Ratchadapong Prasit, a 25-year-old man from Thailand, has been making headlines around Asia for the last couple of years after drastically altering his appearance with the help of plastic surgery. After undergoing 30 cosmetic procedures, Prasit now looks like a Korean K-pop star.

Comparing photos of Ratchadapong Prasit before and after he turned to plastic surgery, you’d swear they were two different people, but that just goes to show you what a difference a few nose jobs, some chin sculpting and eye reshaping procedures can make. Although, to be fair, Prasit had a lot more than that done to his face. He reportedly underwent at least 30 cosmetic procedures over the course of two years, for which he spent around 300,000 Thai Baht ($9,100). But he claims it was worth every penny as it allowed him to completely change his life around, going from a shoe seller to a successful cabaret dancer at a theater in Pattaya. The ladies seem to love his new look as well.

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A Chinese mother allegedly faked the kidnapping of her 11-year-old son as a way of testing whether her husband really cared about her and their child.

The boy’s mother, a 33-year-old woman named Chen, filed a fake missing persons report in Yueqing City, on Friday. She told police that her son had last been seen near his school and gave them a description of his clothes. The case was declared a top priority and huge resources were allocated to an ample search operation in Yueqing and neighboring Wenzhou. The kidnapping attracted national attention, particularly because of the 500,000 yuan ($72,000) reward offered by the family for any information about the boy’s whereabouts, and online articles about his disappearance were read hundreds of millions of times just on social media platform Weibo. Everyone was fearing the worst, but it turned out that 11-year-old Huang had been safe and sound in the care of a relative all along.

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Storm, an eight-year-old Haflinger mare from the Netherlands, has become a star on social media networks like Instagram thanks to her long, wavy locks.

24-year-old student and entrepreneur Naomi Beckers bought Storm from her previous owner two years ago after falling in love with her incredible hair, which interestingly, closely resembles her own blonde, curly locks. The gorgeous mare hand’t had her hair cut since she was only two-years-old, and she already had a decent number of social media fans when Naomi got her. So she decided to set up a new Instagram account where Storm’s human admirers could follow her progress, but never imagined it would become so popular. Storm’s Instagram now has nearly 35,000 followers, making her one of the most popular horses on the photo-sharing social network.

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Every day, hundreds of tourists and devotees visit a shrine in Shivapur, a small village about 180 km east of Mumbai, in India, to witness a controversial “miracle” known as the Levitating Stone of Shivapur.

The Shrine of Qamar Ali Darvesh, a Muslim Sufi Saint who lived about 700 years ago, features an ancient stone that reportedly weighs 154lbs (90kg). Lifting this stone off the ground would normally require a lot of strength, but according to believers in the Levitating Stone miracle, it’s possible for a set number of men to lift it up over their heads with only their index fingers, but only after shouting Qamar Ali Darvesh’s name. This phenomenon has fascinated Indian Muslims for centuries, but many believe it’s nothing more than a gimmick.

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When it comes to the art of camouflage, few creatures can match Uropyia meticulodina, a small moth capable of mimicking a dead, curled up leaf almost to perfection.

From a mantis that mimics a harmless orchid to attract prey, to a caterpillar that looks like a snake to fend off predators and birds camouflaged as toxic caterpillars, we’ve featured some truly impressive natural mimics in the past, but the Uropyia meticulodina moth may just be the best one yet. Its resemblance to a dead leaf curled round in on itself complete with tiny leaf-like veins is just uncanny. If not for video evidence that this moth is real, I could have sworn it was just the work of a skilled image editing artist.

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A 70-year-old man from Scotland ruined his winter holiday and got himself banned from the United States forever after accidentally declaring himself a terrorist on an online visa form.

John Stevenson and his wife, Marion, an elderly couple from Inverclyde, Scotland, were supposed to vacation in New York this month, but they ended up losing both their flight tickets and their advance for accommodation in The Big Apple, after John got permanently banned from entering the United States for declaring himself a terrorist on an online visa form. Despite several attempts to convince US officials that he had just made a mistake, he remains banned, so the couple can’t even reschedule their trip, as they don’t know if they’ll ever be allowed into the United States.

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The owner of a clothing store in the UK is taking an unconventional approach to preventing theft. The woman, who preferred to remain anonymous, wants to hire skilled thieves to come in and steal from her store and then tell her how they did it, so she can prevent it from happening again.

The witty entrepreneur posted a job offer on Bark.com, which quickly went viral, offering thieves £50 ($64) an hour to come in and try to steal from her store, plus the chance to keep three of the things they manage to steal. Candidates would need to visit her store on a number of occasions over several weeks and then produce a report of all the things they stole and how they did it. Realizing that her job may come off as strange, the woman explained that she is simply taking a different approach to theft prevention after years of suffering significant loses during the holiday season.

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Fuerteventura, the second largest of Spain’s Canary Islands is mostly known for its white sandy beaches, but few people know that this island also hosts one of the world’s most stunning attractions, a beach that has popcorn for sand.

There are plenty of tourist spots named after things they resemble, even if just vaguely, but that’s not the case of Popcorn Beach. This amazing place genuinely looks like it’s covered with million of white, puffy popcorn, but don’t go putting them in your mouth, as they are actually stony pieces of coral shaped like popcorn by the elements.

