Maleesha Kharwa grew up in Mumbai’s infamous Dharavi slum, but thanks to a chance encounter with an American actor, she became one of India’s most popular teenage models.

At just 15 years of age, Maleesha Kharwa has already graced the covers of international fashion magazines like Vogue and Cosmopolitan, become the face of a luxury skincare brand, and amassed over 300,000 followers on Instagram alone. She is one of the most recognizable faces in India, and it’s almost impossible to believe that only three years ago she was just another girl in the slums of Mumbai. It was only thanks to a lucky encounter with Step Up 2: The Streets and Grey’s Anatomy actor Robert Hoffman that her life changed drastically and she got the chance to live out her childhood fantasy of one day becoming a fashion model.

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Danish artist Jens Haaning has been ordered to repay the Kunsten Museum in Aalborg 532,000 kroner ($76,000) after handing in two blank canvases as artworks in a project he named ‘Take the Money and Run’.

In 2021, Jens Haaning, a Danish conceptual artist whose work focuses on power and inequality, was commissioned by the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg to recreate two of his earlier artworks for which he had used a bunch of banknotes to represent the average income in Denmark and Austria. The artist agreed and the museum provided about 532,000 kroner ($76,000) for him to recreate the art pieces, including a fee of 40,000 kroner. Only when the museum staff unpacked the two artworks from Haaning, they found two blank canvases titled ‘Take the Money and Run’.

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12-year-old Bayleigh Teepa-Tarau has become the talk of the town in his native New Zealand after winning a national golf tournament despite having played just three rounds of golf his entire life.

Playing with borrowed clubs and wearing basketball sneakers, Bayleigh Teepa-Tarau managed to score an impressive 87 Stableford points during his three nine-hole rounds at this year’s Association of Intermediate and Middle Schools (AIMS) Games. His feat is even more impressive when you consider that he had previously only played three full rounds of golf his whole life. A few months back, his teacher-aide noticed that the 12-year-old autistic boy loved swinging a stick all the time, so he suggested he tried golf. Bayleigh said ‘ok’, and despite having only completed three rounds of golf, he managed to beat everyone at the recent AIMS Games and take home the gold.

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A 39-year-old Japanese man has been described as ‘trans-age’ after reportedly identifying as 28 because it’s an age that better describes his still immature personality.

In the age of ‘self-identified diversity’ where anyone is free to identify as whatever they want, a Japanese man has come out as ‘trans-age’, meaning that he chooses to identify as 28 years old, despite having been born 39 years ago. The Kyoto-based man known only as Jackie appeared on the reality show ABEMA Prime where he explained that he didn’t feel comfortable as a 39-year-old man, so he decided to be 28 instead. Apparently, the trans-age man settled on this particular age, because it strikes a good balance between being an adult and still having a childish side without attracting the judgment of others.

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A UK man has set a new world record for the most tattoos of the same name on the body after having his daughter’s name tattooed a whopping 667 times.

Mark Owen Evans originally got his name mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records in 2017, when he was featured for having his daughter’s name tattooed on his back 267 times. However, in 2020, he was dethroned by Diedra Vigil, a 27-year-old woman who had her own name tattooed on her body 300 times. Even though there wasn’t much space left on his back, Evans was determined to get his world record back, so he kept having his daughter’s name, ‘Lucy’, on his thighs. After going under the needle for five and a half hours for all 400 tattoos – 200 on each leg – Mark once again holds the Guinness record for the most tattoos of the same name on the body – 667.

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The Omnivision OVM6948 CameraCubeChip® holds the record for the world’s smallest commercially available camera. It measures 0.65 mm x 0.65 mm, with a z‑height of just 1.158 mm.

Developed by Omnivision, a global technology company specializing in innovative advanced digital imaging, analog, and touch & display solutions for multiple applications across several industries, the CameraCubeChip® is based on the tiny OVM6948 sensor, which claimed the Guinness Record for the world’s smallest commercially available image sensor. It can be mounted on various medical instruments, including disposable guidewires, endoscopes, and catheters with diameters as small as 1.0 mm. Its impressively small size makes it perfect for use within the body’s narrowest blood vessels for neuro, ophthalmic, ENT, cardiac, spinal, urology, gynecology, and arthroscopy procedures.

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An Australian man tried to sue a Melbourne hospital claiming that he was ‘permitted’ and even ‘encouraged’ to attend his wife’s C-section, which caused the onset of a mental illness.

In January of 2018, Anil Koppula’s wife gave birth to a healthy baby via cesarean section at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne. He was allowed in the operating room during the procedure, and seeing his wife’s organs and blood allegedly caused the onset of a psychotic illness. Now, years later, he is trying to sue the hospital for AU$ 1 billion in psychological damages. Koppula, who represented himself during the legal proceedings, claimed that the hospital breached its duty of care it owed to him, adding that the psychotic illness caused the breakdown of his marriage.

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A Ghanaian man living in Belgium became so frustrated with constantly failing the theoretical part of the driving test that he paid a lookalike to take the test in his place.

