An Italian woman was recently sentenced to four years in jail after she admitted to spiking a work colleague’s drink with sedatives, so she would underperform.

This disturbing story of work rivalry taken to the extreme dates back to October 6th of 2017, when Mariangela Cerrato brought a round of coffees for her colleagues at an office in Bra, a town in Italy’s Piedmont region. She brought the coffees and cappuccinos from a nearby bar, as she usually did, so no one suspected anything shady. However, after downing her cappuccino in one gulp, one of Cerrato’s colleagues, Alice Bordon, started feeling dizzy and lost her balance walking to her desk. She was taken to the hospital where doctors checked for a potential stroke, not knowing that something more insidious was at play…

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Masahiko Kimura is a Japanese bonsai artist famous for pioneering the ‘bonsai forest’ trend, in which several bonsai trees are planted on interlocking wood or stone slates, forming tiny, whimsical forests.

Kimura started out in the world of bonsai art at the age of 15, as an apprentice to bonsai master Motosuke Hamano, at Toju-en Bonsai Garden in Saitama, Japan. After 11 years, a young Masahiko Kimura decides to pursue bonsai art on his own, and ends up creating some of the most controversial bonsai artworks ever. It’s hard to refer to bonsai art as ‘controversial’, but Kimura’s style did ruffle a few feathers among purists of the art at first, as many of them considered that he was breaking too many of the craft’s ancient traditions.

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A middle-aged Vietnamese man is being hailed as a TikTok phenomenon after achieving stardom on popular video app TikTok by doing nothing but staring into his smartphone camera.

With streaming and video content being so popular these days, wannabe influencers really have to work hard and find new ways of attracting and entertaining audiences. Or so they say… In reality, it seems some people can make it by doing nothing but turning on their phone cameras and recording themselves literally doing nothing at all. Don’t believe me? Just check out Vietnamese “uncle” Anh Tran Tan, whose TikTok profile features only clips of him staring into the camera, with Vietnamese music playing in the background.

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Italy is the world’s second largest kiwi producer after China, but for the past eight years farmers have been battling a mysterious enemy that has so far killed over twenty percent of the country’s kiwi plants.

It starts with the leaves. They wither and face downwards, and within 10 days they all fall to the ground, leaving the kiwi fruits exposed to direct sunlight. Underground, the roots of the vine darken and begin to rot. In a year or two, the whole plant withers and dies. There is no known cure, and by the time farmers start noticing the symptoms described above, it is already much too late to do anything about it.  The farmers call it morìa, or “die-off”, and it had devastated plantations where kiwi vines have thrived for decades.

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Developed during the 1980’s in Soviet Russia, the futuristic looking MD-160 Lun-class ekranoplan had been sitting unused at a Russian naval base since the late 1990’s, but has now been beached on the shores of the Caspian Sea, as part of a plan to turn it into an ocean-side tourist attraction.

Known as the Caspian Sea Monster, the giant ekranoplan was designed in 1975 by Rostislav Evgenievich Alexeyev, a prominent developer of of hydrofoil ships and ground effect vehicles. It used a cushion of air beneath its giant wings to hover at about 13 feet above water, making it hard to detect. It was built as part of the Soviet WIG program, which dated back to the 1960’s Cold War, and was the only Lun-class ekranoplan to ever be completed and equipped with supersonic missiles.

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Footage of a young cleaning woman who appears to be drinking water straight out of a toilet has sparked a heated debate on Chinese social media this week.

The caretaker of a fertilizer company located in Shandong province, China has put herself at the center of controversy after a video showing her drinking water out of a toilet she had previously cleaned went viral online. The young woman, surnamed Luo, reportedly resorted to the extreme gesture in order to impress her bosses, who can be seen applauding her as she downs a plastic cup of toilet water. Accused of encouraging the employee to humiliate herself, representatives of the company insisted that the caretaker’s gesture was voluntary, adding that she has done drunk toilet water several times over the last couple of years.

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Russian artist Konstantin Khlanta creates intricate portraits of celebrities and fictional characters by wrapping colored string around strategically placed nails.

27-year-old Khlanta, who hails from the Russian city of Tula, only started doing string art in 2018, when he created a portrait of Chester Bennington, lead singer of Linkin Park, who had passed away a year before. Interestingly, it was Linkin Park who inspired Konstantin’s artistic career, as he only took up drawing back in 2008 after hearing their son the music video for Linkin Park’s ‘Numb’ in which he saw a woman drawing and decided to give it a try himself.

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Vallabhbhai Kathiria, the chairman of a federal body on animal husbandry in India, recently sparked controversy among his countrymen by promoting cow dung ‘chips’ that can allegedly reduce mobile phone radiation and shield users from disease.

