Feel free to add mosquito-repellent to the already huge list of useful of smartphone features. South-Korean manufacturer LG has recently released the world’s first mosquito repellent smartphone, which uses ultrasonic sound waves to keep the pesky bloodsuckers at bay.

Called the LG K7i, the innovative handheld was unveiled at the  India Mobile Congress last week, and judging by early feedback, it’s set to become a best-seller in mosquito-infested countries. While advertised as a budget smartphone with relatively unimpressive technical specs, the K7i has a very unique advantage – it features LG’s “Mosquito Away” technology which can allegedly repel mosquitoes with the help of ultrasonic sound waves.

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In order to show people that basic healthcare needn’t be expensive and that recyclable trash has value, a young Indonesian entrepreneur came up with the ingenious idea of allowing the poor to pay for their healthcare with garbage.

The Garbage Clinical Insurance thought up by Indonesian health care entrepreneur Gamal Albinsaid may sound like a laudable idea that’s doomed to fail in the long-term, but it’s actually been working for seven years now, and the unique model has already been copied by others across Indonesia. Inspired by others’ desire to help the poor access basic healthcare by recycling waste, Gamal Albinsaid has actually put together a free 70-page startup manual for businesses looking to get into garbage health insurance, instead of franchising his innovation.

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On the surface, Japan’s newest stock exchange platform, Valu, may seem like an innovative game changer in that it allows users to sell shares in themselves. The goal of which, for many, is to raise money to start a business or work on personal/freelance projects within their profession. That being said, however, there is at least one kink the company still needs to iron out if they wish to take Valu to the next level – keeping stock buyers from being conned by those just looking to make a quick buck at others’ expense.

Which is exactly what happened this week when a Japanese Youtuber who goes by the name of Hikaru exploited one of Valu’s features to basically cash out on his popularity. While the concept of selling stocks in oneself may seem very similar to basic crowdfunding, Valu also allows the trading of tokens called “VA” between those who list them, and the tokens are also exchangeable with bitcoin. So Hikaru used his popularity to boost the price of his stocks, and then sold them at a huge profit.

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Some people dream about getting married on a mountain top, others in a beautiful church with stained glass windows, but not Sue Berkeley. All Sue cared about is that she and her husband-to-be, Eli Bob, tie the knot in a place near and dear to her heart, surrounded by all the things and all the people that make her happy. Which is why the Australian couple decided to hold their ceremony at their local Costco store, in Sydney.

At first, the idea of getting married in a store was purely sarcastic. “We were joking one Friday,” Eli explains in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. “People were asking when were were getting married – so I suggested Costco. I know how much she loves it there.”  

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The internet has revolutionized crowdfunding by creating an unprecedented interconnectedness that allows people from all over the world to hear each other’s stories and help those whose stories touched them in particular. Today, you can send aid to hurricane victims in Florida, help a single mother start her small business in Ohio, and even help this couple from Saskatchewan make their dream wedding a reality, all in just a few clicks.

Jason Mielke and Rebecca Winter Hansen from Saskatchewan, Canada are engaged to be married, but they need some help making their wedding a special one. Young couples ask friends and family for help planning their big day all the time, these two lovebirds are actually asking complete strangers to basically sponsor their nuptials. They’ve set up a website where they try to explain why they opted for crowdfunding to celebrate their union with a wedding that accurately captures their unwavering love instead of simply eloping, and hope that their love story will make people and corporations want to give them a hand.

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Luo Dengping has become famous as the only woman in a group of “spider men” who climb vertical cliffs of up to 100 meters high, without ropes or safety equipment of any kind, for the entertainment of tourists in China’s Guizhou Province.

Men of the Miao people, in Southwest China, have been free-climbing steep cliffs for centuries. They originally developed this skill as part of a burial custom, to lift coffins of relatives up the cliffs and place them in small caves or just hang them on the cliffside, like the Tana Toraja tribe, in Indonesia. This practice fell into obscurity, but the Miao spider men continued climbing the perfectly vertical cliffs of Ziyun, in order to collect rare medicinal plants said to cure asthma and rheumatism. However, as Western medicine started taking precedence over traditional Chinese medicine, spider men found themselves struggling to support their families. Today, only a few members of the Miao people still practice this ancient tradition, and one of them is a woman.

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Between deforestation, climate change, and poaching, the number of orangutans living in the wild is dropping at an alarming rate, but one orangutan in particular has made it through all this torment and her story is giving us all hope. Her name is Alba, and she is truly one of a kind. Alba is an albino – currently the only known one in the world.

The five year old ape was rescued in an Indonesian Village by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS). She had been illegally captured and kept in a cage without proper care for a couple of days before rescuers got to her. Researches believe Alba was orphaned at a young age and caught not long after. When they found her she was suffering from a parasitic infection, dehydration, and low body weight. However, she still displays wild behaviors, meaning she can be released in the wild.

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Do you have stubborn migraines that just won’t go away? Maybe you’ve recently been in an accident or contracted some life-threatening virus? Have you tried everything Western and Eastern medicine has to offer? Well, in that case, maybe you should look to the stars for your next treatment and give Jerry Sargeant a call. All you need is £90 (about $120), 15 minutes, and an open mind – the rest is up to Sergeant, or, as he prefers to be called “The Facilitator”.

