An Indian education organization recently sparked controversy by introducing an optional engineering course that teaches students that modern inventions like aeronautics, batteries, as well as knowledge of gravity existed in India during the Vedic Age, thousands of years ago.

Human Resource Development Ministry (HRD) decided to introduce into the country’s engineering curriculum a controversial book that makes all kinds of bombastic claims, from the fact that the Wright brothers didn’t really invent the airplane, to assertions that ancient Indian ‘scientists’ in the Vedic Age (1500 – 500 BCE) knew about gravity long before Isaac Newton. This book is seen as another attempt by Narendra Modi’s government to promote pseudoscience pushed by Hindu groups.

Entitled Bharatiya Vidya Saar, the controversial book is set to be introduced as part of an optional credit course in engineering colleges and universities affiliated with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). For some reason, the optional course, called Indian Knowledge Systems, will focus on Indian philosophical, linguistic and artistic traditions, as well as yoga and Indian perspective of modern scientific worldview. Those don’t sound like the kinds of things engineering courses should focus on, but wait until you hear what students will actually be taught.

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Shopping malls in China have come up with an ingenious strategy to attract female shoppers. Many of them now offer attractive ‘shopping’ boyfriends that can be rented by the hour at really affordable rates.

What started as a clever promotion for March 8th, International Women’s Day, has apparently become a year-long strategy to attract female shoppers. Walking through mall galleries in Chinese cities like Hebei or Foshan, you’re likely to spot young, dapper men displayed in giant, doll box-like frames decorated with hearts. They are called ‘shopping boyfriends’ and they can be rented by the hour by lonely female shoppers looking for company. Rates start as low as 1 yuan ($0.15) per hour, up to 2 yuan ($0.30) in some shopping malls.

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You’ll have a tough time finding someone who talks positively about their constipation problems, but one Utah woman is one of those rare exceptions, and for good reason. It was her constipation that inspired her to create a simple stool that now helps millions of people improve their bowel movements.

Judy Edwards has been struggling with constipation her whole life, but the problem only got worse with age. A few years ago, a medical professional advised her to use a foot stool while sitting on the toilet, and that worked surprisingly well for her, so she passed on the same advice to her husband Bill. They were both amazed both about the difference that a little foot stool made and that they had only learned about this trick in their 60s. But it wasn’t until their son Bobby, a self-described gypsy always looking to make a “big splash”, learned about the benefits of the foot stool that the idea of a profitable business started to materialize.

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A family in Russia’s Barnaul region was recently taken to court by the local energy company for accumulating a debt of approximately 80,000 rubles ($1,218) in unpaid bills. In their defense, the accused claimed that it was all their cat’s fault, not theirs.

It’s one thing for kids to say “the dog ate my homework”, but you don’t often hear adults trying to lay the blame on their pets in order to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. That’s exactly what this family in Barnaul did, though, and not just anywhere, but in front of a judge. Accused of refusing to pay the local energy company around 80,000 in electrical bills, they claimed that they hadn’t actually used the electricity, but that meter had been tampered with by their mischievous cat.

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Yungar, a remote town in the Peruvian Andes, has been receiving worldwide attention in the past couple of weeks, because of the efforts of a man named Lenin to stop one of the candidates, named Hitler, from running in the upcoming municipal elections.

Hitler Alba Sánchez, also known as ‘Hitler of the Andes’ or ‘The Good Hitler’, has already served as mayor of Yungar between 2011 and 2014, and he is now trying out for a second term. However, his candidacy was challenged by a local man called Lenin Vladimir Rodríguez Valverde, who claimed that Hitler wasn’t eligible because of his previous term as mayor. The attempt to sabotage The Good Hitler’s election ultimately failed, but the bizarre coincidence of these two men’s names has become an international news topic.

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Last week, police in the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta reported at least 11 cases of people completely stripped of their clothes tied to lamp posts and with the letter ‘R’ shaved on the back of their heads. So far, no one knows who orchestrated these attacks and why, as the victims all refuse to talk.

Police started receiving calls about naked men being tied to lamp posts in different areas of Puerto Vallarta last Monday. Between 9:26 PM on Monday, and 1:29 AM on Tuesday, four men were discovered in similar circumstances. They had all been stripped naked, had bruises on their buttocks like they had been repeatedly slapped, they were tied to lamp posts at various intersections across the city and they all had the letter ‘R’ shaved into the back of their heads. Authorities announced that they had started an investigation, but little did they know that these four cases was only the beginning.

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A man named Valery recently became the star of what may very well be the most epic fail in the history of iPhone launches. After becoming the first person in a monstrously long queue to set foot inside the Apple store in Moscow to buy an iPhone XS, he left empty-handed because he couldn’t afford to buy it.

On the morning of September 28, the Apple store in Moscow finally opened its doors to the crowd of people that had been lining up outside for over 24 hours to buy the new iPhone XS and XS Max. Apple fans have been queuing up for new iPhone launches all around the world for years now, but what made this particular event special was the amount of fail involved. For one thing, the first eight people at the head of the giant queue evaporated minutes before the store opened. It turns out they had never planned on buying a phone, hoping to sell their places in line for absurd amounts of money, instead. But they were actually the smart ones, because the ninth guy planned to do the same thing, only he didn’t have the brains to bail before the doors opened.

