This is the heartbreaking story of a 9-year-old boy forced to live by himself in a cold apartment for two years after his mother moved in with her boyfriend 3 miles away.

French newspapers recently reported the sad and shocking story of a boy who lived alone in a low-income housing unit in Nersac for two long years after being abandoned by his mother who went to live with her boyfriend in a nearby town. Between 2020 and 2022, the unnamed boy survived mainly on sweets, canned food, and handouts from neighbors, while his mother lived comfortably at her boyfriend’s house, just 5 kilometers away, in Sireuil. She only came by once in a blue moon to check up on him and bring him some food, but she never stayed long and she never once took him to her place. It was because of these sporadic visits that neighbors took so long to realize that the boy was living by himself and finally call the police about it.

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A Brazilian man can consider himself lucky to be alive after he mistook a gunshot to the head for getting hit with a rock on New Year’s Eve and going about his business for four days.

21-year-old Mateus Facio was partying in Cabo Frio on December 31st of last year when he heard a loud noise, like an explosion in his head, followed by sharp pain. He instinctively put his hand up to the top of his head and felt blood. A doctor in the crowd noticed the blood dripping from his head and helped stop the bleeding, but thinking that he had just been hit by a random stone thrown by someone in the heat of the moment, Mateus just went about his business. He just applied some ice to the wound, celebrated New Year’s with friends, and then drove 300 km (186 miles) to his home in Juiz de Fora. On January 3rd, he went to work as usual, then drove to Rio de Janeiro to meet some friends, and it was only in the afternoon of the 4th that he realized something was wrong with him…

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A Turkish man is suing the doctor he paid for a penis enlargement procedure after his sexual organ allegedly shrunk by one centimeter following the botched operation.

İlter Türkmen, a wealthy banker from Tekirdağ, Turkey is seeking 500,000 lira ($16,500) in compensation from Dr. Haluk Soylemez, the man who was supposed to help him enlarge his penis in both length and girth, but ultimately caused it to shrink. Türkmen claims that the doctor promised him an extra 3 cm (1.1 inches) in both length and girth, but after two botched procedures, he ended up with one less centimeter than he originally had. The banker’s lawyers told a judge of the 1st Civil Court of First Instance that he had to endure excruciating pain that left him unable to walk properly for a month and was left with a shorter, severely scarred sexual organ.

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An Indian man has been caught trying to take an exam at a Punjab university on behalf of his girlfriend by wearing lipstick, makeup, and female clothes.

Officials at Baba Farid University of Health Sciences in Punjab’s Faridkot district recently caught a young Indian man using a disguise and fake documents in order to take the exam of multi-purpose health workers on behalf of a woman believed to be his girlfriend. The youth, identified as Angrez Singh from Fazilka, showed up at the examination center in Kotkapura on January 7  dressed in full female attire, complete with red bangles, bindi, and lipstick, and carrying documents in the name of the woman he was trying to impersonate, one Paramjit Kaur. While his disguise may have fooled the staff, they couldn’t trick the biometric scanners when his data didn’t fit the one in the database.

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An Indian man who had been pronounced dead by doctors allegedly came back to life when the ambulance transporting him home to his family hit a deep pothole.

India’s pothole problem is a well-documented one. It annoys and exasperates millions of people every day, and on occasion, it can cause serious injuries and even death, but according to the family of an 80-year-old man from Haryana, potholes can also be miracles in disguise. Darshan Singh Brar allegedly owes his life to a pothole. The man had not been feeling well for several days, so one of his grandsons decided to take him to a hospital near his home. He was diagnosed with a severe chest infection which also took a toll on his pre-existing heart condition, and despite doctors’ best efforts, he was pronounced dead after four days on a ventilator. But that’s only the beginning of our story…

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A Chinese family has sparked a debate on social media after moving into a luxury hotel suite permanently because it’s cheaper and more convenient than renting or owning a home.

The family of eight has been living in a luxury hotel in Nanyang, China’s Henan Province, for 229 days and has no plans to move out anytime soon. After getting a special rate (1,000 yuan or $140 per day) for a luxury suite with two bedrooms and a large living room based on the length of their stay, the family now plans to remain in the hotel indefinitely. Because the daily price of the suite also includes electricity, heating, water, and parking, the unnamed family claims that they actually save money by living in a hotel and their life is much more comfortable.

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A Brazilian man tragically lost his life by plunging down a deep shaft he had dug in his kitchen after dreaming that there was gold buried deep under his house.

71-year-old João Pimenta da Silva’s dream of enrichment ended as a nightmare that claimed his life. His lifeless body was found at the bottom of an exceptionally deep well he and his neighbors had dug under his kitchen in Ipatinga, a municipality in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. The man had reportedly dreamt that there was gold deep under his home, and that all he had to do was dig to get to it. He even told his neighbor about his dream and even though he was laughed at in the beginning, da Silva was actually able to convince the man to assist him with the digging. Unfortunately, the treasure hunt ended in disaster when the 71-year-old plunged to his death while trying to exit the 40-meter-deep hole.

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Every year, Japanese pesticide company Earth Corporation holds a ‘transcendence ceremony’ at the Myodoji Temple in Ako City to honor insects that sacrificed their lives for research purposes.

