Photos and videos showing scores of dead birds on the streets of Rome following the recent New Year’s Eve celebration have been doing the rounds online, fueling all sorts of conspiracy theories.

Hundreds of dead birds were found lying around the Termini train station, in Rome, Italy, on New Year’s Eve, and although the exact cause of this tragedy remains a mystery, animal groups have blamed the traditional fireworks show. The Italian capital had announced a fireworks ban ahead of New Year’s Eve, but it was largely ignored. The Italian branch of OIPA (International Animal Protection Organization) has called for a nationwide ban on selling fireworks and firecrackers for personal use, following this sad incident.

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Every year, landscaping experts from all over Japan get together to compete in the Key Truck Garden Contest, a unique event that has participants turning the beds of mini trucks into the most impressive miniature gardens they can.l The results are nothing short of awe-inspiring.

The Kei Truck, or “kei-tora”, is a small yet practical utility vehicle invented in Japan, but used throughout Asia, primarily in construction and agriculture. It’s been a part of Japanese culture for decades, and people love it because it provides plenty of space and it’s easy to maneuver on narrow streets. But once a year, Key trucks take center stage as canvases for ingenious landscaping masterpieces, during the Key Truck Garden Contest, a special event sponsored by the Japan Federation of Landscape Contractors. As you can see in the photos below, these mobile miniature gardens are something else!

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In order to avoid a liquor ban that was in effect during New Year’s celebrations, a group of resourceful New-Zealanders built their own tiny island  in an estuary on the Coromandel peninsula. This allowed them to enjoy a few drinks in peace as they were technically in “international waters”, and not subject to the public drinking ban.

Public drinking was banned on the entire Coromandel Peninsula of New Zealand during New Year’s Eve celebrations, in order to deter violence, and would-be offenders faced fines of up to $250. Police reportedly patrolled on Saturday and Sunday to enforce the ban and make sure everyone got the message, but they couldn’t really do anything about a group of young revelers casually enjoying a drink or two on a small island that they had built themselves just a few feet from shore, in the town of Whangamata.

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Fusing bits of metal together hardly qualifies as art, unless it’s the handiwork of a welding master like Richard Lauth. The 23-year-old professional welder from Chicago creates beautiful portraits, themed sculptures, decorations, and models using nothing but metal and a welding machine

Lauth is an Operating Engineer and member of the trade union Local 150 by day, but he likes to spend his free time using his welding skills on artistic pursuits. Or as he writes on Instagram, he loves making “cool s***” out of metal. Some of his pieces include metal portraits of popular characters like Stormtroopers and Minions, animal faces, and small metal sculptures of everyday objects.

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25-year-old New Zealander, Reese McKee, started a social media campaign that fired the imagination of thousands of romantics on the internet. His plea for help in locating the whereabouts of his soul-mate went viral within hours. In fact, he had to delete the campaign because it all started to spiral out of control.

I’m not quite sure what to make of Reese – sweet romantic dude, or crazy internet stalker. Maybe I’ll let you be the judge of that. Here’s his story:

In his original campaign, Reese said that he met a girl on New Year’s Eve, 2012, in Hong Kong. He spotted her crying alone on the side of a road; she was lost and couldn’t find her friends. “I just cheered her up,” Reese said. “I sort of have this undeniably bad sense of humor that no one can resist laughing at.” The two spent the night partying, dancing and talking, before the girl caught up with her friends again. As they parted, she told Reese that her name was ‘Katie’ and she was from DC. She let him take a picture of her, and left with these final words: “Find Me.”

The next morning, as Reese looked at Katie’s photograph on his phone, a flood of great memories came back to him and he was determined to find her. Unfortunately, he couldn’t remember the e-mail address she’d given him, so he decided to turn to Facebook for help.

