A Vietnamese man obsessed with traditional porcelain dishes and antiques has spent the last 25 years of his life decorating his house with almost 10,000 porcelain bowls, plates and urns.

Nguien Van Truong first fell in love with porcelain antiques in 1986, a year after being discharged from the army and returning to his home village of Kieu Son, in Vietnam’s Vinh Phuc province. He was making a living as a carpenter at a time and got the chance to paint the table and chairs of a local antique collector who first introduced him to the beauty of traditional porcelain dishes. Truong was so impressed that he decided to become a collector himself, and scoured all of Vietnam’s northern provinces in search of traditional porcelain objects, and spent all of his money trying to acquire as much of it as possible.

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A Thai family got the shock of their lives when they took home a box of sushi to eat only to see it glow bright blue in the dark after allegedly becoming infected with fluorescent bacteria.

Last Tuesday, Arun Yolpaiboon, 58, and her son, 21-year-old Natthanai Kanchanawasa, had just returned home with some boxes of sushi, which they consume regularly, when they noticed that some of the pieces of shrimp glowed an unnatural blue in low-light areas of their home. Even after boiling the pieces of sushi, the unnatural glow remained, so the pair shot a video showcasing the bizarre blue color of the shrimp. Then then woman’s son ate one of the radioactive-looking pieces just for fun.

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Daisugi is a centuries-old forestry technique developed in Japan as a way of cultivating the highly-prized Kitayama Cedar without actually using any land. Today, the visually-striking technique can be witnessed in ornamental gardens.

Dating back to the 14th century, daisugi allowed for the cultivation of Kitayama cedar, a species of tree known for growing exceptionally straight and lacking knots, in a time when high demand and lack of straight land for planting enough trees made growing Kitayama cedars impossible. Similar to the famous art of bonsai, daisugi basically involved heavily pruning a so-called “mother cedar tree” so that only the straightest shoots are allowed to grow. Careful hand-pruning is conducted every couple years, leaving only the top boughs and ensuring that the shoots remain knot free. After about 20 years, the now massive shoots can either be harvested as exceptional Kitayama lumber, or replanted to repopulate forests.

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Su ‘Moh Moh’ Naing, a 23-year-old girl from Myanmar shot to online fame earlier this week after being featured by a popular English tabloid for having an incredibly thin waist.

The Burmese student claims to have a waist circumference of only 13.7 inches, which would make it one of the tiniest waists in the world, but even more shocking is the fact that Naing insist her waist size is only linked to genetics. Despite being accused of digitally editing the photos she posts on her Instagram, and even of having some of her ribs removed or constantly wearing a tight corset to achieve such a tiny figure, Su Naing says she is all natural.

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James Maina Mwangi believes himself to be the smartest looking man in all of Africa, maybe even the world, and looking at his impeccably stylish outfits, it’s hard to disagree.

When he came to Nairobi, in Kenya, James Maina Mwangi had only one shirt and people laughed at him because they knew his father, who was an honorable but poor freedom fighter. He asked God for something to make himself stand out, and he apparently got this flamboyant fashion style. He’s been using his brightly colored suits and accessories to stand out on the streets of the Kenyan capital ever since, and has even attracted international attention thanks to his outfits.

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Villages on the east coast of the Kamchatka peninsula, in the Russian Far-East are experiencing scenes that seem taken out of an Alfred Hitchkok movie. Only instead of birds invading their community, it’s billions of mosquitoes swirling into visible “tornadoes”.

Villages like Ust-Kamchatsk are used to being invaded by large number of mosquitoes every summer, it’s normal for this insects to swarm near bodies of water, but this year it’s much worse than usual. Because of an unusually hot summer, the number of mosquitoes is much larger, making them an even bigger nuisance than they usually are. Window and door nets do little to keep the pesky buzzers out of people’s homes, as they seem to get in through the smallest of cracks, and going outside means dealing with large swarms of mosquitoes that seem to reach the sky when seen from afar.

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A Russian man is taking a bank to court for forcing him to pay interest on a loan he never asked for, after fraudsters used his stolen smartphone to take out the pre-approved loan in his name.

Vladimir Volokhovich, from Moscow, has been making news headlines in his home country of Russia after finding himself right in the middle of an unusual scandal. Volokhovich is being asked by the Russian branch of Alpha Bank to pay up a pre-approved loan taken up by fraudsters in his name, using his stolen mobile phone. Not only did the scammers manage to transfer part of the funds to their accounts, but the interest on the loan Vladimir never asked for is adding up every day. The bank, however, refuses to cancel the loan, claiming that Vladimir should have reported his smartphone as stolen sooner.

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An Australian mother-of-three made international news headlines this week after she became the target of an original prank thought up by her ex boyfriend for dumping her.

