China’s online store is becoming increasingly dominated by AI-powered clones that never tire of trying to sell you things and can literally work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The Chinese online shopping scene is very different than what we’re used to in the West. Live streaming is by far the most lucrative marketing channel these days, with popular influencers on platforms like Taobao and Douyin able to close massive deals in just a few hours every day. However, these crazy achievements come at a cost for businesses and brands. It takes time and money to train a great online seller, and there is nothing stopping them from reaching an agreement with competitors, leaving you no option but to restart the process. Having camera crews and assistants around during the live stream also adds to the expenditures, and last, but definitely not least, every top influencer has to sleep at some point. That’s where AI-powered avatars come in…

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Japan’s population is aging at an accelerated pace, so it’s no surprise that the country now has its own old boy band, with members aged between 65 and 87.

G-Pop, a play on the Japanese word ‘Ojii-san’ for ‘old man’, is not your average boy band. J-Pop and K-Pop groups like most other boy bands, are primarily aimed at teenagers and young adults so the usual recipe for success is finding good-looking young men who can also dance and maybe have some sort of musical talent. G-Pop, on the other hand, is targeting Japan’s older population, so they are actually old men in their 60s through 80s. The Kochi Prefecture-based music troupe made its professional debut seven years ago, it’s been busy putting a positive spin on the country’s rapidly aging population ever since.

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Japanese couple Hiromi and Hidekazu Takeda have been married for many years and even have a child together, but they live an hour apart from each other and have never shared a home.

‘Separation marriages’, aka weekend marriages or living apart together (LAT), have reportedly become very popular in Japan, because they allow couples to experience the best of both worlds- on one hand, they enjoy each other’s love and support, but they also get to maintain an individual lifestyle without worrying about their partner. Basically, a separation marriage allows couples to experience the combined benefits of being married and being single, but it is important that the relationship be based on mutual love and respect.

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An Australian man reportedly made his girlfriend believe that he had been kidnapped so he could spend New Year’s Eve with his mistress.

35-year-old Paul Iera narrowly avoided jail time after he admitted before a judge that he had concocted an elaborate lie to hide his infidelity from his girlfriend, wasting tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars in the process. On December 31st of last year, the Australian man from Wollongong called his girlfriend to tell her that he was meeting his “finance guy,” when in reality he was going to see his mistress. At one point, in order to buy themselves some time, the couple messaged Iera’s girlfriend again, this time pretending to be a kidnapper who promised to deliver him safe and sound the next day.

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Russian police are currently on the lookout for a young girl who reportedly stormed out of a restaurant, leaving her date to foot the bill after he asked her to split it evenly.

Handling the bill on a first date has always been a point of contention, as some people believe that men should cover the entire cost, while others are convinced that going Dutch is the only way. Both sides have their arguments, and while online forums are full of endless debates on the subject, there was never really cause for involving the police. Until recently, that is, when one 28-year-old man from Moscow filed a complaint against a woman he went on a date with after she refused to split the bill, leaving him to cover the entire 16,000 rubles ($165) cost.

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In a viral video that has been doing the rounds online, an African pastor can be seen entering the lion’s cage at a zoo and teasing the felines to show that nothing can happen to a man of God.

Originally posted on Instagram by @mufasatundeednut, the bizarre video shows a man wearing a blue suit playing with three young lions under the watchful eyes of several people outside the cage. The man is referred to as ‘Pastor Daniel’, and if the original poster of the clip is to be believed, the daring stunt was designed to convince his followers that he was under the protection of God, and that nothing could happen to him, even when surrounded by a bunch of lions. The bold pastor can be seen slapping the young lions and even letting one of them playfully chew on his hand.

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The aptly named Methuselah, a lungfish at the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco, is the oldest fish held in captivity, with an estimated age between 92 and 101 years.

Methuselah arrived on US soil in 1938, on a steamboat from Australia, along with 230 other fish. Today, she – scientists believe it’s a female, although they can’t be sure – is the only living fish out of all the ones that left the steamboat. She was only a little fish back then, but she kept growing as the years passed and the aquarium life seemed to suit her. The people peering at her through the glass wall didn’t seem to stress her out one bit, and she still enjoys peering back at visitors to this day. She was originally given the unofficial title of oldest fish in captivity back in 2017, when experts estimated her age at 84. However, more recent tests showed that Methuselah is even older than previously anticipated – at least 92 years old and up to 101.

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21-year-old Brooke Bruk-Jackson was crowned Miss Universe Zimbabwe, which means she will represent the African nation at the next Miss Universe pageant.

