A Spanish woman got the shock of her life when she received a $570 fine from a town she visited six months ago, for failing to pick up her dog’s poop from a sidewalk.

The unnamed woman from Paterna, in Spain’s Valencia region, had all but forgotten about that time when she chose not to pick up her Bull terrier’s poop while vacationing in Benalmadena, last August, when she received a fine for it last month. So how did authorities in the seaside town located 650 kilometers away, in the province of Malaga, know about it after all this time? They clearly knew it was her dog, as the notice she received in the mail featured the street that the excrement had been found on and the date, August 26. Little did she know that her “crime” had been discovered thanks to advanced DNA analysis…

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During a live-streamed event last week, a controversial Tennessee pastor burned tens of fantasy books, including Harry Potter and Twilight, in an alleged attempt to fight “demonic influences”.

Pastor Greg Locke of the Global Vision Bible Church in Mt. Juliet, near Nashville, began his sermon last Wednesday by telling his congregation that he had received a missive from God to skip Holy Communion and instead organize a good ol’ fashioned book burning. The event, which was live-streamed on Facebook, was organized to denounce “witchcraft,” and involved dozens of copies of books like Harry Potter and Twilight, as well as other “dangerous” objects that Locke claimed symbolized witchcraft.

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A wanted prison escapee dubbed the “Galician Rambo” eluded capture by hiding in the forests of Galicia since March of 2021.

Alfredo Sánchez Chacón, a Spanish ex-military and survival expert, was sentenced to hard time in prison for shooting and killing a 24-year-old man in 1996. Back then, authorities spent months combing the forests of Galicia and hunting him down, but they eventually captured the wanted man. Then, during the murder trial, Sánchez Chacón escaped Vigo prison by using a brawl between other prisoners to climb down from the prison building using a bedsheet and then getting over the walls. It wasn’t until 2002 that he was once again apprehended. He was sentenced to 17 years for murder, as well as additional time for his prison escape and other minor crimes. The survival expert was still serving his sentence when he disappeared in March of last year…

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Every year, on January 17, the people of San Bartolome de Pinares, in Spain, celebrate St. Anthony by riding their horses, donkeys and mules through piles of burning tree branches in a celebration called Las Luminarias.

The unique tradition of leaping over and through flames dates back 500 years, but the men and women of San Bartolome de Pinares village still celebrate it religiously. They gather all the branches they find in the days leading up to the festivities, and when dusk falls on the eve of Saint Anthony’s, they light them ablaze. Riders lead their mounts through the burning piles of the village, accompanied by sounds of drums and Spanish bagpipes.

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A new type of South Korean face mask that only covers the wearer’s nose has been getting a lot of attention from the western press lately.

Called ‘kosk” –  a combination of ‘ko’, the Korean word for nose, and ‘mask’ – the unusual face mask sold by South Korean company Atman consists of two parts, one of which can be removed to leave the wearer’s mouth exposed. They are apparently designed to provide some level of protection against Covid while eating, but can also be worn in nose-only mode at any time. Kosk is just one of the nose-only face masks available in South Korea these days, and the unusual trend has sparked some controversy in the western world, with many declaring the facial accessories utterly useless.

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The Japanese Bobtail is a rare car breed whose distinctive feature is the presence of a short, bunny-like tail, instead of the long, flexible tail of most other felines.

No one knows exactly when this unusual cat breed arrived in Japan, but it has been a part of Japanese culture for at least several hundred years, being frequently featured in traditional art and folklore. In the early 1600s, the breed played a major role in preserving Japan’s silkworm production, by taking on rodents, and by the next century, the bobtail was already the dominant cat breed being kept in Japan. No one knows whether it was because of its distinctive tail, which looked like it had been bent and broken, its friendly personality, or its talkative nature, but the Japanese Bobtail became extremely popular in the Japanese country and remains so today. However, it remains extremely rare outside the borders of Japan.

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Thanks to a new law, a Swiss man was able to change to officially change his gender so he could retire and receive his pension a year earlier.

On January 1st, 2022, a new law came into effect in Switzerland, one that allows any Swiss resident with the “intimate conviction” that they do not belong to the sex they are registered as in the civil status register to change their gender as well as their first name, for just 75 francs ($81.50). Technically, there are supposed to be regulations preventing individuals from taking advantage of the new rules for nefarious purposes, but in reality, civil servants have “no obligation to verify the intimate conviction of the persons concerned,” and usually assume that they are acting in good faith. Sadly, that’s not always the case…

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Because of their slender physique, incredibly long legs and upright pose, Modern Game Bantams are considered by many the fashion models of the poultry world, but few know that they also have a mean streak.

