North Korea may be one of the world’s least tourist-friendly countries on Earth, but its strategic location along the avian East Asian Australasian Flyway and complete lack of development is preventing the extinction of several once plentiful species of migratory birds.

Around fifty million birds, from tiny song birds to cranes, journey across the East Asian Australasian Flyway every year, and eight million of them are shorebirds or waders. For many of these, North Korea’s west coast is the only stop for tens of thousands of miles, which means that without it, they would probably couldn’t finish their epic trip. But what makes this otherwise inhospitable place so important to birds?

A group of New Zealand bird watchers asked permission from the North Korean government to enter the country and observe the migratory birds. Armed with binoculars, powerful telescopes and cameras they counted the birds making their stop from the southern hemisphere all the way to the top of the northern one. “As we lose habitat elsewhere, the birds are going to get more and more pushed into remaining habitat, which by default means North Korea,” birder David Melville told the BBC. Because the shorelines of neighboring countries China and South Korea have witnessed rapid developments, with most of the mudflats having been converted to dry land for agriculture and industrial projects, the birds have virtually no place to stop and refuel.

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Red, white and rosé wines have been around for hundreds of years, and if you’ve gotten a little bored with them you’ll be happy to know that you can now enjoy a cup of bright blue wine, as well.

Spanish startup Gïk has spent the last two years working with scientists at the University of the Basque Country and food researchers at Azti Tecnecalia, and they have recently unveiled the fruits of their labor – the world’s first blue wine! Why blue you ask? “Gïk is born for fun,” the company’s official site responds. “To shake things up a little and see what happens. To create something new. Something different. Why a blue wine you wonder? And why not?”

Co-founder Aritz López told Eater that the inspiration for the unique color of the wine came from Blue Ocean Strategy, a book written by W. Chan Kim, a Korean-born business theorist. “He tells about red oceans in his book, representing business markets saturated by specialists (sharks) who fight for the same variables and for a reduced number of clients (fish), and end up in water turned red. And how it’s necessary to revert this, by innovating and creating new variables, back to blue. This seemed poetic for us to turn a traditionally red beverage into a blue one,” he said.

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The minimalist lifestyle trend has been gaining popularity in the Western world for a while now, but we’re still far from the hardcore minimalism Zen-loving Japanese have adopted in their quest to achieve a stress-free life.

Space has always been an issue in crowded Japanese cities, so from that point of view it makes sense that people try to keep their homes junk free, but some are taking minimalism to such an extreme that they are virtually living in empty houses surrounded by only the barest of necessities. For them, minimalism is not just about de-cluttering their living space, but also about evaluating what material possessions truly bring to their lives and focusing on the things that they consider important. To Japan’s hardcore minimalists, less is more in every sense that actually matters.

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Buying your first house is supposed to be a joyous occasion, but for young Tamara Holloway, from Nashville, Tennessee it was a terrible nightmare she couldn’t wake up from, because the man she bought the house from refused to move out.

Holloway closed on the home on June 1, and although there was no clause in the contract that stated former owner Justin McCrory couldn stay there past that date, he simply wouldn’t leave. “The transaction went through and they’re getting a good clean property,” McCrory told local reporters. “What’s the problem? … I technically don’t have to go anywhere. They’d have to evict me and they’re not having that.” Signature Title Services had said the processor for the closing also contacted McCrory asking him to move out of the house, but that didn’t seem to do much good, so the new owner filed a detainer warrant, the first step in an eviction process. However it can take up to 30 days until you can have someone forcefully removed that way, so things didn’t look good for the inexperienced buyer.

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Animal leather alternatives like Polyurethane and PVC leather may have solved the fashion industry’s animal cruelty problem, but they are not the most environmentally friendly solutions. Piñatex – a new leather-like material made from pineapple leaves – on the other hand, may just be the all-around eco-leather we’ve all been waiting for.

Piñatex or “vegan leather” is the invention of Dr. Carmen Hijosa and her innovative materials company, Ananas Anam. While working in the Philippines as a consultant to the Product Development and Design Center of the Philippines in the ‘90s, she discovered the properties of pineapple leaf fibers and dedicated her life to creating sustainable alternatives to leather and petroleum-based textiles. After years of research, Ananas Anam has finally come up with what it believes is a viable alternative to animal leather. It recently showcased the versatility of Piñatex during a presentation held at the Royal College of Art in London, where designers displayed various clothing items and accessories made exclusively from the revolutionary material.

