Researchers at the University of South Australia claim to have discovered clay materials in a certain type of dirt, which, if consumed with an evening meal can help soak up fat droplets from the gut.

Obesity costs the global economy an estimated $2 trillion every year, and countries around the world spend even more trying to prevent it, but a recently-published Australian study suggests that finding a cure to this modern-day epidemic could be as easy as dirt, literally. Researchers led by PhD candidate Tahnee Dening were investigating how clay materials can improve drug delivery when they discovered that one of the materials she was testing had the remarkable ability to soak up fat droplets in the gut. The serendipitous discovery immediately signalled Denning that they were on to something big, maybe even a cure for obesity.

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International workspace company Spaces recently teamed up with Dutch lifestyle brand Marie-Stella-Maris to create ‘Spirit de Travail’ a fragrance that can allegedly boost productivity and make people feel more at ease in the workplace.

Productivity at work can be influenced by a variety of factors, of which smell is one of the least obvious. According to research done by Prof. Gary E. Schwartz from the University of Arizona, negative feelings like irritation, annoyance and stress can effectively be countered by fragrances that induce positive effects like happiness, relaxation and productivity. The findings of this study inspired Spaces, a company that specializes in building custom workspaces for businesses and professionals, to come up with a fragrance that both relaxes users and boosts their productivity.

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A 63-year-old Vietnamese woman who recently underwent a laparoscopic procedure to have a tumour from her throat removed was shocked to hear that the doctors removed a six-inch leech from her throat instead. The parasite had reportedly been living in the woman’s throat for about three months.

The unnamed woman from Vietnam’s mountainous Ha Giang Province had been complaining about severe headaches, frequent nasal congestion and a constant sensation of mucous fluid flowing down the throat, for several weeks. She eventually checked into a local hospital where ENT (ear nose and throat) specialists performed various tests and discovered an unidentified mass in her throat. The woman was scheduled for laparoscopic surgery to have the mass – believed to be a tumour – removed, but during the procedure, doctors were shocked to find a live leech attached to the woman’s throat.

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Can you imagine wearing only one color every day for three and a half decades? Abou Zakkour, a 68-year-old man from the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo has become known as the Yellow Man after wearing only yellow for the last 35 years.

The story of the Yellow Man of Aleppo started on January 25, 1983, when Abou Zakkour made the decision to only wear yellow, because in his eyes the color represented love. It’s unclear what he did with his old wardrobe, but from that day forward, Zakkour only wore yellow garments, including underwear and accessories like neckties and hats, as well as yellow footwear. Even his umbrella and smartphone cover are yellow. And when he couldn’t find something to match his attire, he simply took a bottle of yellow nail polish and painted the differently-colored item to fit his Yello Man persona.

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A Chinese woman recently made the news after being diagnosed with a very rare form of hearing loss which leaves sufferers unable to hear low frequency sounds, like men’s voices.

The woman from Xiamen, on China’s east coast, knew something was wrong when she woke up one morning and realized that she couldn’t hear anything her boyfriend said. She had been suffering from nausea and ringing in her ears the night before, but figured that a good night sleep would make everything better, so she went to bed. But when she woke up the next morning, she was shocked by the realization that she couldn’t hear a word the man beside her was saying. The woman, known only as Ms. Chen, was rushed to a local hospital where an ear, nose and throat specialist diagnosed her with a rare condition known as reverse-slope hearing loss.

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An extravagant barber has become famous in Moscow for offering a different kind of hair washing product. Instead of shampoo, clients can choose to have their locks washed with champagne.

Vilen Knudaverdyan says he came up withe unusual service after performing it on a colleague, as a joke. The woman was leaving for another job, and during the farewell party they organized for her at the hair salon they decided to wash her hair with champagne. She apparently loved it, so he decided to offer it as a paid service for clients as well. Now his Moscow salon is famous for the champagne hair wash.

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Sixteen brave runners recently gathered in the Russian village of Oymyakon, also known as the world’s pole of cold,  to compete in the coldest official race in history.

Oymyakon is the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth, with temperatures constantly dropping to under -50 degrees Celsius in winter time. This place is so cold that a person’s unprotected face can suffer frostbite in a matter of seconds, and sometimes the mercury in thermometers freezes. Oymyakon can barely be called inhabitable, let alone suitable for a marathon, and yet at the beginning of this year, 16 runners gathered here to take part in a series of extreme races.

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Zhang Daming, an 18-year-old Malaysia, allegedly spent 10 days wandering through Singapore because he was too shy to ask for directions after becoming unable to find his way to the apartment building he was staying in.

