A 35-year-old mother of three was on trial this week for allegedly pushing her ex-husband and her new boyfriend – both of whom desperately wanted to be with her – into fighting for her hand in “a latter-day medieval duel”.

Asta Juskauskiene, a care worker living in London, UK, has been accused of being a “manipulative and controlling figure” who pushed two men fighting for her affection to settle their differences through violence. A court recently heard that the woman’s ex-husband, 42-year-old Giedruis Juskauskas, was found bleeding in the streets and was later pronounced dead as a result of suffering multiple stab wounds in a bloody street brawl with Juskauskiene’s new boyfriend, a 25-year-old ex con named Mantas Kvedaras. The Lithuanian national admitted to the killing, but the prosecution says they have ample evidence that he and Giedruis were egged on by their common love-interest.

According to prosecutors, Asta Juskauskiene divorced her Giedruis, against his wishes, six months before his brutal killing. They had a five-year-old daughter together and were reportedly still intimate even after the divorce, so he was a constant presence at her home. The man also provided financial support for their daughter and according to prosecutors he still claimed Asta as his own. His ex-wife had other plans, though.

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When their 15-year-old daughter broke the rules by sneaking in boys at a sleepover party, her parents gave her a choice between handing over her phone for a month, or giving them access to her social media for two weeks. She chose the latter and the internet is so grateful for it.

Madelynn Sumpter’s social media takeover by her parents, Tawnya Ford and Larry Sumpter, began early in November with an Instagram post that announced she had chosen to hand over access to her social media for two weeks, so her follower could expect “some amazing Instagram posts, snapchats and tiktoks from her parents”, and boy did that live up to the hype. On November 11, Maddi’s dad had already began his hilarious quest to embarrass his teen daughter, by posting a selfie captioned “Felt cute. Might delete later”. But that was only the beginning, and by her dad’s third post, the teen was already begging her parents to take away her phone for a month.

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Art collectors are going bananas over an artwork that essentially consists of a real banana duct-taped to a white wall at an art gallery, with some paying as much as $120,000 for it.

Titled “Comedian”, the original artwork by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan was on sale this week from Parisian gallery Perrotin, at the Art Basel festival in Miami. The first edition of the artwork was snatched up by a French art collector for the mind-blowing price of $120,000, and according to gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin a second edition of Comedian was already sold for the same dizzying price. After successfully selling two bananas for a total of $240,000, the artist and the Perrotin gallery owner decided to to up the price of the third edition to $150,000.

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If you’re wondering how hard it is to find affordable housing in Germany’s capital of Berlin, maybe this will give you an idea –  On November 24, a whopping 1,749 people showed up to view a reasonably-priced flat, even though it had only been put on the market the day before.

Located near the Schöneberg Town Hall, the popular flat on the third floor of a 1950s building offers 54 meters of usable space and features two rooms and a balcony. So far nothing to write home about, but what really got people interested was the monthly rent of €550 ($610) per month, including extra costs like heating and water. That’s considered a steal in the German capital, and even more so in the sought-after Schöneberg district, so no one was surprised to see people lining up outside for a viewing. They just didn’t expect over 1,700 of them on the same day.

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Airplane food isn’t exactly considered “haute cuisine”, but one budget airline is betting that people love its airplane food so much that they’d be willing to pay for it at restaurants on the ground.

AirAsia, the largest budget carrier in Asia, has announced plans to open over 100 restaurants globally within the next five years. The restaurants will be offering the same menu AirAsia sells on flights, including chicken rice, the airline’s signature Pak Nasser’s Nasi Lemak dish, pineapple fish, noodle chicken inasal with garlic rice, and onde-onde cake . The move is part of AirAsia’s plans to become a lifestyle brand, and the company hopes that its Asia dishes will make people choose it over Western competitors.

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Our online data is already monetized by several technology giants, but one Japanese IT company thinks real-life data could be monetized as well, and it’s willing to pay people to have their everyday life video-recorded and sold to various businesses.

Last month, Tokyo-based Plasma.inc made national news headlines for inviting people to take part in a controversial social experiment called “Project Exograph”. Participants must agree to have their living rooms, bathrooms, changing areas, kitchens and other parts of their homes wired with cameras that would film them continuously for roughly one month. At the end of the experiment, the footage will be edited in a way that would make it impossible to identify protagonists, and then sent to various companies to see if it can be monetized. Believe it or not, hundreds of people have already signed up for a chance to take part in Project Exograph.

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A 22-year-old man was recently accused of scratching a BMW sedan at a dealership in Jiangxi City for a very bizarre reason – so his father would be forced to buy it for him according to the “you break it you buy it” principle.

The suspect, identified as 22-year-old Ji Moubing, reportedly visited the BMW dealership on November 25th and expressed interest in buying a dark blue sedan. Staff later told police that Ji acted normally and actually seemed really excited, telling one salesman that his father had promised to buy him a nice car as reward for getting his driver’s license. Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse after Ji called his father to tell him what car he wanted.

