Nigerian faith healer TB Joshua, who also happens to be a millionaire, is claiming that his patented holy water can cure people suffering from the deadly Ebola virus. He reportedly sent 4,000 bottles of the special water as a part of an aid package to Sierra Leone, via a private jet that cost $50,000. He is believed to have sent a cash donation of the same size, along with the water.

The news of Joshua’s holy water comes at a time when doctors and health workers are already trying to convince people in the rural areas that science could help them more than prayers or witchcraft. Nonetheless, the cash donation is certainly the need of the hour to stem the outbreak of Ebola in the West African nation.

The donation was confirmed by the office of Sierra Leone president Ernest Bai Koroma – the statement revealed that the cash was meant to ‘feed those affected by the Ebola outbreak’. The office, however, made no mention of the controversial holy water.

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Fruit vendors in China came up with a novel idea to sell peaches for the romantic Qixi festival on August 2. They put a sexy spin on the otherwise innocent fruit by slipping some specially designed panties on them! It’s actually quite amusing, how closely the lingerie-donning peaches resemble a woman’s backside.

It all started when a fruit vendor in Nanjing decided to slip underwear onto a few of his peaches. According to Yao Xiao Yang, founder of ‘Fruithunters, he was inspired by literature. “What we understand about fruit is too simple; fruits are wonderful presents given to us by nature,” he explained.

“Fruit being sexy is widely accepted in world literature. Names of many fruits are self-evident, such as Sodom apple and Venus nipple peach. On an ancient Egyptian script pomegranate meant breasts, a French poet compared women’s butts to melons under the sunshine and James Joyce made similar comparisons in Ulysses.”

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Multi-talented British artist Ben Long has been making exquisite illustrations on the dusty rear doors of commercial trucks since the early 2000s. The 35-year-old uses only one finger to ‘scribe into the layer of dirt built-up from exhaust emissions’.

He calls the project ‘The Great Travelling Art Exhibition’, which is an ongoing series of his mobile canvases traveling all over the UK. Long, who studied at the Camberwell College of Art and Design in London, describes the project as an expansion of the ‘daubing and crude slogans that commonly adorn commercial freight vehicles’.

The idea for the drawings came to him during his early days as an artist, when he had little financial backing. By using dusty trucks as his canvas, he was able to express his creativity without a studio or a gallery. Although he has now advanced in his art career, Long continues to draw on greight vehicles, because it helps him appeal to people who don’t relate to the kind of contemporary art that is generally displayed in museums and galleries.

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Every year, thousands of devotees travel to a remote village in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu to put themselves through a gruesome ritual that they hope will bring them good health and success. Believe it or not, men, women and even children willingly permit priests to smash hard coconuts on their skulls!

Breaking coconuts on a sacred stone as an offering to the deity is a common practice in South Indian temples. But breaking them on one’s own head is quite rare, and viewed as an extreme display of devotion. Several devotees squat on the floor in a line, waiting patiently as the temple priests approach with a sack of coconuts. One priest holds the heads firmly, while the other one brings down the coconuts without hesitation. The whole process is completed in a matter of minutes.

Some devotees can be seen wincing in pain as the coconuts come crashing on to their heads. Some massage their heads, while others promptly collect the broken pieces as holy offerings. Surprisingly, there are a few who don’t flinch at all – these people are often in a deep meditative state of prayer. Nonetheless, medical staff are always present to tend to serious injuries. Read More »

A couple of UK-based artists have created a bizarre body-hugging suit made entirely out of raw chicken skin. The disgusting outfit is apparently meant to make a statement against our vanity-driven culture. The two artists – Victor Ivanov and Lewis G – are now parading the completed suit called FLESH around the streets of London and at famous landmarks like the Trafalgar Square and Camden Lock.