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In what is likely the most disturbing teen trend we’ve ever reported about – and there have been quite a few – pregnant young girls in Australia are turning to smoking tobacco cigarettes to keep their babies’ weight low and make childbirth less painful.

The shocking finding that young Australian pregnant women are more terrified of childbirth pain than the serious adverse affects smoking during pregnancy can have on the fetus – including higher stillbirth rates and increased risk of childhood asthma and allergies – was revealed by a recently published 10-year national anthropological study led by Associate Professor Simone Dennis from the Australian National University. She found that girls as young as 16 are either taking up smoking or increasing their daily cigarette intake in an effort to have smaller babies, due to fears that their young bodies will not be able to handle childbirth.

Even more disturbing is the fact that the teen mothers-to-be were inspired to take on this practice by the health warnings on Australian cigarette packs, some of which state that ‘smoking while pregnant can reduce the weight of your baby’. Rather than being deterred by this, they decided to embrace smoking as a way of keeping their unborn babies’ weight low in hopes of a less painful childbirth. Studies show that smoking mothers are twice as likely as nonsmokers to have lower weight babies, about 200g lighter, on average.

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Classical ballet and hip hop don’t exactly seem like a match made in heaven, but a new dance form aptly called “hiplet” is proving otherwise.

A video of a group of young ballerinas performing hiplet to Jason Derulo’s “If It Ain’t Love” went viral at the end of last month and has since then gotten tens of millions of views on various social media platforms. Looking at how these young ladies are able to put a modern twist on classical ballet, it’s no wonder the world can’t seem to get enough of them. Frankly, neither can we!

Hiplet is the creation of Homer Hans Bryant, a famous dance teacher who has previously worked with celebrities like Lady Gaga and first daughters first daughters Sasha and Malia Obama. The talented dancers in that viral hiplet video are his young students at the Chicago Multicultural dance Center. Bryant said he came up with this strange yet intriguing combination in an attempt to keep up with the times and stay relevant with young people.

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Loans are notoriously hard to get for Chinese college students, and some of them will agree to almost anything for some much needed funds, even providing nude photos of themselves as collateral to unscrupulous loan sharks.

The disgusting practice was brought to national attention when a victim – a university student going by the pseudonym of Li Li – desperately sought help from the police after loan sharks requested that she send them a photo of herself in the nude, holding her ID card. The online loan shark group had granted her a 500 yuan ($76) loan in February with a weekly interest rate of 30%. Unable to pay it back in time, the debt inflated beyond 10,000 yuan in a very short while, and at one point the loan sharks threaten not to renew her loan unless she also provided a nude photo of herself holding her ID, which Li reluctantly agreed to. However, after four months, her debt had inflated to 55,000 yuan, at which point she went to the police asking for help.

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Red meat hardly seems like the perfect ingredient for delicious chocolate, but a New Zealand-based food scientist is willing to bet that his high-protein, 50% beef chocolate recipe is going to be a hit.

Mustafa Farouk, Senior Food Technologist at Ag Research has partnered with Auckland boutique chocolate maker Devonport Chocolates to bring meat chocolate to the masses. The quirky idea of combining the two very different ingredients came to Dr. Farouk one day, while looking at ways of adding value to beef and pondering ways the staple food might be consumed in the future. Mixing beef and chocolate seemed like the perfect way for people to get proteins and other nutrients in meat, because chocolate is such a popular dessert.

So Farouk took a very lean cut from the hind quarter of a Waikato-raised bovine, turned into what he calls “chocolate butter”, which I assume is a sort of fine paste, and handed it over to Devonport Chocolates to use in their confectionery. The resulting combination reportedly has a consistency similar to a Turkish delight, and while the food scientist admits you can tell that it’s not regular chocolate, the taste of meat is almost impossible to pick up. In an interview with the New Zealand Herald, Farouk described the taste of beef chocolate as “wonderful”, adding that although people are initially put off by the unique dessert when they here it is 50% beef, once they bite into it and taste the rich chocolate flavor, most agree that it is excellent.