Zhang reportedly traveled from Malaysia to Singapore last month in order to look for work, and was sharing an apartment in the island city with a friend who had been working there for some time. On the day of his disappearance, Zhang Daming’s roommate gave him SGD50 ($37) for food before leaving for work, as the 18-year-old only had Malaysian ringgit. He used some of that money to get some lunch at a nearby cafe, but didn’t bother keeping an eye out for markers to help him find his way back, and upon leaving the cafe, he quickly realized that he didn’t know how to get back to his friend’s apartment building.

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Cats from the Selkirk Rex breed are known to be friendly, playful and even cuddly, but you really couldn’t tell by looking at Pompous Albert. His constantly frowned face makes him look like the angriest, most unfriendly cat in the world, but it’s also the source of his incredible online popularity.

Pompous Albert became an Instagram sensation shortly after his owners set up his own account, in 2014. Just a year later, he already had over 40,000 fans who couldn’t get enough of his permanent “resting bitch face”, and today, his fan count on the popular social network stands at an impressive 228,000. He’s been featured on hundreds of major internet platforms like BuzzFeed and People Magazine, landed commercial deals with Honda, and is richer and more famous than most humans. It’s actually hard to believe Pompous Albert started out as a rejected show cat…

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Eleven schools in the Chinese province of Guizhou have introduced micro-chipped uniforms that track and monitor the students even beyond school grounds.

Developed by local company Guizhou Guanyu Technology, the smart school uniforms feature two microchips embedded into the shoulder pads which allow both the school and the children’s parents to monitor their activity at all times. A GPS system tracks their movements and an alarm informs both teachers and parents whenever a student leaves the classroom or school grounds without permission, or if he falls asleep during classes. The smart uniforms also allow students’ parents to monitor their purchases at school and set spending limits via a mobile app.

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A California family recently notified police about a strange man who had expressed his love for their high-tech doorbell in an explicit manner, after security camera footage showed him licking the doorbell button for no logical reason.

The Dungan family had just returned to their Salinas home last Saturday morning when they decided to check the security footage. They had been automatically notified about unusual activity on the premises the night before, but they had been out of time. When they first started getting notifications from the security system, David Dungan thought it was just his stepson coming home from work. One thing’s for sure, the family weren’t expecting a strange man making out with their doorbell button. And yet, that’s exactly what the footage showed.

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30-year-old Melody Hames has been clipping horses for over two decades, and it shows. Today she is credited for turning horse clipping into an art form.

Hames started clipping horses when she was 9-years-old, and really got into it by clipping her pet Connermara pony who suffered from cushings disease, a condition that caused it to have a thick woolly coat that didn’t change in the warmer season. She did traditional clipping for a long time, but having always had a passion for the arts, and getting requests for custom artistic clipping from clients, Melody Hames started unleashing her creativity on the horses coats and soon became known as “The Horse Barber”.

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A German pastor thinks he may have found a an effective way to approach the men in his community and it involves one of his greatest passions, whisky.

53-year-old Thomas Eschenbacher, a Franconian pastor from Hammelburg, in Bavaria, has long been looking for ways to approach men and talk to them about God and the Christian faith. It’s not the easiest thing to do, especially in this day in age, but Eschenbacher thinks whisky may just be the solution to his problem. A big fan of the Scottish spirit, the pastor noticed how easy it was to start a conversation about whisky during a leisurely whiskey tasting evening with friends, and decided to use the same catalyst to get through to men in matters of religion. He  recently announced that he was organizing a “whisky retreat” for men and all the 30 available spots were sold out almost instantly.

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Xiao Wang was only 17 years old when he decided to sell one of his kidneys in order to buy the iPhone 4 he couldn’t otherwise afford. After the operation Wang was told he was going to have a normal life with just one kidney, but almost eight years on, the 24-year-old is permanently disabled and dependent on dialysis.

Back in 2011, the iPhone 4 was Apple’s flagship smartphone and a status symbol at Xiao Wang’s school in Chengzhou, China. However, he came from a poor family who couldn’t afford to buy him the trendy gadget, so he decided to sell one of his healthy organs in order to get his hands on enough money to buy the coveted device. With help from a middleman, Wang got in touch with shady characters who specialized in trading organs on the black market and agreed to sell one of his kidneys for 22,000 yuan ($3,200), more than enough to buy the iPhone 4 he so badly desired. Unfortunately, this foolish decision would completely ruin his life.

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A Chinese man wound up with two large “play” triangles shaved into his new hairdo after asking his hairstylist to use a paused video on his phone as inspiration for the haircut.

It’s not uncommon for people to show their barber photos of haircuts they’d like to try, but one man in China made the mistake of using a paused video on his phone as inspiration for his hairdo, and the detail-oriented hairstylist ended up incorporating the “play” symbol into the haircut as well. To be fair, the video had been paused at just the right moment and the large triangular icon on the screen looked like it was actually part of the hairdo. What are the odds of that happening, I wonder?

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