A 27-year-old Russian man who has been imploring viewers to vote him out of a Chinese boy band reality show for months, has finally got his wish, but not before making it all the way to the final.

Vladislav Ivanov, a translator and part-time model from Vladivostok, Russia, is finally free after two grueling months. Earlier this year, the 27-year-old, who speaks fluent Chinese, got a gig to support to Japanese contestants on a Chinese reality-show that would culminate in the forming of a new boy band. Ivanov agreed, but upon arriving on the tropical island where the show was to be filmed, his good looks kept getting him confused with the contestants. The show’s director noticed this, and knowing that he could speak Chinese, persuaded him to participate in the reality-show, and “live in a new way”. It turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

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Hundreds of new sinkholes have been reported in Turkey’s agriculturally-focused Konya Province since the start of the year, almost double the number registered last year, and apparently it’s yet another man-made problem.

Konya Provine, located in the eponymous Konya Plain, has always been known as Turkey’s breadbasket or green silo, because of the vast sea of wheat spanning every which way, as far as the eye can see. But while Konya remains the country’s main agricultural center, the persistent drought plaguing farmers in this area has caused an unforeseen problem that has only been getting worse in recent years – sinkholes. As cultivators increasingly turn to groundwater to keep their crops alive, the giant caverns drained of water eventually collapse under the weight of the soil above, creating holes tens of meters across and up to 150-meters-deep.

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A Florida man and his three sons have been indicted for allegedly selling a dangerous chemical mix called “Miracle Mineral Solution” (MMS) as a cure for Covid-19 and dozens of other serious health conditions.

62-year-old Mark Grenon and his three adult sons, Jonathan, Jordan and Joseph stand accused of marketing and selling tens of thousands of bottles of MMS all over the United States, claiming that it could treat, prevent and cure Covid-19, as well as other diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, HIV/Aids, malaria, and even autism. Prosecutors dispute those claims, saying that Miracle Mineral Solution is actually a solution that, when ingested, becomes “chlorine dioxide, a powerful bleach typically used for industrial water treatment or bleaching textiles, pulp, and paper”.

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A young Vietnamese couple got their five minutes of online fame last month after photos of their unique Doraemon-themed engagement party went viral on social media.

Khanh Lam and Xuan Khanh are both big fans of Doraemon, the blue robotic cat beloved by millions of people all over the world, so while brainstorming ideas on how to make their engagement an event to remember, they decided to go with a Doraemon-themed party. Although they expected their families to disagree with their “childish” idea, they were surprised to receive a lot of support from everybody. About six months ago, they started collecting all sorts of Doraemon memorabilia and last month they finally put together their dream engagement party.

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Chinese media recently reported the story of a scrupulous Lothario who dated dozens of women at the same time, scamming them out of millions of dollars over a period of two years.

On March 20th, a woman arrived at a police precinct in Zhengzhou, China’s Henan Province, to file a rather unusual complaint. Apparently, she had been defrauded of more than 9 million yuan ($1.3 million) by her boyfriend, who she had met in 2019. The accused, a man named Zhang Nan, had deceived the woman, claiming to be the son and grandson of powerful public officials, and asking for important sums of money over the last couple of years. This sort of romantic scams are not entirely unheard of in China, but what made this case special was that the police investigation revealed that Zhang had scammed at least 20 women who he had been dating at the same time.

The woman who filed the original complaint, henceforth referred to by the pseudonym Zhang Li, told investigators that he had met the scammer at a car wash one day. He seemed very nice and after texting on WeChat for a while, they became romantically involved. She was emotionally vulnerable at the time, and fell right into Zhang Nan’s trap, believing his web of lies and ignoring all the warning signs.

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When it comes to hyperrealistic airbrushed portraits, you’ll have a tough time finding better works than those of South Carolina artist Dru Blair. His amazing paintings are virtually indistinguishable from photos.

Dru Blair first picked up the airbrush while working on his Master’s degree at the University of South Carolina, and spent several summers after that painting T-shirts in Myrtle Beach. Later, he worked as a freelance illustrator for several ad agencies and painted many novel covers, before developing an interest in techniques like photorealism, trompe l’oeil illusionism, faux finishing, and color theory. Today, he creates some of the most realistic airbrush portraits and teaches the secrets of the trade to other interested artists at his art school, aptly named School of Realism.

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Aleksandr and Maria Dmitriev, a young couple from Penza, Russia, have been sharing their home with a mountain lion for the past three years.

Cats are in the top two most common pets worldwide, but the cat Aleksandr and Maria Dmitriev live with in their small one-bedroom apartment is a little different. Messi is a 3-year-old cougar, the second-largest feline in the Americas, after the Jaguar. In the wild, it is considered an apex predator, but Messi was born in a petting zoo and has spent most of his life as a house cat, so he basically behaves like an overgrown cat, for now. The Dmitriev’s are aware that Messi is a predator that will, at some point, test their strength to establish who is in charge of the house, but they have taken steps to keep his wild side in check.