Victor Ivanov is so disgusted with the current ‘selfie’ craze that he predicts the world might just end with ‘everyone standing on the ashes taking selfies’. In an interview with Art Map London, Victor explained that he originally developed an interest in flesh at university, as a way of working with biodegradable matter. “It’s a little crass because obviously it’s a very direct approach to interpreting our environment but nonetheless something that I want to experience first hand,” he admitted. Read More »

A teenage boy from Corsicana, Texas, recently ran away from home and found refuge in the unlikeliest of places – at Walmart! Employees of the Corsicana Walmart discovered the 14-year-old kid after he had been living at the store for four days straight. To their great surprise, he had built a secret hidden compound for himself where he managed to live undetected.

News channels in the U.S. have released exclusive photographs of the two campsites that the teenager had built. One was located on the baby products-aisle, behind big stroller boxes. The second one was behind stacks of paper towels and toilet paper on a different aisle.

Surprisingly, customers who had walked down these aisles didn’t have the slightest suspicion of the teenager’s presence. “You never expect that you’re at Walmart and someone has been living there for four days. That’s crazy,” said Walmart customer Myrna Aguilar.

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The Japanese giant hornet is known as one of the world’s largest and most aggressive insects. It is two inches long with a quarter-inch stinger, can fly at speeds up to 25 mph, and is feared for its powerful, poisonous stings that claim at least 40 lives in Japan every summer. So when a Japanese man made an outlandish claim that he had actually tamed a hornet, no one really believed him.

But Twitter user Mikuru625’s has been trying to convince everyone that he actually has a pet giant hornet by posting photos of it. He said that he had captured the hornet with a butterfly net and held it with tweezers while he removed its sting and poison sacs. He then put a string around its thorax, so that the insect follows him wherever he goes. “He does bite occasionally but it doesn’t hurt,” the owner says.

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With digital software like Photoshop being used ever so often to alter things so perfectly, it’s hard to tell what’s real anymore. Take these photos of the so-called ‘rainbow grapes’ that have been doing the rounds online for about a month. They’re about the coolest-looking fruit I’ve ever seen, but are they real?

Well, yes and no. Rainbow grapes do exist, but they are just regular grapes photographed in a ripening stage known as Veraison, or the ‘onset of ripening’. “When grapes go into the final stage of ripening, the young immature grapes have a very dark, opaque green color and a very hard texture, like little rocks,” said Larry Stone, master sommelier and restaurateur. “And then when they go through veraison, the skin goes through coloration. If they’re white grapes, they go from a dark green to a kind of yellowish green color, and they get more and more transparent. A red grape will go from a green color to a red color.” The shade of red depends on the variety of grape.”

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Summer in Texas may be merciless, but Hal Jones from Austin has found a great way to stay cool at all times. He spent a whopping $2.2 million to have four enormous pools built into his backyard. He wanted to create a pool experience that’s ‘second-to-none’, so he chose a property located on the shores of Lake Travis – where his guests could arrive by boat.

Once he identified the property, Jones hired designer Evan Mills to come up with a plan for the water-park and create four pools, each with its own unique design. “We have the hot tub, the kiddie pool, Lazy River and Negative Edge pool,” said Jones.

The lazy river pool, which includes a swim-up bar, is where he entertains his friends. “I traveled throughout Texas and saw how people loved the lazy river pools,” he said. “You don’t need to get out of the pool to enjoy a drink!”

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Several years ago, young Jyothi Raj was a depressed man – he chose a rock and decided to climb it before plunging to his death. The huge rock presented a dilemma – there was no easy route to reach the top. But Jyothi Raj managed to scale it anyway, by observing and emulating the monkeys around him. And when he got to the top, he was rewarded with cheers and claps from passers-by who had observed his feat. He didn’t want to die anymore. Instead, he became India’s most famous monkey climber.

“A monkey is the world’s best climber. Humans came from monkeys. But I have it backwards. I’m turning into a monkey from being a human,” Jyothi said with a smile.

Jyothi Raj’s story is a rather sad one – he was born to a poor family in the state of Tamil Nadu, Southern India. Fearing punishment at the age of seven, he ran away from home to Bagalkot, in the nearby state of Karnataka, which he made his new home. “I don’t remember how I ended up here,” he said.

