Three remote villages in India’s Madhya Pradesh state have become famous for their ‘thief schools’ where children as young as 12 are trained in pickpocketing, theft, and robbery by seasoned criminals.

The three nondescript villages – Kadia, Gulkhedi, and Hulkhedi – located about 120 km from the state capital of Bhopal are reportedly nurseries for young criminals, with parents actually paying ‘tuition fees’ of  200,000 to 300,000 rupees ($2,400 to $3,600) to have their offspring trained in “dark arts” like pickpocketing and bag grabbing in crowded places, carrying out robberies, bank account thefts, evading the police, and even withstanding beatings in the event of being apprehended. These so-called ‘thief schools’ have produced some of the most infamous criminals in India’s history, so they are sought after by impoverished and less-educated families unable to give their children a proper education.

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A 17-year-old German teen has been living life as a modern nomad, leaving his parents’ house to live on trains and travel all over his country.

While most 17-year-olds are only just beginning to consider the idea of leaving the nest, Lasse Stolley has already been on his own for over a year and a half. Convinced that his school studies were already behind him, he convinced his parents to allow him to leave their home in Fockbek, Schleswig-Holstein to embark on a unique train-hopping adventure. It took a lot of convincing, but they eventually agreed, and for the last year and a half, the German teen has essentially been living on trains, traveling all over his home country, working as a self-employed coder during the day, and sleeping on night trains at night.

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High up in the Swiss Alps, at an altitude of almost 3,500 meters (11,332 feet), lies Jungfraujoch, Europe’s highest train station, a wonder of human engineering that has been around for over a century.

The train doesn’t seem like the best means of transportation when trying to climb a mountain, but the Swiss would beg to differ, and they have proof to back up their claims. At the end of the 19th century, they began work on a project unlike any other – the Jungfraubahn, a steep railway through the Bernese Alps all the way to the ‘top of Europe’. And, at the end of the Jungfraubahn railway, they built Jungfraujoch, a spectacular train station perched on a rock between the Jungfrau and Mönch mountains, both of which soar over 4,000 meters. Today, Jungfraujoch is officially recognized as the highest train station in Europe and is one of Switzerland’s most popular tourist attractions.

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To celebrate the 175th anniversary of Switzerland’s first railway, a railway company created the world’s longest passenger train ever, a 1.2-mile-long monster snaking through the Swiss Alps.

Switzerland’s mountain railways are regarded as feats of engineering, but they are hardly the best place to attempt a world record for the world’s longest passenger train. And that goes double for Rhaetische Bahn railways. Not only is the alpine terrain itself a challenge, featuring sharp turns and constant gradient changes, but the railway itself is considerably narrower –  just one meter apart, compared to the standard 1.435 meters. In order for the 25 “Capricorn” electric trains (a total of 100 passenger cars) to complete their voyage successfully on the UNESCO World Heritage Albula Line from Preda to Alvaneu in eastern Switzerland, everything had to be perfect.

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If you love karaoke, but can never hit the right notes of your favorite songs, don’t despair! Apparently, all you need to do is use a weird karaoke training device for just three minutes per day, and you’re all set.

Karaoke is really big in Japan. Few people know that the pastime enjoyed internationally by millions originated in the Asian country, so it’s really no surprise that so many people of all ages still love it here. But just because you love singing your favorite songs doesn’t mean you’re good at it, and that can be an issue, especially if you prefer doing it in public karaoke establishments, of which there are many in Japan. Sure, you can take singing lessons, but that requires time and money that most karaoke enthusiasts don’t have. Luckily, there is apparently a simple, albeit more bizarre alternative…

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A 31-year-old woman was recently sentenced to 2 years in prison for impersonating a physician and then an ophthalmologist for years without any medical training.

It all started in 2018, when Sonia, a 31-year-old woman from Meaux, in northern France, decided to try her luck as a physician, without undergoing any medical training. Sonia had a bachelor’s degree in real estate management, but she didn’t let that get in the way of attaining a lucrative job as a general physician. The woman forged a bunch of diplomas from the Faculty of Strasbourg and a false certificate on the board of the Order of Physicians, and not only got the job, but saw patients for three years before anyone noticed she had no business being a doctor.

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Corvid Cleaning, a Swedish startup specializing in training crows to pick up litter in exchange for food, claims that its program could save communities a fortune in cleaning costs.

According to the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation, over a billion cigarette butts are left on Sweden’s streets every year which represents about 62 percent of all litter. Teaching humans not to throw cigarette butts on the street has so far proven impossible, but a Swedish startup claims it can teach crows to pick up after us and save local communities millions of krone in cleaning fees every year. Corvid Cleaning teaches wild crows to do our dirty work through a step-by-step learning process, that involves rewarding the birds with food for every cigarette butt they collect.

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Japan recently unveiled the world’s first Dual-Mode Vehicle (DMV), a contraption that runs both on roads, like a bus, and on rails, like a train.

