To say Orhan Avci has an impressive mustache would be a serious understatement. It’s so luxurious that it completely distracts you from the man’s bald head. You can’t even see his mouth! Does he even have one?

Under the motto “A new word, a new voice,” he wants to strengthen unity and solidarity in the Turkish-Kurdish region of Bingöl, but people seem to only be focused on his mustache, and I, for one, can’t blame them!

Avci’s cool stache has inspired a series of humorous comments and nicknames, including my personal favorite, the Turkish Final Boss.

“Isn’t the pandemic over? Why is he still wearing a mask?” one person joked.

“His mouth is more censored than the Epstein files,” someone else commented.

Referred to only as ‘Joke’ by Stichting Spijt van Tattoo, the middle-aged woman reportedly endured years of abuse and could only cope by numbing herself with alcohol and pills. Her controlling ex reportedly bought a cheap tattooing machine online and personally inked about 250 tattoos on her body, including “property of”, his name and his initials.

“[He tattooed her] In places he thought had been touched by other men, such as her breasts and buttocks. It was a sign of control and possession,” Andy Han, founder of Stichting Spijt van Tattoo, said, adding that some of the tattoos were on her face and neck.

Dutch publication NL Times published before and after photos of Joke, revealing her shocking transformation from having her face covered in tattoos to an almost completely clean slate. Both the victim and Stichting Spijt van Tattoo hope that this shocking story will inspire other victims of abuse to come forward and seek help.

“Those who have been deeply hurt can get back up,” Joke said on the foundation’s website. “If I can do it, then someone else can too.”

Asked if she did anything to fight back against her abusive ex-boyfriend, Joke said that she reported him to the Dutch authorities, but he has yet to face any consequences.

“Any reasonable person knows someone wouldn’t voluntarily get tattoos near the eye, on the nose or on the ear,” Andy Han said. “But ultimately, the authorities couldn’t pursue it because it was legally difficult to prove. Her ex claimed she consented. For Joke, that feels like an injustice.”

Joke hopes to be rid of all her tattoos by the end of this year, but the trauma will probably need years more to heal.

During his phenomenal 2009 performance, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt reached a top speed of approximately 12.42 meters per second, but his average speed over the 100-meter race was 10.44 meters per second. Now, that incredible speed can be matched by humanoid robots!

Unitree Robotics recently released new test footage of its H1 humanoid robot sprinting at speeds of up to 10.1 metres/s on a track, putting it in the same ballpark as the Jamaican sprinting legend. The company acknowledged that there may have been “minor measurement inaccuracies” during the test, but the performance of the H1 is still regarded as a major milestone in bipedal robot mobility.

“10 m/s!! Unitree Breaks the World Record Again. With the physique of an ordinary person, running at a world champion’s speed,” Unitree captioned its viral video.

Believe it or not, a couple of years ago, we wrote about Star1, the fastest bipedal humanoid robot at the time. It ran at a speed of 8 miles per hour. At its peak, the Unitree H1 reached a whopping 22 mph. It’s amazing how fast technology has improved.

Interestingly, another Chinese firm, MirrorMe, showcased its own humanoid robot capable of running at incredible speeds. Named Bolt, it is also capable of reaching 10m/s, making it a direct competitor of the H1.

For the world’s fastest quadruped robot, check out Mirror Me’s Black Panther.

Earlier this month, clips of manual workers in an Indian garment factory started going viral online. They showed human workers operating sewing machines, but there was one thing off about them – they were all wearing head-mounted cameras.

Although no news outlet has been able to confirm it, the main theory regarding these head-mounted cameras is that they are designed to record the worker’s movements so that companies can use the footage to train AI-powered robots that will eventually replace them.

“First step, make humans work like robots, second step, make humans teach robots how to work like robots, third step, fire all humans and get robots to work,” one person wrote on X.

“They are digging their own graves,” someone else commented.

Since the cameras capture exactly what the worker sees — including hand movements, coordination, and task execution — it creates a rich dataset for machines to learn from,” India Today speculates. “Instead of relying on expensive motion-capture tools, companies could use this “human-eye view” to teach robots how to perform complex actions by simply observing and copying.”

Apart from the concerns regarding job losses on a massive scale, some have argued that, if the theory proves true, the way companies are going about it may have ethical implications, as many of the workers probably have no idea they are essentially rendering themselves obsolete.