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An angry husband recently made headlines for selling his “cheating wife’s belongings” on the internet, after she reportedly ran off with someone who “looks like Beppe from Eastenders”.

The anonymous man, who goes by the handle Calibristeve on eBay, listed piles of clothing, shoes and even a black Smart car on the popular online shopping site. Describing the collection as a “complete job lot of possessions belonging to my cheating ex w***e of a wife”, the scorned lover revealed that he plans to use the proceeds to commission the services of prostitutes in his marital home, and buy enough Scotch whisky to drink himself into a coma.

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London residents too busy to hit the gym every once in a while will soon get the chance to work out during their commute, thanks to a fleet of ingenious fitness buses packed full of stationary bikes.

“The Wheels on the Bus” children’s song is going to have a whole new meaning once British fitness company 1Rebel launches its new Ride2Rebel buses on the streets of London. The modified public transportation vehicles will feature stationary bikes instead of seats, allowing commuters to spin at their hearts’ content on their way to work. Buses will travel from four pick-up points in north, east, south and west London along the city’s most popular commute routes, all the way to the 1Ride studio where riders can come in for a shower and a smoothie before work.

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A picturesque Chinese village where humans live alongside hundreds of macaques sounds like a great vacation destination, but for the local population it’s apparently a daily living hell.

A little over a decade ago, authorities in Xianfeng village, in southwestern Sichuan Province came up with an ingenious plan to boost tourism and turn their quaint settlement in one of China’s most popular destinations – attracting wild macaques from the surrounding mountains to their village. Locals spent 48 days drawing in 73 monkeys using food, and their plan worked like a charm. The animals started settling in, and as word about a real-life monkey village spread throughout the region, businessman interested in investing in the novel tourist attraction arrived in Xianfeng.

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A high-end tire company in Dubai has recently secured the Guinness World Record for the most expensive set of tires, after creating four tires encrusted with 24-carat gold and diamonds.

In keeping with the luxury and glamour Dubai is so well-known for, Z Tyres has gone to great lengths to create a unique set of tires that could make some of the world’s most expensive cars seem cheap. Designed and fabricated at the Z Tyres factory, the Z1 tires were shipped to Italy to be encrusted with diamonds by Italian artisan jewelers before being returned to the rich Arab country for the application of gold leafing by the very same craftsmen who have worked on the new presidential palace in Abu Dhabi. The four bespoke tires were individually inspected by Guinness experts and recognized as the most expensive in the world.

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54-year-old Michael Vaudreuil is used to picking up things at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. He has been working as custodian there for the last eight years, vacuuming the carpets, cleaning the floors, wiping the blackboards and picking up the trash. But last month, Vaudreuil picked up something he’ll actually want to hang on to – a degree in mechanical engineering.

In 2008, Vaudreuil, a self-employed plastering contractor, with two decades of successful entrepreneurship under his belt, felt his world crashing down on him. As recession hit, less phone calls were coming in, but he tried not to panic. Soon, clients stopped calling completely and he had no choice but to file for bankruptcy. Soon, his home was foreclosed, his car repossessed and without his income to support his wife’s vending machine business, that eventually went under as well. He and his family moved into a tiny apartment and Michael started looking for jobs with construction companies, but no one was hiring.

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If you’re all alone on your couch watching TV and can’t decide between drinking a glass of wine or stuffing yourself with ice-cream, you’ll be happy to know you can now have both, thanks to Winecream, an ingenious dessert that combines wine and gourmet ice-cream.

Created by Crossroads Company, a family-owned business in Baltimore, Winecream is a mashup of craft-made fruit wines and super-premium, gourmet ice-cream. Customers get to choose a wine from various house-made options including pineapple, mixed berry, peach, or strawberry, which is then mixed in to a cream and sugar base and flash frozen using liquid nitrogen, a food-safe cryogenic liquid that’s nearly -320 degrees Fahrenheit. First announced back in 2014, Winecream has so far only been available at wine festivals and private events, but Crossroads Company has recently made the adult dessert available for online orders and plans to launch it in liquor stores in Baltimore and Washington D.C. later this summer.

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