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The holiday season is a truly magical time around the world. New Year’s Eve, especially, is seen as a time of hope and new beginnings, a time to forget the old and embrace the new. Most people are in high spirits, celebrating the coming of the new year with much pomp and gusto. But what if you got to celebrate it every single night of the year? Would it still be as much fun? Apparently it would, going by the success of ‘Purga’ – a nightclub in St. Petersburg, Russia, where every night is New Year’s Eve.

Everything that’s needed for a typical Russian New Year’s Eve celebration is available at the club. The Russian national anthem, the new year’s speech of Vladimir Putin on TV, fun costumes, decorations, contests, dancing and singing. Professional actors work at the club as ‘bunnies’, who are basically there to entertain people and make sure they forget all their worries. Ever since Purga was started way back in 2002, it has been popular in town, with table reservations being made at least a week in advance.

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A Chinese company is being accused of tricking hundreds of employees into conducting illegal activities so it could then fire them without severance pay.

Wuhan CITIC Design Institute, a company based in Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei Province, recently found itself at the center of a huge scandal, after several prominent news outlets reported that it had allegedly fired around 200 senior employees after accusing them of crimes one of its managers had lured them into committing. Apparently, the company had been looking for ways of getting rid of senior employees with high salaries without having to offer any financial compensation packages, so it had one of the senior managers lure such employees to various bars and clubs under the pretext of “after-work relaxation” where they were tricked into engaging in illegal activities.

Photo: Mohammed Hassan/Pixabay

According to some of the tricked employees, the manager set them up with sex workers and encouraged them to interact with them, while others claim that they engaged in gambling and even intentionally lost some money to their superior to maintain a good relationship with him, only to later realize that they had been lured into a trap.

After gathering dirty evidence on the employees, the manager would report everything to the company, and their contracts would be terminated without any compensation. Some Chinese sources claim that as many as 200 employees lost their jobs this way.

The company’s tactic was fiercely criticized online, with some social media users pointing out that the terminated employees would have a very difficult time trying to find other jobs because of their record of illegal activities. So not only did the employer fire its senior employees without severance pay, but it also compromised their chances of getting a job someplace else.

Although this level of trickery is rare among Chinese employers, finding ways to fire employees without financial compensation is definitely not! Companies are known to dig through their staff’s criminal records hoping to find any illegalities committed in the last five or ten years to use as an excuse to fire them. Some go as far as faking tempting job offers from other companies to trick ‘problematic’ employees into quitting.

An Austrian neurosurgeon is currently under investigation for allegedly allowing her 13-year-old daughter to drill a hole in a patient’s skull during a brain operation.

In January of this year, a 33-year-old man had to be flown to the University Hospital Graz, in the Austrian city of Graz, following a serious accident in a forest that left him with head trauma. The female neurosurgeon on call, whose name has not been made public to protect her privacy, allegedly allowed her 13-year-old daughter to not only sin in on the procedure but actually drill a hole into the unconscious patient’s skull. Luckily, the operation was a success and the injured man was able to go back to leading a normal life. No one outside the operation room knew about the young girl’s active role in the procedure, but the cat was let out of the bag in July when an anonymous complaint was lodged with the public prosecutor’s office in Graz about the minor’s involvement.

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Lee Hyo Jong, the 52-year-old owner of a bakery and cafe in Seoul, South Korea, recently went viral for her incredibly youthful appearance and nonconformist dress style.

The London Bagel Museum cafe in Gangnam, Seoul, was already famous for its delicious pastries and welcoming atmosphere, but it recently got even more attention because of its owner, a 52-year-old woman who doesn’t look a day over 25. Lee Hyo Jong’s age became a hot topic on the South Korean online bulletin board The Qoo after someone posted photos of her along with the information that she was born in 1973, making her 52 years old. People just couldn’t wrap their heads around how she manages to maintain such a youthful appearance, but some pointed out that her dress style and slim physique help with that as well.

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Founded in the year 578, Japan’s Kongo Gumi construction company is recognized as the oldest continuously operating company in the world.

