Rory van Ulft, a 7-year-old Canadian gymnast, has been raising eyebrows with her weightlifting achievements, recently becoming the youngest under-11 and under-13s US Youth National Champion in history.

Rory took up weightlifting about two years ago, as a way of becoming stronger. She had started doing gymnastics but learned that she could get injured doing certain things, if she wasn’t strong enough. She started lifting weights in the the snatch and the clean and jerk styles, under the careful supervision of a trainer, and gradually developed her strength to the point that she now lifts weights that some adults would probably struggle with. She can snatch 32kg, clean and jerk 42kg, as well as squat 61kg, and deadlift 80kg using an Olympic women’s bar.

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In the last decade and a half, the Bosnian town of Visoko has become a popular tourist attraction thanks to several “energy pyramids”, tree covered hills that some claim are actually part of the largest pyramid complex ever built.

The 350-foot-high Pljesevica Hill, aka the Pyramid of the Moon and the 720-foot-high Visocica Hill, or the Pyramid of the Sun, which border Visoko, are two very controversial landmarks in central Bosnia and Herzegovina. Along with a third so-called “pyramid” in the nearby hills, they allegedly make up an ancient man-made complex that gives off massive levels of “energy force” that have a positive influence on people’s lives. Although scientists have been trying to debunk these new-age claims for many years, believers include a number of high-profile names, including Bosnian officials and even tennis world no.1, Novak Djokovic.

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Nigerian socialite Mike Eze-Nwalie Nwogu, aka “Pretty Mike”, sparked controversy after attending a high-profile wedding accompanied by six heavily pregnant women, all allegedly carrying his babies.

Describing the women as his “six baby mothers to be”, Pretty Mike was filmed rubbing and kissing each of their bellies at the wedding of Nigerian actor Williams Uchemba to his girlfriend Brunella Oscar. The socialite, who owns a nightclub in Lagos, wore a pink suit, while his six dates put on matching long silver dresses or two-piece outfits that emphasized their baby bumps.

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Would you ever sell your face? If the answer is yes, there is a Japanese company that wants to hear from you. It’s in the business of buying the rights to people’s faces so it can sell them in the form of hyper-realistic 3D-printed masks.

Ever since Kamenya Omoto, a Tokyo-based specialty mask maker and store, announced its intention to buy the rights to people’s faces for 40,000 yen ($380) a pop, it’s been overwhelmed with offers. The company wants to reproduce people’s faces in the form of hyper-realistic masks and sell them for an estimated ($940). If a mask proves popular with clients, the person whose appearance inspired it stands to earn a percentage of the profits as well. The controversial project, named “That Face”, reportedly aims to give a sci-fi twist to the idea of buying and selling faces.

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For some reason, a 22-year-old Argentinian woman who decided to get her fallopian tubes tied to make sure she never gives birth has become the talk of Latino social media over the last few days.

Ailin Cubelo Naval is only 22 years old but she already knows she doesn’t want to have children, not now, not ever. The young Argentinian cites a variety of reasons for why she decided that she never wants to be a mother, from the fact that she considers parenthood more of a cultural imposition than a natural instinct, to her refusal to dedicate 20 years of her life to bringing up a child. Her views were apparently so controversial in Argentina that she was refused by gynecologists twice when she decided to have her fallopian tubes tied and sent to see a psychologist instead.

After going through the humiliation of having to seek medical assistance after being denied the surgical procedure twice, Ailin was shocked to learn that tubal ligation had been a guaranteed right in her country since 2006. She looked for another doctor and finally got the procedure.

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Beijing-based technology company Kuaishou recently sparked outrage on Chinese social media after videos of digital timers over employee toilet stalls went viral online.

The photos showed digital timers hanging over each cubicle and small sensors installed on the cubicle doors to trigger the timers. Chinese social media users slammed the company for monitoring and timing its office workers’ time in the toilet to increase productivity and its profits, with some calling the practice a breach of human rights and privacy. Some on the other hand defended the company, saying that some employees abused bathroom breaks, using it as an opportunity to waste time on their phones.

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The Brigham Young University in Idaho has launched an investigation into claims that some of its students are intentionally trying to get infected with SARS-CoV-2, to then sell their antibody plasma for cash.

Officials at Brigham Young University, which is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, strongly condemned the the alleged behavior of its students and announced its decision to suspend anyone caught attempting to contract the virus on purpose. The university is currently investigating incidents on campus, and has urged students not to put themselves and others at risk for financial risks, because the risk is not worth the reward.

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Footage of a young cleaning woman who appears to be drinking water straight out of a toilet has sparked a heated debate on Chinese social media this week.

