Kumitaiso, a gymnastic formation in which students climb on top of one another to create a pyramid, has at the center of growing controversy in Japan, due to the high number of serious injuries reported by schools.

At its core, kumitaiso is a routine supposed to encourage teamwork and endurance among young students, and as such it has been a mainstay of annual school sport festivals across Japan. However, problems began to occur as the human pyramids organized by schools started getting higher and more difficult to support by the students at the bottom. Seeing dozens of students working together to create these complex structures is undoubtedly impressive to behold, which is why many schools kept pushing the limits over the years, with some devastating results. With hundreds of reported injuries reported every year, many in the Asian country are asking authorities to ban kumitaiso.

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A famed restaurant in Peru was recently fined $62,000 for discriminating against women by giving ladies who dined with men menus that didn’t feature any prices.

La Rosa Nautica, a pricey restaurant built on a peer overlooking the ocean in the Peruvian capital, Lima, was ordered to pay a 210,000 sol ($62,000) fine for offering women a different menu when they dined with men. While gentlemen were given a blue menu that featured both the dishes available and their prices, ladies got a gold version that mentioned no prices at all. The owner of the high-end restaurant defended the practice by calling it a way for women to enjoy a romantic night out without having to worry about costs, but Peruvian authorities ruled that it was discriminatory against women.

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We all know sitting at a desk for long periods of time has negative effects on our health, but if this life-size model of what an office worker could look like in 20 years is any indication, the future doesn’t look too bright.

Emma, as her creators have named her, doesn’t look so good. She has dry and red eyes from hours staring at a computer screen, a hunched back that makes you think she’s been ringing the bell at a recently burned down French cathedral, excess weight, swollen limbs due to poor circulation, and stress-caused eczema, among other alarming symptoms. Luckily, Emma is just a life-size doll created by a team of researchers led by behavioral futurist William Higham, but the world could be full of Emmas if we don’t do something to change the office environment and culture.

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A mischievous horse has gained legions of fans online thanks to his ingenious way of avoiding being ridden – he drops to the ground in a very dramatic way and plays dead until the would-be rider walks away.

It’s unclear whether Jingang, “the world’s most melodramatic horse” was trained to play dead to amuse tourists, or if he just developed this talent himself, but one thing is for sure – he is really good at it. As soon as someone tries to ride him, Jingang’s legs buckle and he drops to the ground. Sometimes he even closes his eyes, leaving just his flaring nostrils as proof that he’s only playing around. Not even a tasty carrot will make Jingang break character, as demonstrated by his trainer in on e of the several videos of his antics doing the rounds online these days.

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A student learning center in China, recently sparked controversy for claiming to have developed a “quantum speed reading” method that allegedly helps students read and memorize around 100,000 words in just five minutes.

Can you imagine reading hundreds of written pages simply by rapidly flipping through them for a few minutes, sometimes blindfolded? That’s what the Beijing Xinzhitong Qiguang Education Technology in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, is allegedly promising to teach young students, through a method advertised as “quantum speed reading”. The controversial reading technique recently garnered worldwide attention after a video showing kids seemingly “scanning” books went viral online.

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Baunei, an idyllic mountain village on the Italian island of Sardinia, has launched an appeal to visitors asking them to stop relying on the directions of Google Maps when driving around the area.

Salvatore Corrias, the mayor of Baunei, claims that in the last year alone the local fire service or mountain rescue team have been called 144 times to help stranded tourists who had followed the directions of Google Maps. Apparently, people are often using the GPS-powered app to reach so-called “hidden beaches” around Baunei and end up driving down lanes that are unsuitable for cars or onto off-road tracks. To stop this from happening, local police have put up signs that read “Do not follow the directions suggested by Google Maps”.

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Harlso, a five-year-old dachshund from Belfast, Northern Ireland, has risen to internet stardom thanks to one impressive talent – balancing things on his head while standing really, really still.

From glasses filled with water, to donuts and squeaky toys, there’s nothing that Harlso the “King of Balancing” can’t balance on his tiny head. It all started three years ago, when his owner, Paul Lavery, jokingly placed a squeaky toy on his head and was surprised to see the tiny canine sit as still as a statue, while trying to look up the object. Up to that point, Paul and his partner, Jen Scott, had tried teaching Harlso the usual tricks, like ‘sit’, ‘lie down’, ‘roll over’, but he just wasn’t interested. The first time he saw his pup balancing that squeaky toy in his head, Paul remembers calling his girlfriend: “Jen! Harlso has a hidden talent!”

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Otafuku, one of the oldest oden restaurants in japan, has been heating up the same batch of broth every day since 1945, only adding more water to it as it evaporates. It may sound gross to most westerners, but it apparently makes oden stew taste amazing.

Oden is a traditional Japanese stew that is simmered in broth until served. It’s enjoyed by vegetable and meat lovers alike, as it can contain all kinds of ingredients, from from eggs, tofu and vegetables to shark meat, beef, fish balls and whale tongue, but the secret to its deliciousness is the broth. Many Japanese restaurants rely on master stock – a broth that has been repeatedly reused to poach or braise meats – to give their oden a rich flavor, but none have been using the same batch for longer than Otafuku, a Tokyo based eatery that has been reheating the same oden broth since the previous batch was lost in 1945.

