A Malaysian man has sparked controversy on social media by announcing an ingenious service where he rents himself out as a “villain” that harrases clients’ partners, allowing the latter to pose as heroes by confronting him.

Earlier this month, 28-year-old Shazali Sulaiman took Malaysian social media by storm by announcing a “villain for hire” service that would allow clients to show off their masculinity and make a big impression on their partners or romantic crushes. After being told that his unkept long hair and biker clothing make him look like a gang member, Sulaiman was inspired to start a service that relied on his physical appearance to make a profit. For a fee, clients can set up a time and place where he would show up to pick on their partner, thus giving them a chance to intervene and pose as a hero or a knight in shining armor.

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For the longest time, New York’s Upper Fifth Avenue held the title of ‘the most expensive street in the world’ but it was recently dethroned by Montenapoleone, an upscale shopping street in Milan, Italy.

Every year, American firm Cushman & Wakefield publishes a global index that ranks the world’s most expensive shopping areas by the rent prices they command. Fifth Avenue has been ranking first out of 138 leading retail destinations around the world for many years, but last year, it was surpassed by Montenapoleone, the most popular luxury shopping street in Milan. Not only is this short street a magnet for tourists interested only in window shopping, but it also attracts some of the wealthiest people around the globe, many of who spend at least 2,500 euros ($2,600) per purchase, the highest average receipt in the world.

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A female Chinese influencer has been urging men to wear Adam’s Apple covers to highlight gender inequality and promote women’s rights.

Zhu Miaolin, better known as Ah Miao on Chinese social media, recently sparked a bizarre craze in her home country, urging her male friends to wear Adam’s Apple covers to protect what she describes a “sensitive area” of the male body, in the same way that women wear bras to conceal their breasts. Proposed as a unique way to empower women and shine a light on gender inequality in China, Ah Miao’s initiative went viral and spurred the production and sale of Adam’s Apple covers.

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A Chinese man who refused the Government’s generous offer to buy his property for the construction of a new motorway now finds himself living in the middle of said motorway.

A few years ago when Chinese authorities knocked on his door in Jinxi, a town southwest of Shanghai, offering to buy his two-storey house for a fair bit of money and three other properties, Huang Ping decided to play hard-to-get in hopes of getting an even better deal. Unfortunately, his bet didn’t pay off, as the Government simply decided to build around his property instead of giving in to his absurd demands. In the end, all the other property owners in the area sold their land to the Government, leaving Huang isolated in the middle of a soon-to-be-inaugurated highway.

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A young Chinese woman has been getting a lot of attention for her ability to act as an android using a special costume, robotic movements and an expressionless face.

At a time when companies are investing billions into robotics and artificial intelligence to make robots appear more human, one young woman is trying her best to impersonate a robot. Known as “robot girl” on Chinese social media, the young woman first attracted attention last August, during the 2024 World Robot Conference in Beijing, where along with another female model she posed next to a hyper-realistic humanoid robot, confusing the hell out of the audience, most of whom didn’t know which one of the exhibits was human and which was a robot. She has since gained a lot of notoriety in China and is now a popular content creator and the country’s leading “robot girl”.

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A 10-year-old boy reprimanded by his father for not completing his homework took revenge on his parent by calling the police and telling them that his father was hiding forbidden drugs.

The bizarre incident took place earlier this month in China’s Yongning County. After being severely scolded by his father for not completing his homework on time, a 10-year-old boy stormed out of the house and went straight to a nearby store and asked if he could use the phone. The fifth grader dialed 110, China’s emergency number, and asked to speak to the police, claiming that he had proof his father was concealing poppy shells, considered an illegal drug, at home. Then he waited calmly for the police to arrive and let them home so they could conduct a search and confirm his story.

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A Vietnamese hospital recently reported the extremely rare case of a 24-year-old man who had a wooden chopstick lodged in his eye socket for three weeks without noticing.

The unnamed man was admitted to the Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Vietnam’s Can Tho Province when he came in with symptoms of pain and swelling in his left eye. The 24-year-old patient told doctors that he had been experiencing the symptoms for about three weeks but they had gotten worse in recent days. He had previously sought medical help at another facility in his hometown, but after assessing his vision and checking for foreign objects, they prescribed medicine that proved ineffective. This led the man to the Can Tho University Hospital, where doctors once again confirmed that he had 10/10 vision, with no signs of eyeball injury. However, the left eye did appear swollen and there was a small pus discharge from the corner of his left eye. A subsequent CT scan showed that he had a 9-cm-long foreign body lodged in his eye socket.

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A Chinese company has come under fire for installing surveillance cameras in the restroom too see which employees spent too much time on bathroom breaks and posting offenders on ‘wall of shame’.

Many Chinese companies have long been trying to discourage workers from spending too much time in the restroom by various means, like installing countdown timers on bathroom stalls or limiting bathrooms breaks to one per day. A Shenzen-based tech company took things even further by reportedly installing hidden surveillance cameras in its restrooms to monitor employees’ activity and then shaming those who wasted too much time there by posting screenshots of them for everyone to see. A spokesperson for the Lixun Electro-Acoustic Technology Company admitted that employees were surveilled in the company restroom, but claimed that the measure was meant to discourage time wasting during work hours.

