A former Japanese yakuza boss who had been on the run for more than fourteen years was finally arrested in Thailand this month, after photos of his impressive tattoos began circulating online.

Thai police arrested 74-year-old Shigeharu Shirai last Wednesday in a province north of Bangkok, where he had been hiding for more than ten years to escape murder charges in Japan. Shirai was apprehended while out shopping in the central market town of Lopburi.

Japanese authorities had been seeking to arrest Shirai over his alleged role in the shooting of rival gang member Kashihiko Otobe, the deputy leader of rival Kamiya gang, back in 2003. He fled to Thailand before they could apprehend him, where he married a local woman and enjoyed a peaceful retirement. Shirai’s Japanese associates visited him in Thailand two to three times a year bringing him cash gifts to help sustain his life of leisure.

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An incredible new library has opened in the Çankaya district of Ankara, Turkey featuring a collection of salvaged books once destined for landfill.

Local sanitation workers, who spent months collecting abandoned and discarded books from the streets, established the library to be used by themselves and their families. As the collection grew, however, word spread throughout the community, and locals began to donate books that they would have otherwise discarded. In September of last year, the Sanitation Department decided to open the library up to public use.

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A Taiwanese man recently had his petition for divorce approved  by the New Taipei City District Court after claiming psychological torture due to his ex-wife’s hygiene habits, or lack thereof. The woman, surnamed Lin, allegedly bathed just once a year and only occasionally washed her hair or brushed her teeth.

The unnamed plaintiff said that Lin’s hygiene was questionable at the time they were dating when she bathed weekly, but that her behavior worsened after their wedding. Her weekly showers became monthly showers, then biannual, and when she started bathing only once a year, he just couldn’t take it anymore. The man said that due to Lin’s unsanitary habits they only had sex once a year, which prevented the couple from producing any children in their decade-long marriage.

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A Missouri family recently got a taste of internet stardom after sharing a series of hilariously bad “professional photograph” that they had paid just under $250 for. And the funniest thing is they consider it money well spent.

In May of last year, Dave and Pam Zaring, of Hillsboro, Missouri, were contacted by a middle-aged woman who marketed herself as an experienced professional photographer. Having gotten married three years ago, the couple decided it was time for their first family photo shoot, so they took the so-called professional photographer up on her offer.  The couple, their two sons, Cade, 12, and Connor, 8, and Dave’s mother Sharon drove to the lovely Forest Park, in St. Louis, where they paid the photographer just under $250 to snap a few pics of them as one big happy family. The shoot went great, and the woman said she would be in touch again in a few weeks, after editing the photos. However, weeks turned to months, and the family nearly forgot all about the pics. I guess, they figured they got scammed and moved on with their lives.

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A devoted father in the eastern Indian state of Orissa has single-handedly constructed an 8-km (5 miles) stretch of mountain road so that his children, who live away from home for school, can visit him more frequently. For the past two years Jalandhar Nayak, 45, set out every morning with an ax and crowbar and spent up to eight hours a day cutting rocks and moving boulders.

Nayak, who has never received formal education himself, lives in an isolated village, 10 km (6 miles) from the residential school where his three sons study. It would be a small distance with proper roads, but the commute takes the sons three hours as their route includes a trek across five hills to reach their home. “My children find it difficult to walk on the narrow and stony path while going to their school,” the man recently told Kalinga TV. “I often saw them stumbling against the stones, and I decided to carve a road through the mountain so that they can walk freely.”

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Ultrarunner Kelly Agnew, 45, has been disgraced and stripped of his titles after an investigation by event officials revealed that he had hidden inside porta-pottys to win races.

Agnew had one the last four 48-hour Across the Years ultramarathons since 2014, when he was the first to run 201.5 miles within the allotted time, but event officials have disqualified and banned him from all future races for cheating. According to a Facebook post by event organizers, Agnew was seen “registering laps without running the complete loop of the course,” instead hiding inside a port-a-potty for seven minutes before getting out to cross the start/finish mat. The experienced runner would apparently time his breaks in the toilet to keep his mile pace consistent.

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In a world of dumb social media trends, we may have reached peak idiocy. Somehow the absurd and dangerous ‘Tide Pod Challenge’ has become a thing among teenagers, and is on the verge of going viral. The challenge involves filming yourself biting on one of the colorful laundry detergent pods, posting the video online, and daring friends to do the same. In the videos, teenagers are seen chewing on the pods, gagging, spitting up the colorful liquid, and sometimes even swallowing them.

The so called “delicious-looking” pods are very hazardous to human health, and doctors have had to issue warnings about the dangers of eating them. Any amount of liquid from the pod can lead to diarrhea, vomiting, burns, and in severe cases, death. The concentrated detergent contains highly toxic chemicals like ethanol, hydrogen peroxide and various polymers, none of which you want anywhere near your mouth, ever.

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We all post photos of our loved ones – especially adorable children – on social media all the time without ever giving any thought to the potential legal consequences, but as this recent case in Italy proves, posting photos of other people online is not as simple as we all think it is.

Last year, a 16 year-old Italian boy took his mother to court for constantly posting photos of him on Facebook without his consent. The boy claimed that his mother’s actions had such a serious impact on his social life that he was considering transferring to a high-school in the United States so he could “start over”. One December 23, 2017, Judge Monica Velletti of the first section of the civil court in Rome made a historical decision, ruling in favor of the teen, and ordering the mother to delete all references of him from her social media account by February 1, 2018, or risk a fine of €10,000 ($12,270).