Modern Game chickens take their name from the ‘old English game’, a chicken breed brought to the English Isles in the 1st century by the Romans. Bred exclusively for cock fighting, the old English game grew immensely popular over the century because, well, raising a chicken was relatively affordable, and cockfighting was a “sport” anyone could partake in. However, things changed in 1849, when cock fighting was officially banned in England, by order of the Queen. All of a sudden, the old English game was retired, and a new, modern variant took its place.

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Chateau Erken, in the Russian Federation’s Kabardino-Balkaria autonomous republic, looks like an extremely well-preserved medieval castle, but in reality, this architectural wonder is just over a decade old.

Located in the vineyard-dominated countryside of Kabardino-Balkaria, Chateau Erken is a tourist attraction unlike any other in Russia. Not only does it mimic the fortress-like design of European medieval castles, but its location in the middle of a man-made lake full of fish and wild birds is just as impressive. People from all over the country come to this rural area in Southern Russia to see Chateau Erken in person. Photos and videos of this amazing castle have been doing the rounds on social media for years, but some people still can’t believe it exists and that it was built not by a king, but by a legendary businessman.

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Chinese real-estate giant Vanke Group recently sparked controversy after naming its advanced AI-powered debt collector its employee of the year for 2021.

Looking at a picture of Cui Xiaopan, Vanke Group’s employee of 2021, you’d think she was a woman in her 20s with a very determined look on her face, but in reality, she isn’t even human. The AI-generated photo that the Chinese company uses to depict its star debt collector is just an attempt of attaching an eye-pleasing face to what is otherwise a cold-and calculated artificial intelligence. However, when it comes to performance, the AI debt-collector managed to surpass her human colleagues by quite a large margin, registering a 91.44% success rate in collecting overdue payments.

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A young Chinese man who had been experiencing severe headaches lately was shocked to learn that he had been living with a bullet in the left side of his skull for about two decades.

Xiao Chen (pseudonym), a 28-year-old man from Shenzen, had been suffering from random headaches for as long as he could remember, only lately they had been getting more frequent and more severe. At first, Chen thought that the pain was caused by his lack of sufficient sleep on weekdays, but sleeping wasn’t the answer, especially since the headaches kept him up at night. Finally, things got so bad that he decided to go to the hospital, where doctors discovered a rather bizarre cause of the pain.

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Tropical rainforests are densely populated with a remarkable diversity of plant life, from various trees to vines, shrubs and flowers, but deep in the Amazon rainforest there are large areas that consist of a single tree species. These are known as Devil’s Gardens.

The indigenous tribes of the Amazon rainforest have known about Devil’s Gardens for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and they have eerie local legends that speak of evil spirits. In fact, it’s these stories that inspired the name of the mysterious tracts of vegetation randomly spread throughout the jungle. Many locals believe that they were planted by an evil spirit, and who can blame them? After all, how can one explain large areas of otherwise diverse rainforest where only a single tree species appears to thrive? Well, a few years back, researchers found that Devil’s Gardens are not the work of the devil, but that of a small ant that only aims to ensure the survival of its habitat.

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Residents of several villages in Russia’s Magadan region have recently reported black snow caused by the soot produced by an outdated, coal-powered water-heating plant.

In Omsukchan and neighboring Seimchan, two villages in the Siberian far east, snow doesn’t always look the way you’d expect. In fact, sometimes it’s quite the opposite. Instead of an immaculate white covering everything as far as the eye can see, locals are treated to a nightmarish view of black, soot-covered snow that the kids sometimes play in. Photos and videos of this disturbing scenery have been doing the rounds online every winter for years, but locals say that despite the temporary outrage they spark online, nothing ever changes.

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Corvid Cleaning, a Swedish startup specializing in training crows to pick up litter in exchange for food, claims that its program could save communities a fortune in cleaning costs.

According to the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation, over a billion cigarette butts are left on Sweden’s streets every year which represents about 62 percent of all litter. Teaching humans not to throw cigarette butts on the street has so far proven impossible, but a Swedish startup claims it can teach crows to pick up after us and save local communities millions of krone in cleaning fees every year. Corvid Cleaning teaches wild crows to do our dirty work through a step-by-step learning process, that involves rewarding the birds with food for every cigarette butt they collect.

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People on the lookout for affordable housing in the Swiss city of Zurich can now opt for a two-person tent on an open balcony offering “a view of the starry evening sky” for just 500 Swiss francs ($540) a month.

Finding a cheap place to rent in Zurich is almost impossible these days, because of the city’s competitive property market, so one resourceful tenant decided to subsidize her own monthly rent by subletting the balcony of her apartment on the open market. The offer includes a waterproof tent complete with an insulating mat, mattress and pillows, as well as access to the apartment’s kitchen, living room and bathroom. Believe it or not, the woman, known only as Sandra, has already had a good response to the ad she posted earlier this month.

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