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Taasheer is a traditional war dance performed by Saudi men and boys which involves spectacular, well-timed leaps that synchronize with the dramatic discharge of long muzzle-loading rifles.

Once performed before battle to motivate fighters and instill fear in the heart of the enemy, Taasheer is now performed at important social events, like weddings and festivals. Boys are trained to perform the traditional dance from a young age, first with an unloaded weapon, until they are ready to handle the gun powder. It is passed down from generation to generation, and the people of Taif hope to be able to preserve it forever.

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They say finding yourself in the right spot, at the right time, is the key to success, and this Nigerian homeless man who got the opportunity of a lifetime while sleeping under a bridge is the perfect example.

You could say it was fate that Ali Olakunmi, a young Yoruba man from Nigeria’s Osun State, found himself sleeping under the same bridge that a creative director had chosen as the backdrop for a fashion shoot. As a homeless man in Ikeja, a suburb of Lagos, he didn’t really have any better options, but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Afolabi (AL), the creative director we mentioned above, was waiting under the same bridge for a male model that was running late, and he happened to notice this young man who seemed to have all the features he was looking for in a model, so he approached him about putting on some clothes and posing for some pictures. And that’s how Ali the homeless became Ali the fashion model.

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The people of Haifa, a city in Northern Israel, have become used to sharing the streets with wild boars, or even seeing them rummage through their trash cans. The animals have become a part of thee local culture.

No one really knows when and why the boars decided to move from the ravines around Haifa into the city, but they’ve definitely been there long enough to no longer fear the human population anymore. Boars can be seen roaming the streets as cars drive by, digging through people’s trash right under their eyes, and even sleeping in the sun as humans walk past them. They’ve just adapted to the urban lifestyle, and most of the people here have had no choice but to get used to them as well. But while some now accept the wild boars as part of the local charm of Haifa, there are those who claim that something needs to be done about them.

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Almost nothing is what it seems on the internet these days, and this 53-year-old man posing as a woman in her 20s on social media is perfect proof of that.

If you’re familiar with FaceApp, you probably already know about its switch gender option, which lets you see what you would look like as the opposite gender. It’s all in good fun, but one Japanese male fan of the app has managed to build quite an impressive following on social media by transforming himself into an attractive, realistic-looking young girl. The 53-year-old man, who describes himself as “addicted to FaceApp”, spends his free time taking selfies, editing them and uploading them on his social media profiles.

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A member of a popular South Korean K-pop group has been getting a lot of attention because of his unusual hairstyle – long bangs that completely cover the upper half his face, including his eyes.

Junji (준지) is one of the seven members of OnlyOneOf, an all-male K-pop group founded in 2019. He’s easy to identify among his band mates, as he’s the one with the face half covered by long, blonde bangs. He’s been sporting the bizarre hairstyle since January 2020, and has managed to generate quite a lot of buzz in South Korean entertainment business, because of it. Some people have been speculating that Junji is trying to conceal his looks because he wants fans to like him for more than just looks, others that he is simply not as handsome as the other six members, but the important thing is that they’ve been talking about him a lot.

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A small village located on the banks of the Yangtze River, in Sichuan Province, has become known as one of China’s premier suppliers of ornamental stones, generating millions of dollars in revenue every year.

Positioned in an idyllic location, right next to China’s largest river and surrounded by green, forest-covered mountains, Hejiaba village gets a decent number of tourists every year, but tourism isn’t the most profitable local business. That title goes to the collection and sale of ornamental river stones; not the small ones that fit in the pocket as good luck charms, but heavy boulders that enthusiasts all over China pay good money on to add them to their collections. It’s estimated that Hejiaba village generates around 20 million yuan ($3.08 million) annually from the sale of this virtually inexhaustible resource.

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A retired elderly couple has been fighting the desertification of their home in North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region for the last 19 years by planting hundreds of hectares of drought-resistant plants.

Seventy-year-old Tububatu and his wife Taoshengchagan live in a village on the edge of Badain Jaran, China’s third-largest desert, and they’ve been spending every day since their retirement (in 2002) fighting the advancement of the desert with the help of plant-life. Others had tried fighting the desert and failed, but Tububatu just wanted to know if he could make a difference. He started out by planting just 50 trees, but kept doubling his efforts to the point where he now plants thousands of saplings a year. His small desert oasis now spans over 266 hectares and numbers tens of thousands of drought-resistant trees.

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2020 was a rough year for gym-goers, and 2021 isn’t shaping up to be much better in that regard. Luckily, you can now get the hot body you’ve always dreamed, without moving a muscle, thanks to these realistic muscular body suits.

Thanks to silicone body suits like those made by Chinese company Smitizen, you can now look incredibly ripped without even getting off the couch. Complete with realistic looking muscles, bulging veins and anatomically-correct positioning, the muscular body suits create the illusion of a perfectly-toned upper body, especially when worn under a tight shirt. Some even come with fake body hair… Apparently, these ultra-realistic body suits have become increasingly popular on Chinese ecommerce platforms like Taobao and Aliexpress.

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