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Looking at the expertly-drawn charcoal and graphite portraits of Dylan Eakin, you’d think he has a lifetime of experience and many years of art school under his belt, but the truth is he’s a self-taught artist and he’s only been at it for three years.

Staring at most of Eakin’s black-and-white portraits, I often found myself looking for any clues that I was looking at a drawing and not a high-definition photograph. That’s what hyperrealism is all about, I know, but the talented artist really takes it to the extreme, nailing even the finest of details, like loose strands of hair on his subjects’ faces, droplets of sweat or the smallest wrinkles. To the untrained eye, his works seem perfect, but he is the first to point out that there are some things he simply can’t replicate.

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Wild animals usually get put down after attacking humans, but a Russian zoo keeper who lost one of her legs to a caged bear has been pleading with authorities to spare the animal, claiming that it wasn’t to blame for the tragic accident.

On September 25, experienced zoo keeper and animal activist Vera Blishch was instructing a new colleague at the Municipal Zoo in Ussuriysk when a bout of vertigo made her lean towards a bear cage for just a split second. Unfortunately, that was just enough time for Manyunya, a 20-year-old female bear, to reach through the bars and grab the zookeeper’s leg. She suffered severe injuries, including multiple fractures, and eventually needed to have her leg amputated below the knee at a Ussuriysk hospital. Knowing that animals that attack people are put down to eliminate the risk of them attacking other humans, Blishch’s first concern upon waking from her surgery anesthesia was for Manyunya’s well-being, insisting that the bear was not to blame.

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Determined to get her money’s worth out of the wedding dressed she spent over $1,000, an Australian woman has been wearing her wedding dress everywhere, a year after her wedding.

43-year-old Tammy Hall adopted an anti-consumerism lifestyle in 2016, after a trip to India opened her eyes to how much we as a society consume. She vowed not to buy any new clothes or footwear for a whole year after she returned home to Adelaide, in Southern Australia, which turned out to be very easy, but last year, as her wedding day approached, she faced a puzzling dilemma. She wanted to look good on the most important day of her life, but how could she justify spending a small fortune on garment she would only wear on that day? In the end, she just decided to get her money’s worth.

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A California woman who dreamed about swallowing her engagement ring during an apparent robbery woke up to find that the said ring was missing from her finger in real life as well.

Last Tuesday night, Jenna Evans dreamed that she was on a high-speed train with her fiancé, when some “bad guys” appeared. In her dream, the fiancé told her that the only one way to make sure she didn’t lose the 2.4 carat diamond engagement ring she had waited so long for – swallow it. She quickly popped it in her mouth and washed it down with a sip of water. Then she woke up, relieved that it had only been a vivid dream. But then she looked at her left hand and noticed that her ring was gone in real life too…

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A Chinese woman recently had to have her jaw set back in place by a doctor after she dislocated it by laughing too loudly. I guess laughter really wasn’t the best medicine for her, quite the contrary.

The bizarre incident took place on September 1st, on a high-speed train heading to Guangzhou South Railway Station. Doctor Luo Wensheng, who had boarded the train in Kunming, the capital of south-western Yunnan Province, was commuting to Liwan Hospital – part of Guangzhou Medical University – when he heard an urgent appeal for medical assistance being broadcast through the carriage speakers. He rushed to help and found a female passenger who had her mouth open and was drooling profusely, which indicated that she had suffered a stroke, but he blood pressure was normal. It was only after speaking with eye-witnesses that he learned that the woman had become unable to close her mouth due to laughter.

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In an age when tech companies are encouraging consumers to constantly buy newer, more-expensive gadgets, one Peruvian company has just a launched a sustainable wooden laptop designed to last at least 10 to 15 years.

In an attempt to bring new and affordable technology to the most remote areas of Peru, the Carrascos —a family made up of computer specialists and marketing experts – created the Wawalaptop, an SBC (Single Board Computer) with a wooden casing that can easily be taken apart for repairs and upgrading. The 0.1-inch (25.65-centimeter) laptop is lightweigh, ultra-portable and very affordable. A Wawalaptop costs 799 Peruvian Sol ($235), and an upgrade, which basically means a better circuit board, can be bought with about $35 on the free market.

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Not everyone chooses to use their superpowers for good; case in point, this Japanese store clerk who used his amazing photographic memory to memorize the credit card info of over a thousand clients in mere seconds of interacting with them.

34-year-old Yusuke Taniguchi was recently arrested for having stolen the credit card information of over 1,300 people and then using it to by things for himself on the internet. Apparently, Taniguchi worked as a part-time clerk at a shopping mall in Koto City, Tokyo, where he would use his trained photographic memory to steal people’s private information whenever they used their credit cards to buy something. In the few seconds it took to process a payment, the clerk would memorize the card’s 16-digit-number, the holder’s name, expiry date, and security code, all the elements needed to later use the card for online shopping.

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