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A Swedish journalist decided to teach his two young sons – who were obsessed with war-based video games – what real war is all about. So he took them to visit Israel and Syria to show them the harsh realities that exist in war-torn regions, and make them realise what guns are really used for. The trip lasted 10 days, and when the boys got back, they were completely transformed.

The idea for the trip came at the dinner table one night last year, when Leo, 11, and Frank, 10 begged their father Carl-Magnus Helgegren to buy them the latest Call of Duty game. He was quite concerned with their obsession for the popular shooter – he wondered if his boys actually realized the real effect that war has on its victims.

So Helgegren devised a brilliant plan to impart a much needed lesson. He cut a deal with his sons – if they agreed to travel with him to an area plagued by war and spend time with war victims, he would buy them any video game of their choice on their return.

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American investigative journalist and activist, James O’Keefe, recently made headlines for donning an Osama bin Laden costume. Halloween is still months away, but O’Keefe’s attire had a different purpose – he was attempting to illustrate the lack of security along the U.S.-Mexico border in West Texas. He was actually able to cross the Rio Grande River from Mexico into Texas undetected, dressed as Osama.

O’Keefe, who is well-known for his headline-grabbing sting videos that often involve disguise and trickery, also recorded himself in the act of crossing the border. He released the footage on Monday, calling it ‘Project Veritas’. In the video, he can be seen crossing into Mexico twice – once in regular clothes and the second time dressed in an army costume and an Osama Halloween mask. His video release arrived amidst a national debate in America about border security.

“Project Veritas has just returned from the U.S.-Mexican border,” the video description states. “What we discovered there should worry every American. Here in West Texas, the border is just a muddy sliver of river.” And then the video goes on to show O’Keefe splashing his way through the Rio Grande to the other side, effectively entering another country.

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French freediver David Helder has his own unique superpower – he can blow massive bubble rings, whirling vortices that manage to maintain their round shape for a surprisingly long time underwater. Although he appears to perform these tricks effortlessly, anyone who has ever tried freediving knows that it’s no mean feat.

“I had always seen people blowing vertical rings, I just gave it a try and all I can tell is that it’s a vortex and the air is coming out from your mouth,” said David. “It just spins in one direction creating a vortex. At the beginning, they were not good, after a couple of weeks, they were quite okay. And then I started to make some combination, trying to make some tricks.”

“Now, I’m doing some kind of figures when two rings are connecting. And I love doing those kind of rings in the sea. Laying on the surface of the sea, I just blow one ring and I can see the fishes – they are kind of eating the ring. It’s another way of interacting with the life in the water.”

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When American artist William Utermohlen was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1995, he decided to make the best use of his limited time and memory. He began to use his art to understand himself better – for five years, he drew portraits of himself before he completely forgot how to draw.

Through this unique series of self-portraits, viewers can observe the London-based artist’s quiet descent into dementia. As the terrible disease took control of his mind, his world began to tilt and his perspectives flattened. The details in his paintings melted away and they became more abstract. At times, he seemed aware of the technical flaws in his work, but he simply could not figure out how to correct them.

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22-year-old British taxidermist Elle Kaye has a pretty unusual eating habit, even by taxidermy standards – she actually consumes the meat of the subjects she stuffs for her art. Kaye mostly uses roadkill or animals that have died of natural causes, and she tries to eat as much of them as possible, as long as the meat is fresh.

The attractive young woman who studied art at Loughborough University said that she decided to eat her subjects because she wanted to recycle and minimize waste. “For me, it’s a lifestyle choice,” she says. “Doing what I do ensures I recycle a deceased animal, as a meat eater, there is no logic in wasting perfectly edible meat. It’s important to me, because it upholds all of the notions that underpin taxidermy, and it means that I do the animal justice in recycling all of it.”

“I’m a big meat eater and I believe strongly in the idea of recycling,” she says. “It doesn’t make sense for me to preserve the specimen then throw the meat away. If I can determine that it’s fresh, I wouldn’t hesitate to eat it. I’m very careful.” Read More »