The Curious Case of a Child Who Can’t Eat Anything But Peaches

Sometimes, when you tuck into your favorite meal, you may go, “Wow, I could eat nothing else for the rest of my days!” Could you really? What if you never, ever get to taste anything else? This might be the case with Micah Gabriel Masson Lopez – a two-year-old boy from Montreal, Canada who lives only on peaches.He suffers from a serious condition called food-protein induced enterocolitis syndrome (FPIES), which causes a severe allergy to virtually any food other than peaches.

Little Micah has hardly ever had a pain-free day. In addition to FPIES, he suffers from an immunodeficiency called DiGeorge syndrome and a rare genetic condition known as 15Q13.3 micro-duplication. Every month, his parents have to take him to nine different specialists, and the medical costs are taking a heavy toll. So is the cost of ensuring a steady supply of peaches, which can be a problem to find off-season in Quebec. His parents are so desperate that they have launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money that will help them with all the expenses.

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Ukrainian Strongman Makes a Name for Himself by Carrying Horses on His Back

Humans have been riding horses for thousands of years, but one Ukrainian strongman proves that horses can sometimes ride us too. Champion powerlifter Dmytro Khaladzhi has been making quite a name for himself by carrying live, fully conscious horses on his back to prove his incredible strength.

Like most strongmen, Dmytro Khaladzhi does a lot of crazy stuff, like letting trucks drive over him, bending steel rods with his teeth, or driving nails through wood with the palm of his hand, but his horse carrying routines are by far the most impressive. Several videos doing the rounds online show him grabbing full-grown horses, lifting them on his back and taking a few steps with the incredible load, all while the confused animals enjoy the ride.

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Irish Village Claims Fumes from Nearby Viagra Factory Are Giving Men and Dogs Hard-Ons

UK pharmacies will be selling Viagra over the counter as of spring 2018, but the men of Ringaskiddy in Ireland’s Cork County don’t need to pay for the erectile dysfunction drug. In fact, they don’t even have to pop the little blue pill: the fumes from a nearby Viagra manufacturing plant reportedly have an arousing effect on the male population. The villagers claim that even their dogs roam about in a state of arousal. Basically, it’s a case of “love is in the air,” but it may not be all fun and games.

Viagra is a cash cow for US-based pharma giant Pfizer, which has had this particular factory going for about two decades. According to a company statement, the stories are just an “amusing” myth. “Our manufacturing processes have always been highly sophisticated as well as highly regulated,” Pfizer said. Still, the stories have been circulating for years, and there are too many accounts to just brush aside the issue.

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Belgian Artist Chains Himself to Giant Block of Marble, Has to Be Cut Loose after 19 Days

A Belgian man had to be cut free from his art installation after failing to liberate himself after 19 days. Mikes Poppe had tethered himself by the ankle to a three-meter (10ft) chain that ran through a massive four-ton block of marble and spent 438 hours attempting to chisel his way to freedom.

The performance took place in the courthouse of the coastal Belgian city of Ostend. Poppe ate, slept, and washed there while chained to the block, all while live streaming to Youtube. He worked toward liberation from his self-imposed captivity by chiseling toward the stone every day, but after 19 days had to be cut free by a workman with an angle grinder.

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German Man Needs to Drink 20 Liters of Water Per Day to Stay Alive

German architect Marc Wübbenhorst has to drink at least 20 liters of water a day or risk dying from dehydration. The 35-year-old suffers from the rare metabolic disease Diabetes insipidus, which causes intense thirst and the frequent excretion of large amounts of diluted urine. If Wübbenhorst stops drinking water, his body starts to dry out, and he can die of thirst in a matter of hours.

Constant thirst has been a part of Marc Wübbenhorst’s life for as long as he can remember. It’s nothing like the thirst a normal person experiences, because it doesn’t go away after drinking a glass or two of water. His body can’t hold any water, as his kidneys eliminate the fluids almost as fast as he ingests them. Marc can never ignore his thirst for more than an hour, because he starts to experience severe symptoms of dehydration, like cracked lips, dizziness and confusion. These are symptoms that most adults experience after two or three days of fluids deprivation.

