The city of Vadodara, in the Indian state of Gujarat, is crawling with giant crocodiles following the overflowing of a local river caused by record rainfall.

As if having to deal with the water flooding their homes and streets wasn’t enough, the people of Vadodara have to be on the lookout for giant crocodiles waiting to snatch their animals or even attack them. Videos of giant reptiles walking through the streets, chilling on house roofs, or swimming in canals with dead animals between their jaws have been doing the rounds on Indian social media ever since the Vishwamitri River overflowed last week. The river is home to hundreds of freshwater crocodiles, at least two dozen of which were caught in Vadodara between August 27 and 29.

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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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Three remote villages in India’s Madhya Pradesh state have become famous for their ‘thief schools’ where children as young as 12 are trained in pickpocketing, theft, and robbery by seasoned criminals.

The three nondescript villages – Kadia, Gulkhedi, and Hulkhedi – located about 120 km from the state capital of Bhopal are reportedly nurseries for young criminals, with parents actually paying ‘tuition fees’ of  200,000 to 300,000 rupees ($2,400 to $3,600) to have their offspring trained in “dark arts” like pickpocketing and bag grabbing in crowded places, carrying out robberies, bank account thefts, evading the police, and even withstanding beatings in the event of being apprehended. These so-called ‘thief schools’ have produced some of the most infamous criminals in India’s history, so they are sought after by impoverished and less-educated families unable to give their children a proper education.

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María Carolina Herrera, an elderly soap maker from Peru, won a legal battle against iconic fashion designer Carolina Herrera over the right to use her surname as a brand.

María Carolina Herrera lives in Ate-Vitarte, a residential area in Lima, Peru, where she operates her small artisanal soap business. She has always lived a discreet, quiet life, but in 2021 she became known all across Peru and even in other South American countries after becoming engaged in a legal battle with the corporation owned by Venezuelan fashion designer Carolina Herrera. It all started when María Carolina’s son, Dario Morales, surprised her by submitting her soap brand, ‘La Jabonera by María Herrera,’ to the National Institute for the Defense of Competition and the Protection of Intellectual Property (INDECOPI). The request was immediately contested by Carolina Herrera Ltd., whose lawyers argued that another Herrera brand in Peru’s cosmetic industry would cause confusion among consumers.

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Saki Tamogami, a 37-year-old real-estate agent, is known as Japan’s most frugal woman for her commitment to spending as little money as possible on things like food, clothes, and self-care.

“Never buy anything that isn’t on sale!” This has been Saki Tamogami’s motto for the last 15 years, and she claims it has helped her save enough money to buy three houses, a goal she set for herself when she was only 19 years old. The first thing she did was stop buying new clothes, instead accepting handouts from family and friends and taking better care of the clothes she already had. She then started cutting down on food expenses, relying mainly on cheap dishes like udon noodles, toast, and discounted radishes for sustenance. After 8 years of frugal living, Tamogami was able to buy her first home, and by 2019, she had already achieved her goal of owning three homes.

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An Indian teenager was accused of emotional blackmail after going on a hunger strike for three days to pressure his poor mother into buying him an iPhone.

A short video shot by a smartphone shop owner in India went viral last week for featuring a teenage boy who confessed to going on a hunger strike for three days to convince his mother to buy him a new iPhone. The woman, who reportedly makes a living by selling flowers outside a temple, is also featured in the video and has a facial expression that pretty much says everything about her inner struggle. Shared by Indian journalist Abhishek on X (formerly Twitter), the video has been viewed over a million times and has sparked a heated debate about gadgets as a status symbol and the entitlement of younger generations.

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A Chinese woman suffered vision problems and subsequent depression following a botched double eyelid surgery in which her eyeball was accidentally sewn to the corner of her eye.

In 2021, Ms. Zhang, a woman from Weifang, in China’s Shandong Province, underwent a double eyelid surgery at the Weifang Kuiwen Lirendu Medical Beauty Clinic to correct an unevenness of the corners of her eyes. The woman claims that she felt discomfort during the actual surgery but pushed through it only to discover that her left eyeball and the corner of that eye had been stitched together. At first, the doctor who operated on her told her that everything was fine, but then Zhang started experiencing blurry vision and limited eye movement, and despite attempts to correct the damage, she is still struggling with physical and mental issues more than two years after the procedure.

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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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A 49-year-old German woman who had been posing as the empress of a non-existent kingdom and rubbing shoulders with Italy’s elite had been accidentally unmasked as a fraud.

