Last month, a Connecticut fugitive struck a deal with the Torrington Police Department, promising that he would turn himself in if his wanted poster got more than 15,000 likes on Facebook. It took a bit longer than expected, but the man has made good on his pledge.

29-year-old Jose Simms was wanted for seven counts of failure to appear in court, but last month, when the Torrington Police Department shared his wanted poster on their Facebook page, he actually commented on it, writing that he would turn himself in peacefully if the post got 20,000 likes. In unusual fashion, the police made a counteroffer, asking Simms to lower his threshold to 10,000 likes. They eventually split the difference, agreeing on 15,000 likes. People started sharing the post, and after being picked up by the media, it went viral.

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When the Kesharwani family in Jabalpur, India, decided to expand their home back in 1994, they pondered what to do about the giant fig tree growing in their garden. Rather than cut it down, they decided to build a four-storey house around it.

Today, the Kesharwanis’ residence is one of the most stunning sights in Jabalpur – a concrete villa with a giant tree trunk growing through its multiple stories and thick branches coming out through the windows, walls and roof. Yogesh Kesharwani, whose parents built the house 25 years ago, said that the fig tree is about 150 years old but still blossoms into leaves and fruits every year. Even though they have to navigate around its thick trunk when moving through the house, the Kesharwanis have gotten used to it and even grown to consider it a member of the family.

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The people of Sommarøy, an island in northern Norway where the sun doesn’t set for a full 69 days during the summer, want to make time keeping obsolete making this the world’s first time-free zone.

After enduring the long polar night, when the sun doesn’t rise from November to January, the residents of Sommarøy try to make the most of summer, when the sun stays up in the sky from May 18 to July 26. During this time, conventional timekeeping is virtually ignored, and it’s not uncommon to see people doing all kinds of things at late hours of the “night” – say 3 a.m – like doing house chores, swimming or playing ball in their yards. Since it’s always daylight, everyone sleeps whenever they feel like it. It’s been like this for generations, but now the people of Sommarøy want to officially declare their island a time-free zone.

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An Argentinian local court ordered a 70-year-old man to pay his ex-wife 8 million pesos ($173,000) as compensation for 27 years of house work.

Judge Victoria Famá made the landmark ruling after taking into consideration that the elderly couple’s roles had been well-determined during their 30-year marriage, with the woman, identified only as M.L., taking care of the household, while the husband went to work. Despite holding a degree in economics, the woman put aside her professional career to raise her children and take care of the house. By the time M.L.’s husband left her, she was already 60-years-old, too old to even be considered on the job market.

“After 27 years of marriage the accused abandoned his wife when she turned 60 years old, the age at which women obtain retirement benefits, being excluded from the labour market,” Judge Famá’s ruling stated. “The economic dependence of wives on their husbands is one of the central mechanisms through which women are subordinated in society.”

The Argentinian couple separated in 2009, and divorced two years later. Since then, the woman has experienced financial difficulties due to her inability to find a job and receiving meager retirement benefits, while her husband reportedly “lived a good life”.

“This verdict is very novel because it acknowledges that what we do in our homes is a job, care tasks are a job because they involve time, effort and skills,” Lucia Martelotte, deputy executive director of the Latin American Justice and Gender Team, said. “But this goes unseen and women do not get a salary for that.”

Judge Famá described the compensation amount as “a reasonable sum in order to balance the disparate economic situations of the spouses”. She added that the woman’s degree in economics and the age at which her husband decided to leave her were also taken into consideration.

Lawyers in Argentina have called the verdict “very novel and the amount awarded to the plaintiff “unprecedented”.

OECD data shows that women do more unpaid work at home than men in all 10 of the most developed countries in the world…

Political press conferences don’t usually enjoy much success on social media, but an official address by Pakistani regional minister Shaukat Yousafzai gained international attention last week after someone accidentally turned on the cat filter on Facebook Live, turning Yousafzai and other party members into adorable kittens.

