Rory van Ulft, a 7-year-old Canadian gymnast, has been raising eyebrows with her weightlifting achievements, recently becoming the youngest under-11 and under-13s US Youth National Champion in history.

Rory took up weightlifting about two years ago, as a way of becoming stronger. She had started doing gymnastics but learned that she could get injured doing certain things, if she wasn’t strong enough. She started lifting weights in the the snatch and the clean and jerk styles, under the careful supervision of a trainer, and gradually developed her strength to the point that she now lifts weights that some adults would probably struggle with. She can snatch 32kg, clean and jerk 42kg, as well as squat 61kg, and deadlift 80kg using an Olympic women’s bar.

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A 26-year-old woman from Zambia recently made international news for allegedly taking her boyfriend to court because he “wasted her time” by failing to propose after an eight-year relationship.

Tired of waiting for her partner to pop the big question, Gertrude Ngoma decided to take him to court, as a way of forcing his hand. The woman from Ndola, Zambia’s second largest city, claims Herbert Salaliki, 28, promised to marry her, and even paid the lobola (a traditional dowry) to her parents, as a sign that he will take care of her, but has since been putting it off. Despite having a baby together, the two have never even lived together, with Gertrude remaining in her parents’ house. Now she is demanding that Herbert make a decision about their future.

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Smartphones have long been known to be crawling with all sorts of bacteria and microbes, but that “dirty” reputations is getting a cleanup thanks to a UK startup that claims to have created the world’s first antimicrobial smartphone.

The CAT S42 build under the Caterpillar brand is one of the sturdiest and cleanest budget smartphones money can buy. Its IP68 rating means it has total protection against dust and water, and the manufacturer actually encourages users to wash and sanitize their phones under running water. But starting in 2021, the CAT S42 will get an extra layer of protection thanks to a new technology called “Biomaster antimicrobial technology”, which supposedly stops the spread of germs.

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35-year-old Rin Kambe has been dubbed the Japanese Rapunzel because of her nearly 6-feet-long mane, which she hasn’t cut in 15 years.

Rin, who hails from Tokyo, was never allowed to grow her hair as a child.  She was on the girl’s football team so had to keep it short, but when she became an adult, she decided to take control of her hair and use it as a “weapon of expression”. The last time she cut her hair was 15 years ago, and now her straight, black locks measure 5ft 10in, a good 4 inches more than Rin herself. Although her hair sometimes gets in the way when doing the simplest of tasks, like changing her clothes, the Japanese dancer and model said that she loves her long mane, adding that it encapsulates the “beauty of Asia”.

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Mila Povoroznyuk, a young girl from the Ukrainian city of Vinnitsa, has shunned jeans, and all other modern clothing for the long dresses and intricate ensembles of the 19th century.

Nowadays, fashion trends change faster than ever before, but instead of trying to keep up, Mila Povoroznyuk decided to go back to a time that will never go out of fashion – the style of the late 19th century. For the past few years, she has replaced her fairly mundane wardrobe with vintage attires, including long dresses, corsets, all sorts of elegant hats and footwear from the late Victorian Era. Even though getting dressed every morning is much more of a hassle than it used to be, Mila says it’s worth it, as the vintage style makes her feel much more comfortable.

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South Korean television channel MBN recently introduced its viewer’s to the Asian country’s first ever AI-powered news anchor, an eerily realistic version of human anchor Kim Ju-ha.

Developed by MBN in partnership with artificial intelligence  production company Money Brain, South Korea’s first AI-powered news anchor was reportedly shockingly similar to her human inspiration. Not only did it have the exact same look and voice of the popular presenter, but she also mimicked the small gestures that Kim sometimes makes, like fiddling with a pen while reporting the news. During a broadcast on November 6, AI Kim even shared a conversation with real-life Kim Ju-ha to compare their voices, which apparently freaked out a lot of people.

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Vietnamese social media has been abuzz with the story of a girl who went under the knife at age 19, after breaking up with her boyfriend because of her looks.

Nguyen Tuong Vy became an overnight hot topic in Vietnam after taking to social media to share photos of herself from a few years ago, before undergoing extensive plastic surgery to her face. The 21-year-old woman from Dak Lak province said that she made the decision to drastically change her looks after breaking up with her 11th grade boyfriend, when she was only 17. Apparently, they were very much in love, but even though he constantly told her that he liked her for who she was, not how she looked, her boyfriend never introduced her to his friends. It was only when one of his friends invited them to his birthday that she realized it was because of her looks.