One Russian man recently found out just how dangerous March nights can be in Yakutia. The unnamed man was walking to his home in the city of Mirny after a long night on the town when he got tired and decided to rest on a bench on the side of the street. It’s unclear if the man was intoxicated or not, but what we do know is that he fell asleep on the bench.

The sleeping man was first found by passers-by who realised the danger he was in and called emergency services. Unfortunately, by the time the ambulance arrived, the man no longer had a pulse, his blood pressure was zero, and the electrocardiogram showed a flat line. Resuscitation procedures were carried out, but there was no response.

Photo: Google AI

First responders took the clinically dead man to the local hospital, where anesthesiologist and resuscitation specialist Dmitry Bosikov was tasked with slowly thawing the patient back to life. By gradually “defrosting” the patient, he ensured that no damage was caused to the smallest blood vessels, as damaged vascular microcirculation can cause heart attacks, cerebral edema, kidney failure and death.

Over the course of four hours, the man’s body temperature slowly rose from 24 to 34 degrees Celsius, at which point advanced cardiopulmonary resuscitation was initiated. After about 25 minutes, the medical team saw the first sign of life, a faint pulse on the monitor.

After 5 hours and 34 minutes, the man’s vitals appeared stable, but he was left in an induced coma for a day. He regained consciousness the next day, and tests showed that his kidneys and his other vital functions were intact. He received medical care and treatment for five days, after which he was discharged.

46-year-old Mr Wang recently showed up at the Dalian Municipal Central Hospital in Liaoning Province complaining about unbearable pain in his throat and a foreign body sensation. Following an X-ray exam, doctors were shocked to see a 12-centimetre shaft stuck in the patient’s throat, but when they asked him if he knew anything about it, he casually told them that it was a metal chopstick he had accidentally swallowed eight years earlier.

Eight years ago, Mr. Wang accidentally swallowed a whole metal chopstick while eating. He didn’t go into specifics about how exactly it happened, but an article on the Dalian Hospital website mentions that the Chinese man used to have an alcohol problem. Although he experienced a choking sensation in his neck and intermittent throat pain immediately after choking, he had no difficulty breathing.

The hospital initially performed simple treatment to temporarily relieve the acute discomfort, but it was found that a lateral incision was needed to remove the chopstick. Upon learning that the surgical interventions had some serious risks, Mr. Wang decided it wasn’t worth it, and continued living with the chopstick in his throat.

For the next eight years, Wang considered the occasional foreign body sensation and mild discomfort in his throat to be tolerable, so he hardly ever thought about the chopstick. However, the 46-year-old recently started experiencing significant throat pain in the morning. After noticing that the symptoms didn’t subside even after taking pain medication, Wang decided to visit the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the Affiliated Central Hospital of Dalian University of Technology for emergency treatment.  

Upon careful examination, no obvious ulceration, bleeding, or suppuration was found in the pharyngeal mucosa adjacent to the foreign object. Left in the man’s throat, the chopstick would continue to irritate the throat tissues but could also damage surrounding blood vessels and mucous membranes.

The medical staff came up with a minimally invasive surgical plan for oral removal, eliminating the need for neck surgery and completely alleviating the patient’s concerns. Through minimally invasive surgery, Dr. Huang Weipeng gradually peeled and pulled the object, ultimately removing the 12-centimetre-long stainless steel chopstick intact. 

After several days of careful observation, Mr. Wang’s throat discomfort and dull pain symptoms were quickly relieved, the congestion of the pharyngeal mucosa gradually subsided.

 The bizarre case was published on the Dalian Municipal Central Hospital website as a wake-up call for the public.  If a foreign object is accidentally swallowed or inserted into the body, seek medical help immediately. Prolonged retention of the object can irritate surrounding tissues, leading to all kinds of dangerous situations.

Amit, a Class 4 student from Pitampur village in Uttar Pradesh, was bitten by a snake last Thursday. He immediately told his family what had happened, but instead of rushing him to a hospital, they decided to consult a witch doctor. He reportedly told the family to tie Amit to bamboo poles and keep his body submerged in the Ganges River, so that the holy water of the river could cure him.

Indian media reports that only after 12 hours, after noticing that Amit had become unconscious, the family finally decided to take him to a real doctor, but by that time, there was nothing to be done. Even after learning of Amit’s passing, they allegedly tried to throw his body into the Ganges, hoping for a miracle.

