The judges of the prestigious Gilbert et Gaillard international wine competition were duped into awarding this year’s gold medal to a €2.50 ($2.70) supermarket wine they deemed “exceptional”.

Ever wonder how the average person chooses wine at a supermarket? Well, it turns out that having one or more medals plastered on the bottle can increase sales by up to 15 percent, so it’s no wonder that wineries take wine-tasting competitions very seriously. But does winning such medals actually reflect the quality of the wine, or are these contests simple money-making events that charge winemakers hefty sums for participation and the chance to increase sales? Eric Boschman, once named Belgium’s best sommelier, and the team at On n’est pas des pigeons, a Belgian consumer magazine and television program, decided to find out by taking the worst supermarket wine they could find and registering it in a prestigious wine competition.

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A 29-year-old man who has been living in a tent in an abandoned parking lot for 200 days has become the newest symbol of China’s increasingly popular ‘lying down’ culture.

At the end of 2018, Li Shu quit his job in Sichuan Province and began spending most of his time chilling in his rented apartment. The 29-year-old quickly realized that, with no income whatsoever, he would quickly go through all his savings, so he cut his daily expenses to just 10 yuan ($1.5) per day. Even so, after years of having to pay rent, it became painfully obvious that he would either have to find a way to make money or move out. Since the first option wasn’t even considered, he sold most of his belongings, bought a 400 yuan ($57), and decided to continue his relaxed lifestyle in the great outdoors, among the debris of an abandoned parking lot. He has been living there for 200 days, and has no plans of joining the rat race of life anytime soon.

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Kambo is an ancient Amazonian ritual that involves putting the poisonous secretions of a frog into your body for a supposed detoxifying and health-boosting effect.

Named after the poisonous, waxy substance harvested from the backs of giant monkey frogs found throughout the Amazon, Kambo has always been a controversial cleansing ritual because of the severe side-effects od coming into direct contact with the poison of the giant monkey frog. That controversy recently reached new heights due to Australia’s investigation into the deaths of two unrelated people who had died shortly after attempting kambo. Although symptoms associated with kambo vary in severity, in some cases, they are enough to cause serious health concerns, even death.

The shamanistic ritual known as kambo has been used by the indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest to heal and cleanse the body for centuries, and it has been promoted by naturopathic practitioners for its detoxifying effects. However, unlike other, more mild methods of cleansing the body, kambo can be pretty brutal. Side effects of the ritual involve nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, loss of bladder control, dizziness, heart palpitations, and abdominal pain, among others.

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After wearing masks in public for three long years, many Japanese are signing up for smiling classes to learn how to smile again without looking awkward.

Smiling used to be a natural response, but apparently, three years of hiding behind a mask have left many Japanese unable to smile naturally. Some of them are now paying so-called smiling educators to teach them how to display their pearly whites again without looking awkward. They participate in specialized classes where they are taught how to stretch and flex various parts of their faces and even their neck muscles to smile properly and actually convey happiness without looking weird.

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A Colombian doctor has been ordered by a court of law to financially support a patient’s baby until it turns 18 after the patient ended up conceiving the baby despite undergoing a vasectomy.

Diego Naranjo, a doctor from Medellin, Colombia, will have to pay millions of pesos to support one of his patients’ baby after he assured the man that the vasectomy he had performed had been successful and he no longer needed to use other means of contraception. However, the man ended up leaving his wife pregnant and having an unplanned baby. Subsequent sperm tests showed that the vasectomy had in fact not been successful, and the parents of the baby sued the doctor, claiming that his mistake had had serious implications, both financial and emotional. A judge has now ruled that the doctor must support the baby until it turns 18 years old.

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A Mexican court of law recently sparked outrage by sentencing a young woman to six years in prison for “excessive use of legitimate defense”, because she killed the man who was raping her.

The sentencing of Roxana Ruiz, a 23-year-old single mother from Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico, on Monday has been making international news headlines all week. The young woman was charged with homicide with an excess of legitimate self-defense after she strangled the man who was raping her in her own home, and is now facing six years in prison, as well as an obligation to compensate her assailant’s family financially. Ruiz, who has already served nine months behind bars after her initial arrest in 2021, claims that she would have most likely been killed by the man raping her if she didn’t kill him first, but the judge ruled that a simple blow to the head would have been enough to incapacitate the assailant.

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A businessman from southern Thailand recently went viral for claiming that the secret to his good health is to drink crocodile blood mixed with alcohol twice a day.

Rojakorn Nanon, a 52-year-old man from Thailand’s Trang province, starts his day with a glass of crocodile mixed with a Thai spirit called lao khao, and has another such cocktail before bedtime. The businessman claims that he used to be physically weak and exhausted all the time, but ever since he started drinking crocodile blood, things took a massive turn for the better, and now he swears by the stuff. He believes the blood does wonders for several organs, for the blood, and for the nervous system.

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An extremely jealous woman in Argentina was recently arrested for keeping her boyfriend a prisoner in her house for three days to make sure he didn’t cheat on her.