The caretaker of a fertilizer company located in Shandong province, China has put herself at the center of controversy after a video showing her drinking water out of a toilet she had previously cleaned went viral online. The young woman, surnamed Luo, reportedly resorted to the extreme gesture in order to impress her bosses, who can be seen applauding her as she downs a plastic cup of toilet water. Accused of encouraging the employee to humiliate herself, representatives of the company insisted that the caretaker’s gesture was voluntary, adding that she has done drunk toilet water several times over the last couple of years.

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Claw machines are infamous for being deceptively easy, but actually excruciatingly difficult to master, and one Japanese man found out just how difficult after failing to win a single price after 200 consecutive tries.

Twitter user Ogarun, who happens to be a big fan of claw machine games, or “UFO Cathers” as they are called in Japan, visited an arcade earlier this month and was so frustrated with one claw machine there that he ended up calling the police. He reportedly tried his luck 200 times in a row and failed to catch a single price, and after getting into an argument with the staff at the arcade, he called the authorities. Interestingly, the police asked the arcade operator to demonstrate that the machine could be beat, but the guy failed 300 times in a row as well…

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Anna Turaeva, a champion powerlifter from Russia, recently shared a shocking story of how she was stopped by airport security and asked private questions to prove that she really was a woman.

42-year-old Turaeva, a six-time world powerlifting champion and eight-time European powerlifting champion, described the experience of being prevented from boarding a plane from St Petersburg to her home city of Krasnodar as humiliating. The Russian athlete said that security staff believed she was actually a man posing as a woman and asked her all sorts of private and intimate question in order to establish her gender. Anna Turaeva’s appearance has indeed become very masculine after years of bodybuilding and powerlifting training, but she considers herself 100% female and tried explaining to the airline representative that they were wrong to ask her to prove her gender, especially since it was clearly stated on her passport.

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UK-based supermarket Waitrose has been slammed by social media users for selling bouquets of “autumn seasonal foliage” at £6 ($7.5) apiece.

Photos of various tree leaves packaged in transparent plastic foil and arranged as flower bouquets went viral on social media this week, sparking controversy because of the product’s price, six British pounds, of seven and a half dollars. Considering tree leaves can literally be picked up from the street this time of year, it’s understandable that some people went after Waitrose, accusing the supermarket of trying to make money by selling something that is actually free.

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Sylvain, a heavily tattooed school teacher from Essonne, in France, risks losing his job, because some parents don’t approve of his full-body tattoo, which includes his face.

The 35-year-old teacher, who goes by Freaky Hoody on social media, recently went on French television channel BFM TV to complain about the threat of losing his job strictly based on his appearance. He claims that his superiors have asked him to no longer teach kindergarten children, after receiving complaints from parents regarding his unconventional looks. Apparently, these people don’t even have children in the classes he teaches, but they have an issue with his tattoos, which cover the vast majority of his body, including his face, and even his eyeballs.

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A fifteen-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl in Indonesia were reportedly forced to marry after breaking a local custom that forbids dating after sunset.

Child marriage has been a controversial issue in Indonesia for a long time, and last week it was once again brought into the limelight by the story of a young teenage couple forced to marry after only four days of dating. According to multiple media reports, 15-year-old Suhaimi and his 12-year-old girlfriend, Nur Herawati, were pressured into the marriage by the girl’s parents, after allegedly breaking customary dating laws, which forbids young couples to return home after dusk. Since the teenage boy brought his young girlfriend home after 7:30 pm earlier this month, her parents gave them no choice but to marry…

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A young Slovenian woman was recently sentenced to two years in prison for allegedly cutting off her hand with a circular saw in order to cash a $1.2 million insurance payout.

22-year-old Julija Adlesic allegedly conspired with her boyfriend and her father to commit insurance fraud in an attempt to collect $1.2 million in insurance payouts. The young Slovenian maintains that her injury was accidental, not premeditated, adding that no one in their right mind would want to become crippled at age 20, not for all the money in the world. However, prosecutors provided enough evidence that Adlesic and her co-conspirators had planned the so-called “accident” to get convictions against all of them. Julija got a 2-year prison sentence, her boyfriend, who was accused of putting her up to it, has been sentenced to three years in prison, while the woman’s father got a one year suspended sentence.

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Aria DiMezzo, a self-described “transsexual Satanist anarchist” who ran for the sheriff’s job in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, with the campaign slogan “F*** the Police”, decisively won the Republican nomination this weekend.

DiMezzo said that she had expected to lose to a write-in candidate, adding that her surprising victory proves “the system is utterly and hopelessly broken”. She went on to explain that any system that a system that allows thousands of people to walk into a voting booth and vote despite not knowing anything about the person they are nominating for the most powerful law-enforcement position in the county is undoubtedly broken. The young GOP nominee claims that she has always been upfront about who and what she is, but that the very fact that she won shows just how “clueless the average voter is”.

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