An Indian pensioner recently set a bizarre new national record after allegedly spending an entire hour staring directly at the sun without sunglasses and without blinking once.

The 70-year-old retired Government officer from India’s Uttar Pradesh state was identified as Mr. MS Verma. He apparently trained for this incredible feat for 25 years, after being inspired by an Indian guru. His attempt to beat the previous record of staring into the sun without blinking was overseen by a representative of India’s Book of Records, as well as a group of politicians and physicians. After an hour of staring directly at the sun without sunglasses and without even blinking, Mr. Verma’s eyesight was deemed normal, as was his overall eye health.

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Russian robotics company Promobot recently announced plans to buy the rights to use someone’s face and voice on its robots forever for the price of $200,000.

Known for producing hyper-realistic, humanlike robots, Promobot is currently developing “a humanoid robot-assistant which will work in hotels, shopping malls and other crowded places,” and is in the market for a “kind and friendly” face to use on it. To that end, the Russian startup has announced that it is ready to pay $200,000 to anyone willing to transfer the rights to their face to Promobot forever. The company clarified that it will accept applications from people of all races and genders, with the ‘age 25 and over’ being the only requirement mentioned.

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Finland is Europe’s largest producer of fox fur, but undercover investigations have repeatedly shown that arctic fox farms engage in dubious practices, such as fattening the animals until they become deformed, just to increase their fur yield.

Despite a concentrated effort by PETA and many high-profile celebrities to deter the general public from buying natural animal fur, the fur trade has been booming. Around 100 million animals are killed for their fur every year, and the industry is worth tens of billions of dollars. While China is by far the world’s largest fur producer, thanks in great part to the lack of concrete animal welfare legislation, Finland is the largest fur producer in Europe, and the conditions in its animal farms are worse than you can probably imagine. Millions of arctic foxes are kept in tiny metal cages with no bedding, very little light, and are stuffed with food until they become deformed so that more fur can be harvested from them.

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A Chinese man was banned from an all-you-can-eat buffet in Changsha for eating kilograms of pork and prawns on every visit, causing the business to lose too much money.

A food streamer known only as Kang told local reporters that he was banned from the Handadi Seafood BBQ Buffet in Changsha city simply because he can eat more than the average patron. He admitted that he ate around 1.5kg of pork trotters during his first visit to the restaurant and 3.5kg to 4kg of prawns on his second visit before getting banned, but considers that he is being discriminated against because of his healthy appetite. The owner of the restaurant obviously disagrees.

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Dr Manoj Mittal, a child specialist from Haryana, in India, sparked controversy online after appearing on camera to praise the benefits of eating cow dung, while feasting on it himself.

Traditional Indian medicine has long been promoting cow dung as a cure-all that can even stave off conditions like cancer and Covid, but this didn’t include trained doctors who generally believe in things like science and clinical trials. Well, as in virtually any field, there are exceptions, and Manoj Mittal, an MD from the Karnal district of Haryana, is definitely one such exception. In a recently-posted video that has since gone viral, Mottal can be seen taking bites from a piece of cow dung and praising its benefits on the human body, mind, and soul.

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Following a penalty shootout to their Iranian rivals in a women’s football match, Jordanian officials have called on the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) to launch an investigation to determine the sex of the Iranian team’s goalkeeper.

On September 25, following a goalless draw, the Iranian and Jordanian women’s football teams went to a penalty shootout to determine who would qualify to the 2022 Women’s Asian Cup. The Jordanians were heavy favorites to win the game, but the opposing goalkeeper had other plans. Zohreh Koudae saved two penalties, securing her team’s 4-2 shootout victory, and the national team’s first-ever appearance at the Women’s Asian Cup. Only the story doesn’t end here. Jordanian officials have since called on the Asian Football Confederation to investigate whether the Iranian goalkeeper is actually a woman.

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Mexican influencer Lore Garza caused quite the controversy online last week when she announced that the winner of the brand new KIA SUV she was raffling was her own mother…

Lore Garza, a popular Mexican social media personality with over 140,000 fans on Instagram alone, has been getting a lot of attention from news outlets over the past couple of weeks because of her latest attempt of “giving back” to her fans. In one of her most daring promotional efforts yet, Garza announced a raffle for a brand new KIA SUV. Anyone could enter for a chance to win, as long as they bought one or more tickets worth 350 pesos ($17). The raffle generated a lot of interest, so a lot of people tuned in to see who won the car, only to be left with their mouths opened when it was announced that Lore Garza’s own mother was the winner…

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A 26-year-old man in Nigeria was recently arrested by the Islamic police known as Hisbah for trying to sell himself to anyone who would pay the 20 million Nigerian nara ($49,000) fee.

