A Canadian man who claims he identifies as 100% male legally changed the gender on his identification documents to female in order to save over $1,000 on car insurance.

The Alberta man, identified only as David to protect him against possible legal consequences, wanted to buy a brand new car and knew that his insurance costs would be high, due to his age (early 20s) as well as a collision and a ticket or two he had on his record. Still, the $4,500 a year quotation he got from an insurance company was even higher than he had anticipated, so he started thinking of ways of bringing the costs down. At one point, he asked the insurer what the cost would be for a woman in his exact situation and learned that his annual bill would be about $1,100 lower. That got him thinking…

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The parents of a mentally challenged boy attracted criticism for tattooing their home phone number on his arm, to make it easier for anyone who found him to contact them.

On the morning of July 22nd, police Wenzhou, China, received reports of a young boy walking aimlessly on the local highway. 10 minutes later, a police patrol spotted the boy, and after guiding him to safety, stopped their car to ask him some questions. It was clear from the very beginning that the child suffered from some sort of mental disability, as he was unable to provide basic information like his name or his age. After searching the boy for anything that could help them identify him, one of the officers noticed a series of numbers that appeared to have been scribbled on his forearm. It turned out to be a tattoo.

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The story of a couple from China’s Shanxi Province who gave birth to eleven daughters and only stopped having children after finally birthing a son recently went viral on Chinese social media, sparking controversy about male preference in the Asian country.

The original story published by Chinese newspaper The Paper highlighted the dedication of 11 sisters to their baby brother, who recently got married. The women not only took care of all of the arrangements for their brother’s big day, but also chipped in enough money to buy him and his new bride a house, because their parents were too sick and poor to help him. However, the sisters’ generosity and the mystery of how the parents were able to have 12 children during China’s infamous One Child Policy sparked a heated debate online.

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A vegan pet owner from the Gold Coast, in Australia, has been criticized for putting his cat on a diet that matches his beliefs and claiming that she’s actually thriving after switching to veganism.

53-year-old Harry Bolman has been a vegan for the lat 38 years, and after adopting Uma, a five-year-old cat, last year, he decided that the same vegan diet would be perfect for her as well. Bolman has been feeding her vegetables and special vegan cat food, and despite accusations that he is “abusing” and “killing” the feline, he claims that plant-based food is the “healthiest” for cats.

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Miracle Milly, a six-year-old Chihuahua from Puerto Rico, was awarded the title of World’s Most Cloned Dog, by the Guinness Book of Records, after scientists in South Korea created a whopping 49 genetically-identical copies of her.

The controversial Sooam Biotech Research Foundation in Seoul, South Korea, has been creating pet clones since 2006, and last year they approached Vanesa Semler, Milly’s owner about the possibility of creating clones of the adorable pooch to try and solve the genetic mystery that made her special. You see, Mily is no ordinary Chihuahua. She’s held the Guinness record for World’s Smallest Living Dog since 2012, and scientists have been wanting to know exactly what made her so tiny. So in August 2017, Sooam researchers started making clones of Miracle Milly, the number of which has currently reached 49.

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The head of a Russian advertising agency tasked with creating large building facades to promote the 2018 World Cup in Russia has come under fire for using one of the nearly 50-meter-tall facades to pay tribute to his wife, by using her as the model.

Ivan Panteleev, director of advertising agency Novatek Art has been criticised by street artists and members of the general public for putting a giant portrait of his wife Daria on a building facade funded by the Moscow city budget. Four murals were commissioned and co-sponsored by the city’s public relations committee in 2016, to remind the people of Moscow of the upcoming (now ongoing) World Cup, and some people didn’t like that Panteleev used his wife, of all people, as the model for one of the giant artworks.

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Every year, more than a million pigeons die while competing in Taiwan’s controversial pigeon sea races, a series of grueling events in which young birds are shipped far out to sea, released in the middle of nowhere and forced to fly home. According to several reports from animal rights organizations, less than 1% of them make it back to land.

The small island of Taiwan hosts more pigeon racing events than any other country in the world. A reported 500,000 Taiwanese race pigeons every year, competing for billions of New Taiwan dollars in prize money. Pigeon racing is such a big business that the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology once introduced an optional course on it, which proved very popular with both young and old pigeon racers. However, important notions taught during this course, like injury prevention and the use of performance enhancing drugs fly out the window during Taiwan’s seasonal sea races.

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A 19-year-old French woman visiting her mother in British Columbia, Canada, learned the hard way that going for a jog near the Canadian-US border is not a very good idea.

Cedella Roman, who lives in France, was visiting her mother in North Delta, British Columbia, last month, when she decided to go for an evening run on the coast of White Rock, in Western Canada. Cedella was admiring the breathtaking scenery, so even though she knew she was close to the border with the United States, she claims she didn’t realize that she accidentally crossed into the neighboring country. The young jogger only realized her mistake when she was stopped by a couple of U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, shortly after unknowingly  crossing the border.