Thousands of companies are founded and liquidated daily around the globe, many of which only operate for a few years, maybe even months. The world’s most valuable companies have only been around for a few decades and with technology changing the business landscape at breakneck speeds, who knows how long they’ll be around. Today, there are only a few thousand companies older than 200 years, and even those seem relatively new compared to the world’s oldest continually operating company, Kongo Gumi. Founded in the 6th century by a Korean carpenter specializing in Buddhist temple construction, the Japanese construction company has been operating for a whopping 1446 years.

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40-year-old Yoshitaka has been happily married to 65-year-old Aki for over eleven years, despite only learning about the age gap between them on the day before their wedding.

Yoshitaka was only 29 when he met the love of his life. Aki was running a Japanese-style bar and after making some small talk, they realized they had very much in common. They had both gone through failed marriages and were raising children alone, and after visiting Aki’s bar a few times, Yoshitaka asked her out on a date. The Japanese man could tell she was a bit older than him, but he never guessed her real age and she didn’t reveal it either, fearing that it would just scare him away. She was 54 at the time, but told Yoshitaka that she was 44, and he never suspected anything. Aki was always cheerful and her smooth skin didn’t betray her age, so she was able to keep her secret for seven years, up until the day before their wedding.

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A 38-year-old woman in China has been living in a nursing home for the elderly after becoming ill due to overwork and looking for a way to slow things down in her life.

Ms. Yang had been working as a screenwriter in the film and television industry for 11 years when the hectic schedule and extreme work volume started taking a toll on her health. Earlier this year, she became sick and needed to be hospitalized. Doctors told her that she needed to take it easy on herself or she would experience even more serious health problems, so the 38-year-old woman decided to find a way to slow things down. Both her parents had passed away and she had no other close family, so she started looking for a place where she could both relax and recuperate. While browsing the internet for answers, she read about a retirement home and about how calm and slow life was there, so she decided to try it for herself.

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Zhang Sixuan, a 9-year-old girl from China’s Henan province, bested some of the world’s most elite kung fu masters to earn the title of “Shaolin Kung Fu Star” at this year’s World Shaolin Games.

There are millions of Shaolin Kung fu practitioners around the world, and every year tens of thousands of them compete for a chance to be invited to participate in the World Shaolin Games Finals. This year, an international cast of 124 kung fu practitioners was invited to show off their skills at a Shaolin temple in central China’s Henan Province, in front of respected kung fu masters and an audience of kung fu enthusiasts. Among them was a 9-year-old girl whose incredible flexibility and mastery of tong zi gong (a form of Shaolin kung fu) stunned both the judges and the crowd, earning her the coveted title of Shaolin Kung Fu Star.

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A 24-year-old Chinese man who spent the last five months of his life living in the mountains after a painful breakup now looks at least twice his age and is called “uncle” by people older than him.

Remember Brandon Miles May, the 35-year-old man who looks half his age? Well, today we’re featuring his exact opposite, a young man who looks twice his age, not because of some rare genetic disorder, but simply because he has been exposed to the elements in the mountains of northern and western China. The unidentified man rose to fame in his native country after a video in which he showed his ID to the camera to prove he was in his early 20s went viral on social media. When referred to as ‘uncle’ by the person shooting the video, the balding, rugged-looking trekker says that he is only 24, and proceeds to hold up his ID card to the camera to show that he was born in December of 2000.

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Enzo, a 4-year-old boy from Aubervilliers, France, miraculously survived a 43-meter fall from his 16th-floor apartment with only a scratch and no fractures, and no one understands how.

The unusual incident took place on May 26, in a high-rise apartment complex in Aubervilliers, central France. Enzo, a 4-year-old boy diagnosed with autism was in his room when his father, Ji, heard him crying. As usual, he hurried to check on his son and calm him down, but as he tried to enter Enzo’s room, he realized that the door was locked. This had never happened before, and the parents suspect that the boy accidentally locked himself inside which caused him to panic. By the time Ji managed to break down the door, Enzo’s crying had stopped and the room seemed empty. Seeing the window open, the man horrifyingly realized that he was too late.

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