A young Chinese doctor was recently set free after spending three month in jail for claiming that a certain brand of medicinal wine was toxic and couldn’t cure heart disease and arthritis, as the manufacturer claimed.

It all started last December, when Guangzhou-based  physician Tan Qindong published a short article on Chinese social media platform Meipian, stating that the popular Hongmao Medicinal Wine was not only toxic, but also ineffective in treating serious heart conditions and arthritis, as advertised by the manufacturer. His post apparently drew a lot of attention, as Hongmao soon filed a defamation lawsuit against the 39-year-old doctor, claiming that it had “maliciously discredited” the brand’s reputation and had caused “significant financial losses” of as much as 1.4 million yuan ($223,000).

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A female candidate for a local position in Taipei, Taiwan, recently became the butt of social media jokes, after people noticed that she looked nothing like the woman on her campaign posters.

The world of politics is no stranger to image editing software, as many politicians turn to programs like Photoshop to make themselves look better in campaign posters. However, PR people sometimes overdo it to the point where the editing is obvious even to the untrained eye. And then there are cases like that of Wang Zhiya, a politician running for a position on Taipei’s City Council, whose campaign posters look absolutely nothing like her.

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12-year-olds get into arguments with their parents all the time, but most of them just storm off to their room to cool off. Not Drew (made-up name), a boy from Sydney, Australia, who, after a fight with his mother, stole her credit card, got on a plane and flew to the island of Bali for an unforgettable 4-day vacation.

Drew’s name may be fake for privacy reasons, but his incredible story is not. After a quarrel with his mother, Emma, the 12-year-old boy decided it was time to do something drastic, and a vacation to the family’s favorite holiday destination, Bali, seemed like just what the doctor ordered. Only this time, he would go all by himself and experience the freedom of being alone in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, at his parents’ expense. For that, he needed his mother’s credit cards and a way to board a plane without having to answer too many questions. Sounds like a tall order, but this kid had it all figured out.

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José Arno Appolo do Amaral, the mayor of Alvorada, a city in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state, recently became a popular meme in his country after a photoshopped picture of him and his subordinates seemingly inspecting a municipal construction site went viral online.

The photo showing mayor do Amaral, and his deputy Valter Slayfer at a dredging site in Alvorada was originally posted on the official Facebook page of the Alvorada Municipality, along with a long caption detailing the visit. The two officials had allegedly overseen part of the operation and had declared themselves satisfied with the work of the hydraulic dredger. Only people soon became suspicious of the photo, which showed Amaral and Slayfer in the distance, flanking the site supervisor. The two officials’ position in relation to the road they were supposed to be standing on, as well as their color compared to the rest of the photos just seemed odd, so Facebook users started sharing it and questioning its authenticity.

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Known as ‘Sea Nomads’, the Bajau people have wandered the waters of southern Asia for thousands of years, living in house boats and free diving for fish. They’ve long been known for their ability to stay underwater for long periods of time, but until recently, no one really knew how they were able to keep their breath for so long.

According to a recently published study from Cambridge University, the Bajau people have 50 percent larger spleens than their land-dwelling neighbours, which plays a key role in how long they can stay underwater. It plays a key part in what’s known as the “human dive response” or “dive reflex”, preferentially distributing oxygen to the brain and heart, and enabling submersion for long periods of time. As the heart rate slows, blood is directed to the vital organs, and the spleen contracts to push oxygenated red blood cells into the circulation. In an average person, the spleen can boost oxygen levels by 9 percent, but even more in the case of the Bajau, due to its unusually large size.

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The people of Willand, a small village in Devon, UK, can say that they are literally moving up in the world. Scientists have discovered that Willand is rising by 2 cm (0.7 inches) every year, but they have no idea why.

The mysterious elevation was spotted by researchers at Geomatic Ventures Limited (GVL), an offshoot company of theUniversity of Nottingham, who have been working on the first country-wide map of land motion of Britain, by compiling satellite images from 2015 to 2017. While analyzing these images, they noticed that an elliptical area around 1.2 miles (2km) wide had been steadily rising by about 2 cm per year. This sort of phenomenon usually occurs in abandoned mines, but there was no such thing in or around Willand.

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Mizuki Nakano, a former professor at the University of Tokyo, in Japan, has been consuming only fruit for the last eight years, even shunning water and relying on fruit juices for hydration. He recently came on a Japanese TV show to say that his fruit-only diet has caused his body to somehow convert nitrogen in the air into the protein it needs.

In September of 2009, Mizuki Nakano decided to see what would happen to his body if he consumed nothing but fruit all day, every day. Even back then, the scientific consensus was that a balanced diet that contained enough protein, fat and carbohydrates was the best way to go, and that relying solely on fruits for nutrition would deprive the body of needed nutrients and potentially cause serious health problems. But Nakano noticed that there was no scientific research on the long-term effects of eating only fruits, so he started an experiment with himself as the guinea pig.

