A homeless man in Moscow has steadily been building himself an army of followers online ever since he started video blogging in May. The self-confessed ‘bum-blogger’ says his videos are so popular because they “show you the Moscow you have not yet seen “.

Many of the homeless blogger’s videos have gone viral in Russia, and his YouTube channel – where he goes by ‘Zhenya Yakut’ – now has over 35,000 subscribers. His most-viewed videos have nearly half a million hits, and he has over 3,000 followers on Instagram. Yakut, 43, says he’s been homeless for five years now. Through his videos, he tries to give people the low-down about life as a homeless man in Moscow, including “where to eat for free, to sleep, to wash up, where to go, what to see.”

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Twitter, along with countless other social media websites, is often viewed as a productivity killer. But a small town in Spain has actually been using the platform to improve communication between authorities and the people. In fact, Twitter is so important to the people of Jun that they actually built a monument of the iconic ‘blue bird’ in the town’s square.

Since September 2011, the 3,500-strong community has used Twitter to spread local news, developments, job opportunities, orbituaries, and even school dinner menus! Residents book doctor’s appointments, register consumer complaints, and report crimes through their tweets. Jun’s Mayor, José Antonio Rodriguez Salas, has his own account, with a massive following of over 340,000. Locals can contact the Mayor by tweeting him directly.

All the town’s public services, including the police force, have their own Twitter accounts. The force, consisting of only one officer, drives a squad car with ‘@PoliciaJun’ painted on the bonnet. In fact, the bird logo can be seen everywhere, including the Mayor’s office. Even the guy who sweeps the streets tweets amusing messages, with before and after shots of his handiwork.  The town’s elderly aren’t ignored either – there’s a special program in place to teach them how to use the internet and social media.

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Sick of listening to women constantly complain about having to wear high heels, one man challenged himself to wear high heels for a whole day to prove “that girls are huge complainers.” It didn’t go exactly as he planned…

As any woman will tell you, high heels can make your legs look sexy, but wearing them for long periods of time is no picnic on your feet. Even single-sole pumps and platforms will prove painful if you stand or walk in them long enough, but Brandon Cohen, a video correspondent with BroBible.com, actually went for the worst possible option – full-fledged stilettos. He meant to spend a whole day in them, doing all kinds of activities to prove his point, but only managed to keep them on from 8:30 a.m. to 7:15 p.m, most of which he spent sitting, because he couldn’t stand anymore.

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The otherwise quiet town of Westfield, New Jersey, has become the focus of international media attention, after a family was reportedly forced out of their home by a series of bone-chilling letters from a stalker who calls himself “The Watcher”.

Derek and Maria Broaddus bought the six-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot turn-of-the century home for $1.3 million, in June 2014. Three days after signing the papers, they started receiving creepy letters from someone who claimed to be watching the house. “My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched in the 1960s. It is now my time,” the first one read. “I have been put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming.”

The creepy letters also mentioned the Broaddus’ children: “Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested?” the mysterious stalker asked. “Once I know their names I will call to them and draw them out to me.”

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Austrian scientists have invented a revolutionary product in the world of prosthetics – an artificial leg with lifelike sensations. The one-of-a-kind man-made limb has sensors fitted to the sole, which are able to stimulate nerves at the base of the amputee’s stump.

“It feels like I have a foot again,” said Wolfang Rangger, the very first recipient of the sensory-enhanced prosthesis. “I no longer slip on ice and I can tell whether I walk on gravel, concrete, sand, or grass. I can even feel small stones.”

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Brazilian model Mauricio Galdi is the newest addition to the growing band of surgically-enhanced men branded ‘Human Ken Dolls’. After a total of eight procedures in the past decade, his face now looks like that of the popular plastic doll.

Mauricio, 27, claims that he wasn’t actually aiming for the ‘Ken’ look, but now that the media’s given him the title, he doesn’t mind cashing in on the publicity. “I never sought out to be the Brazilian human Ken,” he said. “It was something that came to me, television sought to give me that title.”

We find that kind of hard to believe though, given the fact that he’s been obsessed with dolls since childhood. Growing up in a middle class household in Sao Paulo, Mauricio confessed that he often felt jealous of little girls because it was socially acceptable for them to play with Barbie and Ken. “I saw them playing with dolls and I wanted to do the same,” he admitted, “but I never did for fear of prejudice.”

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Let’s face it: fire drills are boring and they do nothing to prepare you for a real disaster. Recognising the need for some serious training, a school in China recently collaborated with the local fire department to take traditional fire drills to the next level.

During the mandatory annual event hosted by Nanhu Vocational School, in Hongkou District, Shanghai, students had to evacuate the building at the sound of a bell. But they also had to run through a series of burning doorways with napkins over their mouths, to avoid smoke inhalation. After crossing the obstacles, the students used fire extinguishers to put off the flames. Over 1,000 students from different grades attended the course.

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Contact lenses seem harmless, but they can cause the eyes some serious damage, something that 18-year-old Jessica Greaney learned the hard way. She was nearly left blind last month, when a parasite burrowed into her eye and started feeding on her cornea, all because of a contaminated lens.

When Jessica first noticed that her eyelid was drooping, she thought she just had a minor infection. The young girl visited the hospital, where doctors told her it was an ulcer, but in spite of using medication for a week, her symptoms didn’t go away. In fact, they steadily worsened.

