Staff at a Tokyo aquarium have appealed to the general public to help them keep their garden eels accustomed to humans by video-calling the marine creatures during the current Covid-19 pandemic, when the venue is closed.

The coronavirus pandemic has already affected the way we live, but it’s apparently taking a toll on aquarium eels as well, particularly the ones at the Sumida Aquarium, in Tokyo, which have reportedly started to forget what humans look like after the place closed down in March. Aquarium staff took to social media to report that their once sociable garden eels have started hiding in the sand when any of the few keepers walk by their tank, which suggests that they are starting to forget what humans look like.

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A Chinese man who spent seven months away from his apartment in Langfang, Hebei Province, recently returned to find his home had transformed into a small botanical garden.

The unnamed man took to social media to share videos and photos of what he found when he entered his home, after being away for almost seven months, since before the Covid-19 crisis. You can see vines lining the walls of the apartment, using hanging photos, the TV set and furniture as supports to advance further into the home, and even some stems hanging from the roof. The video of this small botanical garden quickly went viral, leaving many social media users wondering how the plants grew so much without him to look after them. It seems the man’s brother had a part to play as well.

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An elderly couple from China’s Henan province took legal action against their own son for neglecting his duty of financially supporting them.

Filial piety isn’t that important of a notion in the Western world, but in China it’s a big deal. Failing to take care of your elderly parents is actually considered a legal offense both in China and in other countries with large Chinese communities, like Singapore or Taiwan. It’s actually not uncommon for parents to sue their offspring for neglecting them in their old age, and while most reconcile their differences before having punitive measures enforced, some don’t and police, revenue service and banks have to get involved. Such was the case of an elderly couple whose son flat out refused to support them even after being ordered to by a judge.

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A Taiwanese female model spent years battling online harassment after an innocent photo she shot for a photo agency was used for a completely unrelated news report and later turned into a meme.

In 2012, international media (OC included) featured the story of a Chinese businessman who had allegedly sued his wife for misleading him into thinking that she was naturally beautiful. The man claimed that his wife’s good looks were the result of plastic surgery and that he had only learned about it after confronting the woman, because their daughter didn’t seem to have inherited either of their good looks. In terms of wow factor, it wasn’t the best story we’ve ever featured, but it was funny and crazy enough to go viral. At the time, no one imagined that the photo used by Chinese media for illustration purposes only would one day end up ruining the female protagonist’s life…

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last eight years, you’ve probably seen this photo online at least once. It shows a ridiculously good-looking couple with three not so good-looking children. This was the photo used in the original Chinese news article and the one that Taiwanese model Heidi Yeh claims ruined her professional modelling career and caused personal issues as well.

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South Korean media recently reported the disturbing case of a high-school teacher who scolded and humiliated a student in front of the class, causing him to take his life that same day.

On April 26th, 2020 ethics professor at Youngshin Middle School in Pohang City referred to only as “A”, for personal privacy reasons, was convicted of child abuse and sentenced to 10 months in prison and had his teaching license suspended for 5 years. His crime: shaming a 9th grade student in front of the whole class after catching him reading a light manga novel, and causing him to end his own life, because of the humiliation. The teacher’s sentencing sent shock waves through South Korean social media, with some users accusing the teacher of bullying, and other expressing fears that the case set a precedent that will put fear into other teachers, preventing them from being strict when they need to be.

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An Indian mother got the shock of a lifetime this week when she sent her son out to get groceries and he came back with a woman he claimed was his wife.

The unnamed woman from Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad city told India’s ANI news agency that she had sent her son out to buy groceries, but instead he came back with a strange woman he said was his wife. The teary-eyed woman said the shock was too much for her and she was unable to accept their union.

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Made famous by Canadian rapper Drake, the Grand Vividus mattress by Swedish manufacturer Hästens and artist and designer Ferris Rafauli is a work of art that only the super-rich can afford.

This month, Architectural Digest magazine featured Drake’s 50,000 square-foot mansion in Toronto, and despite all the cool amenities presented, all anyone could talk about was the rapper’s luxurious-looking mattress. As you can probably imagine, this isn’t your run of the mill mattress, but a bespoke, hand-made masterpiece fit for an internationally-acclaimed artist worth over $150 million.

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Legendary photography company Kodak recently launched a gigantic jigsaw puzzle made up of 51,300 pieces and measuring a whopping 28.5 feet by 6.25 feet.

If you’ve gone through all your jigsaw puzzles and are looking for a real challenge, Kodak just released what it calls “the world’s largest puzzle” (that you can buy), featuring images of iconic landmarks shot by professional photographers. But putting your patience and jigsaw solving skills to the test will cost you both real money and a lot of space, as Kodak’s behemoth will set you back between $409.99  and $599.99, and will probably take up a decent-sized room when completed.

