We’ve heard of robots and artificial intelligence taking human jobs, but I bet mayors didn’t really think their jobs would be threatened any time soon. They were wrong, and the AI running for mayor of a Tokyo district is clear proof of that.

Artificial Intelligence can’t legally run for high-ranking public administration positions yet, but one mayoral candidate from Tama City, Tokyo, intends to maximize the use of artificial intelligence in running municipal affairs, so he’s running his campaign as ‘AI Mayor’. Basically, he’s proposing replacing human public officials with AI and having them collect city data and create fair and balanced policies that will benefit everyone.

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32-year-old Dirar Abohoy spends about as much time on his hands as he does on his feet. Having trained to walk on his hands from a very young age, he can now climb mountains and perform all kinds of stunts with his legs hanging in the air.

Interestingly, Dirar, who lives in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, grew up watching Chinese and American movies, but as a kid, he didn’t know anything about editing. He thought all the stunts he saw on screen were real, so he started to train in order to emulate his heroes. By the time he learned that most of the action scenes in his favorite films were nothing more than illusions, Dirar had already become a master of hand-walking, so he kept on training.

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20-year-old Kasandra Smith, from Macon, Georgia, has shun all kinds of footwear for the last three years, and claims that despite occasionally stepping on glass shards or metal pins, going barefoot full-time has done wonders for her confidence and overall well-being.

Kassandra Smith was never really big on shoes. In school, she would often wear flips-flops just to have an excuse to get out of participating in gym class, but the more she wore them, the freer she felt, and the more she loathed the thought of putting on shoes. She started wearing flip flops when shopping or going to the restaurant, and after leaving school in 2015, she started walking completely barefoot as well. Just two months later, she decided to give-up footwear all-together, and she’s been walking barefoot ever since.

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Looking for an original business idea? How about renting out expensive things to poor couples to show off as dowry during their wedding? A Thai company has been doing just that for the past three months, and business has been booming.

Chiang Mai-based special event company Romantiese has been making news headlines in Thailand for their newest service – a dowry rental option for couples who can’t afford to properly honour their parents on their wedding day. Known as “sin sod”, the dowry system is still very deeply rooted in Thai culture, and considered both a of honoring your bride’s parents for raising their daughter well and proof that you are financially capable of starting a family. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford to have stacks of cash and gold bars on display at their wedding, which is where Romantiese comes in.

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A 50-year-old woman in Wuhan, China, was recently diagnosed with severe spinal neuron damage caused by a lack of vitamin B12. The woman had been on a strict vegetarian diet for over thirty years, and did not take any B12 supplements.

The woman, surnamed Chen, reportedly turned to a vegetarian diet in her 20s, in order to lose weight, and after seeing some truly amazing results, decided to stick with it for the rest of her life. Standing at 160-cm-tall, Chen told doctors that she used to weigh 55 kg when she was young, but managed to drop to 45 kg after becoming a vegetarian, a weight that she was proud of having maintained for over three decades. However, she never imagined that her seemingly healthy diet would put her at risk of becoming paralyzed.

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Doctors in New York recently reported the case of a 34-year-old man who wound up in the hospital with severe headaches and neck pain after trying to eat a Carolina Reaper during a hot pepper eating competition.

The unnamed man reportedly started dry heaving immediately after sampling a Carolina Reaper pepper. It’s unclear whether he stopped after a few bites or finished the whole thing, but what we do know is that over the following days, he began experiencing intense headaches and neck pains that lasted only a few seconds. At one point, the pain became so hard to bare that he had to be taken to the emergency room.

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If you’ve always dreamed about climbing into a nine-foot-tall mecha suit and actually showing off your sci-fi fantasies to the whole world, now’s your big chance. A Japanese company is actually selling custom mecha suits for only 10 million yen ($93,000).

Skeletonics have been around since 2011, when a group of students at the Okinawa National College of Technology showed off their very first fully-mechanical exoskeleton. It didn’t do much except turn the wearer into a metal giant with increased reach, but it definitely looked cool, so the project made international headlines at the time. But while the team came up with several improved Skeletonics over the years, they were merely showed off online and at special events, so only a few fans ever got to give them a try themselves. However, everything changed last month, when Skeltonics finally announced that it would finally begin producing commercial versions of its popular exoskeleton.

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Police inspectors in Pilar, Argentina’s Buenos Aires province, were recently questioned about the disappearance of 540 kg of marijuana from the evidence room, and the best explanation they could come up with was that addicted rats ate it all.

It all started in April 2017, when Commissioner Emilio Portero relieved his partner Javier Specia, as head of the police department in Pilar, a town located 60 km from the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires. Protocol dictates that in the case of such a transfer of command, a sort of inventory of everything left in the hands of his successor by the officer who is transferred to another unit be signed. Although the inventory was allegedly conducted, it was never signed by Specia, which made Portero suspicious. He notified the Division of Internal Affairs of the Police, which in turn tasked the National Gendarmerie with conducting an official inventory.