On Saturday, police in the Argentinian city of La Plata rescued a 29-year-old man from a locked room in his girlfriend’s house. He claimed to have been locked in there for over 72 hours following an argument with his girlfriend of six months, who happened to be extremely jealous. After uninstalling WhatsApp from his phone and then smashing it against the floor to prevent him from talking to other women, the unnamed woman reportedly locked the man in a room. She kept him there for three days straight, until he was somehow able to steal her phone and text a friend for help.

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A family in Sidney, Australia is being praised for resisting the urge to sell their property to developers who have bought all the land around it, despite being offered tens of millions of dollars for it.

The Zammit family home has become one of the most famous properties in Sydney both because of the way it stands out among the dozens of cookie-cutter homes surrounding it and the resilience of its owners. While every one of their old neighbors agreed to sell their land to housing developers, the Zammits have refused every offer so far, and have no plans of moving away anytime soon. The Australian family has been praised for refusing to sell out and continuing to live on their five acres of land despite the financial temptation and pressure from developers.

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An Iranian man claims he stopped consuming food one day in 2006 and has relied solely on sweetened fizzy drinks for energy ever since.

58-year-old Gholamreza Ardeshiri claims that the mere sight of food makes him nauseous and that he has been surviving on water and fizzy drinks like Pepsi and Coca-Cola for the last 17 years. It all started one night in 2006, when he woke up with a strange feeling in his mouth, one that he just couldn’t get rid of, no matter how many doctors he visited. In the end, he decided to shun food permanently and has been living a perfectly normal life ever since. His family doesn’t eat in front of him, because just seeing them makes him sick, and he gets all his energy from carbonated drinks. He drinks three large bottles of soda per day and insists that he never feels hungry.

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South Africa’s Mmabatho Stadium is famous for its unusual design, which features elevated stands that don’t actually face the pitch but other stands.

Built in 1981, during the apartheid era, Mmabatho Stadium is often cited as an example of impractical architectural design. It was commissioned by Lucas Mangope’s government which ruled the Bophuthatswana Bantusan and designed by Israeli architect Israel Goodovitch and engineer Ben Abraham. They came up with an unconventional concept that went against pretty much every basic principle of stadium design, and not in a good way. However, authorities apparently loved the idea and went ahead with the construction. After it was inaugurated, it didn’t take long for people to realize that its weirdly elevated stands didn’t offer the best view of the action on the pitch and actually required them to turn their heads to the side in order to watch the match.

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An IT specialist who has been on sick leave with no obligation to work since 2008 recently tried to sue their employer for not giving them a pay raise.

Ian Clifford, a ‘medically retired’ IT specialist who has been paid a £54,000 ($67,500) yearly salary as part of his disability plan with his employer, tech giant IBM, recently tried to sue the American company for ‘disability discrimination’, claiming that his salary was not ‘generous enough’ to keep up with inflation. Mr. Clifford has not done any work for the company in the last 15 years but will continue to receive his yearly salary until retirement or death, as per IBM’s disability plan. Despite this, the IT worker feels that he has been treated unfairly by his employer, and he is attempting to take the company to court for a pay raise.

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A 16-year-old teenager from South Korea has been accused of forcefully practicing his tattooing skills on two younger schoolmates that he had allegedly been bullying for years.

A disturbing school bullying case has been making news headlines in South Korea and sparking outrage among parents. The Incheon Nonhyeon Police Department has confirmed that it is currently investigating a bullying case in which the assailant is accused of forcefully tattooing at least two younger teenagers, both as a way of branding them and practicing his tattooing skills. The parents of the first victim filed a complaint in March, after accidentally discovering a large and amateurishly-inked tattoo on their son’s leg. After confronting the boy, they learned that he had been forcefully tattooed by a schoolmate who had been terrorizing him for at least two years.

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A young Venezuelan woman recently went viral on social media after announcing that she had befriended her cheating boyfriend’s lover and accepting to share him with her.

Sofía Gutiérrez, a young woman from Lecheria, Venezuela, recently sparked controversy on Facebook after posting a photo of herself and another woman, who she claims is her boyfriend’s mistress and her ‘friend’. Gutiérrez reportedly learned of her partner’s infidelity by checking his WhatsApp messages, only instead of confronting him, she decided to contact his secret lover, and the two ended up becoming good friends. Sofia tagged the girl in the photo, a certain Sarahy Gill, and announced that she had gained all her affection by “accepting my boyfriend as hers” and giving him the attention he needs when she is not able to. As you can imagine, the unusual post went viral almost instantly.

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A gang of eight was recently apprehended just as they were about to reach their goal – an oil pipeline – after spending a whole month digging a secret tunnel to it from their hotel.

South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency recently reported the capture of eight criminals who had rented an entire hotel in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, and spent an entire month digging a secret underground tunnel from it to a nearby oil pipeline. The plan is believed to have been masterminded by a former employee of Korea’s state-run pipeline operator Daehan Oil Pipeline Corporation who had been previously fired for attempting to steal oil from another pipeline. They had rented a hotel near their target under the pretext of wanting to acquire it, and spent most of their day digging using rudimentary tools in order to avoid attracting attention with loud noises.

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