Politician Shaukat Yousafzai and his colleagues in the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party had intended to discuss important decisions of the provincial cabinet in Peshawar last Friday, but their live-streamed official address abruptly turned into a joke after the social media team handling the broadcast accidentally turned on the cat filter on Facebook Live. This gave Yousafzai and a couple of other PTI members digital cat ears, whiskers, and rosy cheeks.

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Outside the Japanese town of Otsuchi, on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, there is a white, glass-paneled phone booth with a black rotary phone connected to nothing and nowhere. Ever since the tragic tsunami of 2010, which claimed nearly 20,000 human lives, thousands of grieving people have visited the booth to “call” their lost loved ones as a way of coping with their loss.

The Wind Phone, as the now famous Otsuchi telephone booth is commonly known, was actually built a year before the 2011 tsunami that ravaged Japan’s Tōhoku coast. Otsuchi resident, Itaru Sasaki, had lost his cousin in 2010 and decided to build a phone booth in his hilltop garden from where he would call his dear relative as a way of dealing with grief. He would dial his cousin’s phone number on an old, unconnected rotary phone, and his words would be “carried on the wind” as he spoke. Even though no one would talk back to him, it made Sasaki feel a deeper connection to his cousin.

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A 46-year old Thai woman recently issued a public cry for help after her breasts suddenly started to grow a few months ago, leaving her unable to work or even move around without using crutches.

Thai media recently presented the case of Lam Phrai Si Nuan, a 46-year-old woman from a village in the country’s Phitsanulok province, whose breasts started growing around 9 months ago and have no become so big and heavy that she needs crutches to walk. Mrs. Lam Phrai says she has seen doctors about her mysterious condition, and although they eliminated the possibility of cancerous tumors, they were unable to diagnose her or provide a treatment. Due to a precarious financial situation, the woman cannot afford a more thorough medical investigation and has appealed to kindhearted people for assistance.

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To deal with a wave of violence and corruption sweeping over the Colombian port city of Buenaventura, the bishop of the local Diocese has proposed using a Navy helicopter to shower the city in holy water and purge evil.

Monsignor Rubén Darío Jaramillo Montoya, Bishop of the Diocese of Buenaventura, plans to perform a mass exorcism in the Colombian city that has seen violent crime and corruption rise to an all-time high. With the support of the National Navy, the representative of the Church wants to use a helicopter to sprinkle holy water over the city in an attempt to get rid of demons. The daring event is scheduled for July 13th or 14th, when Buenaventura hosts its annual patron saints festivities.

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A South Florida Man thought he had hit the jackpot when his $13,000 bid on what he thought was an online auction for a villa, but it turns out he grossly overpaid for a 30cm by 3m strip of land worth $50.

Kerville Holness, a first-time auction bidder, couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw that his $9,100 bid for a villa in South Florida’s Spring Lake community had been declared the winner. However, everything came crashing down when he learned that what he thought was the bargain of a lifetime turned out to be a cruel joke. It turns out poor Kerville overaid for a narrow strip of land that starts on a curb and goes under a wall separating two villas and then out to the back of the lot. Although the appraiser’s site and information on the county’s tax site states that the land has no building values, the buyer claims that the photos used on the auction site were deceptive.

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The Russian village of Lazorevy, in Russia’s Urals region, has been invaded by giant swarms of flies after a local farmer allegedly used chicken droppings as natural fertilizer in his fields, which acted as a perfect breeding ground for the insects.

Imagine Albert Hitchcock’s “The Birds”, only on a much larger scale and with flies instead of violent birds. The roads of Lazorevy have become living carpets of flies that rise into horrific swarms every time they are disturbed, locals sweep buckets of dead flies from their homes every day, and some people are even afraid to go outdoors because the tiny insects are virtually everywhere. The recent fly invasion has been described by most as a living nightmare, and despite the best efforts of residents and local authorities to wipe out the unwanted guests, the flies are breeding so fast that humans can’t keep up.

