Zolpidem is a sedative from the imidazopyridine class of drugs that is most commonly used to help people fall asleep faster. But, in rare cases, this common drug can actually restore function to damaged brains.

There is a reason why zolpidem is sometimes referred to as the “Lazarus Drug”. If you give this pill to someone with brain damage, in 5% to 6% of cases something miraculous happens. In most cases, the changes are minor. People’s speech improves slightly, the frequency of muscle spasms is reduced, they have less difficulty moving, but in some rare cases, a pill can even bring people back from vegetative states, allowing them speak and move as they did before suffering brain damage. The problem is that these positive effects are gone as soon as the drug wears off, and scientists have yet to discover why some patients with brain damage react this way to zolpidem.

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Six months after catching the coronavirus, a 69-year-old Russian virologist and researcher exposed himself to patients infected with Covid-19 without any protection to see how his immune system would respond.

A former researcher at the Vector Centre of Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Novosibirsk, Alexander Chepurnov first caught Covid-19 at the end of February 2020. He was on a skiing holiday in  France when he started feeling unwell, with a high fever, sharp chest pain and a complete loss of his sense of smell. There was no way to get a coronavirus test in Europe at the time, so he returned home to Novosibirsk, where he was quickly diagnosed with double pneumonia. He was lucky enough to recover, and a month later an antibody test confirmed that he had been infected with the new virus.

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A popular Russian vlogger recently made international headlines after purposely burning his expensive Mercedes-AMG G63, because he was sick of it breaking down all the time.

Russian media reported that young vlogger Mikhail Litvin bought his brand new luxury car in December of 2019, for a whopping 13 million rubles, or around $170,000. For that kind of money one would expect both performance and durability, only Litvin claims that his Mercedes-AMG G63 was really short on the latter. Despite having allegedly driven it only 15,000 km (about 9,300 miles), he claims the car has been in and out of repair shops over the last 10 months. Exasperated by the constant need for repairs and the manufacturer’s reluctance to accept responsibility, the Russian vlogger decided that the best way to solve things was to simply burn the car down to a crisp.

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A viral news report about a woman who claims to have found plastic pellets mixed with rice grains has once again reignited allegations about Chinese fake rice.

Rumours about ruthless Chinese rice growers and retailers mixing plastic rice grains with real ones to increase profit at the cost of consumers’ health have been doing the rounds online for at least a decade, but no such claims have ever been confirmed. We previously wrote about allegations surrounding “cheap but profitable” fake Chinese rice being exported to other Asian countries, including Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, and India, but even then authorities could neither confirm nor deny these rumors. Now, another such case has once again brought the so-called “fake rice myth” back into the spotlight.

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Looking back at the most significant battles and military operations in history, deception has always been an important strategy, and in modern-day Russia balloons are one of the most important tools of deception.

Bouncy castles aren’t known as the most effective tools of war, but in Russia, they are just as important as actual weapons worth millions of dollars. That’s because bouncy castles designed to mimic actual weapons cost a hundred times cheaper than the real thing, and can be deployed and moved a lot faster. And if your goal is to deceive the enemy, to appear stronger than you really are, drawing their fire, or simply buying time by forcing them to verify targets, this inflatable army is an important piece of your arsenal.

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A computer programmer has been dubbed ‘Britain’s biggest hoarder’ after it was discovered that he had amassed a huge collection of items stored in several homes and garages and valued at £4 million ($5.2 million).

Ramann Shukla, 64, passed away earlier this year, but has posthumously been dubbed Britain’s biggest hoarder for filling his three-bedroom house, a rented flat, two garages and 24 large trash cans with some 60,000 items he had collected over the last 20 years. After the computer programmer died suddenly of a heart attack, his brother was shocked to discover that Ramann’s home had been converted into storage space for thousands of items, some of which were still in their shipping packaging. It’s believed that the Nottingham man was planning to sell of his treasure trove to fund to set up his own retirement fund.

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A popular gym in Krakow, Poland, managed to stay open under new coronavirus restrictions by declaring itself a shop where people can “test” equipment for a fee, and a church offering “religious meetings” to promote a healthy lifestyle.

Over the weekend, Krakow police entered the “Atlantic Sports Fitness Gym Squash Klub” fitness center where a dozen or so people were exercising despite the government ban on gyms designed to slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Officers ID-ed both the staff and the visitors, but didn’t issue any fines, because representatives of the gym claimed that they were operating legally. Because the firm already has a business classification allowing it to carry out retail services, Atlantic Sports declared itself a shop where people could come in and test fitness equipment for a fee.

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Galina Chuvina, a retired woman from the small Russian town of Sasovo, took up knife throwing as a hobby and ended up becoming an eight time national champion, European champion and even world champion.

