A funeral agency in Sweden is currently seeking volunteers for a project that it hopes will offer people comfort by allowing them to speak to their deceased loved-ones.

First of all, if you’ve already read something about this on sites like Mail Online or Sputnik News, you should know that most of the information they present is truly ‘fake news’. No, Swedish scientists are not trying to create robots or androids that are “fully conscious copies of dead relatives”, in fact, I’m not even sure any Swedish scientists are involved at all. This is actually about a Swedish funeral agency called Fenix wanting to create bots (computer programs, not actual robots) powered by artificial intelligence that can offer comfort to living relatives of the deceased.

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67-year-old Vernon Madison has been on death row for over three decades and was supposed to be executed in 2016, but after a series of strokes allegedly wiped out his memories of fatally shooting a police officer, his lawyers have been trying to suspend his death sentence. The U.S. Supreme Court will now have to decide if it is lawful to execute a murderer who does not remember his crime.

Madison was supposed to receive the death penalty in May of 2016, for the 1985 murder of a police officer. Shortly before the sentence could be carried out, his lawyers intervened, arguing that as a result of several strokes, the inmate had suffered neurological damage and could no longer remember his crime. A previous ruling of the Supreme Court stated that mentally incompetent prisoners cannot be executed, but also that some of them may be ruled competent to be executed as long as he or she understands their punishment and why they are receiving it. This leaves a lot of room for interpretation by state courts, so Vernon Madison’s execution has been scheduled and postponed several times in the last two years. It is now up to the Supreme Court to rule if it is lawful to have a man executed for a crime he doesn’t remember.

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A 22-year-old man from Sochi, Russia, was recently busted by police after his parents help prove he tried to have them assassinated by posing for photos of their fake bloody murders.

The shocking story of a young man who tried to have his parents and sister killed so he could inherit their wealth first appeared in Russian media earlier this month, with even more disturbing details surfacing later, as the criminal confessed to police. Apparently, police learned of the man’s diabolical plan from a friend of his, to whom he had confided in. To make sure he was serious about killing his family, police set up a meeting between the man and an undercover policeman posing as a professional hitman. Their worst fears were confirmed when the man gave the “assassin” all the details he needed to get into his parents’ house, like the location of the security cameras and of their guard dog, as well as a plan of the home. He allegedly offered the “killer” 3 million rubles ($54,000), one for each of his murdered family members.

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When thinking of ways to assist the poor, offering free breast augmentation or reduction surgery is probably not the first thing to come to mind, but that didn’t stop health department officials in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu from doing it.

Most governments are tackling poverty problems the old fashioned way, trying to make sure that unprivileged citizens have access to food, water, a place to live and basic healthcare. The Indian state of Tamil Nadu, on the other hand, is taking a slightly different approach, becoming the first state in the world to offer free cosmetic breast surgery to both impoverished women and men. These procedures are currently funded by the state health department, but authorities are trying to get health insurance providers on board to cover them as well.

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An Indian groom returned home with a different wife that the one he had originally intended to marry, after his bride-to-be refused to go ahead with the wedding upon seeing that he was balding.

Dr. Ravi Kumar’s family had arranged his weeding to a girl in Sugauli village, Bihar, more than a year ago, and all there was left wad for the couple to finally meet and get married in a traditional wedding ceremony. As the set date of February 18, approached, Kumar, a neurosurgeon, traveled with his family from New Delhi to Bihar, but he never actually met his bride-to-be until his wedding day, which turned out to be a big mistake. After all the rituals were completed and all there was left for the betrothed couple was to enter the wedding pavilion to be married, disaster struck. Kumar removed his traditional headgear and his bride-to-be noticed that he was balding.

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A couple in Volvograd, Russia, were recently reunited with the child they had though had died seven years ago, right after birth. What’s even more astonishing is that the startling revelation was the result of a completely accidental administrative error.

In 2011, a young girl gave birth at a hospital in Volgograd, but was soon told that her child was not viable and that it would not survive a week. Advised to give up the child, the depressed mother agreed to sign a waiver leaving the newborn in the care of the state and went home. Five days later, guilt overwhelmed the two parents, so they returned to the hospital to retrieve their baby and look after it for as little as it had to live. They were told that they were too late, that the baby had died. After grieving their terrible loss, the parents went on with their lives, but last year, they were shocked to discover that the child had been alive all this time.

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Sally Dawly is a woman on a mission. Over the last three and a half years, the anti-littering activist has spent most of her free time picking up cigarette butts from the streets of her home city of Auburn, in California, and on this year’s Valentine’s Day she picked up her millionth butt.

Dubbed the “Butt Lady” by her local community, Dawly began her quest to rid the streets of Auburn of cigarette butts in October 2014. Armed with a broom, dustpan and a pair of tongs, the woman started scouring the streets of her town in search of discarded cigarette butts, picking them up and throwing them in the trash, where they belong. To keep a tab on how many butts she picks up, the Butt Lady has been using a clicker, and earlier this month, she hit a historic milestone – one million cigarette butts.