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Woman Leaves Her Husband After Seeing the View from Her Bedroom Window on Another Woman’s Instagram

A Russian woman has left her husband after she recognized the view from her bedroom window in a photo on another woman’s Instagram account and realized that he was cheating on her.

Yulia Agranovych, a former model turned pediatric dentist, from St. Petersburg, was browsing through her Instagram feed one morning, when she noticed a familiar sight in a photo posted by a certain Vlada Abramovich. It was the same view she admired daily from her bedroom window, so she continued looking through other woman’s gallery and discovered several images of her husband, Nazar Grynko. Yulia decided to confront him about the photos.

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Vietnamese Blogger Sentenced to 7 Years in Prison for Reporting on Catastrophic Toxic Spill

A Vietnamese court recently sentenced 22-year-old blogger and journalist Nguyen Van Hoa to seven years in prison for reporting on the 2016 Formosa spill that devastated the Vietnamese coast. Arrested in April, Hoa had produced video footage, photos, and articles about Taiwan-owned Formosa Plastics Group’s April 2016 toxic chemical spill from its steel plant located at the port in Ha Tinh. According to state-run media, he stands accused of “propagating against, distorting and defaming the government.”

The People’s Court of Ha Tinh province found Hoa guilty of violating Article 88 of Vietnam’s Penal Code and also ruled that he be placed under house arrest for three years after his jail term is complete. No attorney was present to represent Hao in the closed trial.

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Can You Spot the Mom? 40-Year-Old Mother Looks as Young as Her Teen Daughters

Photos of 40-year-old Kiyenia Booker and her two teenage daughters have recently went viral on social media, because people just can’t tell which one’s the mother.

Booker, from Nova Scotia, has been posting pics of herself and her two daughters – K’Lienya, 18, and Kolieya, 16 – on her popular Instagram account for a while now, but things got crazy a few days ago, after she shared a collage of photos from when her girls were very young compared to now. It showed just how much the girls had grown, but people couldn’t help noticing how Kiyenia didn’t seem to have aged at all in the years that passed between the two photos.

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Gun Violence in Rio de Janeiro Is So Widespread That People Are Using a Smartphone App to Avoid Dangerous Areas

Gun violence is a very serious issue on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, so much so that people have begun using a smartphone app similar to the popular “Waze”, only instead of heavy traffic, they’re trying to avoid gun fire.

Rio de Janeiro is facing a crisis of gun violence, as police raids and shootouts between drug gangs echo daily through the streets of Brazil’s second largest city. Civilians are continuously caught and killed in the crossfires, with harrowing stories, such as that of a pregnant woman being shot in the stomach, continually emerging from the beleaguered city. The hardest hit area is the Maré complex of poor favela neighborhoods, the residents of which fear even walking down the street, both at night and during the day.

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New Laser Surgery Lets You Change Eye Color from Brown to Blue in Only 20 Seconds

Blue eyes have historically been a significant measure of attractiveness, and although they’re commonly found among actors and models, only 17% of the global population has them. For the majority of people, approximately 80% of the population, blue eyes have been attainable only with the aid of colored contact lenses or artificial iris implants. But that will soon change with the introduction of a new medical procedure, pioneered by California company Stroma Medical, that can turn brown eyes blue.

The laser procedure works by eliminating the melanin -, the pigment that also colors hair and skin – from the surface of the iris, which then allows light to enter and scatter in the stroma, the fibers seen in light-colored eyes. The effect is similar to Rayleigh scattering, in which wavelengths of sunlight hit much smaller molecules in the air and then scatter, which makes the atmosphere appear blue.

