When it comes to telling when someone is lying, we currently have very few options, but a team of Israeli researchers claims to have come up with something better than anything we’ve seen before.

Using stickers printed on soft surfaces containing electrodes that monitor and measure the activity of muscles and nerves, a team of researchers led by Prof. Dino Levy from Tel Aviv University, discovered that some people involuntarily activate muscles in their cheeks and eyebrows when they lie. No sensors had been able to measure these subtle muscle contractions before, but the innovative ones invented by Prof. Yael Hanein and sold by Israeli company X-trodes proved sensitive enough. Tests revealed a 73% success rate of lie identification, better than any existing technology.

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Unable to find the medicine his two-year-old son desperately needs in China or even import it from abroad, a loving father set up his own laboratory and synthesized the drug himself.

Two-year-old Haoyang suffers from Menkes Syndrome, an ultra-rare genetic disorder that affects how copper is processed and absorbed in the body. The boy cannot move or speak and experts claim he only has months left to live but his father refuses to give up on him. As long as he draws breath, he is determined to do everything he can for his son, even if it means teaching himself chemistry and producing the medicine Chinese authorities have been unable to provide. Xu Wei, a desperate father from southwestern Kunming, has touched millions with his determination and unwavering devotion to his ailing son.

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A Michigan woman who turned to a bogus rent-a-hitman website to have an assassin kill her ex-husband was recently convicted for solicitation of murder.

The internet is amazing. You can find just about any kind of information or service if you put in the work and do some research, but when it comes to hiring someone to be your hitman, you may want to skip the obvious options. Wendy Wein, a 52-year-old woman from Michigan who wanted her ex-husband dead, failed to do just that. She found the website RentAHitman.com and assumed that it was a legitimate business where vengeful people like her could find professionals to do their dirty work for them. It won’t surprise anyone that this wasn’t the case and that she is now facing at least nine years behind bars.

RentAHitman.com promises confidentiality, boasts about complying with HIPPA, which apparently stands for the non-existent “Hitman Information Privacy & Protection Act of 1964,” features testimonies from satisfied customers, including women who caught their husbands cheating, and offers access to a network of over 17,000 “field operatives”. And that’s apparently more than enough for people to put in an order for a hitman…

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The picturesque Ohau Waterfall on New Zealand’s Kaikoura coast is the only waterfall in the world that doubles as a seal creche, a place where the young marine mammals can play and socialize without having to worry about predators.

Ohau is a 15-meter-high horsetail waterfall (the water maintains contact with the bedrock as it falls). It’s not the most eye-catching waterfall in the world, but it has something that no other land waterfall has – adorable seals. For one to three months a year, the shallow pool at the bottom of Ohau waterfall acts as a creche for dozens of New Zealand fur seal pups. By playing and interacting with each other, the young seals learn important behaviors and develop social skills, all while putting on an unforgettable spectacle for human visitors.

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California-based startup SpinLaunch has been making news headlines for its innovative approach to space flight – using a vacuum-sealed centrifuge to hurl rockets into space.

SpinLaunch has been working on a launch system that uses kinetic energy as its primary method. It relies on a complex mechanism that includes a vacuum-sealed centrifuge to spin the space rocket at several times the speed of sound before launching it upwards through a chute. If successful, SpinLaunch’s system could prove to be the most cost-effective and most reliable way of getting objects into outer space. The company has already had a successful launch in October, using its SpacePort suborbital accelerator in New Mexico to get a prototype vehicle tens of thousands of feet into the atmosphere.

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Scientists recently found that one of the world’s “toothiest” animals, the Pacific lingcod, keeps its 555 teeth razor-sharp by losing up to 20 of them every day and growing them right back.

The Pacific lingcod (Ophiodon elongatus) is a carnivorous fish found in the North Pacific. You couldn’t tell just by looking at it, but this 20-inch (on average) fish has one of the scariest mouths in the world. Instead of the incisors, molars, and canines we’re used to seeing, it has hundreds of nearly microscopic teeth lining its jaws. Their hard palate is also covered in hundreds of tiny spikes, as are the pharyngeal jaws, a set of accessory jaws that the lingcod uses to chew its food the way we use our molars. Now scientists have found that Pacific lingcod keep their hundreds of teeth sharp by losing and then growing dozens of them in a day.

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A Chinese man was banned from an all-you-can-eat buffet in Changsha for eating kilograms of pork and prawns on every visit, causing the business to lose too much money.

A food streamer known only as Kang told local reporters that he was banned from the Handadi Seafood BBQ Buffet in Changsha city simply because he can eat more than the average patron. He admitted that he ate around 1.5kg of pork trotters during his first visit to the restaurant and 3.5kg to 4kg of prawns on his second visit before getting banned, but considers that he is being discriminated against because of his healthy appetite. The owner of the restaurant obviously disagrees.

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Sumomomomomomomomo, a Japanese racehorse that recently claimed its maiden win, was dubbed “the horse that makes commentators cry” because of its tongue-twister name.