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Footage of a full-grown polar bear with “T-34” spray-painted in black on its side has left wildlife experts in Russia scratching their heads as to who or why branded the animal this way.

The T-34 was a legendary Soviet tank that played a crucial role in Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War 2, which has led some experts to believe that the text spray-painted on the polar bear spotted in Arctic Russia was nothing more than a poor military-themed joke. As to who would stoop so low as to spray-paint a polar bear and thus affect its ability to hunt for prey by virtually making it impossible for it to blend with its environment, that’s even harder to answer. On the one hand, it’s hard to believe that scientists would ever do such a thing, and on the other, whoever did it must have tranquilized is beforehand.

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Square Off, the world’s smartest, most connected chess board, gives the centuries-old sport of chess a 21st century touch by allowing players halfway around the world to interact with physical pieces without actually touching them.

Chess has been available as a digital game for years, but true fans know that there’s nothing like playing on a high-quality physical board. That’s hard to do when your opponent is thousands of miles away, or at least it was until someone came up with away to allow people halfway around the world to play chess on a physical board made of rosewood. It looks like a magical set out of a Harry Potter movie, but it’s actually a wonder of technology that harnesses robotics and internet connectivity to make the impossible possible.

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A Mexican family recently discovered that their pet cat had been leading a double life, meaning he had a second home, a different name and another family just a few blocks away.

Cats like to be independent, so whenever her cat Pixi went away for longer than usual, Mary Lore Barra assumed that he was out chasing birds on rooftops and going on all sorts of feline adventures through the streets of Tamaulipas, in Mexico. The one thing she never imagined was that Pixi was actually spending time with another human family, who in turn thought they were the cat’s sole owners. But Pixi’s double life was accidentally revealed last month, when he came home to the Barra residence wearing a new collar around his neck.

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Morris Villarroel, a Spanish scientist at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, wanted to have a more detailed and complete record of his everyday life, so he could figure out how to live more effectively. Ten years ago he started writing down all the things he did every day, and he’s been doing it ever since.

Villarroel had just turned 40 in February of 2010, when he decided to embark on an epic experiment of self-knowledge and self-improvement. He decided to keep a detailed record of everything going on in his life by meticulously writing all the experiences, the places he was in, the people he met, every 15 to 30 minutes of every day. He thought that this would not only help him better remember everything, but also help him better manage his time and day-to-day life. Nine years and nine months later, the scientist says that he was right.

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Desperate to reclaim his farmland from a gang of invading monkeys, a farmer in Karnataka, India decided to pain his dog to look like a tiger in the hopes that it would scare the monkeys away.

Srikant Gowda, a farmer from Karnataka’s Shivamogga region, recently made international news headlines after it was reported that he used hair dye to paint his watchdog in the characteristic stripes of a tiger. The pooch already had a reddish hair color, so all he had to do was add the black stripes and some white to give it the tiger look. It wasn’t that Gowda had always wanted to own a tiger, but that he hoped the disguise would help the dog drive away the monkeys ravaging his crops.

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A 71-year-old pensioner from Saitama, Japan, was recently arrested and charged with obstruction of business after allegedly calling the toll-free number of his telecom provider a whopping 24,000 times over the last two years, to complain about the service and demand apologies.

In the month of October alone, Akitoshi Okamoto, a 71-year-old man from Kasukabe City, allegedly called the toll-free number of Japanese telecom giant KDDI 411 times in a single week to complain about his phone not being able to pick up radio broadcasts. Over the last two years, KDDI registered around 24,000 calls from Okamoto, which works out to an average of 33 phone calls a day, but the corporation had been reluctant to press charges until last week, when the frequency of complaints became too much to bear.

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Japanese artist Kohei Ohmori rose to prominence over the last few years thanks to his uncanny ability to draw everyday metallic objects to perfection. Just take a look at the three-dimensional Seiko wristwatch below!

Using graphite pencils is usually a dead giveaway that you’re looking at a drawing of something, but in the case of Kohei Ohmori’s artworks, it feels more like looking at high-resolution, black-and-white photographs. The 25-year-old Japanese artist spends hundreds of hours on a single project, using his signature super-sharp pencils, a steady hand and mountains of patience to get the tiniest details just right. As a result, his drawings turn out as realistic as photographs.

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Every once in a while, a health trend so unbelievably crazy comes along that it leaves us wondering if it’s nothing more than a parody. “Perineum Sunning”, or exposing your ‘back door’ to direct sunlight for a few minutes every week is one such trend, and unfortunately it’s no joke.

Did you know that exposing your butthole to direct sunlight for just 30 seconds every day is the equivalent of a full day of sunlight exposure with your clothes on? At least that’s what Instagram “healer” Metaphysical Megan claims in one of the viral social media posts that catapulted perineum sunning to health craze level. It also allegedly gives you more energy than chugging several cups of coffee and improves sleep, among other health and spiritual benefits. However, many medical experts warn that this bizarre practice can be dangerous, as the perineum area is particularly sensitive and exposing it to direct sunlight without protection could increase the risk of skin cancer.

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