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Police in the Taiwanese city of Taipei were accused of wasting taxpayers’ money on solving stupid cases, after local media revealed that they recently conducted DNA tests worth hundreds of dollars to find out who drank a student’s $2 yogurt bottle.

Sharing a fridge with roommates in college usually means accepting that, from time to time, some of your treats will mysteriously disappear. It’s like a tradition, but for one Taiwanese woman sharing a house with five other women studying at the Chinese Culture University in Taipei, it was a serious crime that had to be solved at any cost. Last month, the unnamed woman came home to find one of her yogurt bottles empty in the garbage bin. None of her housemates had asked her permission to drink the yogurt, so she fished the empty bottle from the trash, convened an emergency house meeting and asked the other five women which one of them had stolen her yogurt. When none of them owned up to the crime, the infuriated woman took the empty yogurt bottle to the police and demanded that they carry out an official investigation and bring the criminal to justice.

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Nick Prosser, a 28-year-old man from Rotorua, in New Zealand, has been stuttering for as long as he can remember, but he recently discovered that speaking in an Irish accent makes his speech disorder disappear almost completely.

The young New Zealander claims he discovered the simple cure to his stutter completely by accident, while trying different accents with a friend, for fun. When he tried the Irish accent, both he and his friend were amazed that his pesky stutter virtually vanished. They were able to have a long conversation without him stuttering at all, which had never happened before. He just couldn’t believe that something so simple could be the cure to a problem that had seriously affected his self-confidence ever since he was a child.

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A Chinese real-estate company has been accused of taking a wrong approach to encouraging its employees to exercise. Workers claim that they have been fined 0.01 yuan for every step they failed to take to meet their monthly target of 180,000 steps.

Taking a set number of steps every day has become a big deal in China. Some health insurers use apps to track their clients’ daily walks, offering discounts on future plans if they meet their goals, and many schools reportedly require students to walk/exercise every day and routinely check the pedometer apps on their phones to ensure that they comply. Even private companies have jumped on the walking bandwagon, encouraging their workers to take a set number of steps per month, but if one recent news report is to be believed, some employers are taking things too far, opting to fine those who fail to reach the required target.

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The Amazon rainforest is home to many frightening creatures, like giant Anacondas, flesh-eating piranhas, just to name a couple, and now you can add a new one to the list, a species of wasp that lays its eggs on the abdomen of spiders and then hijacks their brain, essentially turning them into zombies.

The previously unknown wasp of the Zatypota genus was discovered by researchers with the University of British Columbia (UBC) working in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin. They documented its symbiotic relationship with a species of so called “social spiders” and recently published some truly terrifying findings in the Ecological Entomology scientific journal. This newly discovered wasp is apparently able to hijack the nervous system of its host, forcing it to leave its colony, which it otherwise rarely does, protect the wasps larva and ultimately get eaten alive. It essentially turns the social spider into a zombie-like drone that then does the wasp’s bidding.

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A 65-year-old woman from a village in India’s West Bengal has allegedly spent every day for the past two decades submerged up to her neck in the waters of a nearby lake, due to an unknown disease.

Before getting into this strange story, I have to disclose the fact that it is unverified. It went viral in Russia (of all places) last month, and I’ve been trying to find a credible source ever since. Unfortunately, I’ve had no luck. Apart from dozens of Russian news sites and a few dubious English blogs, I have found no mention of this woman anywhere. Normally, I wouldn’t even have bothered writing about something like this, but what really intrigued me about this story is that it comes with a video of this woman siting idly in a lake, all by herself, as other people look on from the shore. There’s definitely a story here, I just don’t know if it’s the one I’ve found. So if you’re reading this and can provide any credible insight about this news story, I’d love to hear from you. Anyway, here’s the Russian version:

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A 15-year-old Japanese boy has been getting a lot of attention in his country and in neighboring South Korea for his unusually feminine looks and voice.

Idegami Baku’s meteoric rise to fame occurred late last month, when he became a finalist in Japan’s popular talent contest JUNON Super Boy. Organized by famous entertainment magazine JUNON, the Super Boy competition has been offering attractive boys aged between 13 and 28 the chance to fulfil their dreams of becoming singers, actors and television stars for the past 28 years. Baku didn’t win the competition, but if the online attention he’s been getting for the past couple of weeks is any indication, his future success in the entertainment business is guaranteed. But while his talent may have gotten him into the finals of JUNON Super Boy, people can’t stop talking about his looks. You see, Idegami looks more like a young girl than a boy, and he even sounds like one.

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Dozens of families in and around the city of Cairns, in Australia, have been forced to temporarily abandon their homes after flying foxes started dropping dead on their properties due to the unbearable heat.

Cairns residents started reporting massive numbers of spectacled flying foxes dropping out of trees on Monday, when temperatures in Australia’s Queensland region rose to above 40 degrees Celsius. According to animal experts, the nocturnal mammals cannot sustain an internal temperature of over 40 degrees, and with no way to cool off, their organs start to shut down and they eventually die. Wildlife rescuers have been working around the clock, using using spray bottles and drippers too cool off and hydrate the helpless creatures, but there’s only so much they can do. The flying fox colonies in the Cairns area have already sustained heavy losses and the number of fatalities is expected to rise for as long as the heatwave continues. But apart from the environmental issues, the massive number of dead bats rotting away so close to people’s houses has now become a become a serious public health issue as well.

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