A Chinese mountain climber recently sparked controversy after reportedly refusing to pay the $10,000 resue fee of the sherpa who found her unconscious on Mount Everest.

On May 18, while making the climb up Mount Everest, Chinese mountain climber Fan Jiangtao stumbled upon an unconscious woman in her 50s. An experienced mountain climber herself, the woman had reportedly reached the summit and was on her way back to base camp when she started experiencing health problems. Fan and the sherpa decided to abandon their goal of conquering Everest in order to take Luo back to the base camp safely. During their descent, they met Xie Ruxiang, a Hunan Provincial Mountain Climbing Association member, who also abandoned his climb in order to help. His sherpa, however, was reluctant to join them, but they needed the extra hands so Xie promised him a fee of $10,000, to which the man agreed. No one asked the person being rescued, though…

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A scandal known as ‘Rat Head Gate’ has been getting a lot of attention on Chinese social media after a student found what looks like a rat head in their cafeteria meal. The school claims it’s actually a duck head.

The incident reportedly occurred last week at the cafeteria of the Jiangxi Vocational Technical College of Industry Trade in Nanchang, China. While eating their lunch, a student found what looked like a rat’s head in their bowl of rice and pulled out their phone to record the discovery. They then confronted the cafeteria staff about it but were told that it wasn’t a rat’s head, but a duck’s head. The latter, along with duck necks are an important part of Chinese cuisine, but it wasn’t what the student had ordered, and it certainly didn’t look like a duck…

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An Indian IT company recently sparked outrage online after it was reported that one of its managers ordered the exit of the office building padlocked to prevent employees from leaving without his permission.

A video of a security worker using heavy chains and large padlocks to seal off the exit of the Coding Ninjas office building in Gurugram, India, recently went viral on Twitter. In it, the guard claims that he had been directed by one ‘Anurag sir’, later identified as a manager with the company, to lock the exit to ensure no one can leave without his express permission. The video sparked outrage and once again brought issues like employee exploitation and a degrading working environment into the spotlight. As for the company, it recently issued a statement acknowledging the incident, describing it as an ‘anomaly’ rectified ‘within minutes’ of its occurrence.

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A German tattoo artist has been criticized for charging a client hundreds of dollars for a back tattoo that many have compared to a childish doodle.

Mykhailo, a 21-year old tattoo artist from Berlin, Germany, recently posted a TikTok video of one of his latest projects, an abstract, scribble-like design that his client allegedly paid 900 euros ($960) for. The short clip quickly went viral, with nearly 2 million views at the time of this writing and hundreds of comments about the quality of the artwork. The tattoo consists of two shapes resembling hurriedly doodled flowers stemming out of a scribbled section surrounded by dozens of seemingly disconnected lines. While some people described the tattoo as a piece of art, others said that they wouldn’t have it inked on their bodies even if someone paid them $10,000.

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A Brazilian doctor recently lost his job after allegedly prescribing chocolate ice cream and video games to a 9-year-old with a sore throat and flu-like symptoms.

On May 18th, Priscila da Silva Ramos, a 37-year-old mother from Osasco, in Greater São Paulo, took her 9-year-old child for a checkup at a state-owned clinic, after he started feeling sick and started vomiting. She claims that the doctor there was very unprofessional, asking her if she had looked at her child’s throat, but not bothering to do it himself. Instead of actually examining the minor, the unnamed doctor allegedly started writing a prescription for drugs like amoxicillin, ibuprofen, dipyrone, prednisolone, and N-acetylcysteine, as well as ice cream and daily sessions of gaming.

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A cafe in the Russian city of Perm has been getting a lot of attention after announcing plans to introduce a controversial breast milk-infused latte on its menu.

Perm-based cafe chain Coffee Smile has been the talk of the Russian internet over the past week after announcing intentions to use real human breast milk as an ingredient for coffee products like lattes and cappuccinos. The craziness started earlier this month, when Coffee Smile locations started plastering posters advertising the controversial new ingredient. People started sharing photos of the photos on social media, and before long, local businessman and Coffee Smile owner Maxim Kobelev released a promotional video claiming that his cafes will be using genuine breast milk stored in special, pharmacy-grade bags.