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An ER doctor recently shared “one of the most insane X-rays he has ever seen,” showing a person’s lower body infested with hundreds of calcified tapeworm eggs.

Tapeworms are parasites that usually anchor themselves to the inside of the intestines of their host, absorbing nutrients directly from the gut, but few people know that tapeworm eggs can travel anywhere inside the body of their host, from their feet all the way to the brain. Over time, these eggs calcify and are no longer viable, so they don’t pose much of a threat when they get lodged in soft tissues like muscles or fat, but they can cause a life-threatening condition known as neuro-cysticercosis when they calcify in the brain.

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A Taiwanese plastic surgeon has been getting a lot of attention for sharing a video of performing a vasectomy on himself on social media, as a gift to his wife.

Chen Wei-nong, a father-of-three who works at a plastic surgery clinic in Taipei City, went viral this week after sharing a rather unusual clip on his Facebook and Instagram profiles. To put his wife’s mind at ease, the young doctor decided to get a vasectomy, and to make sure there was no risk of botching the procedure, he performed it himself, recording the entire process for educational purposes. After presenting a list of 11 steps involved in the operation, Chen got local anesthesia and then started working on himself, so to speak. Because operating on yourself isn’t very common, a procedure that usually takes about 15 minutes ended up taking an hour, but it was a success.

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For over a month now, the Gaîté Lyrique Theater in Paris, France, has been taken over by a group of homeless migrants who needed a roof over their heads during winter.

The occupation of Gaîté Lyrique began on 10 December when the cultural venue hosted a free conference titled “Reinventing the Welcome for Refugees in France”. Ironically, the 250 African migrants who attended the event refused to leave after it was over, and they were later joined by another 50 or so migrants who didn’t have anywhere else to hide from the cold Paris weather. It’s been over a month since the Gaîté Lyrique was occupied, and management admits that it was forced to cancel all performances until at least January 24, which threatens to bankrupt it, as the institution relies on such performances for 70% of its income, with the other 30% coming from the state as subsidies.

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A 53-year-old woman was scammed into paying hundreds of thousands of euros to a person posing as Hollywood megastar Brad Pitt as payment for hefty medical bills he couldn’t cover due to his divorce.

For more than a year, Anne, a French interior decorator, thought she was in a long-distance romantic relationship with Brad Pitt. This bizarre tale started in February 2023, when the middle-aged woman joined Instagram to share photos from a recent skiing vacation in the Alps. She was immediately approached on the social network by someone claiming to be Jane Pitt, the mother of legendary actor Brad Pitt, who started chatting with Anne and telling her what a good match she was for her son. It wasn’t long before someone posing as Brad Pitt approached Anne on Instagram. They chatted online every day, and before long, Anne fell in love which made her an easy target for a surprisingly effective scam.

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An Arizona tattoo artist has come under fire for tattooing an American flag on a 9-year-old girl’s arm after she asked to get Trump’s portrait on her neck.

A video posted on social media by a tattoo artist at the Black Onyx Empire Tattoo parlor in Yuma, Arizona, has been getting a lot of attention online because it shows a nine-year-old girl getting her arm tattooed. Shared by the artist, who goes by ‘cutzsosa’ on Instagram, the video sparked a heated debate about inking minors, even with their parents’ consent. According to the artist the girl and her parents traveled to the tattoo parlor from out of state specifically to get a tattoo. She initially wanted a portrait of Donald Trump on her neck, but Sosa allegedly convinced her to get something more patriotic done, a US flag on her arm.

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A Shanghai man was shocked to find the apartment he had rented out two years ago had been turned into a chicken coop and damaged beyond repair.

Imagine putting all of your savings into buying and renovating an apartment, and then renting it out for a small profit only to find out that the tenant has been using it to raise chickens. It sounds like a joke, but it’s the true story of a Chinese man who was recently alerted by his neighbors that there were strange noises and a foul smell emanating from the apartment he had rented out to a tenant two years ago. Content to receive the monthly rent on time, the man hadn’t checked the flat until last month when he was shocked to find it full of chickens roaming and flying around the place.

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A middle-aged Japanese man known as ‘Uncle Praise’ has been making a living by standing on the street and showering strangers with praises for a small fee.

Uncle Praise first made news headlines in Japan in September of last year when Fuji TV released a short documentary on his unique “profession”. The 43-year-old man reportedly used to work for a company in his hometown of Tochigi, but at one point in his life, he got so addicted to gambling that he lost both his family and his job. His father fell ill, he lost his job and couldn’t pay the mortgage anymore, his family eventually cut ties with him, and he found himself living on the street. It was a rude awakening that helped him beat his gambling addiction and really assess his life. The middle-aged man had always dreamed of being a street performer, but he had no special skills such as magic tricks or singing, so he came up with the idea of praising people for money.

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