An Indian businessman who allegedly staged a stupid plane hijacking hoax to get his wife fired by the airline so they could spend more time together was recently sentenced to life in prison.

Birju Salla, the 38-year-old scion of a wealthy family of jewellers based in Mumbai, became the first person to be sentenced under India’s strict Anti-Hijacking Act of 2016. The funny thing is that he never actually intended to hijack a plane, all he wanted was to get his beloved  fire so they could spend more time together. He told the court that by printing a hijacking threat and planting it in the toilet of a Jet Airways plane, the airline would close its Delhi operation and fire his younger wife, so she would be forced to return to Mumbai where they could be together more. Things didn’t work out quite as planned…

Birju Salla’s troubles began when, during his frequent flights from Mumbai to Delhi, he fell in love with a Jet Airways customer care executive. They began having an affair in 2017, but the businessman quickly became frustrated with how little time they spent together. He felt that her job was always getting in the way of their love, so in July of 2017 he secretly married her – although he was already married and had two children – and asked her to move to Mumbai with him. She refused, and that’s when he allegedly hatched a ridiculously stupid plan to get her fired.

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John Low, a 60-year-old Singaporean diving instructor, spent four days and three nights drifting in the South China Sea with nothing but a small buoy and a useless backpack, after his boat was capsized last month.

On May 4th, John Low was getting ready for a leisurely dive off the coast of Tioman Island, in the South China Sea, when a strong wave hit his anchored boat and threw him into the water. Before he even could even realize what had happened, the boat, started taking water and eventually sank. All John could retrieve was a ring buoy and his backpack, but he wasn’t too worried at first, as he figured he could swim his way back to land. However, try as he might, he couldn’t fight the currents, which constantly pushed him out into the open sea. By 10 pm, he could no longer see the shore, and he started panicking. For the next four days, he was all alone, with no food and potable water.

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A Chinese animal lover who took in hundreds of stray dogs over the last two years is struggling to make ends meet despite having a stable job and his own business. He has accumulated a debt of 600,000 yuan ($87,000), but he refuses to give up on his four-legged friends.

Up until two years ago, Zhang Kai, a 41-year-old man from Chengdu, China, had a peaceful, comfortable life. He was the manager of a state-owned company and had just opened his own travel agency. But everything changed when his 13-year-old dog, which he had raised since 2003 suddenly died. The tragic event left a void in his life, and somehow made him pay more attention to the countless strays in his city in need of a home. At first, he took in two of them and raised them in his travel agency office, but before he knew it he was taking care of eight strays. Things just snowballed from there, and today he is struggling to take care of 260 dogs, relying solely on bank loans and donations.

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Last week, a Chinese man went to the hospital after experiencing severe chest pain and was shocked to learn that his discomfort was caused by the house keys he thought he had lost the night before after getting drunk with his friends.

On June 7th, a 26-year-old man, identified solely as Chang, from Guangdong, China, went out for drinks with his friends, to celebrate the end of another long work week. When he got home in the middle of the night, he searched for his keys, but couldn’t find them, so he called someone inside and asked them to let him. He was pretty drunk, so he didn’t give his lost keys a second thought, instead going straight to bed. The next morning,  as the numbing effect of the alcohol started to wear off, Chang started experiencing a sharp pain in his chest, so he went to the local Dongguan Hospital to have it checked out.

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A computer programmer in China caused quite a stir on social media recently after posting that he created a custom chatbot to answer his girlfriend’s texts 24/7, because he was too busy to do it himself.

Li Kaixiang, who works as a software development engineer for Chinese internet giant JD.com, said that he was often too busy at work to answer his girlfriend’s daily texts, but he also didn’t want to hurt her feelings by ignoring her, so he came up with the idea to create a chatbot to answer and send messages on his behalf. He even posted some screenshot of the chatbot’s conversation with his girlfriend on WeChat, and it definitely looks like the software did pretty good. He also mentioned that on the first day that the chatbot went online, it exchanged around 300 texts with his girlfriend, which kind of explains why he created it in the first place.

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Brazilian pet shop chain Petz has combined face recognition technology and artificial intelligence to create a groundbreaking platform that allows dogs to buy their favorite products by analyzing their facial expressions.

There’s nothing more disheartening for dog owners that buying a new toy for their pooches only to see them turn their nose up at it. Well, thanks to Pet-Commerce, an online pet-store created by Brazil’s Petz brand, you can avoid such disappointing experiences by allowing the dog to choose his favorite products. All you have to do is hold an internet connected camera to the dog’s face and allow the AI powering Pet-Commerce to analyze its facial expressions as you scroll through the different products listed on the site. Once it detects excitement, it automatically adds the product to your shopping cart and you can finalize the transaction when you’re done.

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An 11-year-old boy from Xinxiang city, China’s Henan province, has been praised for taking on the mission of saving his father’s life by eating as much as he possibly can.

Lu Zikuan’s father was diagnosed with leukemia seven years ago and has been treated with medication ever since. However, last August his health started deteriorating drastically and doctors informed him that his only option was a life-saving bone marrow transplant. After screening members of his family for possible matches, they found that the only viable donor was Zikuan, who was 10-years-old at the time. Despite his young age, the primary school student was eager to go under the knife to save his father’s life. But there was one big problem, he weighed only 30 kg, and doctors told the family that they wouldn’t operate on him unless he gained at least 15 kg more. So in March of this year he started stuffing his face with as much fatty food as possible.