Held for the first time in 22 years this past week, the Miss Universe Zimbabwe beauty contest sparked racial controversy in the African country, with many claiming that the winner is not an accurate representation of Zimbabwe’s general population. Born and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city, Brooke Bruk-Jackson is also white, which for many is apparently a problem. Her crowning as Miss Universe Zimbabwe ignited a fiery debate on social media, with vocal critics arguing that her title is tainted by racial bias, and that she only won because she is white.

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Police in the Mexican state of Coahuila recently arrested a knife-wielding Chucky doll and its ventriloquist owner for terrorizing people in the streets for money.

Chucky the red-haired murderous doll possessed by the spirit of a serial killer is one of the most terrifying movie characters in history. He’s an iconic character whose chilling smile has terrorized generations around the world, so it really doesn’t come as a total surprise that someone used a Chucky doll to scare people into giving them money. It happened in Monclova, a town in the Mexican state of Coahuila, where a man identified only as Carlos N. started manipulating a large Chucky doll like a ventriloquist and terrorizing people on the street into giving him money.

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The chairman of a large Chinese cleansing product company has been mocked after a video showing him biting into a bar of all-natural soap went viral on social media.

Speaking during an employee meeting, the boss of Hongwei, a well-known cleaning product manufacturer founded in 1952, can be heard doing a presentation of a laundry soap, telling people that it contains no harmful substances, just alkali, animal fat, and milk. To be as convincing as possible, the man takes a bar of soap and starts munching on it, before washing it down with a swig of water. Although The man’s extreme marketing technique was meant to demonstrate the all-natural ingredients, it was actually mocked by a lot of people, with some joking that the soap could be a life-saver during a natural disaster.

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A lack of trust in their romantic partners is pushing a lot of people to use online ‘loyalty testing’ services that flirt with partners and try to get them to cheat.

At the beginning of this year, online ‘loyalty testers’ began trending on Vietnamese social media, and today a simple search yields thousands of results for both paid testers and ones who offer their services free of charge. There are hundreds of them on Facebook alone, a platform that remains very popular in Vietnam, and more than half of them provide the service for free. However, psychologists warn that this type of partner loyalty testing may have unforeseen negative consequences on a relationship.

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A Chinese woman has been charged with fraud after it was revealed that she was employed by 16 different companies at the same time, but she never really showed up for work at any of them.

The woman, identified as Guan Yue (pseudonym) by Chinese media, had reportedly been juggling over a dozen employers and collecting paychecks for at least three years, without actually getting any work done for any of them. She and her husband, who is also a suspect in this case, allegedly kept a very tight record of employers, her exact role at each company, the date she had started working for each of them, and the bank account details provided for the woman’s monthly salary. Guan Yue would constantly be looking for new employers, and when going to new job interviews, she would take photos and send them to current employers as proof that she was meeting with clients. Believe it or not, the fraud worked flawlessly for years, allowing Guan Yue to buy an expensive apartment in Shanghai.

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A Russian man who had spent the last 22 years of his life in a penal colony for serious crimes, recently escaped on the very day he was supposed to be released.

According to the SHOT Telegram channel, Kamoljon Kalonov had been serving a lengthy 22-year-sentence for a double murder, theft,  and possession of weapons, ammunition, explosives, and explosive devices, but he was supposed to be released from the IK-19 penal colony in the village of Markova near Irkutsk last week. However, the regional department of the Federal Penitentiary Service told RIA Novosti that on the morning of his release day, at around 4 in the morning, Kalonov disappeared from the colony without informing anyone and is now supposedly on the run.

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A 69-year-old man from the Russian Republic of Dagestan claims to have set a new world record for fastest weight loss, after allegedly losing over 11 kilograms during a 2.5-hour race.

Bahama Aigubov had already had his name inscribed in the Russian Book of Records in 2019 when he lost 9.3 kg after a five-hour race, but he recently managed to blow his own record out of the water by losing  11.1 kg in 2.5 hours during a 21 km race in Makhachkala. Aigubov cannot have his record recognized by the Guinness Book of Records, as it does not acknowledge achievements in rapid weight loss so as not to encourage people to engage in dangerous experiments, but the pensioner claims to be the fastest body weight shedder in the world, by far.

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Belly button stickers are apparently all the rage in China these days, as a growing number of women are reportedly using them as a way of making their legs appear longer.

There is a curious beauty trend going on in China right now. Young women are paying 5-10 RMB ($0.70 to $1.40) for sheets of temporary tattoos designed to look like belly buttons. The stickers are usually placed a few centimeters above the real navel, which is then concealed with skirts or pants, in order to make the torso seem shorter and the legs, longer. It sounds pretty dumb, but belly button sticker manufacturers are struggling to keep up with demand, and social media platforms like Xiaohongshu are being flooded with video tutorials on how to use the temporary tattoos and clips showing their effects on the wearer.

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