‘Balaknama’, or ‘Children’s Voice’, is a quarterly publication that’s completely written and run by children living in New Delhi’s slums. With a readership in the tens of thousands, the newspaper is being hailed as one of the most impressive in the world.

Backed by the Indian non-profit organisation Chetna, Balaknama publishes contributions from a federation of Indian children who work for a living and live off the street. It started with only 35 child-contributors, but the stories come from various Indian states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Andhra Pradesh.

Written in Hindi, the paper covers a range of serious subjects that highlight the problems faced by Indian street children. A typical issue would contain articles related to topics like police brutality, child marriage, and illegal child labor. It’s not what you’d expect from a children’s newspaper, but Balaknama is known for reporting hard truths and harsh realities.

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Through her work, artist and illustrator Yulia Brodskaya demonstrates that you don’t need complicated tools or expensive materials to create brilliant art. She works with simple materials used in everyday life – paper and glue. Using a technique known as quilling, she weaves multi-colored strips of paper into breathtaking three-dimensional patterns.

Yulia, who started her career as a graphic designer and illustrator in 2006, quickly abandoned computer programs to work with paper. “I believe that one of the main reasons I enjoy the paper craft, is due to my love of the material: paper,” she explained.

“I’ve always had a special fascination for paper, it has taken me a while to find my own way of working with it. Now I draw with paper instead of on it. And then it took a little longer to find out that the technique I have been using so intensively is called quilling – it involves the use of strips of paper that can be rolled, shaped, and glued to the background.”

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Ravi Dalchand, senior brand manager at Bissell Canada, will stop at nothing to demonstrate just how great his company’s new steam vacuum cleaner is. Believe it or not,  he has actually eaten pasta off the floor of a busy subway station, after cleaning it with the vacuum.

The event in question took place at Toronto’s Bloor subway station (one of the busiest in the city), where Dalchand was present with the KBS+ Advertising creative team. At the station, the team shot a video while he used the Bissell Symphony All-in-One Vacuum and Steam Mop to scrub a single spot on the floor. After just a couple of minutes, the floor appeared nice and gleam.

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Mark Bustos is a New York hair stylist with a heart of gold. He spends his Sundays – his only day off from work at an upscale salon – giving free haircuts and shaves to the homeless. His heartwarming story has gone viral on Instagram, where he posts photographs of his unusual weekend escapades.

Every Sunday, Mark sets out through the city in search of anyone who might need a trim or a shave. Once he spots someone who fits the description, he approaches them with a simple phrase: “I want to do something nice for you today.” He then proceeds with the haircut and repeats the process for up to six different people.

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When advertising professionals Josephine Wai Lin and Dala Khajak decided to start a business of their own, they knew it had to be something quirky and original. Their new startup is called ‘ManServants’, and no, it’s not a gimmick. The business is basically a man rental service, giving any woman that can afford it the chance to have a good-looking man attend to her every need.

“A Man, But Better,” declares the tagline for the startup, and this pretty much sums up what ManServants is all about. “We believe personal assistants and pool boys are luxuries every woman, or gay guy, deserves – even if it’s just for a day,” the founders write on the official ManServants website.

Their promo video is really something; it claims that for decades women have had to put up with male strippers that they secretly hated. “Ladies, if you hate your friend, and yourself, get her a stripper,” the video advises. “But if you love your friend, get her a ManServant.” You can’t help wondering if the whole thing is a spoof, but the founders insist that it’s a real service. “It’s not a stripper who gets naked and rubs his greasy body all over you,” the website declares. “It’s a ManServant: a gentleman who treats you like a queen.”

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Lonely New Yorker Dan Perino got so tired of traditional dating methods that he’s trying something new and unconventional in order to find love. He’s plastering posters of himself all over Manhattan in a bid to find the woman of his dreams.

It might sound desperate, but he insists that he’s not. The 50-year-old simply believes that it’s a better way of meeting women. The black-and-white posters consist of a large photograph of Dan, with the words ‘Looking for a Girlfriend’ below. He’s currently pasting them all over the city – on post boxes, lamp posts, and parking meters.

Dan claims that he received hundreds of calls only a few hours after the fliers went up. Some women were genuinely interested, while others thought the posters were a joke. As strange as it sounds, the posters idea seems to have worked – Dan already has one date set up.

