Sharing E Umbrella, a new umbrella sharing company based in Shenzen, China, recently announced that it had lost most of the 300,000 umbrellas it made available since it launched, in April.

China’s sharing economy has been booming, with companies offering anything from bicycles and basketballs to smartphone battery banks on a rental basis. Customers make a small deposit and get to use the item for a set period of time for a daily fee, with penalty fees put in place for every day that they fail to return the product after the deadline. It’s a simple business model, and market data shows that consumers see sharing as a cheap and convenient way to reduce waste and avoid clutter. However, it doesn’t always work out as well as entrepreneurs hope.

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Amirul Rizwan Musa, a 21-year-old entrepreneur from Malaysia, has recently come under fire in his home country for spending tens of thousands of dollars on plastic surgery that left him looking like a real-life anime character.

Amirul, better known by his online name, Miyyo Rizone, became the target of criticism from many of his countrymen, after photos showing his radical transformation went viral on social media, last weekend. The fact that some media outlets reported that he had undergone numerous cosmetic surgery procedures in order to become a living Ken doll, didn’t help things either, and now he’s asking people to stop condemning and dehumanizing him for his choices.

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28-year-old Irakli Nadar is considered one of the most talented digital artists of our time. Using only digital painting tools, he is able to create photo-like portraits from scratch. His works are so good that many in the digital art world accuse him of simply applying various filters to digital photographs and passing them off as paintings.

You could say that Irakli Nadar’s amazing skill is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, his breathtaking artworks have brought him worldwide fame and legions of adoring fans on various social networks, but his success and enviable skill have also made him the target of criticism from both rival artists and the average internet trolls. Luckily, he has learned to live with both, and says that tough as it sometimes is, he just ignores the haters and focuses on the positive.

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For 150 lucky preschoolers in Moscow, Russia, every day is a fairy tale. Instead of the usual kindergarten, they go to the Castle of Childhood, a real-life fantasy castle where they can play and live out their dreams of being princes and princesses.

The Castle of Childhood is often called the coolest-looking kindergarten in the world, and for good reason. It’s an amazing complex consisting of a large, colorful medieval castle and numerous play areas, including the usual swings and slides, as well as several playhouses, a soccer field, running track and flower gardens. The castle itself houses all kinds of wondrous areas designed to keep children busy and entertained at all times.

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Browsing through photos of Kina Shen, a young Chinese model with a massive following on Instagram, it’s often hard to tell if you’re looking at an actual human being, or just a life-size doll.

There are many girls out there trying their best to capture the living doll look, but few – if any – manage to do it as well as Kina Shen. The Shenzen-based Chinese model was blessed with perfect facial features, flawless porcelain-like skin and a talent for makeup, all of which apparently come in handy when you’re trying to pose as a doll or a mannequin.

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26-year-old Kel Cruz, an artist from Quezon City, Philippines, is being hailed as a “pixel art wizard”, for his mind-blowing pixelated portraits created with everything from bits of scotch tape and matchsticks, to fingerprints and blood stains.

Cruz, who works as a male nurse, used to create pixelated art the old fashioned way, with a ballpoint pen. But then a rival artist challenged his artistic talent, accusing him that he was using a printer to create his detailed portraits. That inspired him to stop relying so heavily on conventional tools and start exploring unusual mediums. Since then, he has used lipstick, colored tape, rubber stamps, beer and even woven pieces of paper to create some truly awe-inspiring masterpieces.

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A dog shelter in Nikopol, Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk Oblast region, recently received a call from a concerned animal lover begging them to help her rescue a dog that had fallen down an exposed drain and had been stuck there for three years.

The shocking story was shared on July 2nd, on a public dog-themed Facebook group, by Elena Omelchenko, a volunteer at the Nikopol dog shelter. Apparently, a girl named Lena called the shelter and practically implored them to rescue a dog that had fallen down an uncovered drain, into a complex central heating system, three years ago, and had been living there ever since. Lena and other kindhearted people had been throwing the dog food, but, so far, they had been unable to rescue it.

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Selamat Riayadi, a 16-year-old boy from South Sumatra, Indonesia, recently married his sweetheart, 71-year-old Rohaya. The two are apparently so in love with each other that they threatened to take their own lives if their families didn’t give their blessing for the controversial union.

It’s not exactly clear how and when Selamat and Rohaya fell in love, but what we do know is that the two have become husband and wife on Saturday, during a wedding ceremony held at the house of their village chief, in Karangendah Village, South Sumatra. The wedding was held at night, to keep the number of visitors to an acceptable number, because their controversial love story had already attracted curious visitors from neighboring villages. Even so, hundreds of people attended the special wedding.

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When his father died, in 2011, Jay Wilde inherited the family cattle farm, in Ashbourne, UK. He has been constantly sending cows to the slaughterhouse ever since, but he recently decided he couldn’t do it anymore, so he gave away his heard of 59 cows to an animal sanctuary, where they will live out the rest of their natural lives in peace.