“By the end of the week, my eye was bulging, and it looked like a huge red golf ball,” Jessica told student newspaper The Tab. “It was swollen, and extremely painful, and they admitted me into hospital.

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Rajendra Singh is considered a hero in the state of Rajasthan, in India, for single handedly reviving five rivers that had been dried up for decades. His exceptional work and dedication have earned him the nickname ‘Waterman of India’.

Singh, who studied Ayurvedic medicine at college, had always dreamed of becoming a farmer. So when he moved to Rajasthan’s Alwar district after graduating in 1985, he was interested in healing not just his people, but also the semi-arid region’s ailing ecosystem.

Singh noticed that the district’s population was dwindling – most villagers had left their homes after the local Arvari River had dried up in the ’40s, and the only people who remained were either too old or too poor to move elsewhere. Singh, driven by a strong desire to help the villagers, took on the task of bringing water back to those lands.

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Meet Li Li Juan, a former millionaire whose benevolent spirit led her to bankruptcy. The 47-year-old, from northern China’s Hebei Province, has adopted 72 abandoned children over the course of 19 years. She spent all her money caring for them, and is now facing a huge debt of over two million yuan.

Li became rich during the 1980s, earning huge profits from her garments business and her investments in iron ore mining. It was around this time that she started taking in sick and disabled children who were abandoned by their parents, and orphaned children whose parents had died in coal mine disasters. She used her two sources of income to provide for all her adopted children.

It was all smooth sailing for a few years, but as luck would have it, hard times fell upon Li in 2008. Her mine was shut down due to urban developments, cutting down a major source of her income. But she continued to care for the children by selling off all her properties and valuables, one at a time.

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The parents of an African American civil rights leader in Eastern Washington state have shocked the nation by declaring that their daughter isn’t black, as she has claimed to be for the last 10 years. In several recent interviews with the media, Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal revealed that their daughter Rachel is actually caucasian.

“She’s our birth daughter and we’re both of European descent,” Larry told news reporters. “We’re very puzzled and it’s very sad.”

Since January, Rachel has been the president of the Spokane County chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). She is also chair of the city’s police oversight commission, and an adjunct professor of African studies at Eastern Washington University. Rachel is currently estranged from her parents – they claim that they only found out about her disguise when they read about her in a newspaper a few years ago.

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You’re going to have a hard time convincing yourself that the woman in these photos isn’t Britney Spears. In fact, it isn’t a woman at all! It’s actually a man named Derrick Barry, who’s making a living out of impersonating the world-famous celebrity.

It all started a few years ago, when Derrick dressed up as Britney for Halloween. The resemblance was so striking that his friends and family were stupefied. They later told him that he should consider a career as her professional lookalike. And that’s exactly what he did..

The 31-year-old says that he finds it “amazing” to pay tribute to someone he’s idolized since the beginning of her career. “I think even if I wasn’t impersonating her I would still be such a huge fan,” he told Las Vegas Weekly. “I really have the most amazing job in the world. To be a fan of hers and then get to impersonate her around the world is such an honor.”

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In a brilliant use of social media, a news show in Panama City gave potholes in the streets their own voices on Twitter. The crew of Telemetro Reporta installed motion-sensitive devices in craters across the city, programmed to tweet authorities every time cars ran over them, until they fixed the problem!

The makers of the show said that they wanted to highlight how horrible the roads of the city had become. Despite having one of the fastest growing economies of Central and South America and a concentration on skyscrapers that earned it the nickname ‘Dubai of Latin America’, Panama City’s streets were pockmarked with holes and ditches that made every commute a nightmare.

“It would seem that in a rush to build a modern city, Panama forgot to take care of its existing streets, creating a contradiction of modern buildings and damaged streets,” the show’s promo declares. “This is not amusing for the people that drive on the streets every day.”

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In a bid to get African youth interested in current affairs, Newz Beat, a Ugandan original news program features ‘rap-orters’ who rap headlines to hip hop beats.

Hip-hop is probably the last thing you’d expect to hear when listening to a news bulletin, which is exactly what makes Newz Beat so intriguing. Yahoo news reports that the show is quite relevant in Uganda, where the press faces lots of problems with censorship, and the youth aren’t too interested in what’s happening around them. A program that features ‘rap-orters’ instead of traditional anchors is actually quite refreshing.

The offbeat show consists of five-minute episodes aired every Saturday on NTV, just before the station’s traditional news bulletin. Each episode covers about four regional and international stories and is recorded in both English and the local language, Luganda. The show is broadcast on air, but since over 90% of Ugandan households don’t have electricity, Newz Beat is also distributed through video halls, where people can get together and watch it.

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If you’re passionate about breaking high-tech stuff, we may have found the job of your dreams. Believe it or not, a UK-based cell phone comparison website currently has a vacancy for ‘Mobile Phone Destruction Tester’, a part time position that pays £36,500 (nearly $55,00) a year!

The ideal candidate for the job would be someone who loves mobile tech, and has a “long history of destruction, particularly in the field of mobile phones,” the listing on TigerMobiles.com mentions. “We want you to take the latest smartphones and put them through their paces in real world scenarios. Drop them in the bath, stomp them in the mosh pit, accidentally dip them in your Chicken Vindaloo.”

However, candidates would also have to be good with written and spoken English, and familiar with using computers, because “there has to be some boring part to the job.”

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