A Thai conman was recently arrested and charged with robbery after successfully pulling out a sophisticated plan that involved setting up a fake jewlery store and luring an Indian businessman there so he could steal a valuable diamond.

59-year-old Pipatpongpat Suksawatpipat, the man arrested for the ingenious robbery, was once a prosperous jewlery trader himself, but fell on hard time when he became addicted to gambling a few years back. He went from being one of the richest people in Chanthaburi to having just 40,000 baht ($1,200) to his name, but he recently put that small amount of money to good use and pulled off a scam that would make any self-respecting conman jealous. In just a week’s time, he managed to rent a commercial space and turn it into a fake jewelery store, lure an Indian jeweler there with a 10 million baht diamond, and eventually steal that diamond before riding out into the sunset. Alas, his success was short-lived.

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It turns out that smelling your own socks is not only gross but potentially deadly. A Chinese man was recently hospitalized with a severe pulmonary fungal infection, which he allegedly developed by constantly sniffing his used socks.

When he was brought in to the No 909 Hospital in Zhangzhou, China’s Fujian Province, the 37-year-old man, surnamed Peng, complained of chest pain and frequent coughing. An X-ray showed that he was suffering from a severe lung infection, and subsequent tests revealed that it had been caused by a bacteria typically found in used footwear. After being questioned by his doctors, Peng admitted that he had long developed a habit of sniffing his dirty socks every day after coming home from work, before throwing them in the laundry basket.

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Enhanced water company Vitaminwater recently launched a contest challenging entrants to give up their smartphones and tablets for a whole year. That’s a tough thing to do in this day and age, but the Coca Cola-owned company is ready to make it worth your while by putting up a $100,000 prize.

Vitaminwater’s #nophoneforayear challenge requires entrants to go a full 365 days without using a smartphone. That means giving up their own phone and tablet as well as agreeing not to use anyone else’s handhelds either. The selected person will have to sign a contract committing to no smartphone usage for the duration of the contest, and if they are found to have adhered to the strict rule for the duration of the contract, they will be rewarded with $100,000. Sounds easy enough, but first you have to convince the company that you’re the right person for the job.

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Abdussalam Firdaus Abdul Aziz, a 22-year-old man from Malaysia, recently became an overnight internet sensation thanks to his feminine features that apparently make it hard for people to tell whether he’s male or female.

Photos of Aziz have been doing the rounds online ever since it was reported that at a recent soccer game that he attended, he was asked to show his identification documents, because male security guards refused to do a body check on him, thinking that he was a woman. The story made news headlines in Malaysia earlier this week before transcending national borders via the internet.

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At just 12-years-old, Leonardo Nicanor Quinteros is still in secondary school, but he already runs his own free private school to help other children, and even some adults, with their studies.

Leonardo loves to study, but he also wants to transfer his passion for education to his peers. After seeing some of his colleagues struggling to keep up at school, and other children spending too much time playing on the streets and completely neglecting their studies, he decided to do something about it. Last year, he told his grandmother, Ramona, that he wanted to operate his own school and asked her to help him build it next to her house, in the Argentinian town of Las Piedritas, near San Juan. She obliged, and today’s Nico’s free private school caters to nearly 40 young students. The 12-year-old acts both as teacher and principal and is proud that his initiative has already made a big difference for many of the children attending there.

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Mi Youren, a 68-year-old pensioner from Jinan, China, loves nothing more than to put on a tight leopard costume complete with tail and pointy ears, and practice a fitness routine based on he created himself based on the movements of the athletic feline.

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Kai-Xiang Zhong, a 24-year-old self-taught artist from Taiwan, has been called the “Tony Stark of cardboard” for his ability to create truly incredible sculptures out of a material that most of us throw away.

Zhong first attracted online attention to himself in 2013, when photos of one of his impressive cardboard creations, “The Dragon” went viral. Then, a year later, he once again stunned the internet, this time with a life-size replica of Marvel’s Iron Man, made exclusively out of corrugated cardboard. Over the last three years, the young Taiwanese artist has been busy adding to his collection of stunning cardboard sculptures, which now features life-size animals, monsters and an awe-inspiring bust of Pennywise, the scary clown from ‘It’.

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Food waste is one the greatest challenges of our time, and fruits and vegetables are particularly problematic, as an estimated 52% of harvests go bad before reaching consumers. But one Malaysian company claims to have come up with a simple and effective solution to this problem – a tiny sticker that keeps fruits from spoiling for up to two weeks.

You’ve probably seen stickers on fruits before, but not like the ones created by Stixfresh. Those common stickers are used solely to provide consumers with information about the grower and how the fruit was grown, but Stixfresh has a completely different purpose. It contains a special, all-natural formula that slows down the ripening process, keeping the fruit fresh and juicy for much longer.

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Khai Ho, 38-year-old self-described breatharian from Birkenhead, in the UK, claims he can last up to three months at a time on only 100 calories per week, surviving only on air, sunlight and the occasional mint leaves.