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We all know politicians sometimes say stupid things, they’re only human after all, but sometimes their statements just leave you scratching your head in disbelief. Take Indian minister Biplab Deb, who recently said that the internet existed back in the ancient days of Mahabharata.

Speaking at a regional workshop on Public Distribution System (PDS) in Agartala, in the Indian state of Tripura, Chief Minister Biplab Deb told the audience that the internet was invented “lakhs of years ago”, along with other advanced technology like satellites, and not by Western countries, but by ancient Indians. He argued that some of the events described in the Mahabharata couldn’t have been possible without this technologies, which, in his mind, is proof that they existed thousands of years ago.

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I always thought intravenous treatments only worked on humans and animals, but apparently they do wonders for sick trees as well. The world’s second-largest Banyan tree is currently being treated against a termite infestation, with an IV drip.

Known as “Pillalamarri” or “Peerla Marri”, the 700-year-old Banyan tree in Mahabubnagar, India’s Telangana state, spreads across three acres, making it the second-largest of its kind in the world. It’s also in danger of being eaten alive by termites, which have already brought down some of its largest branches. Public access to the tree was restricted in December of last year, as desperate authorities scrambled to come up with a way to save one of a’s biggest tourist attractions.

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A resourceful driver in Suzhou, China, found the perfect way of avoiding a parking ticket. When leaving her car in a no-parking zone, she would simply leave a fake parking ticket in her window so that policemen would think one of their colleagues had already fined her.

It was the perfect crime! Most policemen would only check if the date was correct and move one, and if one of them actually paid enough attention to figure out that the parking ticket was fake, the woman would simply say that she had no idea, that she was the victim of a prank. Genius and safe, I tell you! Unless someone actually saw her putting the ticket in the window, there was no way to prove she was guilty.

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Golf carts aren’t the fastest, most comfortable, or most spacious vehicles money can buy, but in Discovery Bay, an upscale residential development in Hong Kong, they are more coveted than Porsches, Teslas or other luxury cars.

In the US, the average price of a golf cart is around $10,000, but in Discovery Bay, the slow-moving buggy can sell for a whopping $250,000 (HK$2 million). That’s more than some people are willing to pay for a home, let alone a vehicle that barely qualifies as a car. But there’s a reason to this madness. You see, private passenger cars aren’t allowed in this upscale neighborhood of Hong Kong, and residents require a special license for golf carts as well, the number of which has been capped to 500 by the Transportation Department. The demand for motorized transportation in Discovery Bay offset by a supply crunch has catapulted the modest golf cart to luxury vehicle status.

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As a child growing up in Japan, engineer Masaaki Nagumo always dreamed of climbing into his very own Mobile Suit Gundam mecha. As an adult, he finally made that dream a reality.

Nagumo created the 28-foot-tall, 7-tonne-heavy LW-Mononofu robot as a project for his employer, industrial machinery maker Sakakibara Kikai, in Japan’s Gunma Prefecture. The metal colossus took six years to finish, and is probably the world’s largest anime-inspired robot that you can actually ride in and control. It can move its arms and fingers, turn its upper body, and walk forward and backward at a snail-like speed of 1km/hour. As any respectable mecha, it also has a weapon – a metal gun that fires sponge balls at a speed of 87 mph.

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Mobile phones being smuggled into prisons is a worldwide problem, but Costa Rica may have recently became the first country where people are using “trained cats” to deliver cell phones into prisons.

On Tuesday morning, the Costa Rican Ministry of Justice released a video of a cat intercepted while trying to make its way into La Reforma prison, in Alajuela. Footage shows the feline with a strange parcel strapped to its chest and tied around its neck. After struggling to remove the package from the animal, penitentiary staff cut it open and reveal that it contains a used mobile phone, as well as a charger, a replacement battery and earbuds.

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A 23-year-old man from Lincolnshire, in the UK, claims that taking a prescription painkiller has caused him to lose sexual attraction to women and become interested in men.

Scott Purdy started taking Pregabalin, also known as Lyrica, after breaking his foot in a go-karting accident. Before he knew it, he had stopped finding his girlfriend of six months, or any other women for that matter, attractive, and started craving male attention instead. So he stopped taking the medicine for a few weeks, and that attraction to other men simply went away. However, he ended up breaking up with his girlfriend and getting back on Pregabalin, because it made him feel happy about his sexuality and gave him a liberating feeling.

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Zhang Shuai, a 22-year-old senior at the Heilongjiang Institute of Technology, in Harbin, recently made news headlines in China for his six month transformation from overweight and out of shape to regional bodybuilding champion.

Shuai had been a star player on his college basketball team, but a couple of years ago, a serious injury forced him off the court and into a state of depression. Due to excessive eating and an almost complete lack of physical exercise, he put on a whopping 40 kilograms in only six months, which caused all kinds of inconveniences for the once athletic teen. However, six months ago, Zhang Shuai decided that enough was enough and it was time to get back into tip top shape. He started exercising again, adhered to a strict diet, and within half a year, he was in the best shape of his life.

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