In a puzzling turn of events, Indian authorities have arrested a pigeon on the suspicion of spying for the Pakistani government.

The dubious bird is believed to have landed on the terrace of a barber’s home in the village of Manwal, four kilometers away from the India-Pakistan border. The barber’s 14-year-old son noticed an Urdu message printed on its feathers that read: ‘Tehsil Shakargarh, district Narowal’, along with a series of numbers. The boy immediately turned the pigeon over to the police, asking them to investigate its appearance.

Intrigued by the message and by a wire-like object found on its body, officers rushed the bird to a veterinary hospital in the town of Pathankot for inspection. X-Ray reports did not reveal anything abnormal, but the police said that they plan to detain the bird until they find out more. They do have a hunch that the digits in the message may be a telephone number in Pakistan’s Narowal district and the tension was further intensified by the fact that the bird made an appearance during a top-secret inter-state security conference in India. So the bird was listed in police records as a “suspected spy”.

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Chinese media reports that a growing number of parents are taking their children on special tours of luxury villas, to stimulate their desire to become wealthy and successful.

On weekends, most parents take their kids to the playground, maybe to a museum, shopping mall or on a relaxing picnic, but in China, some parents use these family outings to inspire their young ones to study hard so one day they can afford to live a life of luxury.

Companies like Heming Island Resort and Spa, in Qingyuan, Guangdong Province, offer families the chance to visit luxury villas worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, which are meant “to stimulate a child’s desire to become wealthy and successful”. These holiday homes are apparently becoming a popular tool for parents who want their offspring to learn that being rich is a sign of “high social status and success”.

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At first glance, Wendell Castle’s “Ghost Clock”, an art piece on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, looks like an old grandfather clock covered in a white sheet. But looks can be deceiving.

What’s the point of displaying a covered up old clock in a museum, right? You’d be tempted to think the exhibit is temporarily covered up for reconditioning, but a plaque at the base of the artwork quickly clears things up for those interested enough to read it. Castle’s Ghost Clock was expertly hand-carved from a large block of laminated mahogany, white cloth, rope and all.

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Looking for super-fresh mushrooms? Head on over to a Kroger grocery store in Indiana, where you can pick them yourself.

Instead of selling already picked and packaged button mushrooms, Kroger grocery stores in Indianapolis and Bloomington, Indiana, give customers the chance to pick them by hand from a compost stand. Sure, you have to get your hands a little dirty, but at least you know they are as fresh as can be.

Photos of the unique pick-you-own stand at Kroger were first posted on Reddit a few months ago, and got mostly positive reactions from users of the popular news sharing website, while some expressed concerns about food waste, since the pictures showed a lot of already picked mushrooms left on the compost stand by picky customers. However, as one user pointed out, there’s really no waste with mushrooms, as the staff can just make new compost out of them and grow new ones.

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Believe it or not, the world’s most expensive cheese doesn’t come from cows or goats, but from donkeys. Made on a farm in Serbia, ‘Pule Cheese’ is made from Balkan donkey milk and costs a hefty $1,000 per pound! It is a crumbly white cheese, apparently popular for its intense flavor and natural saltiness.

The world’s supply of pule comes from a single herd of Balkan donkeys that live on a farm in the Zasavica Special Nature Preserve, Serbia. Part of the reason this cheese is so expensive is that donkeys don’t yield too much milk, and they all have to be milked by hand, three times a day. Apparently, 15 donkeys yield about a gallon of milk, and it takes 3.5 gallons to make a pound of pule cheese. The donkeys of the Zasavica Special Nature Preserve only produce enough milk to make around 200 pounds of pule cheese a year, which makes it very hard to come by.

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Remember the gut wrenching scene from Apocalypto, where Jaguar Paw’s wife uses ants’ pincers as sutures on her young son? Turns out it was inspired by a real medical treatment used in part of Asia, Africa and South America.

According to survival expert Cody Lundin, who starred on the Discovery reality show Dual Survival, army ants – soldiers that guard the rest of the colony – are known for their whopper mandibles. “I know that in ancient China, they were used as sutures by a lot of native peoples,” he explained on the show. “Take it on both sides of your wound and it’s going to clamp down on your flesh, and when you pinch off the body, it will hold that wound shut. Once they bite on, they don’t let go. You can physically pull their body away from their head, and they will stay embedded in the flesh.”

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The headquarters of NetDragon Websoft – China’s most popular internet provider – looks quite conventional from the ground, but aerial footage shows that the building is actually a replica of the iconic Starship Enterprise!

NetDragon chairman Liu Dejian, a huge Star Trek fan and self-described ‘Uber Trekkie’, reportedly spent $150 million over a span of six years to construct the USS Enterprise-shaped office. When it was finally ready in 2014, he chose to remain rather low-key about it. But when a fan spotted a satellite image of the badass building – about the size of three football pitches – it eventually stirred up a social media frenzy. Drone footage was soon released online, making Star Trek fans all over the world drool with delight.

