Tourists Looking to climb China’s sacred Mount Tai, in Shandong Province, can now do so with the help of a lightweight AI-powered exoskeleton that makes hiking a breeze.

Clips of elderly tourists climbing up Mount Tai, one of the five sacred mountains in China, while wearing bizarre gear around their hips have been going viral on Chinese social media, sparking all kinds of strange theories. In reality, the tourists are wearing light exoskeletons offered by the Taishan Cultural Tourism Group on a trial basis. Weighing only 1.8 kg (4lbs), these advanced exoskeletons are reportedly fitted with a series of sensors that allow them to detect and analyze every movement of the wearer’s lower limbs and provide just the right amount of assistance in a timely manner, effectively reducing the burden on the legs.

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Unable to offer attractive wages, a Japanese tech company has been trying to attract new talent by offering ingenious benefits such as free alcoholic drinks at work and hangover leaves.

Since the burst of the Japanese economic bubble in the early 1990s, the Japanese economy has been stagnating along with employee salaries. Even though some corporations have announced plans to increase starting wages in hopes of attracting new talent, small and medium-sized companies simply don’t have that option because their budgets don’t allow it. In order to compete with big players, they have to think outside the box and offer appealing and sometimes unorthodox benefits to potential employees. One small technology company in Osaka recently went viral in the Land of the Rising Sun by offering its staff free alcoholic drinks during work hours and hangover leaves to clear their heads.

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A family of European beavers has become an overnight sensation in the Czech Republic after taking just two days to build a series of dams that the Czech Government had been struggling to build for 7 years.

A project to restore water areas in the Brdy Nature Park began in 2018, but authorities had taken years to get all the right permits and finally get construction of necessary dams underway. The cost of the dams needed to restore the wetlands of the area to their original condition was estimated at around 30 million Czech crowns, but thanks to a family of diligent beavers, the Government doesn’t have to spend a single dime anymore. Environmentalists monitoring the Brdy area recently reported that a few beavers took just two days to build functional dams in just the right areas, sparing us humans the trouble.

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A viral video shot at the Mekong Underwater World in Yunnan, China, shows a young mermaid performer getting attacked by a giant aquarium fish during a live show.

A popular tourist attraction in Xishuangbanna, China’s Yunnan Province, recently attracted a lot of criticism for allegedly trying to cover up an incident involving a mermaid performer and a giant fish that attacked her during a live performance. Halfway through “The Mermaid Show”, an underwater ballet performance, the young Russian woman known only as Masha gets her head swallowed by a huge sturgeon that had crept up behind her. Luckily, the 22-year-old woman maintains her composure and manages to swim to the surface and get help. Although the show was reportedly stopped for at least an hour and a half, management at Mekong Underwater World allegedly offered the dancer a meager compensation for “moral damages” and specifically asked her not to talk about the incident.

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The mayor of Berezovsky shockingly lost the recent local elections to a “puppet candidate” who happens to be his subordinate and the wife of his personal driver.

Russian media has been reporting on the surprising outcome of the mayoral race in Berezovsky, a satellite city of Yekaterinburg, in Russia’s Sverdlovsk region. The reelection of Yevgeny Pistsov, who was trying to secure a fourth consecutive term as mayor, seemed little more than a formality, as he was running against a fellow member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia political party who also happened to be a subordinate of his and the wife of his personal driver. No one expected Yulia Maslakova to win, she even told reporters that she ran as a “sparring partner” for Pistov, but the impossible happened and now she is doing everything in her power to avoid being sworn in as mayor.

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A Utah man was arrested and accused of manslaughter after allegedly shooting his friend in the chest because the latter claimed he could dodge bullets.

23-year-old Ashton Jonathan Mann was arrested yesterday on one count of second-degree felony manslaughter and one third-degree felony charge related to firearms for a bizarre incident involving guns and marijuana use. In the early hours of Sunday, February 2nd, first responders were called to a home in Kearns, Utah, where they found an unresponsive young man with a gunshot wound to the chest lying on the floor. The victim was quickly taken to a nearby hospital, but doctors there couldn’t save his life. Mann later told police that he had shot his friend after he bragged that he could dodge a bullet.

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An Indian woman stands accused of tricking her husband into selling his kidney on the black market to fund their daughter’s education only to then steal the money and run away with her lover.

A woman from West Bengal allegedly spent months trying to convince her husband to sell one of his kidneys in order to fund their daughter’s higher education and arrange her marriage in the future. Although reluctant at first, the man eventually grew to believe that his sacrifice would improve the family’s financial situation and secure his child’s future. He spent a year looking for a buyer on the black market, as selling human organs has been illegal in India for over three decades, but he finally found one about three months ago. After going through the painful procedure, he entrusted the money for his kidney (1 million rupees or $11,500)to his wife, only to have her steal the money and elope with another man.

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Colombian influencer Daneidy Barrera Rojas, known as Epa Colombia, was sentenced to five years behind bars after filming herself vandalizing public property during a protest.

In November 2019, Colombia was rocked by violent protests against the government of former president Iván Duque. It was during this time that popular influencer Daneidy Barrera Rojas posted a video of herself vandalizing a public transportation station in Bogota, smashing windows, card readers, and access registers with a hammer, and painting the walls with spray paint. The video quickly went viral, getting her tons of attention online, but it also became the topic of an investigation that culminated in an initial prison sentence of three and a half years for property damage and disruption of public transportation. Epa Colombia later apologized for her actions, but that didn’t help much, as the Prosecutor’s Office appealed the sentence and secured a 5-year prison sentence and a fine equivalent to 493 monthly minimum wages.

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China’s capital city of Beijing is all set to host an interesting half-marathon that will set thousands of human runners against dozens of bipedal robots developed by some of the world’s leading robotics companies.

This coming April, the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (E-Town) will be hosting an interesting running event for both humans and human-like robots. 12,000 people are expected to take part in the event alongside dozens of bipedal robots developed by major robotics companies, including Tesla, Boston Dynamics and 1X, making this one of the strangest half-marathons in history. Participating robots will need to have a human-inspired appearance, be between 0.5 and 2 meters tall (so no giant mechs allowed), and have the ability to run or at least walk on two legs. The winners, be they human or robot, will receive prize money depending on their performance.

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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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