A factory worker in Khanty-Mansiysk,, Russia, is being sued by his company for refusing to return over 7 million rubles ($87,000) he was wired by mistake due to a software glitch.

When he received a notification from his banking app at the beginning of this year, Vladimir Rychagov couldn’t believe his eyes. Apart from the 46,954 rubles ($581) he knew he was owed as vacation pay, he had also received a mega-bonus of 7,112,254 rubles ($87,000). There had been rumors among his colleagues that their factory was preparing a sizeable 13th salary for them after a prosperous year, but he never expected anything like this. However, his joy of becoming a millionaire was short-lived as he soon started receiving phone calls from the accounting department to let him know that he had been transferred the 7 million rubles by mistake and he had to return it. After doing some research online, Vladimir decided he disagreed.

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For centuries, scientists have been puzzled by the mysterious phenomenon known as “Seneca’s Gun”, a loud boom emanating from New York’s Seneca Lake.

Records of loud explosions heard on Seneca Lake date back to the 17th century, but they had become the subject of myth and folklore long before that. The Seneca people, a Native American tribe that lived around the lake, believed the booms to be the voice of a god angry at the warriors who had defiled their sacred hunting grounds, while early pioneers believed them to be drums being played by the spirits of soldiers who lost their lives in the War for Independence. It wasn’t until the 20th century that scientific hypotheses started emerging, but none of them were confirmed until 2025, when a team of researchers using advanced equipment mapped the bottom of Seneca Lake.

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Police in Wuhu, China’s Anhui Province, recently mediated the bizarre marital dispute between a local man and his wife, who had accused him of cheating because a fortune-teller had told her so.

Earlier this month, a man walked into a police station in Wuhu to complain about his wife’s constant harassment following an online fortune-telling session. After paying 500 yuan ($70) to hear a total stranger’s opinion about her husband’s fidelity, the wife confronted her spouse, accusing him of visiting hotels with other women and paying sex workers. At first, the man didn’t know where his wife’s accusations were coming from, and he tried explaining to her that he had been loyal, but when he learned that his wife was basing her accusations on a fortune-teller’s predictions, he went straight to the police.

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A Chinese gym has been getting a lot of attention for its controversial offer for gym goers – a used Porsche Panamera sports car to the first person to lose 100 pounds (50 kg) in three months.

If you’re the kind of person who needs extra motivation to hit the gym, maybe the chance to win a 2020 Porsche Panamera will get you off the couch. A gym in Binzhou City, China’s Shandong Province, recently announced that it would be giving away the owner’s Panamera as a prize to the first person to lose 100 pounds in three months. To be considered, willing participants need to pay a fee of 10,000 yuan ($1,400) and get themselves weighed before beginning the weight loss process. The mandatory fee also covers three months of intensive training, accommodation, and meals, so even if you don’t end up winning, you’re still getting some value. 

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Japanese drink company Suntory recently launched a functional drinking water that can allegedly reduce abdominal fat.

Suntory’s new ‘Special Water’ looks like regular mineral water but is officially classified as a “functional food,” meaning it’s a food product legally permitted in Japan to advertise health benefits. Special Water is aimed at office workers and those with irregular lifestyles who struggle with body fat accumulation because it can allegedly help reduce abdominal fat, especially visceral fat. Suntory’s new product contains HMPA (3-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)propionic acid), a small-molecule metabolite derived from fermented rice bran that can help reduce abdominal fat.

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A neuroscience startup has created a 6-pound smartphone case that is so heavy and cumbersome to use that it should limit most people’s screentime by around half.

Smartphone cases are usually light and slick by design, but Matter Neuroscience decided to go the opposite way, creating perhaps the heaviest and chunkiest phone case money can buy. There was a purpose to their madness, however, as they were trying their best to create the most inconvenient smartphone case in order to make the handheld as difficult to use as possible. The stainless steel phone case weighs a whopping 6 pounds (2.7 kg), heavier than a 16-inch MacBook Pro laptop, and consists of two separate pieces that screw together around the phone.

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A South Korean woman in her fifties thought she was in a romantic relationship with Squid Game star Lee Jung-Jae and sent an online scammer over 500 million won ($350,000).

With AI technology readily available, scammers are taking their operations to a whole new level, taking advantage of the gullibility of people who believe the craziest things. Case in point, a 50-something woman from Miryang, South Korea, who thought she was in a long-distance relationship with Squid Game protagonist Lee Jung-Jae after being contacted by someone claiming to be the actor on social media. Using AI-generated images of the actor, the scammer managed to get close enough to the woman, referred to only as A. by South Korean media, to ask for considerable sums of money.

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For over five centuries, the statues of Qin Hui, a former chancellor of the Song Dynasty, and his wife have been slapped, kicked, and spit on by millions of people.

