Adrien Locatelli, a young bio-hacker from the French city of Grenoble, has been called an “idiot” for undergoing a bizarre DIY experiment in which he injected himself with a DNA pattern made from translated passages from the Bible and the Koran.

Locatelli, who is believed to still be in high-school, started off by selecting passages from the Christian and Muslim holy books that he wanted stored in his body in the form of DNA. He then assigned one of the four letters corresponding to the chemicals that DNA is made of (ACGT) to every character in the passages, in the order GACT. Using a free online tool, the daring experimenter translated the nucleotide information into protein sequences that he ended up injecting into his thighs. Why? Simply because he was curious to know if it could be done.

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A photo of a tattooed man’s hand with the top layer if skin damaged by a minor kitchen burn sparked a heated debate on social media site Reddit last week. That’s because the section where the skin was burned off revealed a tattoo so bright you could swear it was just inked.

The photo, posted by Reddit user uhmodijia, reportedly shows the hand of a “friend of a friend” who had just suffered a minor burn which only affected the top layer of his skin, exposing the dermis. The man had a blue rose tattooed on his skin a while ago, and like all tattoos do in time, it had started to fade. However, the patch of burned skin that had peeled off because of the burn revealed a much more vibrant copy of the same tattoo on his dermis. Apparently, tattoo guns reach deep into the skin, and while the tattoos on the first layer begin to fade just months after they’ve been inked due to multiple factors, they remain vibrant under this first layer of protective skin.

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Every day, hundreds of tourists and devotees visit a shrine in Shivapur, a small village about 180 km east of Mumbai, in India, to witness a controversial “miracle” known as the Levitating Stone of Shivapur.

The Shrine of Qamar Ali Darvesh, a Muslim Sufi Saint who lived about 700 years ago, features an ancient stone that reportedly weighs 154lbs (90kg). Lifting this stone off the ground would normally require a lot of strength, but according to believers in the Levitating Stone miracle, it’s possible for a set number of men to lift it up over their heads with only their index fingers, but only after shouting Qamar Ali Darvesh’s name. This phenomenon has fascinated Indian Muslims for centuries, but many believe it’s nothing more than a gimmick.

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A Chinese real-estate company has been accused of taking a wrong approach to encouraging its employees to exercise. Workers claim that they have been fined 0.01 yuan for every step they failed to take to meet their monthly target of 180,000 steps.

Taking a set number of steps every day has become a big deal in China. Some health insurers use apps to track their clients’ daily walks, offering discounts on future plans if they meet their goals, and many schools reportedly require students to walk/exercise every day and routinely check the pedometer apps on their phones to ensure that they comply. Even private companies have jumped on the walking bandwagon, encouraging their workers to take a set number of steps per month, but if one recent news report is to be believed, some employers are taking things too far, opting to fine those who fail to reach the required target.

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Chinese researcher He Jiankui recently shocked the entire world after revealing that he had altered the DNA of twin girl before birth, to make them immune to the HIV virus and AIDS. If his claims prove to be true, these twins would be the world’s first genetically-edited babies.

Professor He revealed his controversial genetic editing work earlier this week. In a video posted on YouTube, he claims to have used gene-editing tools to eliminate a gene called CCR5 in order to make a pair of twin girls, called Lulu and Nana, resistant to the HIV virus, should they ever come in contact with it. Speaking at a genome summit in Hong Kong, on Wednesday, the Chinese scientist defended his work and talked about the stigma attached to HIV/Aids in China. However, many of his peers believe that He Jiankui has gone too far, warning that meddling with the genome of an embryo could cause long-term problems not only for the individual, but entire future generations.

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A young Christian missionary has been killed after venturing to North Sentinel Island, a protected island in the Indian Ocean home to a 30,000-year-old tribe known to aggressively repel outsiders, in order to “declare Jesus”.

27-year-old John Allen Chau is believed to have been killed by a volley of arrows shot by members of the Sentinelese tribe shortly after encroaching on their remote island. He had been trying to make contact with the reclusive natives for years, and on Saturday he paddled to the island in a kayak, despite the warnings of several fishermen he had paid to take him close to it. According to eyewitnesses, Chau was hit by an arrow shortly after reaching the island, and his body was later dragged deeper inland and buried. In a journal he left fishermen before venturing to North Sentinel Island, the young explorer wrote that he knew he risked being killed but that it was “worth it to declare Jesus to these people”.

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In an effort to spare her young daughter from being ostracized by other children for not having a father, a Japanese single mother made the controversial decision to hire an actor who has been posing as the girl’s father for the last 10 years.

Megumi was only a baby when her parents separated and he father disappeared from her life. The mother, Asako, remembers that the girl started asking where her father was very early, but that her father’s absence didn’t seem like a big deal until she was about 10-years-old. That’s when Asako noticed a change in her daughter’s behavior; she stopped talking to her, became withdrawn, and eventually stopped going to school. Her mother soon learned that she wasn’t just blaming herself for her father’s absence, but she had also become a victim of bullying at school, as it often happens with children of single parents in Japan. Asako was heartbroken, and after appealing to Megumi’s teachers for help, she also decided to give her daughter the thing she wanted most, even if it meant lying to her.