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Mitsutoki Shigeta, the heir of a wealthy Japanese businessman, was recently awarded sole custody of 13 children he fathered through surrogate mothers in Thailand. Dubbed the “baby factory dad”, 28-year-old Shigeta is believed to be the father of at least 17 children, all conceived through surrogacy.

The “baby factory” scandal began in 2014, when Thai authorities stormed the Bangkok apartment of Japanese millionaire Mitsutoki Shigeta, where they found nine surrogate babies, each accompanied by a nanny, living in mostly unfurnished rooms and surrounded by playpens and baby bottles. DNA tests showed that Shigeta was the father of all nine children, as well as four others not living in the apartment. They had all been delivered by surrogate mothers that the Japanese national had paid between $9,300 and $12,500 each.

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A 30-year-old woman in Egypt recently filed for divorce from her 32-year-old husband after only 40 days of marriage on grounds that he is so stingy that he refused to buy her a shawarma sandwich on their first and only outing as a married couple.

Speaking before the Family Court in Zananiri, the young woman, known only as Sameeha, said that the shawarma incident was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She had married Ahmed, a teacher, after only knowing him for two months, which apparently wasn’t long enough for her to realize how incredibly stingy he was. However, his frugal nature became very obvious right after their traditional wedding. On their first day of marriage, Ahmed allegedly told his wife that he hated going out because he viewed it as a waste of money. She didn’t pay much attention to his words then, but things got worse with each passing day.

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Can you imagine going a whole month without taking a dump? One suspected drug dealer in Harlow, England has gone a record-breaking 34 days without passing stools for fear of providing police with evidence after allegedly swallowing drugs right before his arrest last month.

24-year-old Lamarr Chambers was arrested on January 17, after failing to stop his car when police put their lights on. Officers claim that during the chase, the suspect was “moving his head towards his hand and his hand towards his head as if he was eating something”, but when he finally pulled over, Chambers casually told them that he had been eating fried chicken. Police have reason to believe that he actually swallowed crack cocaine and heroin that he intended to sell around Harlow, so they have been holding him in custody and waiting for him to take a number two. But he simply refuses to do it.

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Ever wish there was a way to instantly erase all of your financial debt without actually paying back one cent? Who hasn’t, right? Well, an Indonesian guru claims he can do just that for the followers of his mysterious debt forgiving cult, Swissindo World Trust International Orbit.

With most of the world’s wealth concentrated in the hands the elite, excessive lending has become virtually the only way to ensure that the rest of the world can maintain a decent lifestyle. Over the past couple of decades millions of people around the globe have incurred massive debts that they are unable to pay off. Facing constant pressure from banks or Government financial institutions, many of them are left with no other option than praying for a miracle. And that’s exactly the kind of solution that Swissindo, a cult-like organization in Indonesia, offers – to magically rid the world of financial debt with the help of a massive stash of gold and platinum.

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Residents of Windsor, a Canadian city near Detroit, have been complaining about a mysterious noise interfering with their daily lives for over eight years now, but despite numerous attempts to establish its origin, nobody has been able to figure out what’s causing it.

Called the ‘Windsor Hum’, the mysterious noise plaguing the Canadian city of over 210,000 people reportedly varies in intensity and comes and goes at random intervals. Sometimes it can be heard for just a few hours, and other times it lingers for days, causing those who can hear it to suffer from symptoms like severe headaches, sleeplessness, irritability, depression, among others. Some residents have been so affected by the Windsor Hum that they packed up and moved far away just so they could escape it.

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Suchetha Satish, a 12-year-old Indian girl living in Dubai, recently shattered two Guinness World Records at the same time by singing songs in 102 different languages during an epic concert that lasted 6 hours and 15 minutes.

A seventh grade student at the Indian High School in Dubai, Suchetha only started preparing to break the world record for singing in most languages in a single concert just over a year ago. She already enjoyed singing in several Indian languages, like Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil, as well as English, but she had always been fascinated by foreign languages, and this was an opportunity to learn as many of them as she could and also leave her mark on the world. On January 25, 2018, she 12-year-old girl stunned the audience at the Indian Consulate in Dubai by singing in a whopping 102 languages, for 6 hours and 15 minutes.

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Krishna Sen, a woman from India’s Uttar Pradesh state who posed as a man for over 4 years, was recently arrested for marrying two women and harassing them for dowry.

Krishna had always been a bit of a tomboy, but in 2013 she went a step further, adopting a male persona on social media and approaching women online in hopes of starting a romantic relationship with them. She started wearing men’s clothes, cutting her hair short and even changed her name to Sweety Sen. Over the course of three years, the disguised woman managed to convince two women to marry her, and then started pressuring them and their families for dowry.

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A woman from San Luis Potosí, Mexico came up with an ingenious way of notifying the man who allegedly got her pregnant and then cut off all contact, even blocking her on Facebook, that her pregnancy test came out positive.

Photos of a bizarre advertising billboard on top of a building between Mariano Jiménez Street and Salvador Nava Avenue, in San Luis Polosi, have been doing the rounds on social media over the last couple of weeks. It features the photo of a man in a cowboy hat, along with his full name and a very personal message from the woman who rented it – she’s pregnant and this was apparently the only way to let him know, as he had blocked both her phone number and her Facebook account.

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