When it comes to getting back at your ex-partner after being dumped, it just doesn’t get more original than advertising a Chewbacca roar contest and encouraging total strangers to call your ex’s number and leave their impression of the furry Star Wars character as voice messages. That’s exactly what one Cairns man did earlier this week, after being dumped. He put up portraits with the fake Chewbacca roar contest featuring his ex’s phone number and promising a $100 prize to the best Chewbacca.

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Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, a.k.a. “El Mencho”, the leader of Mexico’s fastest-growing drug cartel, has allegedly built his own private hospital in order to avoid having to treat his illnesses at other, less secure healthcare facilities.

El Mencho, under whose leadership the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG) became the most prominent criminal organization in Mexico, reportedly suffers from kidney failure and other serious illnesses that require constant medical care. Unlike most drug kingpins, who usually keep doctors on their payrolls in order to avoid going to hospitals where they could be arrested or killed by police, El Mencho decided to go one step further. Because his serious kidney condition means he can’t have it treated in one of his many mountain hideouts across Jalisco, he allegedly decided to build his own hospital.

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An Indian software engineer was arrested last week after reportedly hacking his former employer and deleting information in the hopes that he would be rehired.

The IT specialist, identified as one Vikesh Sharma, used to work as a senior software engineer in the company until being fired during the the lockdown due to disagreement over his salary. Only instead of moving on and looking for another job, Sharma allegedly tried to get his old job back in a very unusual way. He managed to hack his former employer’s database and delete thousands of patient details, in the hopes that his former boss would contact him to rectify the situation. That didn’t happen…

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Textiles aren’t the main means of contamination for the SarsCov-2 virus, but studies have shown that it can survive on clothes for various periods of time. That’s why several companies are planning to launch lines of virus-killing denim.

Last month, Swiss company HeiQ announced that its Viroblock NPJ03 textile treatment had been tested against the SARS-CoV-2 virus strain and proved to be 99.99% effective in killing it. Virpblock had previously been tested against coronavirus 229E, another strain of virus in the Coronavirus family, but this latest test showed that the combination of silver salts with a vesicle technology was effective against the Covid-19 causing virus as well. HeiQ has since announced collaborations with several denim brands to create SarsCov-2-resistant clothes.

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Dozens of die-hard car racing fans found an ingenious way to support their favorite drivers while also abiding social distancing rules – they rented 21 construction cranes and watched the race from above the race track arena.

Sunday is race day at Stadion Żużlowy Motor Lublin in the Polish city of Lublin, but because of the Covid -19 pandemic, the arena wasn’t full to the brink as it usually is. Social distancing rules dictate that sport venues fill up at only 25 percent capacity, but a few dozen fans found a way to be close to the action without actually setting foot in the arena. They rented 21 construction cranes and lifted themselves up above the stadium in groups of three or four. Photos of them standing on platforms and holding flares have been doing the rounds on the internet.

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Human pregnancies normally last around 9 months, but one Indonesian woman has been making news headlines in her country for claiming that she gave birth just one hour after experiencing pregnancy symptoms.

Heni Nuraeni, a 30-year-old woman from Mandalasari, a village in Indonesia’s Tasikmalaya Regency has become the main topic of conversation in her country, after it was revealed that she gave birth to a baby boy after allegedly experiencing pregnancy symptoms for about an hour. Heni claims that on Saturday night, July 18th, her belly started growing and she started experiencing painful cramps which she immediately associated with child birth, having previously given birth to two children. The problem was that not only had she been oblivious to the pregnancy, she also hadn’t made love to her husband in 19 months…

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Gyromitra esculenta, or the False Morel, is a Spring mushroom that contains the toxin and carcinogen gyromitrin, which makes it illegal to sell and cook in countries around the world. In Finland, however, it is considered a delicacy.

False Morel mushrooms have historically been consumed in northern Europe for centuries, but as chemistry and medicine evolved, it became somewhat of a forbidden fruit due to the dangers of consuming even small amounts of gyromitrin. Symptoms associated with the ingestion of this known toxin and carcinogen include severe headaches, vomiting, nausea, extreme dizziness, diarrhea and, if the damage to the liver is too serious, even death. Their sale in countries like Sweden and Norway was made illegal years ago, but in Finland people still eat it with gusto.

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An international team of researchers claim to have created the first synthetic cut-proof material that actively destroys the tool trying to cut through it.

Even the toughest lock can do little more than delay a person properly equipped to cut through them, but engineers at Durham University in England and the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany have come up with a new material that they say is extremely hard to cut through. Called Proteus, the revolutionary synthetic material is inspired not by diamonds and sapphires, the toughest natural materials known to man, but by the cellular skin of the grapefruit and the fracture resistant shells of the abalone mollusk.

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