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Last weekend, as most parts of the world enforced extreme social distancing measures to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, a crowd of thousands gathered in the Dominican city of Puerto Plata to listen to a popular “pilgrim” prophesize that God will rid the country and the whole world of this pandemic.

In flagrant breach of the social distancing measures imposed by the Dominican Government, a crowd of thousands of people accompanied pilgrim Mildomio Adames to a local square where the self-proclaimed holy man revealed that he had had a divine revelation. Adames told the excited crowd that he had to dump a large wooden crucifix into the sea to make God end the Covid-19 pandemic.

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A 57-year-old woman from Ukraine recently made international news headlines for surviving a brutal assault by her drunk neighbors which saw her beaten for hours and then digging her own grave in the local cemetery.

Earlier this month, media outlets from the Ukrainian region of Poltava reported the shocking case of Nina Rudchenko, a woman who managed to survive after being buried alive by her violent neighbors. The woman told police that she was inside her house in the village of Maryanske when two local brothers aged 27 and 30 stormed in and started hitting her with their fists and a baseball bat. The woman claims to have been badly beaten hours before blacking out and waking up at the local cemetery.

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In a bid to make its exotic fish tank more appealing to visitors, an aquarium in the Chinese city of Guizhou wrote popular Chinese surnames on the live fish, attracting the wrong kind of attention in the process.

Staff at the Guizhou Polar Ocean World thought they had struck gold when they came up with the idea of writing common surnames like “Zhao,” “Hu” or “Wu” on dozens of live fish in an exotic fish tank, but the response wasn’t as positive as they had hoped. Photos and videos of the yellow fish with bright red Chinese characters painted on their bodies quickly went viral on social media and inspiring thousands of critical comments from the general public.

Overwhelmed by the negative feedback, the Guizhou Polar Ocean World recently put out a statement saying that their exotic fish tank was generally overlooked by most visitors, and that the painted surnames were supposed to make the fish more appealing to the public.

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Three female college students at Northwest Iowa Community College were recently arrested for pranking their roommate in one of the strangest and most disgusting ways imaginable.

It’s unclear how the three girls –  Ann C., a nursing student and member of the All-Iowa Academic Team, Kyiah Elaine K., a 19-year-old former Honor List student, and 20-year-old Ellie T. – came with the idea of putting their gross foot skin shavings in their roommate’s bag of grated cheese and then watching her unknowingly eat it, but that’s reportedly just what they did. The terrible prank took place at 6 p.m. on March 13, but three alleged perpetrators were only picked up by authorities last week.

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China’s cosmetic surgery market was estimated to be worth around $31 billion in 2018, with double digit growth per year, and at the forefront of it is a 30-year-old self-confessed cosmetic procedure addict who had her first work done when she was only 14.

Wu Xiaochen, or Abby, as she is known on social media, is perhaps China’s most popular plastic surgery crusader. Her perfect features fascinate and inspire millions of young women who either dream of making it in the competitive entertainment industry, or simply want to correct certain defects so they can regain their self-esteem. She has millions of followers on various social media platforms, owns two cosmetic surgery clinics in Beijing and has worked with some of the biggest brands in China. But Abby’s success didn’t happen overnight. She has been obsessed with plastic surgery for the past 16 years, and has gone under the knife or the needle hundreds of times during that time to make sure that her appearance is impeccable.

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In 2016, Arshad Khan was a “chaiwala” (tea maker) on the streets of Islamabad, in Pakistan, but then he looked into a stranger’s camera at exactly the right moment and that photo catapulted him to stardom.

Arshad’s family has been making tea in Islamabad for almost 30 years, but he had only joined their stall for a few months when professional photographer Javeria Ali spotted him, in September of 2016. Somehow, the young chaiwala managed to look into Ali’s camera at just the right moment to have his striking blue eyes forever immortalised in a photo that has been shared online ever since. Hours after the pic was shared on Twitter, it went viral, and everyone started asking about the handsome chaiwala.

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After three failed IVF attempts, a 68-year-old Nigerian woman and her 74-year-old husband fulfilled their dream of having their own children this month, by giving birth to healthy twins.

Margaret Adenuga is thought to be the oldest first-time mother in Africa, after she welcomed a pair of twins at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, almost two weeks ago. It was reported that she and her husband, 77-year-old Noah Adenuga first tried having children soon after getting married in 1974, but despite spending their life savings and travelling to a number of places both in Africa and in Europe, they couldn’t conceive for 46 years. Still, they never lost hope, and last week, their prayers were answered.

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