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Romy McCloskey, a professional costume designer from Texas who also raises monarch butterflies as a hobby, recently received a lot of praise online, after a series of photos of her using household items to fix the deformed wing of one of her butterflies went viral.

McCloskey apparently started raising monarch butterflies and releasing them into the wild, a while ago. Recently, she noticed that one of the insects was born with a broken left wing, as a result of an injury sustained while pupating, and could not fly. Monarchs can live from 2 weeks to about 5 months, but without the ability to fly, this little guy wasn’t going to live very long. So Romy, who describes herself as a “master hand embroiderer”, decided to use her skills to help him.

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The tiny house movement has taken off over the past decade as urban developers have had to find creative solutions to soaring property prices worldwide. James Law Cybertecture of Hong Kong has joined this trend with their newly released Opod Tube House, made from repurposed concrete pipe.

Hong Kong, one of the most populous cities on the planet, has been especially hard hit as home prices have shattered historical records for 12 straight months this past year. According to the Bangkok Post, an apartment sold this past November for HK 32,060 (USD 6,915) per square foot, making it the most expensive apartment per square foot in all of of Asia. This trend has forced over 200,000 people into tiny partitioned apartments, averaging no more than 62 square feet, and some are only able to afford individual caged beds. Government data shows a 9% increase in the number of households living in “inadequate housing,” including partitioned flats and industrial buildings.

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A new and first-of-its-kind gene therapy treatment for inherited blindness, called Luxturna, was approved by the FDA last month. The groundbreaking medication, however, comes with the staggering cost of USD 850,000, making it one of the most expensive treatments in the world, and placing it far beyond the means of most patients.

Spark Therapeutics, the company releasing the drug, had initially planned to sell Luxturna for 1 million USD but lowered the price after health insurers expressed concern over their ability to cover the cost of the injectable treatment. Despite the small drop in price, Luxturna is still significantly more expensive than almost every other medication on the global market, including two separate gene therapy treatments approved last year by the FDA. Luxturna is the first gene therapy that treats an inherited condition. It has proven to improve vision for those with a rare form of inherited blindness that is estimated to affect less than 2,000 people in the US.

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A Chinese divorced mother-of-one was left shocked and devastated after her live-in boyfriend of more than a year vanished without a trace. What she uncovered a short time later stunned her even more – her “boyfriend” was, in fact, a woman in disguise.

Wang Qi, 41, from the Zhejiang Province of China, had met the younger “man,” surname Qian, online in 2016. Although they hit it off, Wang initially resisted Qian’s advances, explaining that they would not be compatible because he was too young for her and she was divorced with a child. Qian would not be dissuaded, however, and by June of 2016, the two were officially dating. By 2017 the pair had moved in together, and Qian had even brought Wang to “his” home city of Haikou to introduce her to his parents. Qian insisted that although they could be affectionate and sleep in the same bed, that they should hold off on intercourse until they married.

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An unusual restaurant in the Jinbocho district of Tokyo offers meals in exchange for 50 minutes of labor. This unique “open-source” eatery, called Mirai Shokudo, is the brainchild of former engineer Sekai Kobayashi, 33, who wanted to create a place for hungry people who otherwise couldn’t afford to eat out.

There is no permanent staff other than Kobayashi at the restaurant, which seats 12 at a counter. Customers can either pay for their meals or work one of two daily shifts to earn their meal. The lunch shift consists of serving orders, clearing tables, and other such tasks, while the evening shift, which starts after closing, consists mainly of cleaning. The shift can be exchanged for either a free meal or can be “paid forward” in the form of a voucher that is left at the front door for a hungry but broke patron. First-time customers must eat at the restaurant once before working a shift to familiarize themselves with the setting. So far over 500 people have opted to work for their meals.

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Everyone knows that Dubai is a rich city, but not many people know it is so rich that even beggars there can earn a small fortune by asking for handouts. Begging in Dubai is so lucrative that people come into the UAE legally, on a three-month travel visa, just so they can fill their pockets on the streets. That may sound shocking, but some of these so-called “professional beggars” or “smart beggars” can earn up to Dh270,000 ($73,500) per month. That’s more than most jobs pay in a year.

Reports of professional beggars taking advantage of the generosity and gullibility of wealthy Dubai citizens have been showing up online for the past three years now, but despite the best efforts of local police to eradicate the practice, it is still considered a widespread phenomenon. If anything, news headlines of beggars in the Las Vegas of the Middle East earning insane amounts of money by begging have only encouraged others to follow their example. Some sources report that there are now Arab and Asian gangs bringing beggars into Dubai legally and then taking most of their earnings.

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A lot of people are reluctant to buy affordable clothes from Chinese online marketplaces like Alibaba, because, many times, the pictures advertised by the sellers don’t match the actual products. Well, one dedicated seller decided to reassure potential customers that what they see is what they’ll get, by modelling his elegant dresses himself. Talk about going above and beyond, right?

Photos of the male Chinese seller modelling several of his elegant gowns went viral on Reddit a few days ago. They were allegedly posted by a customer of his who requested real-life photos of the dresses and got a lot more than she bargained for. User 10lbsofmum claimed “I found a shop that sold prom dresses and wedding dresses so I asked for real photos rather than stock photos and the seller sent me these of him trying them on”, but that’s most likely a lie, since the same photos can be tracked back to October 2017, when they were originally posted to a closed Facebook group called “ALIEXPRESS AND EBAY LOVERS. But regardless of the real story behind the pics, you can’t help but admire this seller’s dedication.

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