The unique bus-train hybrid was unveiled last month, in the town of Kaiyo, Japan’s Tokushima Prefecture. The mini-bus-like contraption didn’t win anyone over with its looks, but it definitely made an impression in terms of practicality. It runs with normal rubber tires on the road, but when it needs to switch to train mode, a pair of metal wheels drop down from the vehicle’s underbelly. The front tires are lifted off of the track, while the rear wheels stay down to propel the vehicle. Switching between road and train modes takes only about 15 seconds.

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A Hungarian man has been accused of jumping in front of a train and having both legs cut off by the metal wheels in order to claim over $3.2 million in insurance payouts.

Sandor Cs., a 54-year-old man from the Hungarian village of Nyircsaszari, lost both of his legs in a horrific incident in 2014. He claimed that on the fateful day of July 30, 2014, he was walking near the train track when he happened to step on a piece of glass, which caused him to lose balance and fall in front of a speeding train. The injuries to both his legs were so severe that he had to have them both amputated from the knees down, and he spent months in a wheelchair before getting prosthetic limbs. However, insurance companies have spent the last seven years gathering evidence in an attempt to prove that Sandor willingly in order to collect a fortune in payouts.

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For over 120 years England’s Norland College has been known as the most prestigious nanny-training school in the world, with graduates landing jobs with wealthy families and earning upwards of $100,000 per year.

Founded in the late 1800s by Emily Ward, who realized that there was no official childcare training at the time, Norland College soon became the most renowned nanny-training school on Earth, with clients including Royal families and wealthy couples looking for the best service money could by. And indeed, Norland-trained nannies are nothing if not expensive, with some graduates earning as much as $170,000 per year, and even students raking in around 40,000 working during their elite training. That’s more than four times the average salary of a nanny in UK, but somewhat justified by the unique curriculum taught at Norland.

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Muscle Girls is a Tokyo-based women’s gym that doubles as a fitness-themed bar staffed by a group of young, muscular women.

Japan is famous for its plethora of themed bars and cafes, from black cat cafes to cafes dedicated to women’s thighs, but Muscle Girls is the country’s first and only bar dedicated to female weightlifting. Founded by a young fitness enthusiast who goes by the name of Eri Muscle, Muscle Girls started out as a women’s gym, but recently transitioned into the entertainment industry, opening its own unique bar as well as a popular YouTube channel. Photos and videos of the venue started going viral earlier this year, mainly because of its staff, which is made up exclusively of muscular, fitness-loving girls.

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A Chinese man has been getting a lot of attention on Asian social media, because of his unique training regimen – walking with 150 kg of steel plates attached to his feet.

Zhang Enshun, a 42-year-old man from Yulin City, in China’s Guangxi province, has been training in the art of “iron shoes” for the last five months, and has already made significant progress. After seeing news reports of people working out by walking with heavy weights attached to their feet, and hearing them talk about the benefits of this training, Zhang decided to try it for himself. He began by attaching one steel plate, weighing around 18.75 kilograms, to each of his feet and trying to take a few steps with it. Today, he can walk around with four of these heavy plates attached to each foot, for a total weight of 150 kilograms.

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An Australian court has ruled that a man who accidentally dropped the keys to a company car and strained his back while bending over to pick them up should receive workers compensation.

Robert Thelan, a works coordinator for SA Power Networks, in South Australia, was on call at home, on September 9, 2019, when he received a text message from work, telling him to go fix a power line. Thelan got dressed for the job, went out to the company-issued Ford Ranger in his driveway, sat down in the driver’s seat, but accidentally dropped the keys to the car on the pavement. While remaining seated, the man reached out to grab the keys and strained his back. Apparently, that’s a work related injury and he needs to be compensated by his employer.

The Australian man was able to drive to the Port Pirie SA Power Networks depot to report his injury, and was taken to the hospital soon after. His injury left him unable to work for an undisclosed period of time, and he incurred substantial medical expenses, but his employer, SA Power Networks, rejected his claim for compensation.

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An artificial intelligence engineer has created an intriguing algorithm that learned human language from reading “the bible and nothing else” and is now churning out ominous prophecies based on the Holy Book.

George Davila Durendal, a childhood coding prodigy and current AI engineer and entrepreneur, recently unveiled his wackies creation yet, an A.I. algorithm trained solely on the King James Bible and dubbed “AI Jesus”. Described by Durendal himself as an “A.I. clone of Jesus”, the software is a Boltzmannian natural-language processing model that “tries to replicate the style of the King James Bible without quite copying it”. Designed to write about 3 different topics – ‘The Plague’, ‘Caesar’ and ‘The End of Days’ – using the language of the Bible, AI Jesus has so far come up with some pretty scary, if somewhat nonsensical, prophecies…

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Last month, South Korean television featured the bizarre case of a shoe repairman from Seoul who has been conditioning his body by banging his body and his head against a tree for the last five years.

Would you ever pick on a man after seeing him violently banging his forehead against a full-grown tree trunk? I myself would, steer away immediately, which is just what the hero of our story is betting on. Back in April, South Korean TV show X SBS WOW featured a shoe repairman from Seoul’s Sinchon neighborhood famous for banging his head and body against a tree every day. You’d think they had made up such a preposterous story, but this man has the forehead callus to prove that he has been doing a lot of head banging for quite some time.

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