Chuvina was 56 years old when she discovered knife throwing, back in 2007. The pensioner had landed a simple job in the coat check section of the local pool, taking people’s clothes and handing out numbers. One day, two young people came by to discuss the possibility of opening a knife throwing club on the premises, and Galina became one of the first people to enroll for knife throwing training. Just a month and a half into her training, the pensioner learned that her home town would soon host a knife throwing competition with around 50 participants, including special forces soldiers, professional knife throwers, as well as amateurs like her. She signed up, and shocked the audience by wining first place.

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A Swiss couple has named their baby daughter Twifia after Internet start-up Twifi and won themselves 18 years of free wi-fi internet.

The young couple responded to a Facebook ad from Twifi, a Swiss Internet provider, which dared parents to name their newborn Twifus (if it was a boy) or Twifia (if it was a girl) in exchange for 18 years of free internet. The parents, aged 30 and 35, ultimately decided that Twifia wasn’t that bad of a name, and the thought of getting free internet for 18 years and putting that money in a savings account for their daughter was appealing. So after thinking it over, they decided to make it official, putting down ‘Twifia’ as their daughter’s middle name on her birth certificate.

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The Brigham Young University in Idaho has launched an investigation into claims that some of its students are intentionally trying to get infected with SARS-CoV-2, to then sell their antibody plasma for cash.

Officials at Brigham Young University, which is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, strongly condemned the the alleged behavior of its students and announced its decision to suspend anyone caught attempting to contract the virus on purpose. The university is currently investigating incidents on campus, and has urged students not to put themselves and others at risk for financial risks, because the risk is not worth the reward.

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Can you imagine looking in the mirror and not recognizing the person staring back at you. That’s what Lena, a 29-year-old Russian woman suffering from prosopagnosia, a rare condition that makes it impossible to recognize faces, including her own.

Lena Ash only learned that she was suffering from prosopagnosia last year. Before that, she had always tried to convince herself that she wasn’t simply slower than other people. Even as a child, Lena had problems recognizing faces, and talking to her parents about it didn’t really help. She doesn’t blame them for it, as they didn’t even know such a condition existed, and it’s not like they could simply google her symptoms back then. Not even the neurologists she went to for her headaches, migraines, low blood pressure and nausea could figure out the cause of her health problems, and this all made her feel ashamed of herself.

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An Italian woman was recently sentenced to four years in jail after she admitted to spiking a work colleague’s drink with sedatives, so she would underperform.

This disturbing story of work rivalry taken to the extreme dates back to October 6th of 2017, when Mariangela Cerrato brought a round of coffees for her colleagues at an office in Bra, a town in Italy’s Piedmont region. She brought the coffees and cappuccinos from a nearby bar, as she usually did, so no one suspected anything shady. However, after downing her cappuccino in one gulp, one of Cerrato’s colleagues, Alice Bordon, started feeling dizzy and lost her balance walking to her desk. She was taken to the hospital where doctors checked for a potential stroke, not knowing that something more insidious was at play…

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Italy is the world’s second largest kiwi producer after China, but for the past eight years farmers have been battling a mysterious enemy that has so far killed over twenty percent of the country’s kiwi plants.

It starts with the leaves. They wither and face downwards, and within 10 days they all fall to the ground, leaving the kiwi fruits exposed to direct sunlight. Underground, the roots of the vine darken and begin to rot. In a year or two, the whole plant withers and dies. There is no known cure, and by the time farmers start noticing the symptoms described above, it is already much too late to do anything about it.  The farmers call it morìa, or “die-off”, and it had devastated plantations where kiwi vines have thrived for decades.

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A longtime fan of the ‘Alien’ franchise has spent three years turning a Barcelona apartment into a faithful replica of the Nostromo spaceship interior depicted in Ridley Scott’s original ‘Alien’ film.

43-year-old Luis Nostromo watched Alien when he was still a child, and even though he found it scary, he fell in love it with. The Barcelona man has spent the last two decades collecting Alien-related memorabilia, and for the last three years he has been working on his very own Alien Museum, an apartment decorated as the most iconic locations depicted in the movie. Today, his epic project is nearly complete, and it looks absolutely amazing.

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Footage of a young cleaning woman who appears to be drinking water straight out of a toilet has sparked a heated debate on Chinese social media this week.

The caretaker of a fertilizer company located in Shandong province, China has put herself at the center of controversy after a video showing her drinking water out of a toilet she had previously cleaned went viral online. The young woman, surnamed Luo, reportedly resorted to the extreme gesture in order to impress her bosses, who can be seen applauding her as she downs a plastic cup of toilet water. Accused of encouraging the employee to humiliate herself, representatives of the company insisted that the caretaker’s gesture was voluntary, adding that she has done drunk toilet water several times over the last couple of years.

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