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A 64-year-old employee of the waterworks bureau in the Japanese city of Kobe was recently fined and reprimanded by his superiors for going on his lunch break three minutes early, on more than one occasion.

The lunch break at the Kobe waterworks bureau starts at 12 pm sharp and lasts until 1 pm. However, an employee looking for “a change of pace” decided to leave his desk a few minutes early to go get himself a bento box from a nearby restaurant. Unfortunately for him, a senior colleague looking out the window from his office, saw the unnamed offender heading to the restaurant on one of his unsanctioned escapades, and reported him to management. An investigation revealed that the man had started his lunch break three minutes early a total of 26 times in the last 7 months, which they apparently decided was a huge deal.

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The Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office, in Tennessee, has become famous for coming up with a unique approach to catching wanted people. They’ve created a weekly online game show called “Busted Bingo”, where wanted people are assigned numbered balls and randomly selected for an all-inclusive stay in a county jail cell. It’s probably the world’s first game show that no one wants to win.

The first episode of Busted Bingo aired on November 15, 2017, and generated quite a bit of media coverage, especially on a local level. Sheriff Wayne Anderson, the host of the unusual game said that the game was an innovative way of getting the public involved in the process of catching wanted offenders. The idea was that if someone recognized the selected “winner” of the game, they could call the police to turn them in and save officers the trouble of locating them. Believe it or not, it actually worked. The first ever winner of Busted Bingo was busted just a few hours after the episode aired on YouTube.

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A Nigerian man recently created a huge buzz online after spending $90,000 on a brand new BMW X5 and using it as a casket to bury his late father in.

The man, identified simply as Azubuike, had reportedly lost his father to old age and decided to send him off on his final journey in a luxury car. So he spent a small fortune on a brand new BMW X5, placed the old man’s body inside and buried it in an extra-large, six-foot-deep grave, near his village. A photo of the car being lowered into the grave by pall bearers under the watchful eye of Azubuike recently went viral online and caused quite the controversy.

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If you’re looking for a way to get your restaurant business off the ground, this unique eatery in Bangkok, Thailand is proof that having a team of hot male waiters dress in skimpy female garb and scream like damsels in distress as they serve patrons is a sure way to success.

Staneemeehoi (Shell Station) is one of many seafood restaurants in Bangkok. As the name suggests, it specializes in shellfish, and judging by the hundreds of reviews on TripAdvisor and Facebook, the dishes and dips served here are above average, but that’s not really what has people coming back. Staneemeehoi is famous for its unique service. It employs a team of muscular young men who wear skimpy female clothing and try their best to act girly as they serve and entertain customers. That includes imitating a girly scream, dancing provocatively and puckering their lips as they pose for pictures.

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Russian media recently featured the story of Taras Shelest, a highly-regarded passenger jet pilot who turned out to be a complete fraud. Despite having never attended aviation university and instead faking his diploma, Shelest allegedly flew thousands of people all around the world for several years, until a bizarre incident finally exposed him.

In August of 2015, Taras Shelest was a co-pilot on a passenger flight from Moscow to Cyprus. When entering Ukrainian airspace, he contacted the ground controller as per protocol, only instead of sticking to the strict technical language, he used a very peculiar greeting – “Glory to Ukraine!” This was apparently so unusual that Shelest was reported to his company’s security service, which in turn contacted the FSB, Russia’s federal security service. Taras’ fellow pilots were whispering to each other that he had lost his mind, for using that bizarre greeting, but the result of the investigation into his background revealed something even crazier – the man was not even a real pilot, but a flight enthusiast who had taught himself to fly using flying simulators and faked his aviation university diploma.

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An Atlanta-area dermatologist has been dubbed the “rapping doctor” for her unusual habit of filming herself and her staff dancing and rapping during surgery, with unconscious patients used as props, and posting the videos online for promotional purposes.

Dr. Windell Boutté promotes herself as the “#1 Female Plastic Surgeon in the Southeast” despite not being licensed by the Georgia’s medical board to perform surgery. Luckily for her, the state allows any licensed physician to operate, so she’s all good. What hasn’t sitting well with either her patients of fellow doctors, though, is Boutté’s unconventional marketing technique – filming herself rapping and dancing to popular rap songs while operating on unconscious people and posting the videos on sites like YouTube. In the over 20 now-deleted videos on her account, patients are often shamelessly exposed despite never having given their consent to be used as props in the doctor’s amateur videos.

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A couple in Milan, Italy, who had chosen to name their baby daughter “Blu”, was recently ordered by a court to change the name to something more suitable for a girl or risk having it changed for them.

According to a presidential decree issued in the year 2000, “the name given to a child must correspond to their sex” and Italian authorities apparently don’t consider “Blu” – the Italian spelling for ‘blue’ – to be a suitable name for a girl. Despite having already registered the 18-month-old child’s name on her birth certificate and passport, the parents were recently summoned to appear in court last week in order to choose another, more feminine name.

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