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Tihar Food Court, a new restaurant in New Delhi, serves its customers a regular fare of north Indian dishes – rice, flatbreads, lentils, samosas, and more. You’d probably get to eat these dishes at many other restaurants in India’s capital, but here’s what’s special about Tihar Food Court – the food is prepared and served by convicts serving time for murder at New Delhi’s infamous Tihar Jail.

The restaurant opened earlier this month within the sprawling Tihar complex – South Asia’s largest prison – as a rehabilitation effort on an experimental basis. It is a rather simple eatery with indoor and outdoor seating for around 50 customers, and cream colored walls decorated with paintings made by prisoners. The small staff consists of a manager who is also a police constable, and seven convicts who have displayed good behavior over several years of imprisonment.

To be eligible to leave prison for a few hours of work at the restaurant, inmates must have a high school education and need to have maintained an ‘unblemished’ record for at least 12 years. They mostly pick prisoners who are due to be released within two years time, so they don’t feel too tempted to escape. The inmates walk or ride a cycle to work everyday completely unsupervised, as the authorities apparently trust them enough not to provide an escort.

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For centuries, the Anga tribe of Papua New Guinea’s Morobe Highlands have practiced a unique mummification technique – smoke curing. Once smoked, the mummies aren’t buried in tombs or graves; instead, they are placed on steep cliffs, so that they overlook the village below. The very sight of a string of charred, red bodies hanging off the mountains might seem quite grotesque, but for the Anga people, it’s the highest form of respect for the dead.

The process itself is carried out carefully and thoroughly by experienced embalmers. At first, the knees, elbows and feet of the corpse are slit, and the body fat is drained completely. Then, hollowed-out bamboo poles are jabbed into the dead person’s guts, and the drippings are collected. These drippings are smeared into the hair and skin of living relatives. Through this ritual, the strength of the deceased is believed to be transferred to the living. The leftover liquid is saved for later use as cooking oil. Read More »

A jilted man impulsively purchased hundreds of IMAX tickets to the latest Transformers film, last week, and posted photos of the receipts online. Even as his bizarre move shocked movie-goers across Beijing, the crazed gentleman gave the tickets away for free to everyone who shared his post on social media. It turns out it was all just a desperate ploy to prove to his ex-girlfriend that he is no longer poor.

The woman in question had dumped our man, Wang, seven years ago. That’s a long time in terms of break-up years, but it looks like Wang still hasn’t gotten over her. He wrote on his Weibo microblog that she had ditched him when he couldn’t afford to take her to the cinema. To add insult to injury, she moved away from him, from their hometown of Nanjing to Beijing.

Clearly stung by the break-up, Wang spent the past seven years working hard to make his Shanghai-based business a success. And he was finally able to afford not just one, but hundreds of cinema tickets worth 250,000 yuan (US $40,000). He claimed that the amount is only half of his present monthly income. He booked all the seats in four of the six IMAX theaters in Beijing, for last Friday’s screening of Transformers: Age of Extinction.

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The newly opened Sugar Daddy University aims to teach women how to become professional sugar babies, and men become better sugar daddies. Located in New York, the school is  run by well-known sugar daddy Alan Schneider, who previously created the top dating site, SugarDaddyForMe. He’s roped in one of his own sugar babies, Carla Abonia, as a professor.

Together, Dean Alan and Carla will teach students the five key elements required to become a successful sugar daddy or sugar baby – sexuality, understanding, generosity, attraction and reciprocity. They’re also collaborating with plastic surgeons, relationship experts and financial experts to help women look better and help men manage the relationship better.

Many tend to frown upon this kind of relationship, but according to Alan there’s nothing wrong with a relationship based on a rich man providing for the woman of his dreams if she provides for him as well. The transaction itself is not the problem, but the associated stigma is. “It’s a whole lifestyle that is taught and refined,” he said.

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As much as I hate packing, I do think this is overdoing it a bit – some rich mothers in New York are actually hiring professional organizers to pack their kids’ trunks for summer camp. Believe it or not, each bag takes a whopping four hours to pack and costs no less than $250 per hour.

So what exactly goes into a bag that needs four hours of packing, you ask? Well, the idea is to fit in all the comforts of home in the luggage, including scented candles, delicate soap and 1,000-thread count sheets (nope, not kidding).

According to Barbara Reich of Resourceful Consultants, several mothers have approached her to do the job. “For a lot of mothers, particularly when their child is going away for the first time, it’s very stressful,” she said. “Clients will say, ‘I need to touch and feel the sheets for softness.’ But these are the kind of things they can control. They’re paying $10,000 for sleep-away camp, so they shouldn’t feel so bad for their child.”