Sandra Nicole Martinez, who had adorned herself with titles like ‘Her Royal Highness’ or ‘Her Imperial Highness”, had become a regular at exclusive parties and social events in Italy’s capital city after being introduced to them by legendary Italian socialite Guya Sospisio a few years ago. Apparently, no one questioned her claims of being the Empress of the Imperial House of Glodeni, a royal house with headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon, even though a simple Google search would have revealed that Glodeni is actually a town in the tiny Eastern European country of Moldova. Martinez was eventually unmasked as a fraudster completely by accident.

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This year, the Beijing University of Chemical Technology (BUCT) printed its admission letters on an innovative carbon fiber composite material that is just 0.2 millimeters thick but as sharp and strong as a knife.

While most university admission letters are usually put away in a cupboard after students learn they have been accepted, freshmen accepted by the Beijing University of Chemical Technology have been busy using their admission letters as a multi-tool. Many of them have been sharing videos of themselves using the sturdy admission letters to cut all kinds of fruits, even melons, mincing pieces of meat, and holding them over open flames to prove they don’t burn or melt. After several of these videos went viral, a spokesperson from the Chinese university went public to clarify that this year’s admission letters were made out of an innovative material developed at the learning institution.

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A Taiwan court of law sentenced a man to three months in prison for invading his adulterous wife’s privacy by installing hidden cameras around their home.

Chinese media recently reported the unusual story of a Taiwanese man surnamed Fan who managed to land himself behind bars for daring to expose his wife’s cheating by installing cameras around their home. The couple had reportedly been married for several years and had two young children in 2022 when Mr. Fan began suspecting that his spouse was having an affair. He installed a camera under the piano in the living room of the family home and another one next to the computer in the master bedroom. About two weeks later, the cameras caught Fan’s wife and a mystery man having intimate relations in the family home, footage that the husband later used as grounds for a divorce.

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Crocs teams up with DC Comics to create a surprisingly cool-looking version of its ubiquitous Classic Clogs inspired by arguably the best Batmobile ever designed.

The Croc brand has always been associated with comfort, but rarely with style. Nevertheless, the company has always come up with ways of surprising its faithful fans, teaming up with various other brands for intriguing collaborations. Its latest such venture resulted in the recently-released Batman x Crocs Classic Clog “Batmobile”, a limited-edition version of its Classic Clogs inspired by the design of the Batmobile featured in the 1989 Batman movie and its sequel, Batman Returns.

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A Chinese company recently published a series of texts between its customer service and a woman who claimed her daughter had become pregnant after wearing underwear bought from the company.

The unnamed company made the allegations made by an alleged customer public as a warning that such stunts could put entrepreneurs out of business. Apparently, a woman claiming to have purchased underwear from the company on Taobao, one of China’s largest online retail platforms, contacted customer support to complain that her daughter had become pregnant after wearing a pair of brand-new underwear. Despite staff’s attempts to convince the disgruntled woman that such a thing wasn’t possible, she insisted that it was the only way her daughter could have gotten pregnant and demanded an explanation.

All attempts to convince the woman that her theory was physiologically impossible failed, so in the end customer service told her that its factory staff consisted exclusively of women and their boss had gotten a vasectomy, so the girl’s pregnancy had nothing to do with the company.

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A Russian man who got a vasectomy after fathering four children is preparing to sue the medical clinic that botched the surgery and caused him to father a fifth child.

In 2022, after becoming a father for the fourth time, Maxim, a 45-year-old man from the Russian city of Ufa, made the radical decision to get a vasectomy to ensure that he didn’t get his wife pregnant again. He visited “Promeditsina”, a local medical clinic that performed vasectomies, and agreed to pay 30,000 rubles ($330) for the operation. The procedure was successful and Maxim was discharged from the clinic after only a few hours. Everything was well and good until early last year when Maxim’s wife told him that she was pregnant again, which was quite a shock, considering the circumstances. Despite the man’s hopes of a false positive result on the pregnancy test, In November of last year, he became a father for the fifth time.

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Two dangerous male criminals imprisoned at a correctional facility in Fortaleza, Brazil attempted a daring escape by disguising themselves as women and simply walking out during visiting hours.

Francisco Átila da Silva and Carlos Antônio da Silva Oliveira, suspected members of a criminal faction in Ceará with long criminal records including drug trafficking, robbery, and murder, were caught trying to escape the Itaitinga 3 prison in Fortaleza, Brazil while wearing rudimentary female disguises. The two men wore long black-hair wigs, pink skirts, and white t-shirts, and even had improvised breasts to fool the guards. They tried mingling with real women at the end of conjugal visiting hours to reduce the risk of getting noticed by the guards, but their sloppy getups were quickly spotted, and the two were detained before they set foot outside the prison.

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