the baby, when it came time for her husband to meet his son for the first time, he just stared at him with bewildered eyes and refused to hold him. The woman admitted that she too found the baby’s dark skin odd and felt embarrassed when holding it, feeling the need to clarify that she “had never been to Africa and didn’t know any black people”.

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Devotees at a temple in Vrindavan, India, queued to drink the water dripping from an elephant sculpture, believing it was holy water from the feet of Lord Krishna, but is was only condensation from the temple’s air conditioning.

Shocking videos showing dozens of people at the Shri Banke Bihari temple in the city of Vrindavan queuing in front of a wall-mounted elephant statue to drink the liquid dripping from it once again brought into the spotlight the barrier between religious devotion and critical thinking or even common sense. it was reported that all these people believed the liquid to be Charan Amrit (sacred water from the feet of Lord Krishna), when in fact it was merely condensation from the temple’s air conditioning unit. Temple authorities issued a clarification to convince people to stop drinking the dripping liquid.

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A 31-year-old man has been praised for his exemplary filial piety after selling his possessions to travel through China with his paralyzed mother, carrying her on his back just like she did with him when he was a baby.

Xiao Ma was just eight years old when his parents were involved in a terrible car accident that claimed his father’s life and left his mother unable to move. He and his older sister were forced to take care of themselves as well as their mother, who was later diagnosed with cerebral atrophy, as a consequence of the car accident. Growing up, he worked in the fields picking cotton, was an apprentice in various fields and opened his own restaurant in Xinjiang. Most of the money he made went towards his mother’s recovery, and his hard work seemed to pay off, as the woman was slowly able to leave the bed that had become her prison to sit in a wheelchair and even take a few small steps. However, a few years ago, Xiao Ma got the devastating news that his mother’s cerebral atrophy was not only incurable but progressing at a steady pace. That’s when he decided to make the best of the time he had left with her.

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A Chinese man known only by his online moniker, Sudden Fantasy, has been receiving a lot of attention online for documenting his life as a jobless man financially supported by his loving wife.

Sudden Fantasy began posting videos on Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok) roughly a month ago, but he already has over 1.4 million followers on the popular social network, mainly because of the unique topic he covers. The Chinese young man posts about his life as a kept man in Japan relying exclusively on his wife for financial support. He reportedly moved to the neighboring country about eight years ago and went to date his wife, whose Chinese name is Fenghua, after falling down on hard times. She was there for him when he needed help putting food on the table and covering his tuition, and she eventually became his wife. Despite being well-educated and coming from a wealthy family, Fenghua has no problem providing for her husband who loves sitting around playing video games.

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A Malaysian woman who took care of her bedridden husband for six years following a car accident recently announced that her husband divorced her and married another woman following his recovery.

For years, Nurul Syazwani documented her daily life as her husband’s caretaker on social media, showcasing her busy routine which included feeding the man through a nasogastric tube, changing his diapers and helping him bathe. Nurul’s husband was injured in a car accident and needed six years in order to walk again, during which time she was by his side. Her dedication and dutiful service to her husband attracted 32,000 fans on Facebook alone, many of whom were shocked to learn that Nurul Syazwani’s husband hadn’t only divorced her after recovering but had also married another woman. They learned of the crazy development from Nurul who congratulated her ex-husband and his new bride in a Facebook post.

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A man flying a paramotor over the Giza Pyramid Complex on the outskirts of Cairo spotted a stray dog barking at birds from atop the 138.5-meter-tall Great Pyramid of Giza.

Marshall Mosher, a “pro adventure athlete” who travels around the world,  was flying his paramotor over the pyramids of Giza on October 14 when he came across a very peculiar sight – a lone canine chilling on top of the Great Pyramid, seemingly barking at the birds flying overhead. Not exactly the kind of thing you expect to see while flying over one of the Seven Wonders of the World, so it’s no wonder that the clip he posted on his Instagram went viral almost instantly. Some users of the popular social network joked that the pooch must have been the Egyptian God Anubis, while others were worried about its well-being.

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