Serge, a Ghanaian immigrant living in Grammont, Belgium, had been struggling to pass his driving license exam for over a year. The man had already obtained a license in his home country, but he couldn’t use it to drive a car in Belgium, and the theoretical part of the exam had been giving him some serious headaches. Serge had tried and failed the test 12 times, but he couldn’t just give up, as having a driver’s license opened up some very lucrative options for him in Belgium. In the end, he decided that cheating was his best bet, so he started looking for someone with similar looks to take the test on his behalf.

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The shopping mall is considered a symbol of American consumerism and the US is indeed home to over 100,000 shopping malls, but the title of world’s biggest shopping mall actually belongs to one of America’s biggest rivals, Iran.

Located northeast of Teheran, the humongous Iran Mall shopping mall covers an area of 31 square meters and consists of seven floors, but its entire infrastructure area measures a whopping 1.35 million square meters and is set to expand to 1.60 million square meters. Since 2014, over 1,200 contractors and around 25,000 workers worked around the clock to make the world’s largest shopping mall a reality. In 2018, the first phase of construction was completed, and 267,000 square meters of gross leasable area and 708 retail units were opened on 1 May 2018. That same year, Iran Mall set a Guinness record for the world’s longest continuous pour of concrete, with tons of concrete pouring continuously for 6 consecutive days.

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A Chinese woman recently filed a lawsuit requesting a divorce from her husband of less than a year, claiming that he blackmailed her into the marriage with some sensitive photos.

According to Li Song Song’s lawsuit, she and her husband, Tan Dan, met in May of 2022, at a party. She didn’t pay too much attention to him, but he apparently became obsessed with her, even going to the salon where she worked every day. Because he didn’t give him the attention he craved, Tan allegedly started finding ways of chasing clients away from the salon, just so he could be alone with his love interest. However, Song was less than impressed with his tactics and refused to give in to his advances. In the lawsuit, the woman claims that she saw him as an unreliable and conniving person.

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Lino Tomasén, a 32-year-old street performer known as the ‘Cuban Ironman’, has allegedly been conditioning his body of iron by hitting himself with a heavy hammer around 1,000 times per day.

The so-called Cuban Ironman first garnered media attention in 2020 when a video showing him banging his fists and elbows against concrete walls went viral. Since then, his strongman reputation has been steadily growing. These days, he has an Instagram following of over 100,000 people and makes a living by putting on street performances in which he showcases his incredible strength. Most of the time he does pushups on his wrists with another person on his back, and uses a large hammer to hit his wrists, fists, and shins, or has someone else do it to prove it’s not fake.

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The Zhuhai Chimelong Marine Science Park in Zhuhai, China, is famous both for its impressive offering of rare marine wildlife from all over the world and its sci-fi-inspired design.

Announced in 2015, the Zhuhai Chimelong Marine Science Park immediately captured people’s imaginations with its futuristic design reminiscent of alien motherships depicted in sci-fi flicks and video games. Described as the largest indoor marine science park in the world, with more than 100,000 marine animals of around 300 species, as well as 100 kinds of living coral split into 10 themed areas. Originally scheduled to open in 2021, after ten years of planning and just over 5 years of actual construction, the giant marine science park only opened its gates to the public this month.

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A 36-year-old woman in Vietnam has been raising a lot of eyebrows in her home country with claims of suffering from an insomnia that has lasted for over 11 years.

Ms. Tran Thi Luu, who works at a preschool in the city of Quảng Ngãi, has become the talk of Vietnamese social media after it was reported that she hasn’t slept in more than 11 years. In a recent interview, the woman said that her decade-long insomnia began with a bizarre crying episode. Tears just started flowing from her eyes for no apparent reason, and even trying to lie down and close her eyes couldn’t stop the trickle of water. The inexplicable crying eventually ceased, but so did her capacity to fall asleep. Try as she might, Luu couldn’t ‘log out’ anymore. Her eyes were tired, but her mind was fully awake, so for the last 11 years she has done little other than lie down with her eyes closed to relax while her husband and children are sleeping.

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Seo Yoo A is an Instagram influencer who rose to fame thanks to her doll-like features enhanced with not-so-subtle digital editing tools and filters.

It’s no secret that Instagram is full of young, attractive influencers who use their God-given or surgically enhanced assets to build a fanbase and gain popularity, but South Korea appears to have launched a whole new trend – digitally enhanced models who aren’t afraid to go all out with the editing. Last week, we featured Shasheile, an influencer whose photos were so heavily edited that people actually found them refreshing, but it turns out she is not the only one using this unusual social media technique. Seo Yoo A is another rising Instagram star whose conspicuous use of Photoshop and other editing tools has won her hundreds of thousands of fans.

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Caviar, a Russian company that specializes in luxurious smartphone customization, recently unveiled the iPhone Diamond Snowflake, the most expensive iPhone ever made.

The iPhone 15 hasn’t even been launched yet, and it’s already advertised as the most expensive iPhone ever made. Not the stock version, though! That one is expensive enough, but it’s nowhere near the Diamond Snowflake designed by Russian luxury customization company, Caviar. This uber-exclusive version of Apple’s newest handheld features a custom case made of 18K white gold and inlaid with no less than 570 individual diamonds, as well the pendant of the Snowflake Graff necklace made by famed English jeweler Graff. The pendant itself is made of platinum, white gold with inlaid diamonds. The price of this handmade masterpiece – a whopping $562,700.

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