The Fanvue Miss AI pageant, the world’s first beauty pageant for AI-generated female models, judges contestants on beauty, social media clout, and their creator’s use of AI tools.

At first, they said artificial intelligence was coming after our jobs, but now it seems that not even beauty pageants are safe. Originally announced back in April 2024 by Fanvue, a subscription-based platform for creators, the world’s first beauty pageant for AI-generated avatars made international news headlines and sparked controversy online. But, based on the popularity of AI models like Aitana Lopez and Emily Pellegrini on social media, this type of event was bound to happen at some point. About 1,500 AI-generated girls were submitted by creators from all over the world, but only 10 of them made the finalist list.

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A  football field at the Luzhniki Olympic Sports Complex on the outskirts of Moscow recently hosted the world’s longest football game, which lasted a total of 26 hours.

To celebrate All-Russian Football Day last Saturday, two teams of 7 players each gathered at the Luzhniki Olympic Sports Complex to break the record for the longest football match ever. The game started at noon on Saturday and ended after 26 hours, at 2 in the afternoon on Sunday. The previous record had been set in 2014 when two teams played the beautiful game for 24 hours straight. This time around, the Red Team defeated the White Team with a score of 416 goals to 409.

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An Algerian man was recently convicted for indecent behavior and sentenced to two months behind bars for hugging random people on the street to spread peace and positivity.

Mohamed Ramzi, a 30-something vlogger from Algeria, sparked outrage in his home country last summer by posting a TikTok video inspired by a popular European vlogger who became famous for social experiments like hugging random people on the street. Only that kind of thing is apparently frowned upon in Algeria, as the footage sparked outrage and attracted condemnation from the general public, and not even Mohamed’s apology could stop the imminent charges against him. Last year, a court found him not guilty on all charges, but his case was then referred to the Algerian Judicial Council after prosecutors appealed the decision, and this time he was found guilty.

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A Hungarian kids ‘football team won the Under 14 National Championship after surmounting an impressive 40-goal difference with a 43-1 victory in their very last match of the season.

With just one match left to play, Kerekegyháza SE and Miklós GYFE were tied at 43 points, but the latter had a comfortable 40-goal advantage, which virtually guaranteed its first-ever U14 football title. But there is a reason why ‘virtually’ isn’t synonymous with ‘definitely’. In their last match, Kerekegyháza SE scored an epic 43-1 victory over Palmonostora, the last team in the rankings, while Miklós GYFE only managed a 1-0 victory in their last match. Miklós GYFE was getting ready to celebrate their title after the comfortable win when they got the unbelievable news that they had actually finished second, behind Kerekegyháza. The 43-1 victory is now being investigated by the Hungarian Football Federation.

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A so-called blind dating cafe in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, has come under fire for installing a one-way window that allows men to see the girls they are talking to, but not vice-versa.

On June 1st, a blind dating cafe in Ho Chi Minh’s District 1 went viral for a controversial reason. According to multiple reports, Mina Cafe features two different rooms for men and women, separated by a glass wall. The controversy lies in the fact that the wall is advertised as a mirror when in reality it is only a mirror from the women’s side. The men’s room is dark and they can clearly see the person on the other side. Basically, the blind date part is only valid for the women, as the men can freely admire their potential partners like items on display.

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There is a bizarre craze sweeping China’s primary and secondary schools. Students are adding all sorts of smelly ingredients to plastic bottles to create the stinkiest recipes possible.

Chinese media recently reported multiple incidents involving bottles of foul-smelling water created by young school students using online recipes. Apparently, they were related to a strange craze where students add all sorts of disgusting ingredients to a plastic bottle of water and let the mix ferment to create the stinkiest concoction possible. They write the recipe on the bottle, and if stinky enough, share it online so that other can take the experiment even further. It has been dubbed the “stink-raising water” craze and education authorities are scrambling to prevent it from becoming even more popular, as experts believe it puts public health at risk.

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An Istanbul-based plastic surgery clinic has been drawing a lot of attention for taking to social media with before-and-after photos that show improvements so radical that experts have deemed them impossible to achieve.

The Este Med Clinic took the internet by storm last week with a before-and-after photo of a patient referred to only as Michael. The after photo showed the man at least a couple of decades younger, his wrinkled skin now as tight as a youngster’s, a full head of hair, and a perfectly sculpted nose. Michael looked so good in his ‘after’ photo posted on Instagram that some users wondered if the clinic had simply put him in a time machine. Had the two photos not been posted together, most people would never have guessed they were of the same person. But this was only the beginning, as a look at Este Med’s Instagram profile showed dozens of other incredible transformations that even plastic surgery experts found hard to believe.

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The femur is widely considered the hardest or second hardest bone in the human body, but a 35-year-old man in China allegedly managed to break his just by coughing.