Ho, who works as a pizza deliveryman, claims that he has never taken much interest in food, constantly refusing his mother’s meals as a child, but only started giving up food completely over long periods of time four years ago, with the help of Hindu meditation. He says can last up to three months without consuming any kind of food, apart from some mint leaves to help with bitter taste in his mouth, and drinking water only rarely, sometimes just once per week. Apparently, meditation helps him absorb all the nutrients he needs from thin air and sunlight.

The 38-year-old breathrian said that before turning to meditation, he would eat normal food once every three or four days, but now doesn’t need to do that because he gets necessary nutrients from sunlight and can even absorb moisture from the air around him. He admits that most people think his crazy for fasting for months at a time, but claims that some consider him “incredible at the same time.

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A Chinese man has been making national headlines after it was revealed that he has been waiting in a bookstore in Beijing for over 50 days hoping to meet a girl he has “fallen in love with” after making eye-contact for 10 seconds.

To say that this 26-year-old man is a firm believer in love at first sight would be an understatement. He is so convinced that the woman he saw in a popular Beijing bookstore back in September is the girl of his dreams that he quit his job and has been staying in the bookshop every day from 11am to 7pm, hoping to meet her again so he can tell her how he feels. To improve his chances of bumping into the mystery woman again, the man, surnamed Sun, has been passing out hand-drawn sketches of her to other bookstore visitors, and recently tried to sue her for emotional distress, even though he doesn’t even know her name.

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Yesterday, during the opening of Russia’s annual “PROJECT” scientific forum in the city of Yaroslavl, the audience got to see Boris, a highly-advanced robot that major news channel Russia24 called “the country’s most modern robot”. Only Boris wasn’t really all that advanced, or even a robot, for that matter.

Very similar in appearance to Honda’s famous Asimo humanoid robot, Boris can reportedly walk and talk, do mathematical calculations and even dance, feats he demonstrated on the stage of the “PROJECT” forum, on December 11. The audience, made up primarily of young students, was blown away by the Russian robot’s advanced capabilities, as were several news outlets, including Russia24, which dedicated a news segment to Boris, showcasing his performance at the forum and calling it “Russia’s most modern robot”.

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A talented food artist from Japan has getting a lot of attention on Instagram for her ability to turn plates into delicious works of art by painting them with melted chocolate.

Most parents often tell their children not to play with their food, but if the melted chocolate of Japanese artist Norico are any indication, playing with your food can lead to some spectacular results. Using only her fingers and some basic kitchen utensils, Norico can painting anything from portraits of Japanese celebrities and popular cartoon characters, to abstract geometric motifs and wedding reception messages. The ephemeral nature of her art allows Norico to experiment at her heart;s desire, and in her Instagram and YouTube videos she often cleans her unusual canvas several times after creating some exceptional painting and start all over again.

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33-year-old Alena Kravchenko, a real-life Rapunzel from Ukraine, had her last haircut at age five, 28 years ago. Today, Alena’s hair is around two meters long and the young Ukrainian claims that she sometimes trips on it.

Alena’s mother had always told her that a woman’s feminine beauty stems directly from her hair, and she took her words to heart. The last time she allowed anyone to cut her blonde locks was 28 years ago, and today, even though her extremely long becomes problematic, she is still convinced that her mother was right. “There is nothing more beautiful in the world than a woman with natural, flowing hair,” Alena says.

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A Vietnamese businessman has been attracting a lot of attention on Asian social media sites for his obsession with gold. 36-year-old Tran Ngoc Phuc wears a total of 13kg of gold wherever he goes, and is always accompanied by at least 5 bodyguards who make sure that no one tries to steal it.

Phuc first started making headlines in Vietnam last week after a series of YouTube videos of him showing off his massive jewellery went viral,  getting several millions of views. Since then, photos and videos of him wearing his huge gold necklace, bracelets and rings have been doing the rounds on Vietnamese social media, and even on several websites in China and Thailand. While some people expressed their doubts that the jewels are real gold, most commenters wondered how he can stand walking around with so much extra weight. The businessman admitted that wearing the jewellery took some getting used to , but claimed that it was worth it as all the gold has boosted his good luck and prosperity.

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A photo of a tattooed man’s hand with the top layer if skin damaged by a minor kitchen burn sparked a heated debate on social media site Reddit last week. That’s because the section where the skin was burned off revealed a tattoo so bright you could swear it was just inked.

The photo, posted by Reddit user uhmodijia, reportedly shows the hand of a “friend of a friend” who had just suffered a minor burn which only affected the top layer of his skin, exposing the dermis. The man had a blue rose tattooed on his skin a while ago, and like all tattoos do in time, it had started to fade. However, the patch of burned skin that had peeled off because of the burn revealed a much more vibrant copy of the same tattoo on his dermis. Apparently, tattoo guns reach deep into the skin, and while the tattoos on the first layer begin to fade just months after they’ve been inked due to multiple factors, they remain vibrant under this first layer of protective skin.

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