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A 27 -year-old woman who was caught raising a six-month-old endangered sun bear in her Kuala Lumpur condominium unit explained that it had found it on the side of the road and took it in thinking it was a dog.

On June 6, residents of the Sentrio Suites Condominium in, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, were shocked to hear the roars of what sounded like a wild beast coming from the building’s upper floors. Then they spotted what looked to be a bear poking its head through the window of an apartment and screaming its heart out. At first, most of them thought it was just someone trying to prank them by putting on a bear suit and making animal noises, but then one of the tenants living below the suspicious scene took a video and confirmed that it was indeed a real bear. That’s when the authorities were contacted to remove the threat.

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Bamboo was already one of the most versatile resources available to man, but villages in various parts of China have come up with yet another use for the giant grass – living casks for maturing liquor.

Villagers and liquor producers in several Chinese provinces have come up with a way of using living bamboo trunks to produce alcoholic drinks that are proving very popular with tourists. By using high-pressure injection techniques, they fill up sections of living bamboo trunks with rice wine or sorghum and leave it to mature for several months, up to a year and a half, during which time the liquor is infused with flavone (the liquid naturally released by the trunk) and the sap of bamboo. This apparently gives the liquor a pure, pleasant aroma and detoxifying properties. It also lowers alcohol content, as the plant absorbs part of it.

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It seems like only yesterday flip-phones were the hottest handhelds available, but nowadays they are practically antiques and companies are making news headlines for paying people to use them over smartphones.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first ever flip-phone, Utah based Internet and phone service provider Frontier Communications has announced it will pay someone $1,000 to ditch their modern smartphone and switch to a flip-phone for a week. The lucky winner will have to record how long it takes them to do simple tasks like texting and sending emails with the obsolete handheld, how much sleep they get, and whether their productivity increases during the one-week experiment.

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A Malaysian doctor recently confessed to battling methamphetamine addiction for the last nine years, after being introduced to the drug as a way to boost his energy level to cope with 48-hour hospital shifts.

Dr Sasitharan Ayanai, a 39-year-old doctor at a government hospital in Johor Baru, Malaysia, got addicted to meth nine years ago, shortly after coming home from Russia, where he graduated medical school. Long-hour shifts, sometimes up to 48-hours-long, without proper rest and having to treat countless waves of patients quickly took a toll on the young doctor, and he found himself looking for a way to boost his energy level just to cope with the situation. He was introduced to metamphetamine, and because he was a doctor, he thought he could control himself and not become addicted, but he was wrong. Fast forward nine years, and Dr Sasitharan is still struggling to stay clean.

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Smartphone addiction is getting so bad that restaurants are offering customers free food if they agree to part with their handhelds for the duration of their meal.

Curry Pizza Company, a pizza place in Fresno, California, is offering customers a “Talk to Each Other Discount”, which requires customers to agree to have their smartphones locked up while they are in the restaurant and simply talk to each other during their meal. The discount is only applicable to groups of four people or more, all of whom must be carrying a working smartphone. If they qualify for the offer, diners will receive a free large pizza that they can enjoy on their next visit, or, if they’re in a giving mood, donate to the homeless in downtown Fresno.

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A wealthy farmer from China’s Sichuan province has been arrested for allegedly stealing chickens and ducks from several villages in Linshui county in order to buy gas for his “thirsty” $290,000 BMW.

Police in Linshui had been getting reports of chickens and ducks getting stolen from several villages in the county since April, but never expected the culprit to be one of the richest farmers in the area, a man who happens to live in a multi-story villa and drives a 2 million yuan luxury BMW. Apparently, it was the latter that pushed Qiang (pseudonym) to a life of petty crime, as after running into financial woes, he found it tough to afford gas for his gorgeous BMW. So he started stealing people’s domestic birds, breeding them on his farm, and selling them off for gas money.

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Photos of a Venezuelan emigrant allegedly chained to his seat at a restaurant in Peru so that he wouldn’t walk out without paying have sparked controversy online.

The shocking photos were originally posted on Twitter by a Venezuelan journalist named Luis Martinez, who writes for La Patilla. However, while the article posted on the news website is still accessible, the photos have been removed from the journalist’s Twitter feed. Allegedly, Martinez got the photos from a countryman who emigrated to Peru following the longstanding political and social turmoil in Venezuela. In one of his deleted tweets, the journalist claims that the man took the photos himself after being chained to his seat, but asked that his face be blurred out for fear of repercussions in Peru.

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Maurice, a proud rooster from the French commune of Saint-Pierre d’Oléron, has become an overnight celebrity after triggering a controversial legal battle with his loud morning crowing.

The story of the rooster who sang to loudly has become the topic of a fired-up debate in France. A local family has been sued because Maurice, one of their roosters, crows too loudly in the morning and disturbs some of the neighbors. The bird’s owners claim that they live in a rural environment, where crowing is a part of daily life, but because of an influx of tourists and seasonal residents looking for peace and quiet, the animal’s natural instincts have become a nuisance. They’ve tried keeping Maurice in the chicken coop until 8:30 in the morning, but that’s the best they can do, they said, because Maurice is a rooster, he has to crow. Still, their neighbors didn’t find that solution satisfactory so they filed a complaint at a regional court.

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