Doctors at the Second People’s Hospital of Fujian Province in China recently reported the shocking case of a 35-year-old man referred to only as Mr. Ye who suffered a fractured femur during a coughing fit. According to Dong Zhong, director of the Department of Orthopedics at the hospital, the unusual incident occurred during a coughing fit, which is unusual considering that men in Ye’s age range typically suffer femur fractures as a result of serious trauma, such as car accidents or falls from considerable height. Mr. Ye told doctors that he felt a sharp pain immediately after a particularly strong cough, but he simply brushed it off as a cramp. It was only after walking became difficult because of the pain that he decided to seek medical help.

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French distillery Pegasus decided to celebrate its debut on the US spirits market with a unique product – an ultra-premium vodka infused with a real meteorite.

The aptly named Shooting Star Vodka starts off as organic, locally sourced wheat and botanicals from France distilled using iStill,  the most advanced distilling technology. The mixture is then slowly reduced over a month-long period using pure spring water from a well dug 150 meters below the Pegasus Distillery in Burgundy. But what really sets Shooting Star Vodka apart from other premium spirits is the aging process. Shooting Star Vodka is aged in small batches for at least one year using large terracotta jars with pieces of meteorite suspended in the middle. As the space rock partially dissolves into the vodka, it allegedly gives the spirit a mineral taste.

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After the owner of a Russian supermarket chain announced that he would be paying 1 million rubles to each person proven to have gotten food poisoning from the store’s products, many decided to take him up on his offer.

Earlier this month, Yekaterinburg-based supermarket chain Zhiznmart came under fire for allegedly selling compromised food products that had landed at least 18 people in the hospital with food poisoning. As a result, several suppliers refused to work with Zhiznmart anymore for fear of getting audited by Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s federal agency in charge of consumer wellbeing and protection. Left with empty shells and a sullied reputation, Zhiznmart founder made a bold public statement, promising to compensate each person proven to have been poisoned by his products with 1 million rubles ($11,000). His promise went viral, and before long, people were trying to get food poisoning at Zhiznmart and get compensated.

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The organizers of a recent festival at a university in South Chungcheong Province, South Korea, were forced to apologize after the host decided to give away the water bottles used by the members of an idol group as prizes.

On May 22, the popular girl group Oh My Girl performed at a university festival in Asan, South Chungcheong Province. However, it was what occurred on stage after the group’s performance that made news headlines all around the country in the days that followed. On May 26, several videos were posted on South Korean social media showing the host of the event inviting male fans of Oh My Girl on stage and then collecting the used water bottles left behind by the members of the group. Fans were asked to participate in a talent show for the chance to win an unusual prize – the used water bottle of the Oh My Girl member of their choice.

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CCTV cameras in Mexico recently recorded one of the strangest street fights in history involving a band of mariachi and a fire-breathing performer quarreling over busking territory.

They say life is stranger than fiction and a short video clip captured by surveillance cameras in the Mexican city of Morelia proves it! Not even the brilliant Quentin Tarantino could have come up with the idea of a fiery street fight between a group of guitar-armed mariachi and a street-performing fire-breather in broad daylight, but that’s exactly what occurred last week, at a busy intersection in the Mexican capital. The viral video shows a man being chased by a mariachi and then put in a headlock until more mariachi arrives. They punch and kick the man, but then he turns the tables on them, as he starts blowing plumes of flames at them, literally setting them ablaze. Not the kind of thing you see every day, that’s for sure!

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A 21-year-old Malaysian man recently underwent a cornea transplant after scratching his due to rubbing his eyes excessively for most of his life.

Muhammad Zabidi has suffered from allergies for as long as he can remember. As a child, he would rub his eyes until they turned red, but it wasn’t until his teenage years that this became a serious problem. At age 15, he started experiencing blurred vision in his right eye, and things only got worse as time went by. When he finally decided to see a doctor about it, he was told that he had severely scratched his cornea due to the constant eye rubbing and he now needed a new one in order to regain his vision.

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A Moscow woman recently got the shock of her life when she entered her bathroom and saw a full-grown white Boa constrictor snake hanging out on her toilet bowl.

Exotic snakes crawling up from toilets may not be a worthy news topic in countries like Australia or Brazil, where the slithering reptiles are virtually a part of everyday life, but as a European living in a bustling city, it’s not the kind of thing you ever expect to see. However, one Moscow resident almost had a heart attack when she entered her bathroom and found an albino boa constrictor coming out of her toilet bowl. The shocked woman slammed the bathroom door shut and immediately called emergency service. It turned out that the snake was a fellow resident of the apartment building who had simply gone out to explore its drain pipe system.

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An Algerian man who had disappeared from his home one morning in 1998 was recently found alive in his neighbor’s cellar, just 200 meters from the house he had grown up in.

Omar bin Omran was only 17 years old when he disappeared from his home in Djelfa, Algeria, in 1998. It was during the Algerian Civil War, a time of great unrest in the African country, and many of his family and friends feared that he had ended up among the estimated 200,000 people killed, or the 20,000 kidnapped, during the conflict. Authorities stopped looking for him after a while, and his mother remained the only one who never gave up hope. Unfortunately, she died in 2013, and Omar bin Omran became yet another case that would likely never be solved. Only earlier this week, the brother of one of Omar’s neighbors took to social media to suggest that his sibling was involved in the teen’s kidnapping.

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