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A 40-year-old woman’s decision to quit her job and become a ‘full-time daughter’ in the employment of her own parents has sparked controversy in China.

Last year, after 15 years of working for a news agency, 40-year-old Nianan quit her job. She had to be on-call virtually 24 hours a day and was constantly under tremendous stress. Luckily, her parents came up with a better employment offer if she just quit the job that made her so miserable. “Why don’t you just quit your job? We’ll take care of you financially,” the woman’s parents said, promising to pay her 4,000 yuan ($570) per month if she just came and lived with them. That obviously meant no more housing costs, and saving massively on food and various household items, as the parents would take care of such expenses. So Nianan quit her job and became a ‘full-time daughter’.

After a year in her parents’ employment, Nianan describes her profession as one “filled with love”. She spends her days accompanying her mother and father when they go grocery shopping, she cooks dinner with them every evening, drives them around when they need to, and even has an hour to dance with them every day.

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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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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 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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Joseph Mellen is a British-Born author famous for ‘Bore Hole’, a controversial book about his three attempts at drilling a hole in his own skull so he could be permanently high.

Mellen, an active member of the Swinging Sixties acid revolution, wrote his famous book in 1970, but his story has been going viral online regularly for decades, for understandable reasons. It’s not every day that you learn of a man who tried to drill a hole in his own skull, not once, not twice, but three times, for the sole purpose of being permanently high. The archaic process of drilling holes in one’s skull is called trepanation and is considered by many the oldest operation in the world. Trepanned skulls have been found on all continents, and some African tribes even perform them today, but Joe Mellen is one of the few people in history to perform trepanation on himself to produce a permanent acid trip.

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Cauzinho Neto, a muscular 12-year-old boy from Brazil, has become famous both for his impressive physique and his grueling training regimen, which apparently puts most adults to shame.

Carlos Augusto Pitanga Neto, aka ‘Cauzinho’, only started hitting the gym 2 years ago, under the watchful eye of his father, himself a fitness enthusiast, but he is already seen as a CrossFit prodigy able to deadlift more than twice his own body weight and do 700 ab crunches a day. Most 12-year-olds struggle to get out of bed for school on weekdays, but Cauzinho gets up at 5:30 am every day for a 5km (3.1-mile) run and a few dozen situps. After breakfast, he goes to school, and after finishing his homework he puts in two and a half hours of work in the gym, including deadlifts, squats, bench presses, and bicep curls.

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A popular Japanese hotel has been forced to issue a public apology after it was reported that employees at its cafe fermented a citrus drink by using the bacteria on their own hands.

The AWA Nishiizu Hotel in Numazu, Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture, has come under fire for putting its clients’ health at risk by breaking basic hygiene rules. On April 23rd, the popular TV show ‘Beat Takeshi’s TV Tackle‘ showcased how much Japan’s travel trends have changed in Japan by featuring a ‘health’ drink sold by a hotel cafe in Shizuoka. The orange concoction kept in large plastic jars was apparently a syrup made with squeezed summer mandarins and sugar, but the secret ingredient that set it apart from similar drinks was the fermentation process. According to an interviewed employee, the syrup was fermented with the help of bacteria indigenous to the human hand, so they would just stick their hands in the jar and stir it…

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A Brazilian mayor sparked massive controversy earlier this month after legally marrying a 16-year-old girl and then appointing her mother Secretary of Culture and Tourism.

65-year-old Hissam Hussein Dehaini, the mayor of Araucária City, in southern Brazil, recently married a girl 49 years his junior the day after she turned 16, which is the legal age that someone can get legally married. This alone sparked controversy in the South American country, but the controversial union was also shadowed by serious accusations of nepotism and corruption. The Prosecutor’s Office in the Brazilian state of Paraná is investigating the appointment of the young bride’s mother to the position of Secretary of Culture and Tourism in Araucária just a day after the mayor’s wedding.

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