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For some reason, a 22-year-old Argentinian woman who decided to get her fallopian tubes tied to make sure she never gives birth has become the talk of Latino social media over the last few days.

Ailin Cubelo Naval is only 22 years old but she already knows she doesn’t want to have children, not now, not ever. The young Argentinian cites a variety of reasons for why she decided that she never wants to be a mother, from the fact that she considers parenthood more of a cultural imposition than a natural instinct, to her refusal to dedicate 20 years of her life to bringing up a child. Her views were apparently so controversial in Argentina that she was refused by gynecologists twice when she decided to have her fallopian tubes tied and sent to see a psychologist instead.

After going through the humiliation of having to seek medical assistance after being denied the surgical procedure twice, Ailin was shocked to learn that tubal ligation had been a guaranteed right in her country since 2006. She looked for another doctor and finally got the procedure.

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Ever since the 1960s, seismologists on multiple continents have detected a mysterious pulse generated like clockwork, every 26 seconds. But in the last 60 years no one has been able to figure out what this sound actually is.

The “heartbeat of the Earth” was first documented in 1962, by John Oliver, a researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, Columbia University. He figured out that it was coming from somewhere in the southern or equatorial Atlantic Ocean, and that it was more intense during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer months. Then, in 1980, Gary Holcomb, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, also discovered the mysterious pulse, noting that it was stronger during storms. But for some reason, the two researchers’ discoveries remained virtually unknown for over two decades, until a graduate student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, once again detected the “heartbeat” and decided to look into it.

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The idea that a simple paint could could compete with modern air-conditioning sounds crazy, but researchers at Purdue University say it could become a reality thanks to a cool new “radiative cooling paint” they developed.

Engineers at Purdue University recently unveiled a revolutionary white paint that they claim can keep surfaces up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit (7.8 degrees Celsius) cooler than their ambient temperature, by absorbing almost no solar energy and actually sending heat away from the surface it is covering. Think of it as a way of turning basically any space into a refrigerator, only without the energy cost.

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Zolpidem is a sedative from the imidazopyridine class of drugs that is most commonly used to help people fall asleep faster. But, in rare cases, this common drug can actually restore function to damaged brains.

There is a reason why zolpidem is sometimes referred to as the “Lazarus Drug”. If you give this pill to someone with brain damage, in 5% to 6% of cases something miraculous happens. In most cases, the changes are minor. People’s speech improves slightly, the frequency of muscle spasms is reduced, they have less difficulty moving, but in some rare cases, a pill can even bring people back from vegetative states, allowing them speak and move as they did before suffering brain damage. The problem is that these positive effects are gone as soon as the drug wears off, and scientists have yet to discover why some patients with brain damage react this way to zolpidem.

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Six months after catching the coronavirus, a 69-year-old Russian virologist and researcher exposed himself to patients infected with Covid-19 without any protection to see how his immune system would respond.

A former researcher at the Vector Centre of Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Novosibirsk, Alexander Chepurnov first caught Covid-19 at the end of February 2020. He was on a skiing holiday in  France when he started feeling unwell, with a high fever, sharp chest pain and a complete loss of his sense of smell. There was no way to get a coronavirus test in Europe at the time, so he returned home to Novosibirsk, where he was quickly diagnosed with double pneumonia. He was lucky enough to recover, and a month later an antibody test confirmed that he had been infected with the new virus.

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A stonecutting workshop that set out to carry on the legacy of legendary Russian jeweler Peter Carl Fabergé has managed to raise the art of volumetric mosaic stone cutting to a level never reached before in all of human history.

Volumetric mosaic is one of the most complicated and technical hardstone carving techniques. It involves combining volumetric fragments of various colored semiprecious and ornamental stones to assemble impressive sculptural compositions. It has been practiced by Russian craftsmen and artisans for over a century, but Alexei Antonov’s stonecutting workshop in Yekaterinburg has elevated the art form to a whole new level, by incorporating precious metals in the detailed sculptures and using modern technology to make the artworks stunningly detailed.

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A Swiss couple has named their baby daughter Twifia after Internet start-up Twifi and won themselves 18 years of free wi-fi internet.

The young couple responded to a Facebook ad from Twifi, a Swiss Internet provider, which dared parents to name their newborn Twifus (if it was a boy) or Twifia (if it was a girl) in exchange for 18 years of free internet. The parents, aged 30 and 35, ultimately decided that Twifia wasn’t that bad of a name, and the thought of getting free internet for 18 years and putting that money in a savings account for their daughter was appealing. So after thinking it over, they decided to make it official, putting down ‘Twifia’ as their daughter’s middle name on her birth certificate.

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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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