Earth Corporation prides itself on being the ‘no. 1 preferred household insecticide company in Japan’, a status it has achieved over decades of research and trial & error. In order to test the efficacy of its products, the company uses them on various species of insects at a proprietary research facility in Ako City, and some of those bugs inevitably die in the process. The company breeds the bugs it uses for testing, but that doesn’t make their sacrifice meaningless, and to show that it doesn’t take the tiny creatures for granted, Earth Corporation holds an honorary ceremony at the Myodoji Temple in Ako City.

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Chinese media reports that a growing number of pet owners are putting their animals through painful cosmetic procedures in order to give them rounded ears inspired by Mickey Mouse.

Most cats and dogs have naturally pointy or droopy ears, but a new disturbing trend sweeping through China these days has pet owners ignoring common sense and their animals’ physical and mental well-being for the promise of stylish ‘Mickey Ears’. Apparently, some shady pet clinics will slice part of the animal’s ears off to achieve the Mickey Mouse look, but there are also a variety of special clamps available online for pet owners disturbed enough to perform the procedure themselves. Recent coverage of this bizarre trend sparked controversy online, with most of the general public urging authorities to ban the ‘Mickey Ears’ procedure and punish those who would torture defenseless animals purely for cosmetic purposes.

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A Minnesota woman is suing her dentist for allegedly putting her through hell for over five hours by conducting 32 different procedures in a single, agonizing session.

Having to endure one root canal is traumatizing enough, but imagine having to sit through four root canal procedures, eight dental crowns, and no less than 20 fillings in a single session. It sounds like a nightmare and Kathleen Wilson, a Minnesota woman with severe dental problems, can attest that it truly was. In a span of just over 5 hours, her dentist, Dr. Kevin Molldrem, allegedly used about double the recommended dose of anesthetic, in an attempt to fix all her teeth in a single session. His efforts allegedly left the woman disfigured and distressed, and she is now asking for at least $50,000 in damages.

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‘Star Wash’, a small, family-owned car wash on the outskirts of Santiago de Chile, is being sued by LucasFilm, the company that owns the Star Wars brand, for allegedly plagiarizing its property.

Matias Jara, the owner of Star Wash, was in the process of registering his brand with the Chilean patent authority when he received a lawsuit from LucasFilm. The Disney-owned company reportedly wanted to stop the registration of the Star Wash name, arguing that the brand could be confused as being affiliated with Star Wars. However, Mr Jara is contesting the suit and claims that the name is different enough not to be confused with the LucasFilm property, adding that they are not selling movies of branded products. Apparently, the Star Wars copyright does not cover car cleaning services.

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In what has been described as a first-of-its-kind medical case, a man in his 30s ended up with a hole in his throat after pinching his nose and pressing his lips shut in order to surpress a sneeze.

The unnamed man was taken to Ninewells Hospital, in Dundee, Scotland, in severe pain, after trying to stifle a sneeze by pinching his nose and closing his mouth shut while driving. Apparently, when you do something like that, the pressure in the upper airways can increase by about 20 times, which can lead to serious injuries including ruptured eardrums, aneurysms, and even broken ribs. However, in this particular case, the unnamed patient ended up with a 2mm tear in their windpipe, which caused excruciating pain. A throat tear, known medically as a “spontaneous tracheal perforation” is a rare and potentially life-threatening injury that had not been associated with sneeze stifling before.

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A Kenyan man has been arrested in Connecticut for trying to have his estranged wife killed by asking a random Uber driver to help him find a hitman willing to do the dirty deed.

Leonard Thuo Mwithiga, 52, a former high-flying executive at Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) is facing a lengthy prison sentence for attempting to hire a hitman to kill the woman he had been married to for 22 years. According to a report by the Connecticut State Police, Mwithiga had followed his estranged spouse, who had run away in September of last year because of his abusive behavior, to the United States in an attempt to convince her to return home. Having failed to do that, the man decided that the woman had to die. After getting into an Uber, he reportedly started talking to the driver, telling him that he was “very, very mad” and that he needed a hitman.

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Russian hydrologist Alexander Tsvetkov was detained in February 2023, after an AI system determined that his face was a 55% match to the sketch of a murderer drawn 20 years ago by a witness.

Alexander Tsvetkov, a scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Inland Water Biology, has been living a nightmare for the past 10 months. He was removed from an airplane in February, following a work trip to Krasnoyarsk, and informed that he had been identified as the author of a series of murders over 20 years ago. Investigators claimed that he and his alleged accomplice killed at least two people in Moscow and the Moscow region in August 2002, ignoring the testimonies of multiple scientists that Tsvetkov had been with them at the time of the murders. The state’s smoking gun? An AI-powered system that found a 55% match between Tsvetkov and a sketch drawn by a witness over two decades ago…

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Italian police recently arrested a Genoa barber for drug dealing after noticing that many of the clients going into his shop were bald and beardless.

The Carabinieri (Italian police) had received reports of drug dealing activity in Genoa’s Foce area, but they didn’t really have any strong leads. An investigative unit was charged with gathering more information and, with the collaboration of the Forte San Giuliano station, setting up surveillance teams to spot any unusual activity. It was one of these teams that reported an unusually high number of bald, beardless men visiting a small barber shop operated by a 55-year-old man. The individuals were of different ages and appeared to be from varied walks of life, but they had one thing in common – they didn’t appear to need a haircut or a shave…

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