The three-year-old mare claimed victory at Tokyo’s Oi racecourse a couple of weeks ago and has since become somewhat of a celebrity on Japanese social media. Its name, which is based on a Japanese tongue-twister that means “plums and peaches are both peaches,” captured people’s imagination, and now everyone is rooting for her to win, just so they can hear race commentators struggling to say ‘Sumomomomomomomomo’. Just listen to NHK announcer Izumi Tanaka commentate the horse’s recent victory, and you’ll understand why people want to hear more of it.

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When gold, platinum and precious stones aren’t enough to sell custom iPhones, it’s time to bring out the good stuff, and there are few things more intriguing than real dinosaur teeth.

Caviar has been producing custom luxury variants of popular iPhone models for many years now, but this year they’re doing something completely different. After producing various types of gold-plated and diamond-encrusted iPhones, the Russian company is now introducing real dinosaur teeth as part of its arsenal. The recently-unveiled Tyrannophone is an iPhone 13 Pro made from a lightweight composite material featuring 24 K gold-plated alloy inserts. But the truly special thing about the Tyrannophone is the embossed tyrannosaurus head on the back, more precisely one of the dinosaur’s teeth, which is actually an 80 million-year-old T-Rex tooth.

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Dr Manoj Mittal, a child specialist from Haryana, in India, sparked controversy online after appearing on camera to praise the benefits of eating cow dung, while feasting on it himself.

Traditional Indian medicine has long been promoting cow dung as a cure-all that can even stave off conditions like cancer and Covid, but this didn’t include trained doctors who generally believe in things like science and clinical trials. Well, as in virtually any field, there are exceptions, and Manoj Mittal, an MD from the Karnal district of Haryana, is definitely one such exception. In a recently-posted video that has since gone viral, Mottal can be seen taking bites from a piece of cow dung and praising its benefits on the human body, mind, and soul.

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If Aquaman had a home on dry land, I imagine it would look very similar to this Russian apartment that’s been getting a lot of attention on social media lately.

Featuring a floor that imitates the ocean, complete with dolphins, sea stars, seashells and other marine life, this Russian apartment put on sale for a whopping 27,499,000 rubles ($376,000) is one of the craziest-looking apartments we’ve seen in a while. The 240-square-meter abode also features some wild wall decor, like a cloud-covered sky to complement the sandy beaches and turquoise water on the floor, as well as some pink furniture that seems out of place.

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As part of this year’s Movember, Australian menswear brand Politix teamed up with visual artist Pamela Kleeman-Passi to create a unique suit using men’s mustache hair.

Movember is an annual event that encourages men all around the world to grow their mustaches in the month of November to raise awareness of serious men’s health problems, such as prostate cancer and testicular cancer. This year, Politix decided to do something special for Movember, and ultimately decided on a wearable men’s suit made using real mustache hair. It turned out to be one of the most hideous, disgusting-looking suits we’ve ever seen, but at least it’s for a good cause, and it’s a hell of a conversation starter.

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Following a penalty shootout to their Iranian rivals in a women’s football match, Jordanian officials have called on the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) to launch an investigation to determine the sex of the Iranian team’s goalkeeper.

On September 25, following a goalless draw, the Iranian and Jordanian women’s football teams went to a penalty shootout to determine who would qualify to the 2022 Women’s Asian Cup. The Jordanians were heavy favorites to win the game, but the opposing goalkeeper had other plans. Zohreh Koudae saved two penalties, securing her team’s 4-2 shootout victory, and the national team’s first-ever appearance at the Women’s Asian Cup. Only the story doesn’t end here. Jordanian officials have since called on the Asian Football Confederation to investigate whether the Iranian goalkeeper is actually a woman.

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Chinese real-estate agencies are paying so-called “haunted house testers” to spend at least 24 hours in ‘stigmatized’ properties in order to convince potential buyers that they are completely safe.

Real-estate properties where “unnatural deaths” have occurred are really tough to sell, especially in markets where superstition and the belief in supernatural phenomena are strong. Japan, for example, has an agency that specializes in marketing and selling such stigmatized properties, because they don’t really appeal to the mainstream market. China does things a little differently. Apparently, real-estate agencies pay haunted house testers to spend at least one night in problematic homes to prove that they are not haunted.

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Some people spend most of their lives putting together a collection worthy of being recognized by the Guinness Book of Records, but one girl managed to achieve this feat at the tender age of six.

Scarlett Ashley Cheng is crazy about lip balm, and together with her sister, Kaylyn (8), owns the world’s largest collection of lip balms, numbering 3,388 different items. Their amazing collection features lip balms of different types, colors, textures and shapes, from known brands like Burt’s Bees, Eos, Humble or Nivea, as well as some obscure ones. Like most kids, Scarlett and her sister discovered lip balms when they started getting dry lips. Their grandmother introduced them to balms, and they just kind of went down the rabbit hole after that.

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