Aliyu Na Idris first made national news headlines at the end of October, when he was spotted walking through the city of Karo with a cardboard sign that read “this man is for sale, 20,000,000N”. At the time, the 26-year-old man, who works as a tailor, told news reporters that he had first tried selling himself in the city of Kaduna, but couldn’t find a buyer, so he moved to Karo. He also explained that he had resorted to selling himself because of what he called poverty, claiming that he planned to give most of the money to his parents and keep the rest for daily expenses.

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In what is being reported as a disturbing new trend, Chinese parents are allegedly resorting to corrective helmets and molds to ensure that their babies have aesthetically pleasing round heads.

The latest craze to hit China involves parents taking advantage of their babies’ soft skulls to make sure that they have round heads, instead of dreaded flat ones. A number of companies have taken advantage of the bizarre head shape preference by offering a variety of head-correcting products, from helmets to special mats and pillows designed to prevent the flattening of babies’ heads. Ironically, flat heads were once considered so lucky that children were forced to sleep with their heads on books, but the shape has fallen out of style…

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Shanghai-based artist Yang Yexin has been getting a lot of criticism for throwing away 1,000 grains of rice made of pure gold as part of a performance artwork to highlight current food waste.

If you’re planning on visiting Shanghai soon, you may want to keep your eyes peeled as you walk through the city streets, as you may stumble on small precious nuggets worth a pretty penny. Local artist Yang Yexin recently released a video of himself throwing 1,000 gold grains in trashcans, in drains, in the grass, and in the Huangpu River, as a way of drawing attention to food waste in modern society. The rice grains  showed in the video were made from 500 grams of gold worth over 200,000 yuan ($31,000), by a jewelry store that made them “in accordance with the actual size of each real rice grain.”

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Kiska, the last living killer whale at the Marineland marine park, has been dubbed the world’s loneliest orca after it was revealed that she has spent the last 10 years of her life alone in a concrete tank, with little to no stimulation.

Orcas, dolphins, and whales are among the world’s most intelligent animals; they are social creatures that require a lot of interaction and stimulation which those raised in captivity, unfortunately, don’t receive enough of. In one extreme case, a lonely orca that has spent most of her life in captivity and the last decade completely alone in a concrete tank, at a marine park in Ontario, Canada has been showing signs of extreme distress, like floating listlessly and banging her head against the sides of her enclosure.

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A 15-yer-old girl in rural India has reportedly been pumping out small stones out of her eyes every day for the past two months, and doctors don’t have any medical explanation for it.

According to the girl’s family, small stones started falling from her eyes on July 17, and she has been crying between 10 and 15 stone tears every day since. More than 70 so-called stone tears have been collected in the over two months since the bizarre phenomenon was reported. Apparently, 15-year-old Chandni starts eliminating small stones from her eyes from around 6 in the morning and continues to do so until evening. For some reason, the stones don’t form n her eyes during the night…

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A Danish museum loaned artist Jens Haaning tens of thousands of dollars and asked him to recreate two of his most popular artworks, which involved the use of real banknotes, only he took the money and ran, an act he describes as an original work of art.

The Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg asked Jens Haaning to recreate two of his most popular artworks, one he had produced in 2011 called An Average Danish Annual Income, which featured krone banknotes in a frame, and an earlier version, An Average Austrian Annual Income. For the original works, Haaning had borrowed the money from banks, but this time the museum agreed to loan him the cash from its limited reserves. He required 328,000 kroner for the Danish annual salary and €25,000 for the Austrian salary. Only instead of recreating the artworks, he just sent the museum two empty canvases, and the message that him keeping the money they had lent him was the actual artwork.

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A Japanese YouTuber recently sparked controversy after apparently cooking and eating a piglet that he had raised on camera for the previous 100 days.

In May of this year, a Japanese man started a peculiar YouTube channel named “Eating Pig After 100 Days“. True to its name, the channel was all about raising a small piglet for 100 days, before cooking and eating it. The idea was intriguing enough to attract a decent audience of over 100,000 on the world’s most popular video platform, but few of its followers actually believed the man behind the project would actually go through with it. After all, what kind of monster would slaughter and eat the adorable piglet that won the hearts of so many, right? Well…

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Daisuke Hori, a 36-year-old man from Japan, has spent the last few years training his mind and body to function on as little sleep as possible. He claims to get just 30 minutes of sleep a day and not get tired at all.

Do you ever feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day, and that you’d rather shun sleep so you can do the things you like? Well, that’s probably most people, but few of us actually go through with that idea. Daisuke Hori is one such man. He claims to have lowered his daily sleep time from about 8 hours a day to just 30 minutes, without suffering any of the severe side-effects associated with sleep deprivation. He is the chairman of the “Japan Short-sleeper Association” and now teaches others how to lower their daily sleeping time so they can enjoy life more.

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