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I always thought people taking pictures of their food was kind of silly, but at this new pop-up restaurant in the UK, I’d probably do it too. ‘The Picture House’ is the world’s first pay-by-photo restaurant – you order, click a photo of the food, share on Instagram and eat for free!

The restaurant belongs to frozen food giant Birds Eye, who came up with the idea to cash in on people’s obsession with photographing food and sharing the pics online. They conducted a survey and found out that more than half of the Brit population regularly took pictures of their meals, nine percent of them on a daily basis. So they realized, what better way to advertize their new dining range than with hashtags?

The pop-up eatery was open in Soho, London for three days in May, and is now moving to other major UK cities. They serve two-course meals that customers don’t have to pay for, if they snap and Instagram it. “We wanted to tap into this social media trend and create a new reason for people to talk about and sample our inspirations range,” said marketing director Margaret Jobling.

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It’s stories like these that make me truly worried for the future of the human race. First we heard of people getting plastic surgery for the picture perfect selfie, and now, in a bizarre new trend, engaged women are getting hand jobs (no pun intended), to achieve the perfect ‘engagement ring selfie’.

It’s the latest thing on social media – as soon as the man pops the question, women click pictures of the ring on their finger, posting it online for the world to see. But not all women are happy with shape of their hands, so they turn to image altering tools like Photoshop to make them look better. Only now they have a new solution – cosmetic hand-lifts.

The procedure involves an anti-aging treatment called Juvederm, which is an injectable form of hyaluronic acid. Doctors use it to convert aging hands with visible tendons and veins into youthful, plump hands worthy of showing off a stunning diamond ring. Usually used on the face to fill in lines and wrinkles, Juvederm works wonders on the hands too, if the ‘before’ and ‘after shots are to be believed.

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New York has got to be the coolest place for kids. First they opened a DJ school for babies, and now they’re welcoming kids into their nightclubs. Fuzipop is a new company that organizes these daytime dance parties for children aged 6 to 12 and their parents. The three-hour parties happen once a month at Manhattan’s most happening clubs. Entry costs $20 for a parent and child, and $60 for a family of four. And here’s the best part – the DJ is nine-year-old!

According to the official website, “Fuzipop is a series of events focused on the celebration of music, dance and community for the next generation of city kids. This new generation has inspired us to provide a proper venue for them to experience what was once only available to a select few.” Fuzipop claims to provide an answer to ‘all our kids who constantly demand, ‘We want to have a dance party!’’.

Fuzipop is the brainchild of a husband and wife duo who also happen to be parents, DJs and music executives. Jesse Sprague, who spent years working in nightclubs around New York, met Jenny Song while dancing at a club. And when they had their first child, they threw a big bash at one of the clubs where Jesse worked. They invited almost all their club friends along with their kids – the party was a huge hit and no one wanted to leave. “All the parents said they would pay to do this, so we made a business out of it,” said Jesse.

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They say good things come to those who wait. But here’s the loophole: what if you could pay someone to do the waiting for you? Same Ol Line Dudes (SOLD Inc.) is a new service in New York that helps people get in line for the latest, hottest and trendiest new products. At $25 for the first hour and $10 for every half hour after that, I think it’s pretty legit. If I could avoid waiting in line and still get to buy the new iPhone or enjoy a cronut, I’d definitely be willing to pay for it.

The idea for the business came to Robert Samuel after he made $325 selling two spots in a line for the iPhone 5 launch last year. That’s when he realized that he could cash in on people’s fear of missing out on new things. “It’s a phenomenon,” he said. “I did an interview with German Public Radio a while ago and I explained FOMO: fear of missing out. Especially in New York, you have friends and you’re hanging out and it’s like, ‘Did you see that new exhibit at MoMA? Do you know what a cronut is?’ People want these things like it’s the end of the world. When I show up to their offices with a sleeping bag in one hand and the cronuts in another, they know they’re getting their money’s worth.”

There have been services like this in the past, but they weren’t exactly ethical. Like these guys who would buy cronuts in bulk and sell them on Craigslist at a higher price. But Robert makes sure he plays by the rules. He has a few super-rich clients. When one of them wants cronuts for his out-of-town guests, Robert gets to the bakery hours ahead of time. He’s always properly equipped – a portable charger, two iPhones, an iPad mini and handwarmers are always at his disposal. A lawn chair, the MetroCast and HBO Go make sure that waiting in line is never a boring experience.

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