59-year-old Wilde has been a vegetarian for 25 years, so having to sell animals to be killed for meat was particularly difficult, but he had promised his father that he would take over the family farm. Having to send off the animals to the slaughterhouse after seeing them grow under his eyes and spending time with them was extremely unpleasant, and the farmer recently decided that he couldn’t bear to do it anymore.

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In a horrifying trend recently reported by Indian media, poor villagers near the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve are allegedly sending their elderly relatives into the jungle as tiger prey, so they can then claim compensation from the government.

The disturbing tactic was discovered by officials at the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) in Uttar Pradesh, who, upon inspecting several mauling sites near the tiger reserve, noticed evidence of foul play. In the most recent case, reported on July 1st, the mauled body of a 55-year-old woman was found in a field near her village, but bits of her clothes were found one kilometer away, in the tiger reserve, and tractor tracks leading into and from the jungle showed that the body had been relocated.

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They say that one man can’t make a difference, but Abdul Samad Sheikh, a 60-year-old rickshaw driver from Bangladesh, is living proof that small contributions over a long period of time can mean very much. He has planted at least one tree every day since he was 12-years-old, which means that he has so far planted a small forest of over 17,500 trees. Imagine if everyone followed his example.

Abdul Samad Sheikh, fondly known as “Tree Samad” in his native town of Faridpur, central Bangadesh, has worked as a rickshaw driver for most of his life. The modest job earns him about 100 taka ($1.25) per day, which is barely enough to put food on the table for his family, but he somehow manages to also buy at least one tree from the Faridpur Horticulture Centre, every day. He considers it his duty to the world, and claims he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if he didn’t plant a tree that day.

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Yu Ermei, and 86-year-old woman from Jingdezhen, Eastern China, has spent around $900,000 and five years of her life building a “palace” completely decorated with ceramic pieces. Most people consider her insane for spending so much time and money on this project, but she says that her life would be incomplete without it.

When Yu came up with the idea for her unique porcelain palace, six years ago, her family thought she had become senile, but she tried to explain that this was her life’s dream. Jingdezhen is considered “China’s porcelain capital” and having lived here since age 12, the woman wanted to leave something behind in honor of the city that had shaped her existence. She had worked in the ceramics business for most of her life, first as an apprentice in a porcelain workshop, then as a worker in two state-owned factories, before gaining enough experience to open her own kiln and porcelain factory, which ended up making her a sizable fortune. This palace would be her way of giving back to Jingdezhen and a tribute to ceramics.

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In the Indian state of Rajasthan, some 50 km from the city of Jodhpur, along National Highway 65, there is a temple. That, in itself, is not unusual, as temples are virtually everywhere in India, but what is strange is that the deities worshiped here are an old Royal Enfield 350cc motorcycle and its deceased owner.

The story of “Om Bana” or “Bullet Baba” temple dates back to an accident that occurred almost three decades ago.  On December 23rd, 1988, Om Singh Rathore, the 23-year-old son of a village elder in Chotila, Pali district, was riding home on his motorcycle when he lost control, hit a tree and was catapulted into a 20-foot, where he died on the spot. His body was discovered the next day, and the broken “Bullet” motorcycle was taken to the police station. And that’s where things start to get weird.

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An experienced Kenyan lawyer recently filed a petition with the International Court of Justice in The Hague against the countries of Israel and Italy, as well as historical figures that have been dead for over 2,000 years, for the unlawful trial and crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

If you somehow feel that you’ve heard something like this before, you probably have. Kenyan lawyer Dola Indidis first tried to sue Israel and Italy over Jesus’ death in 2007. His petition to a Nairobi court was dismissed, but the persistent man didn’t give up. In 2013, he turned to the International Court of Justice for the first time, arguing that Jesus’ “selective and malicious prosecution violated his human rights through judicial misconduct, abuse of office bias and prejudice.” Unfortunately, his case was thrown out, but in March of this year, Indidis once again appealed to the ICJ, hoping to finally make it to an actual trial.

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Noel Cruz, a Filipino-American artist based in Anaheim, specializes in repainting mass-produced celebrity and character dolls, like those made by Mattel, into hyper-realistic miniature models of the people that inspired them. The results of his meticulous work are nothing short of awe-inspiring.

Born and raised in Manila, the Philippines, Noel Cruz has been drawing and painting people’s faces for most of his life. It all started when he was 12 years old, when, while looking through a neighbor’s window, he saw a telecast of the 1974 Miss Universe Pageant on television. Seeing so many beautiful faces all at once inspired him to start drawing portraits on pieces of paper. At age 16, having undergone no specialized training, Cruz was already selling portraits as commissioned work. But he only discovered the fascinating world of repainted dolls several years later, after emigrating to the United States with his family.

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