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Infamous Conman Asks to Spend 20 Years in Solitary Because He Can’t Stop Conning People

Jimmy Sabatino, one of Florida’s most notorious and prolific conmen, was recently convicted to 20 years of solitary confinement, after pleading guilty to running a $10.4 million (USD) fraud. He was already in prison at the time, but managed to run a successful racketeering operation with the help of associates on the outside. During his trial, Sabatino told the judge that he cannot stop himself from committing crimes, and requested that he be sentenced to solitary confinement at Supermax, one of the toughest prisons in the US. He claims that the lack of human contact is the only thing that can stop him from conning people.

Sabatino, who has spent most of his life since age 19 behind bars, was serving a sentence at the Federal Detention Center in Miami for violating the terms of his supervised release, in 2014, when he came up with an idea of another con, from inside the prison. He somehow convinced two correction officers at the detention center to smuggle 5 mobile phones for him, which he used to call victims and associates on the outside. Both officers lost their jobs, but neither of them faced criminal prosecution.

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This Landfill Diner in Indonesia Lets Patrons Pay for Food with Plastic Waste

An extraordinary new restaurant in Semarang, Indonesia is on a mission to support locals trapped in poverty, many of whome are earning less than $25 (USD) a month, by providing them with an alternative way to pay for their food.

The Methane Gas Canteen, run by husband and wife team Sarimin and Suyatmi, is located in an unexpected place for an eatery – Jatibarang Landfill in Semarang, Central Java. The landfill is a mountain of putrifying waste, where poor locals spend their days scavenging plastic and glass to sell. Meanwhile, the couple, who spent 40 years collecting waste before opening the restaurant, is busy cooking.

What makes the restaurant unusual, aside from its location, is that no cash is required to pay for meals. Poor scavengers have the option to pay for their food with recyclable waste instead of hard currency. Saramin, 56, weighs the plastic customers bring in, calculates its worth, and then deducts that value from the cost of the meal, refunding any surplus value to the patron. The scheme is part of the community’s solution to reduce waste in the landfill and recycle non-degradable plastics.

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Terrifying Fungus Kills Insects by Taking Control of Their Muscles But Leaving Their Brains Intact

A parasitic fungus, of the genus Ophiocordyceps, uses carpenter ants to complete its life cycle by turning them into zombies. The ant encounters the fungal spores while foraging and the fungus quickly infects and spreads throughout its body, hijacking the insect’s nervous system. It then forces the ant to climb vegetation, where it will clamp onto the underside of a leaf or twig, and then slowly die. The parasite then produces a spore-releasing stalk that sprouts from the cadaver’s head to discharge spores to the ground below, where more hapless ants can get infected.

Until recently scientists were uncertain as to the exact mechanisms or reasons behind this gruesome phenomenon. New research from Penn State University, however, has shed some light on the mystery. The researchers have suggested that the fungus invades muscles fibers throughout the insect’s body, which allows it to control the host’s behavior, but stays away from its brain.

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Dutch Youtubers Take Drugs on Camera and Document Their Effects for Viewers

Drugslab, an educational YouTube Channel funded by a public broadcaster in the Netherlands, has been accused of glamorizing drug use by having three young moderators take drugs on camera and documenting their effects for the viewers.

You can find YouTube tutorials on just about anything these days, and thanks to Drugslab, that includes snorting a line of cocaine and taking LSD or ketamine. In fact, if you want to learn about a certain illegal drug, all you have to do is post a comment, and the three young moderators will do their best to procure it from dealers and try it on camera. They will provide valuable tips on the proper dosing of the drug, how often you can take it, how it affects your heart rate and body temperature, and how it affects your mood. And, since one of the hosts actually takes the drug, you can see the effects yourself.

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Stereo Bicycles Pump Up the Volume on the Streets of Palermo

When it comes to bicycles, tuning options are rather limited, especially in the audio department, but a community of teenagers in Palermo, Sicily, has found a way to adapt car stereo systems complete with speakers, subwoofers, amplifiers and even car batteries on their cycles, allowing them to pump out up to 1250W of sound as they cruise the city streets.

Bike tuning has become a trend among music-loving teenage cyclists of Palermo, on the island of Sicily. They spend anywhere between a couple of hundred euros to over 1,200 euros to have their bikes converted into powerful sound systems on wheels.

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