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They say “no good deed goes unpunished” and one Chinese billionaire learned that the hard way after spending tens of millions of dollars on hundreds of luxury villas for all the residents in his home village, only to see them remain deserted as greedy recipients continue to argue over who should own multiple houses.

Five years ago, Chen Sheng, the founder and chairman of drinks company Tiandi No 1 Beverage Inc, committed 200 million yuan (US$31.9 million) to the construction of 258 luxury villas on a plot of land offered by authorities in the village of Guanhu, China’s Guangdong province. Each property measures 280 square meters and the three-story villas feature five bedrooms, two reception rooms, a garage and a small garden. The new village also has a small stream passing through it, several pedestrian bridges, basketball and badminton courts and even a public stage for various cultural events, but even though everything was completed last year, the place remains deserted.

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Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja lived among wolves for 12 years in the mountains of Spain’s Cordoba province, before being discovered by the Civil Guard at age 19 and brought back into civilization. But even now, at age 72, Pantoja still hasn’t completely adjusted to life among humans.

Born in Añora, Cordoba, in 1946, Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja lost his mother when he was only three years old, and soon after, his father abandoned him to live with another woman in a neighboring town. As a young boy, he was taken to the mountains to replace an old sheepherder and look after a heard of 300 sheep. He remembers that the old man taught him to make a fire and use various tools, but in 1954, when Marcos hadn’t even turned eight years old, the sheepherder died, living him all alone.

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A Japanese animal lover risks her life every single day by venturing into the Fukushima exclusion zone to feed a heard of 11 cows abandoned after the 2011 nuclear disaster.

The earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Fukushima in 2011 claimed the lives of over 20,000 people, and forced another 160,000 to leave everything behind and flee to safety. But while people were able to escape the threat of radiation from the damaged reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, animals could not. The area was home to over 3,500 cattle which became known as the “nuclear cows of Fukushima” after being exposed to high levels of radiation. Most of them are dead now, killed by starvation or euthanized by the government, but the few surviving cows now rely on the kindness of humans brave enough to risk their lives to bring them food and water.

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A Chinese art student sparked a heated debate online after using the wings of over 500 butterflies to create a series of artworks symbolizing rebirth. While some consider her “sick” for using butterfly wings as an art medium, others think her creations qualify as original art.

Li Zheng, a fourth-year art student at Quanzhou Normal University in Fujian province, China, created a series of artworks consisting of meticulously arranged butterfly wings as part of her graduation piece. She and her colleagues were instructed by their lecturer to recreate famous artworks using different materials. Li decided she wanted to recreate some of the masterpieces of Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, but at first, she had no idea what materials she was going to use.

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A 9-year-old boy from Kerala, in India, has become a social media sensation after videos of him lighting rechargeable LED light bulbs just by touching their electrical contacts with any part of his body went viral online.

Abu Thahir, who hails from Muhamma near Alappuzha, Kerala, discovered his unusual power only recently, while returning home with his father after buying a rechargeable LED light bulb. His father, Nizar, who happens to be an electrician, told reporters that when he passed the light-bulb to his son, it just lit up in his hand. At first, he thought it was some sort of prank, but then he noticed that the bulb lit up whenever the electrical contacts on its bottom touched any part of his son’s body.

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53-year-old Juana Munoz, from Cadiz, Spain, has been living in a custom glass cage for the last 13 years. It is her prison, but also the very thing that keeps her protected from all the things that would otherwise kill her.

After being diagnosed with four life-threatening conditions – multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and electrosensitivity – Juana Munoz had no choice but to isolate herself inside a 25-meter glass cage. She cannot leave that space without following a very strict protocol, and anyone coming in must first shower with chemical-free cleaning products and wear only organic cotton clothes. The most painful thing is that her family cannot touch, let alone hug her without putting her life in danger. Juana’s two children, aged 26 and 29, are only allowed to hug her two times a year, and only after undergoing several days of preparation.

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Wang Mingqing’s daughter went missing 24 years ago, but even if the chances of finding her became lower with each passing year, he never gave up hope. After decades of tireless searching, the nearly-impossible happened – Wang received confirmation that his daughter had been found thousands of miles away, on the other side of the country.

Wang’s life was forever shattered on January 8, 1994. He and his wife were serving customers at their their fruit stall in Chengdu, China’s Sichuan province, and their 4-year-old  daughter Wang Qifeng was playing nearby. All the man remembers is that they both lost site of the girl for a little while, and she was gone. When they realized she was missing, both parents started looking for her, calling out her name and asking passers-by if they had seen her. They spent all day searching for Qifeng, but when they finally went home at 1 a.m., all they could do was weep.

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