Artist and model Matt Kuwata is mostly known as the son of Japanese legendary baseball player Masumi Kuwata, but in recent years he has attracted a lot of attention for his dramatic physical transformation. Somehow, the 24-year-old went from looking like a Japanese teenage boy, to a Caucasian, doll-like man.

Matt’s appearance has been a hot topic on Japanese social media for the last couple of years, with some people simply admiring his “foreign prince” or “anime character” looks, and others speculating that he had undergone extensive plastic surgery to achieve the shocking transformation. Even though the young man’s face has been constantly changing over the last two years, the photos he started posting on his Instagram at the beginning of last year left a lot of people in shock. He looked nothing like his former self, and frankly he didn’t even look Japanese anymore. Instead, his face resembled that of a Caucasian human doll.

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This Indonesian woman who loves to lick various brands of hand soap and rate them by how good they taste is giving the phrase “clean eating” a whole new meaning.

Khosik Assyifa, a young woman from Indonesia’s East Java province, has become an unlikely Instagram sensation thanks to her bizarre eating habits. Assyifa has been posting videos that show her licking bars of hand soap and reviewing them based on taste. Just so we’re clear, she doesn’t just touch the soap bars with the tip of her tongue to get a taste, but licks and slurps them like you would an ice-lolly. She appears to be enjoying the taste almost as much as people love watching her do it. Her soap-eating videos receive thousands of likes and comments, including suggestions on what soap brands she should try next.

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Imagine going to sleep after a day of heavy snowfall and waking up the next morning to find that all that white snow has turned black overnight. That’s exactly what the people of Kiselevsk and Prokopyevsk, two cities in Russia’s Kuzbass region experienced earlier this week.

Photos and videos recently shared on social media by worried citizens of the two Russian cities show the grim reality of living in a coal mining area – snow covered fields and streets blanketed by a thick layer of coal dust and soot that literally turns the snow from white to pitch black.

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The small town of Belushya Guba, in northern Russia, is in a state of emergency, with locals afraid to leave their houses because of dozens of polar bears roaming the streets in search of food.

Located on one of the two islands that make up the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, Belushya Guba is home to roughly 3,000 people, many of whom are terrified to leave their homes and send their kids to school, because of the dozens of bears running around in the streets and even entering buildings in search of food. While polar bear sighting aren’t exactly uncommon in the remote town, the scale of this invasion is reportedly unprecedented. Over 52 sightings have been reported in only three days, with up to 10 bears seen in the settlement at any given time.

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For the past 17 years, the people of St. Mary’s, a small town in Canada’s Newfoundland, have had to put up with the pungent smell of fermented seafood sauce at an abandoned nearby factory. In the summer, the stench gets so bad that some residents bar their homes and leave to stay with their relative, because it’s so hard to breathe.

In 1990, a Vietnamese immigrant opened the Atlantic Seafood Sauce factory near St. Mary’s, with the goal of producing a kind of fermented seafood sauce that is very popular in Vietnamese cuisine. Things were off to a good start, but just 4 years down the line, the owner, a man named Sanh Go, started complaining that Canadian regulations were killing his business. In the year 2000, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspected the factory and concluded that the sauce was produced in unsanitary conditions. Two years later, the Atlantic Seafood Sauce factory closed for good, but its giant vats of fermenting fish parts and seafood sauce have remained there ever since, causing a big stink.

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Building up the courage to confess your feelings to your crush and asking them out on a date can be a nerve-wrecking experience, but thanks to the unique services offered by Japanese company Kokunavi, it doesn’t have to be. If you’re too shy to approach your crush, you can just pay them to do it on your behalf.

True to its name – a mashup between the Japanese word “kokuhaku” (confession of love) and “navigation” –  Kokunavi is committed to helping shy people make their feelings known to their crushes without having to go through the emotionally distressing experience of actually confessing their crush. Basically, Kokunavi will have someone else approach the client’s crush and convey a romantic message on their behalf. Think of it like having a friend deliver a love letter to your high school crush, if that friend charged a lot of money to do it.

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A dog owner in Thailand has come under fire for dyeing her pooch’s ears bright red, after a severe allergic reaction to the dye allegedly caused one of the animal’s ears to fall off.

The unnamed woman reportedly took her adorable Pomeranian, Diffy, to a grooming salon in Hua Hin, last week, to have its ears and tail dyed. The staff carried out a ‘foil wrap’ dyeing procedure, covering the dog’s ears and tail with red dye and leaving them covered in aluminum foil for 40 minutes. The owner was very happy with Diffy’s new look, but quickly noticed that her ears had drooped, even though they had always pointed up before they dyeing procedure. She asked the grooming salon staff about it, but was told that the drooping was normal and that Diffy’s ears would be back to normal in two or three days. Sadly, that turned out to be a lie.

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The democratic Republic of Tajikistan is probably the only country in the world where celebrating a birthday outside the family home can earn offenders a hefty fine.

The recent case of Tajik pop star Firusa Khafizova, who got fined 5,000 somoni ($530) for celebrating her birthday in the company of friends outside her home, has once again drawn attention to one of Tajikistan’s most bizarre laws. According to the “Regulation of Traditions and Customs in the Republic of Tajikistan” the celebration of birthdays anywhere except in the privacy of the family circle is strictly forbidden, with offenders risking hefty fines. As strange as that may sound, the law is actually enforced, with authorities going as far as using social media pictures and videos as proof against suspected offenders.