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Colombian singer Maluma is one of the world’s most popular reggaeton stars, but while millions of people love listening to his hits, one jailed Mexican official claims he has been driven crazy by Maluma’s music after police “tortured” him by playing loud reggaeton non-stop for 10 days straight.

Gilberto Aguirre Garza, the former director of the Attorney General’s Office in the Mexican state of Veracruz, was jailed in April for his alleged involvement in the concealment and alteration of evidence relating to the mass burial of 13 human bodies. On January 19, 2016, the remains of 19 victims of enforced disappearance allegedly perpetrated by public servants of the Public Security Secretariat of the State were discovered in a place called La Barranca de La Aurora. However, prosecutors claimed that Garza instructed personnel under his command to report the finding of only 6 bodies, a charge that he has always denied. The jailed official’s lawyer recently told reporters that, in an effort to force his client to admit to the crime and denounce other public servants, the current Verracruz Governor and the state’s Attorney General have been subjecting Garza to music torture.

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The Maltese city of Zebbug, on the island of Gozo, recently welcomed its newly appointed archbishop in a very unusual way – having the prelate ride in a convertible Porsche Boxter S pulled by dozens of young children.

A video of the unusual welcome that took place on Sunday went viral both in Malta and abroad, with most viewers declaring themselves outraged by the sight of a high-ranking member of the church riding in a luxury sports car pulled by young children dressed in white. Footage showed Archbishop Ġwann Sultana standing up and waving from the grey Porsche Boxter S, as dozens of children pulled the sports car through the streets of Zebbug, to the local church.

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A 69-year-old Dutch man who claims to feel much younger than his actual age has gone to court to make himself legally 20 years younger.

Emile Ratelband, a media personality and self-described “positivity guru”, recently told a court in Arnhem, Holland, that he did not feel comfortable with his true age and compared his desire to have it legally changed with that of people who identify as transgender. Ratelband said that he would gladly renounce his pension to ensure that there were no unforeseen consequences, and tried to convince the judges that slashing two decades from his real age would have a hugely positive impact on all aspects of his life.

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Three managers of a home improvement firm in Zunyi, China, were recently arrested for subjecting employees to extreme punishment, including forcing them to eat cockroaches, for not meeting their sales goals.

The arrests came after an employee of the unnamed company took to social media to complain about the humiliating punishments he and his colleagues were being subjected to by management for failing to meat their goals. His post included a video of a topless man standing in a center of a room and being whipped with a belt by his boss, while his workmates watched. Footage also shows people drinking cups of yellow liquid which some have alleged is urine. The video was later deleted, but screenshots started circulating online, and the police were notified about the troubling punishments.

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Ningen, a pop-up restaurant in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, attracted a lot of media attention over the last two weeks for giving patrons the chance to order the last meals requested by infamous death row inmates before their execution.

The controversial eatery was opened by a Japanese art collective called Chim↑Pom and for two weeks served the last meals of infamous American criminals like armed robber and double-murderer Gary Mark Gilmore, Judy Buonoano, Florida’s “Black Widow”, or real-life killer clown John Wayne Gacy.

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A 29-year-old American man decided to leave the United States behind and move to a remote jungle village in India so he wouldn’t have to constantly worry about paying back his student loan.

Like many other Americans, Chad Haag had to rely on a student loan to pay for his college education, but he struggled to find a college-level job after graduating, and going back school to pursue a master’s degree in comparative literature didn’t really help in that regard. His first job had him unloading trucks and constructing toy rockets on a factory assembly line, then he worked as an adjunct professor, but with only one class assigned per semester, he could barely make a living, let alone pay back his $20,000 student loan. At one point, struggling to pay the $300 monthly instalments became too stressful, so he just packed his bags, said goodbye to his life in the US and moved to a small village in India.

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Pope Francis is generally considered the supreme leader of the worldwide Catholic Church, but to David Bawden, a conservative Catholic from Topeka, in Kansas, Francis and the five other popes who cam e before him are nothing more than frauds or ‘antipopes’. Interestingly, Bowen considers himself the one true pope of the Catholic Church.

David Bawden was elected pope on July 16, 1990, in Belvue, Kansas, by a conclave of six people that included himself and his parents. He became Pope Michael, the self-proclaimed one and true pope of the Catholic Church, and he has spent the last 28 years attracting followers and performing his duties as the religious leader of billions of Catholics around the world, which includes holding prayer meetings and the performing the Stations of the Cross. To make himself known to the world, Pope Michael maintains his own website, is active on social media and has even appeared in a feature-length documentary.

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A Chinese man has been excluded out of a parents WeChat group and accused of flaunting his wealth by dropping his son off to school in an expensive Ferrari 488 sports car.

The man, surnamed Li, is a senior executive in an property development company in in Hangzhou, China, and has the habit of taking his junior pupil son to school in a Ferrari 488. This didn’t sit to well with the parents of the other kids in his son’s class, and Li was recently told by a teacher that he had received complaints about it. Apparently, some of the other parents were worried that it would lead to unhealthy comparisons between the kids in class and prevent them from developing fellowship. The man didn’t agree so they all shunned him, and even excluded him from their WeChat group.

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