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For most of us a cruise around the world aboard a luxury ship is nothing but a fantasy, but for Lee Wachtstetter it’s everyday life. The 86-year-old has been living on the Crystal Serenity cruise ship for the last seven years, hardly ever setting foot on dry land.

The Florida woman sold her five-bedroom home in Fort Lauderdale shortly after she lost her husband ,Guy Mason Wachtstetter, to cancer, and moved into the stateroom of a Holland America Line ship. When that ship discontinued its dance host program, she moved to the 1,070-passenger Crystal Serenity, where she has been living for the past seven years!

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In a phenomenal display of creativity, artist Marc Schneider has managed to transform ordinary metal screws into an art medium. He painstakingly arranges thousands of gray scale screws to create detailed portraits that look like black and white photographs.

Schneider starts by taking a photo and modifying the pixels into a gray scale template. Using the pixelated photograph as a reference, he uses thousands of hand sprayed screws to replicate the photo on a block of wood.  “I enjoy working in a medium that embodies strength and durability, allowing the viewer to touch the art and experience the unique surface created by thousands of screws,” he wrote on his website. “The meticulous approach in the creation of my screw art portraits is medicine for my soul.”

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A shopping mall in Shanghai recently sparked controversy with its special, super-sized parking spaces for female drivers. The pink-colored spots are six meters long by three meters wide, making them half a meter larger than normal parking spaces. Although mall staff insist that they are intended to make parking safer and more convenient for women, plenty of netizens have deemed the move sexist.

The four pink-colored spaces on the B1 level of Wandu Center, on Xingyi Road, feature the image of a woman, similar to the ones used to designate restroom doors, on the floor and the walls behind them are to be painted pink for easy identification. Men are obviously not allowed to use these spots, but strict action won’t be taken against those who do, at least not at first. “Whether the ladies-only spaces will be properly used still depends on public awareness,” said mall employee Li Ming.

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The curious case of the bizarre facekini strikes again! In case you don’t remember, it’s a nylon mask that covers the entire head, leaving holes only for the eyes, nostrils and mouth. The Chinese invention is meant to be used as beachwear, protecting wearers (mostly women) from sunburns and jellyfish stings. It first made an appearance in 2006, and the present “fourth-generation” avatar has managed to enter new levels of weirdness!

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Lata 65 is a highly unusual urban art workshop in Lisbon, Portugal, that teaches elderly women the basics of street art. Although graffiti is generally perceived as a part of youth culture, the workshop has introduced the quirky art form to over 100 senior citizens around the city. It gives groups of elderly women the chance to team up with prominent street artists and literally paint the town red. They bring color and charm to otherwise neglected and run-down neighborhoods, by making their own stencils and creating their own street tags.

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Six-year-old Amina Al Musa is a seemingly normal child: She goes to school and loves playing hide-and-seek. But her after-school snack is so unconventional that it has attracted media attention across the world. Amina happens to be breastfed by her mother every single day, and the little girl seems to love it!

Extended breastfeeding is highly unusual in today’s world, which is why Amina’s case is making headlines. At age 52, her mother – belly dancing expert and human rights activist Maha Al Musa – is one of the oldest women in the world to be breastfeeding. Although she’s garnering a lot of interest and some criticism, Maha says that she’s only responding to her daughter’s natural desire.

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17-year-old Lamont Cathey, who was jailed for breaking into a pizza parlour in Chicago, is proving to be a costly inmate to handle. For the past 16 months, mentally disturbed Cathey has been consuming metal objects – ranging from toe screws to needles, to drawing pins, and even strips of leather. He has been rushed to the prison’s hospital 24 different times to have these items removed, costing the State a whopping $1.3 million!

Cathey used to be a promising basketball player until he was accused of stealing money from a safe at a pizzeria over a year ago. He is yet to go on trial, and as he waits for a sentence, he has taken to eating “anything he could get his hands on” around his cell. He reportedly swallowed parts of a security camera, tore apart a $50,000 hospital bed, and broke open a medical device to swallow the parts inside.

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While plagiarism is generally abhorred in artistic circles, controversial artist Richard Prince makes millions by brazenly duplicating others’ work. In his last project, ‘New Portraits’, he took screenshots of 37 Instagram photographs (without permission), blew them up, and displayed them at the Frieze Art Fair New York. One of the portraits – posted by a woman called Doe Deere – reportedly sold for a whopping $90,000!

The portrait in question depicts Deere styled in blue hair, identical to the doll she’s holding. “No I did not give permission and yes, the controversial artist Richard Prince put it up anyway,” Deere wrote on Instagram, where she has 328,000 followers. “It’s already sold ($90k I’ve been told) during the VIP preview. No, I’m not gonna go after him. And nope, I have no idea who ended up with it!” She hashtagged the post #modernart and #wannabuyaninstagrampicture.

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