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Tech giants Google and Apple have come under fire for hosting a controversial smartphone app that allows Saudi men to monitor how and where women travel and effectively prevent them from leaving the country without permission.

Developed by the government of Saudi Arabia, Absher has been around for a while, but it only started making waves in western media after an article in ThisIsInsider highlighted one of its most controversial features – allowing male “guardians” to track and restrict women’s movements via their smartphones. In Saudi Arabia, women are placed under the authority of a male guardian regardless of their age. Women must ask the permission of their guardians to get married, open bank accounts and travel to certain places, and thanks to Absher, tracking an restricting the travel options of women is easier than it’s ever been.

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Police in Papua’s Jayawijaya district, Indonesia, issued a public apology after a video showing an alleged thief being interrogated by security forces using a two-meter live snake went viral online.

Human rights advocates in Indonesia are condemning the use of a live snake during the interrogation of an alleged thief in Western New Guinea. In a video doing the rounds on social media, a barefoot, handcuffed man can be seen squirming and screaming as police officers push a live snake in his face and threaten to put in his mouth and in his pants. Later, the reptile is also seen wrapped around the suspect’s neck, as police try to get a confession out of him about some stolen phones.

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A male student at the Universidad Mayor de San Miguel, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, was recently apprehended while trying to take the college entrance exam on behalf of a female applicant, disguised as a woman.

19-year-old Bryan G. was already a Systems Engineering student at the Universidad Mayor de San Miguel, but on February 6th, he tried to once again take the entrance exam at his college, this time on behalf of a female applicant. To fool university staff, he put on a wig, applied makeup on his face and dressed in women’s clothing. Unfortunately, he was seated at the front of the exam hall where all the professors and assistants could see him, and because he looked more nervous than the other applicants, he quickly attracted their attention. Just as Bryan was about to receive his exam sheet, an assistant came over, asked him who he was, and when he answered “Jocelin C.”, the man told him “You are not that person”.

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Vaggelis Chatzis’s life is considered by many the ultimate underdog story. After having his right forearm amputated from below the elbow when he was only a baby, he grew up to become the world’s only one-handed professional boxer.

Chatzis was born with a cancerous tumour in his right hand which would have ultimately killed him if doctors didn’t amputate part of his arm to stop the cells from spreading. He was only three months old at the time, so the young Greek has had to rely on his left hand alone for as long as he can remember. Growing up was tough, as the other kids would often bully him and make fun of his three-fingered prosthetic hand, calling him things like Captain Hook. That caused him to grow up into a very angry young man, and that anger got him in a lot of trouble. He started hanging out with the wrong crowd, spent his nights drinking and partying, and got into fights a lot. But then he discovered boxing and he fell in love.

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A newlywed couple in Kuwait recently made history for having the shortest marriage in the country’s existence. They decided to go their separate ways just three minutes after getting married.

Last month, Kuwaiti media reported the bizarre case of a couple who ended their marriage before even leaving the courthouse they got married in. The two had just signed their marriage contract in front of a judge and were walking out of the courthouse when the bride accidentally tripped. Instead of helping her up, the groom reportedly insulted his wife by calling her “stupid” for slipping. That was apparently too much for the woman to bear, so she turned around and asked the judge to dissolve their marriage on the spot. They had been married for only three minutes.

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We’ve seen a lot of interesting dating services in the last few years, like Hater, an app that matches people by things they both hate, Dating AI, a service that lets you date people who look like your favorite celebrities, or Trump Singles, a dating site catering exclusively to Donald Trump supporters. But if you prefer a more scientific approach to dating, you may want to try Pheramor, a unique dating service that matches people by chemical compatibility, by analyzing and comparing their DNA.

Pheramor’s approach to finding suitable matches for singles is a bit different than that of most dating services. For $29.99, the company will ship users a DNA kit containing a buccal swab that they have to return for analysis after swabbing the inside of their cheeks. Pheramor will then analyze the samples and sequence 11 genes allegedly linked to attraction and compares the results with others in its database to determine chemical compatibility. The company then sends the user three potential match in their area (with their photos blurred) every day, each graded from 0 to 100, based on estimated compatibility.

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William J. Gallagher, a 68-year-old career criminal who had just been released from prison after a 20-year sentence, recently robbed a Wisconsin bank, with the sole purpose of getting arrested and sent back to prison.

Six months after finishing his 20-year prison sentence at a penitentiary in New Jersey for attempted homicide, Gallagher took an Amtrak train to Chicago, then another one to Milwaukee, in Winsconsin, where he headed straight to a Chase bank with the intention to rob it. But this wasn’t your usual bank robbery. Instead of getting as much money as possible and trying to escape before the police arrived, Gallagher demanded some $100 bills, then casually asked the bank teller to call the police, and simply waited for them to arrive and arrest him. His goal was never to escape with the money, but to get sent back to prison for his crime.

The New York native had spent so much time behind bars that he simply couldn’t adjust to life on the outside, and after remembering that a fellow inmate had once told him that prisons in Wisconsin were the best in the United States, he decided to travel there and commit a crime so he could go back to his old life.

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