In the heart of Hangzhou, forever facing the impressive mausoleum of a brave general they once framed and got executed, are the statues of Qin Hui and his wife, two of the most hated and despised figures in Chinese history. They are depicted on their knees, with their heads down and their hands tied behind their back, eternally humiliated for their treason. But that is not punishment enough for the cast-iron statues, as they also have to endure the slaps, punches, and kicks of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people every single day. To get an idea of how much abuse Qin Hui and his wife receive, you should know that their statues have been replaced 11 times since the originals were installed in the late 15th century, with the latest ones dating back to 1979.

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A Chinese family sued their daughter’s school after the child was diagnosed with acute and transient psychotic disorder, allegedly caused by a horror movie she had watched in class.

The unusual case began two years ago, but only recently concluded in Court. In October of 2023, because their teacher was on temporary leave, a class of students at a school in Hangzhou, China’s Guanxi Province, watched a movie screened by the school with their and their teacher’s consent. No details about the film have been disclosed to the press, but according to the parents of one of the students, it was a horror movie that had a very serious impact on her. Problems allegedly began on the evening following the screening, when the young girl began exhibiting unusual symptoms, including incoherence and a loss of touch with reality. Panicked by her behavior, the parents took her to a local hospital, where she was diagnosed with “acute and transient psychotic disorder.”

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A ropeless bungee jumping attraction from the world’s highest road bridge has been suspended before its inauguration after videos of safety tests sparked fear on social media.

After making news headlines as the world’s highest road bridge, the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge was again in the news recently, this time for a controversial attraction that challenged daredevils to jump from the bridge into a rainbow-colored net to avoid falling into the Beipan River 625 meters (2,051 feet) below. Footage of the safety staff dropping sandbags of various weights into the net as part of safety testing went viral on Chinese social networks earlier this month, causing concern among the general public.

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As part of a divorce agreement with his ex-wife, a Turkish man has agreed to pay 10,000 liras ($240) every three months as child support for their two cats.

Buğra B., who lives in Istanbul, filed for a mutually agreed-upon divorce from his wife, Ezgi B., citing “severe incompatibility and a breakdown in the foundation of their marriage.” The two parties have agreed to end their marriage and have not sought any compensation or alimony from each other, but they did include a rather peculiar protocol in their divorce filing, which could impact future divorces of pet-owning couples. The document states that the husband transfers custody of their two cats to his wife and assumes financial obligations for their maintenance.

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A Brazilian motorist had the misfortune of being caught on camera lighting up his Porsche sports car so he could cash the insurance policy.

On October 5th,  the Civil Police of Paraná was contacted by a man who claimed to have been stopped in traffic by armed men and stuffed in the trunk of his Porsche 911 Carrera before being driven to a rural area in Lapa and being set on fire. He claimed to have been rescued in the last second by passers-by who heard his screams from the burning vehicle, but had suffered minor burns. He told police he didn’t know his assailants or the reasons for trying to kill him, so police launched an investigation that revealed some peculiar details. The victim in this case appeared to have made up the story of his kidnapping, because CCTV from a farm close to the site of the arson showed the owner of the Porsche sports car setting it on fire himself.

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A 38-year-old Japanese man was arrested on suspicion of fraud after exploiting a food delivery app’s loophole to unlawfully receive over 1,000 deliveries without paying for them.

For more than two years, Takuya Higashimoto, an unemployed man from Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, took advantage of the order cancellation policy of a major Japanese food delivery platform to eat over 1,000 free meals. To do this without being detected was no easy feat. Investigators found that the fraudster used 124 accounts on the Demae-can delivery app, many of them registered under false names and fake addresses. Higashimoto typically used prepaid cards to register an account and cancelled his membership a few days later. This made it very hard for the platform to detect and stop his operation, which resulted in losses exceeding 3.7 million yen ($24,000).

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A young couple from China’s Guangdong province has become famous for their uncanny resemblance, leading many people to speculate that they might be long-lost siblings.

Liang Caiyu and He Xiansheng, both in their twenties, run a herbal medicine shop in Dongguan, Guangdong province. Although they both come from families with decades of experience in traditional herbal medicine, the two struggled to get their business off the ground until they started doing promotional clips on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok. After noticing how similar they looked, Liang convinced her husband to take part in funny clips where they dressed alike to emphasize their likeness even more. Today, these clips are the couple’s main promotional material for the shop.

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A Turkish Court ordered a man to pay his ex-wife compensation for both material and moral damages after he saved her number as “Chubby” in his phone’s contact list.

Spouses often come up with nicknames for each other, some more endearing than others, but rarely do these end up as a reason for a divorce. Exceptions do occur, though, as was the case with a Turkish couple who broke up over how the husband had his wife’s name saved in his phone. The Court of Cassation ruled that the woman should be compensated for being saved as ‘Tombek’, which is apparently Turkish for ‘Chubby’. The nickname came to light during court proceedings as the couple went through a divorce, and the woman claimed that the derogatory nickname was degrading and damaging to their marital relationship.

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