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A 37-year-old woman from Colombia recently shocked her entire country after managing to fake her pregnancy for nine months and then coming up with film-worthy story to explain the absence of a baby on her due date. And she did it all to keep her partner from leaving her.

Antonela Santiago Padilla and her partner Victor had known each other since they were 14 year old teenagers growing up in northern Barranquilla. Life split them apart for a long time, but many years later, Victor called to commemorate the memory of her brother, who had passed away. She started writing to him in September of last year, and soon their relationship became stronger and closer. However, Antonela knew that he was involved in a romantic relationship with another woman and didn’t want to break them up. Victor kept telling her that he and his partner weren’t getting along and that they were going to break up, so they started their own romantic relationship in December 2017. But Antonela wasn’t convinced that Victor had forgotten about his former girlfriend and it was this insecurity that made her create this elaborate farce that left everyone flabbergasted.

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A creative female farmer in China recently broke the internet with a gorgeous wedding dress she made out of 40 cement bags leftover after repairing her country house.

28-year-old Lili Tan has never taken fashion design courses, and spends most of her time farming, not creating wedding gowns, but looking at the amazing dress she created on a rainy day, when she couldn’t work in the fields, you could swear she makes dresses and accessories for a living. Using 40 discarded cement bags, the contents of which had gone toward renovating her village house near Longnan city, in China’s Gangsu province, Tan was able to create an elaborate wedding dress like the ones she saw in magazines, an impressive train for it, as well as a fancy hat. She showed them off on social media in a video which instantly went viral with several millions of views.

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A man recently caused havoc at a car dealership in Tongren City, China, after turning up with a truck full of coins to buy a 480,000 yuan ($70,000) BMW.

The unnamed man apparently used to work as a bus driver and collected the coins during his many years on the job. Only instead of regularly exchanging them for larger denomination banknotes, he just kept them in his home, hoping to some day spend them on the car of his dreams. After seeing a new BMW that he really liked, the man decided that the time had come to exchange his sizable fortune for it, but only then realized that he had never even counted the coins. So he called some friends over and they spent four days counting them before loading them up in crates and driving to the car dealership.

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For some reason, many Japanese people find it incredibly difficult to quit their job and prefer paying a third party hundreds of dollars to quit on their behalf rather than have to face their boss and co-workers and handing in their resignation personally.

Senshi S LLC is a Tokyo-based startup founded by childhood friends Toshiyuki Niino and Yuichiro Okazaki last year. It operates ‘Exit’ a unique service that basically handles job resignations on behalf od clients, for a fee. Rather, than having to tell their bosses that they can’t or don’t want to work for them anymore, Exit clients prefer to pay between 40,000 yen ($350) and 50,000 yen ($450) to have someone else do it for them. Exit’s founders declared themselves surprised that so many people find quitting their jobs so stressful, but they have been more than happy to help hundreds of them get through this process.

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A Minnesota couple has been accused of abandoning a 5-year-old child in the woods as punishment for wetting his pants. The couple did reportedly come back for the boy after driving away a short distance, but couldn’t find him.

Lynda Michel and Gregory Wilson can kiss away their chances of winning a parents of the year award after showing off their parenting skills – or lack thereof – late last month, when they left a young child all by himself in a forest to teach him a lesson after he reportedly wet himself. The couple allegedly came back to get him after driving off a short distance, but the boy was nowhere to be found. He was spotted by a motorist on Aug. 28 walking along a highway south of St. Peter in Minnesota, all wet and sobbing.

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A 6-year-old girl from China’s Ningxia autonomous region managed to melt the hearts of millions with her dedication to her disabled father who she has been taking care of ever since her mother left them.

Tian Haicheng, a 38-year-old man from Haiyuan County, in Ningxia, had his entire world turned upside down four years ago, when he was involved in a serious car accident. He lost his ability to walk, and was left with use of arms, which made him unable to work and support his family. His wife took their son and abandoned him and their 6-year-old daughter. But instead of Tian having to somehow take care of his girl, she was the one who took up most of the responsibilities, including cooking, cleaning, and making sure that Tian was well taken care of.

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An Indian man was recently left unable to speak after his enraged eight-month pregnant wife bit off his tongue when he tried kissing her during an argument.

If you thought a French kiss was the best way appease a woman’s wrath during a fight, this story may make you think twice the next time you want to use to end an argument. A 22-year-old man from Delhi, India, had to be rushed to the hospital and treated for heavy bleeding after his wife bit off his tongue. The woman was subsequently arrested and she told police that she was unhappy with her married life as well as her husband’s unattractive looks, so she couldn’t control her rage anymore.

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The Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine recently reported the incredible case of a man who had been getting poisonous snakes to bite him on his tongue, because the usual narcotics no longer gave him the buzz he was looking for.

Cobra venom contains one of the most potent neurotoxins on Earth, with the amount injected in a single bite being enough to 20 adults and even an elephant. These facts only make the story of one Rajasthan opioid addict almost impossible to believe. He told researchers at the Institute of Medical Education and Research, in Chandigarh, India, that he had been subjecting himself to snake bites on the tongue for months, in order to get the buzz he no longer felt using regular narcotics. He did so on the advice of a friend who had been getting snake bites for years, and insisted that the practice is quite common in his community.

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