It all started one day in Romania when Sargeant was in a life-affirming car accident. His taxi allegedly crashed into two women who were crossing the street. Sergeant claims that one woman came through the window – causing him to hit his head and the last thing he witnessed was “her soul hovering over her body”. This was apparently what kickstarted his abilities and awoken Sergeant to the healing powers that have always resided within him.

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Paying $840 for an original Hermes item seems like a great deal, but in this particular case we’re talking about a paperweight consisting of a rock and a calf leather strap. How do you even sell something like that?

Well, the French luxury brand found a way – they are marketing the “galet pebbles” (rocks) as unique, which means no one else in the world has the exact same item. But I’m pretty sure you can say the same thing about any river stone. The odds of finding another with the exact same shape and pattern are probably astronomical, and you don’t have to pay anything for that. Sure, it doesn’t come with a fancy calf leather strap, but still…

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Harsukh Bhai Dobariya, of Gujarat, India, is very popular with birds. Every day, between 2,500 and 3,000 parrots and sparrows visit his 4-acre farm to feed on tasty millet cobs and build their nests away from predators. Nicknamed “The Birdman”, Dobariya has spent the last 17 years of his life looking out for the birds and transforming his land into a safe ecosystem for them.

It all started in the year 2000, when Harsukh Bhai Dobariya suffered a leg fracture on his property in the Junagadh district of Gujarat, and had to spend most of his time in bed. After a neighbor came to buy some pearl millet from him, he had the idea to hang a millet cob on his balcony, which soon caught the attention of a parrot. The next day, two parrots came to feast on the delicious treat, then three, four, and within a month, there were already 100-150 parrots and sparrows visiting him every day.

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Vegetable smoothies are not exactly everyone’s favourite treat, but one amateur artist has come up with a way to make them more appealing – by decorating them with intricate designs, using only natural ingredients.

Hazel Zakaryia‘s edible artworks may not make her smoothies tastier, but they definitely make them prettier to look at. Using only wood skewers and a kitchen knife, she painstakingly paints over the thick fruit and vegetable base with edible “paints” made from ingredients like turmeric, blue matcha, milk, cream and and butterfly pea powder. The results are so impressive that it’s hard to believe Zakaryia is not a professional food artist, but a market analyst who likes to spend her free time entertaining her artistic side.

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Claire and David Burke have been together for 16 years, happily married for 7 years, and even have a son together, but they’ve never moved into the same house. They spend their free time as a family, but when it’s time for bed, they say their goodbyes and head to their separate homes. It may not be the most conventional marriage arrangement, but they say it actually it helps make their relationship stronger.

Claire, 49, says that they never seriously considered moving in together, and after spending their wedding night in the same bed feeling tired and miserable, she and David, 43, decided that giving each other space was the best thing they could do for their marriage. They realized that they both liked the way things were at the time, and that moving in together wasn’t worth ruining their relationship. Claire and David have been living in separate homes, about 4 miles from each other, ever since, and things between them couldn’t be better.

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Kids, and teens in particular, are apparently really good at ignoring their parents’ messages, which is why one London Father created ReplyASAP – a messaging app that takes over the home screen and sounds an alarm that can’t be turned off until a message is answered.

45-year-old Nick Herbert, from London, UK, came up with the idea for ReplyASAP after realizing that simply giving his son a mobile phone didn’t make getting in touch with him easier. He wasn’t answering his messages as fast as Nick had expected, and often kept his phone on silent. It was driving the father crazy, so he set out to create a messaging app that would make reaching kids easier for parents. It took eight months and a considerable investment to complete the project, but Nick thinks ReplyASAP could really take off, as it has the potential to give parents some peace of mind.

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Researchers at the Biotherapy Development Research Center Co. in Kanazawa, Japan, have come with a 100%-natural solution to the age-old problem of melting ice-cream. By using polyphenol found in strawberry, they can keep a popsicle from melting for hours, on a hot summer day.

Believe it or not, the secret ingredient for “unmeltable” ice-cream was discovered by mistake. The Kanazawa research center had asked a local pastry chef to create new confectionery using strawberry polyphenol, in an attempt to find new uses for strawberries not good enough to be sold as fresh fruit. However, the chef later reported that  that “dairy cream solidified instantly when strawberry polyphenol was added”. That made it redundant in confectionery, but researchers at the center realized that polyphenol could be used to make ice-cream melt a lot slower.

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Even in a highly creative environment, work at the office can get pretty stressful, so a digital advertising agency in Bangkok, Thailand is encouraging staff to bring their pets, especially dogs, to work, to help them relax.

Walking into the Bangkok headquarters of Adyim, a successful digital marketing firm, it’s not uncommon to see young employees holding small dogs in their laps, stroking them with one hand and operating their computer mouse with the other, or even pooches playing on the table during an office meeting. In fact, company manager, Anankanat Kongphanich, encourages staff to bring their pets too work as often as possible, let them run around, and play with them whenever they have free time.

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