Named ‘Gausatva Kavach’, the cow dung chip is said to be manufactured by Rajkot-based Shrijee Gaushala (cow shelter) as part of an initiative to promote cow dung products. The aim is to have 500 gaushalas produce the anti-radiation dung chips, which cost between Rs. 50 ($0.70) and Rs. 100 ($1.40). Through Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayoghe (RKA), the federal body on animal husbandry, the Indian Government wants to popularize cow dung chips in India, but also sell its products abroad, including in the United States.

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A Scottish fan of rap superstar Eminem has set a new Guinness record for most tattoos of a single musician after getting 28 tattoos inspired by her idol inked on her body.

35-year-old Nikki Patterson got her first tattoo, a smiley face, when she was 18, and she has added dozens of them since then. Three years ago, she got her first portrait of Eminem, whose music she had adored ever since she heard “Stan” for the first time, and she kept adding to them. Today, out of the 52 tattoos on Nikki’s body, 28 of them are inspired by Eminem, and 16 of them are portraits of the musician.

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Hidefumi Yoshida, a self-described ‘tear teacher’, encourages people to shed a few tears every once in a while as a way to relieve stress and lead a happier life.

Japanese are among the least likely of all nationalities to cry, and some would go as far as to say that there is a stigma surrounding crying in the Asian country. But according to Hidefumi Yoshida, a man who has dedicated the last eight years of his life to bringing people to people’s eyes, Japanese people originally had a predisposition to cry easily, but that all changed to the point where children and adults alike are discouraged from crying and they end up becoming closed off. Yoshida has been trying to change this perception, by educating people on the benefits of crying as a way of relaxing and combating stress. He claims to have helped over 50,000 people shed tears over the last seven and a half years.

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Luxury fashion brand Ralph Lauren has been slammed and ridiculed online for selling a pair of paint-covered overalls for $695.

If you’re going to spend just under $700 on a pair of designed overalls, you at least want them to look expensive, right? No? Well, maybe that’s just me, but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t them to make you look like you just finished painting an entire house. And yet that’s exactly the look that Ralph Lauren went with for its new “Paint-Splatter Coverall”, a pair of black denim overalls covered in white and orange paint stains and featuring beat-up knee areas.

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Palmistry, or the art of palm reading, is very popular in Thailand, so one entrepreneur has founded a business that specializes in tattooing people’s palm lines to allegedly change their fortunes for the better.

They say you make “your own luck” and if you believe in palmistry there is now a very simple way to change your destiny. All you have to do is visit a certain tattoo shop in Nonthaburi, Thailand, and ask to have your life, love or luck lines altered with the help of tattoos. Even if you don’t know what lines need to be altered, they have palm reading experts who can tell you what lines need to be tattooed in order to improve your prosperity, health or love life.

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La Casa en el Aire (literally ‘The House in the Air’ in Spanish) is a unique hostel perched on a cliff face, about 30 meters above ground, in the Colombian mountains.

Built primarily out of wood and featuring a tin roof, Casa en el Aire is attached to Cerro San Vicente, a monumental rock formation that rises up among the coffee landscape in rural Abejorral, Colombia’s Antioquia region. It is held in place by several steel wires connected to the cliff and supported by a long wooden pole also placed against the cliff. It stands about 20 meters above ground, at an altitude of about 2,500 meters above sea level. It is connected to a more stable-looking cable via a hanging bridge along the cliff face.

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Miracle believers all over Mexico have been flocking to the city of Monterrey, where a chalk drawing of the Virgin Mary inexplicably reappeared 13 years after it was drawn.

An outdoor parking lot in Monterrey recently became a pilgrimage spot for Christians, after a detailed drawing of the Virgin Mary appeared on the asphalt. Its origin was unknown at first, but after photos of the mysterious artwork started circulating online, local authorities revealed that it had been drawn during a celebration  called “Bella Vía”. The weird thing is that this particular chalk drawing dates back to the 2007 festival, and no one knows how the artwork lasted for so long, or how it had gone unnoticed for 13 years.

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A Mexican animal rights activist has been praised as a hero by animal lovers around the world after it was reported that he sheltered around 300 stray dogs and many other animals in his home to protect them from a hurricane.

On October 7, at around 5:30 in the morning, Hurricane Delta made landfall in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. Hours before, Ricardo Pimentel, an animal rights activist from the town of  Leona Vicario, was busy making sure that the facilities at the Tierra de Animales animal shelter he founded were prepared for the strong winds and heavy rains that were about to hit the region. The most radical thing Pedro did was fill his own house with over 300 hundred dogs, as well as some cats, chickens, rabbits and even a hedgehog, to make sure they were safe from the hurricane.

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