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An Indian businessman who allegedly staged a stupid plane hijacking hoax to get his wife fired by the airline so they could spend more time together was recently sentenced to life in prison.

Birju Salla, the 38-year-old scion of a wealthy family of jewellers based in Mumbai, became the first person to be sentenced under India’s strict Anti-Hijacking Act of 2016. The funny thing is that he never actually intended to hijack a plane, all he wanted was to get his beloved  fire so they could spend more time together. He told the court that by printing a hijacking threat and planting it in the toilet of a Jet Airways plane, the airline would close its Delhi operation and fire his younger wife, so she would be forced to return to Mumbai where they could be together more. Things didn’t work out quite as planned…

Birju Salla’s troubles began when, during his frequent flights from Mumbai to Delhi, he fell in love with a Jet Airways customer care executive. They began having an affair in 2017, but the businessman quickly became frustrated with how little time they spent together. He felt that her job was always getting in the way of their love, so in July of 2017 he secretly married her – although he was already married and had two children – and asked her to move to Mumbai with him. She refused, and that’s when he allegedly hatched a ridiculously stupid plan to get her fired.

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Danny Schleibe, the creator of a unique art form called “tapigami”, spent a whopping 200 hours making an awe-inspiring portrait of actor Bill Murray exclusively out of hundreds of rolled pieces of vinyl tape glued to a wooden panel.

Sacramento-based artist Danny Schleibe has spent the last 14 years of his life refining the contemporary art of tapigami, which looks very similar to quilling, only with vinyl masking tape instead of rolled pits of paper. He recently perfected his technique to a level that allows him to create portraiture, and his first project was an amazing portraits of Bill Murray made out of tiny strips of rolled tape. It’s only when you get up-close and see how he nailed all the subtle details, like the actor’s beard and eyes, that you really start to appreciate all the work that went into the artwork.

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John Low, a 60-year-old Singaporean diving instructor, spent four days and three nights drifting in the South China Sea with nothing but a small buoy and a useless backpack, after his boat was capsized last month.

On May 4th, John Low was getting ready for a leisurely dive off the coast of Tioman Island, in the South China Sea, when a strong wave hit his anchored boat and threw him into the water. Before he even could even realize what had happened, the boat, started taking water and eventually sank. All John could retrieve was a ring buoy and his backpack, but he wasn’t too worried at first, as he figured he could swim his way back to land. However, try as he might, he couldn’t fight the currents, which constantly pushed him out into the open sea. By 10 pm, he could no longer see the shore, and he started panicking. For the next four days, he was all alone, with no food and potable water.

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A Chinese animal lover who took in hundreds of stray dogs over the last two years is struggling to make ends meet despite having a stable job and his own business. He has accumulated a debt of 600,000 yuan ($87,000), but he refuses to give up on his four-legged friends.

Up until two years ago, Zhang Kai, a 41-year-old man from Chengdu, China, had a peaceful, comfortable life. He was the manager of a state-owned company and had just opened his own travel agency. But everything changed when his 13-year-old dog, which he had raised since 2003 suddenly died. The tragic event left a void in his life, and somehow made him pay more attention to the countless strays in his city in need of a home. At first, he took in two of them and raised them in his travel agency office, but before he knew it he was taking care of eight strays. Things just snowballed from there, and today he is struggling to take care of 260 dogs, relying solely on bank loans and donations.

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While most people can barely produce intelligible handwriting with the most expensive fountain pens, Turkish artist Yazi Yolcusu creates stunning calligraphy using cutlery like forks and knives.

Yazi Yolcusu, which apparently means “Text Traveler” in Turkish, is living proof that it’s not the tools that make the artist, but their skill. using only metal cutlery – a spoon to hold the ink and forks and knives as writing tools – the talented artist creates some of the most amazing calligraphy you’ll ever see.

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