Dr. Shashank Chaudhary of the local health centre told reporters that he and his colleagues routinely conduct awareness-raising campaigns, urging people to come to the hospital immediately after getting bitten by snakes, as every minute counts.

Amit’s preventable death sparked outrage on social media, with many asking for his parents to face consequences for their negligence. At this time, it is unknown if the police plan on charging the family in this tragic case.

In a TikTok video that received millions of views, Deyanira said that she initially didn’t even notice that her septum piercing was missing, and when she finally noticed its absence, she certainly never for a second thought she had inhaled it by mistake.

“The only theory I have, which I told the pulmonologist, is that I fell asleep, the little ball fell out, and that was it,” Deyanira told creatorzine.com. “I was lying on my back, I didn’t realise, and that’s how I messed up.”

Deyanira’s initial shock soon turned into fear for her life, as the doctors told her that the circular metal barbell was just 0.5 millimetres from her aorta. She was scheduled for emergency surgery, but what was supposed to be a 20-minute procedure ended up taking almost an hour and a half and ended in failure.

It ended up taking an hour and 20 minutes, and they still couldn’t remove it because it was attached to my body,” the 26-year-old woman said, adding that she needed to undergo a second, more complicated procedure to have the nose piercing removed.

Luckily for Cabrera Barajas, the second procedure was a success, but doctors told her that she was extremely lucky to be alive. If the metal piercing had punctured her lung or her largest blood vessel, she likely would have died due to a collapsed lung or a perforated aorta.

“I love piercings, and I really liked my septum piercing, but in my case, I wouldn’t get it again because of the terror I experienced,” Deyanira said.

As for how her piercing detached from her septum and wound up in her lungs, the young woman believes one of the metal stoppers on one end fell off, and the ring simply fell into her throat while she was sleeping on her back, and she inhaled it.

Companies around the world have been investing billions in anti-ageing solutions in the hopes of coming up with a scientific or technological equivalent to the mythical fountain of youth. However, they’ve all faced the same hurdle – regulatory approval. Human trials would literally take decades, and few companies are willing to invest significant amounts of money for such a distant potential payout. The risks are simply too great.

Photo: Unsplash

The regulatory approval process for veterinary products is another matter entirely! This week, biotech company Loyal announced that its anti-ageing drug for dogs has cleared a significant regulatory hurdle, making it the first potential longevity treatment approved for any species.

Known as LOY-002, this experimental drug comes in the form of a beef-flavoured tablet and is designed for senior dogs over the age of 10 and weighing at least 14 pounds. It targets ‘IGF-1,’ a hormone involved in metabolism and growth in dogs. Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) helps dogs grow, but high levels after they become adults are identified as a major culprit in accelerating cellular aging. 

Loyal claims that LOY-002 reduces the effects of IGF-1, thus slowing down the biological clock and helping dogs maintain a decent quality of life in their later years. The pill is designed for larger dogs, because larger breeds tend to have shorter life expectancies compared to smaller ones.

LOY-002 has been in development for some time now, but earlier this year, Loyal had its target animal safety (TAS) technical section accepted by the FDA, which means that the drug’s application has now received acceptance for 2 of 3 major technical sections required for market launch.

“As a veterinarian, what I care about most, especially when it involves preventive care, is safety,” Ellen Ratcliff, vice president of clinical and veterinary medicine at Loyal, said in a press release. “The FDA’s sign off on this submission is an important vote of confidence in our mission to develop safe and effective lifespan extension drugs for dogs.”

That only leaves the STAY study, which is the pivotal effectiveness trial required to support a future full FDA approval. Loyal estimates that this final hurdle will be overcome next year, so LOY-002 may become commercially available by the end of 2027.

In June of last year, we wrote about a Chongqing company that set a world record by illuminating the night sky with 11,787 drones flying at the same time. That record fell only a few months later, when another drone manufacturer used 15,847 drones simultaneously. But it too only hung on to the record for a few months, as in February of this year, a Guangdong-based company claimed it with a stunning light show featuring 22,580 AI-operated drones.

On February 3rd, 2026, the people of Hefei, in China’s Anhui province, were treated to one of the most impressive light shows in history. Chinese drone producer EHang Egret launched 22,580 drones and used AI-powered ‘swarm intelligence’ technology to control them as a single entity, without a single accidental collision.

Three-dimensional Chinese lanterns, urban landscapes and various other intricate patterns were displayed in the night-sky above Hebei, in a light show designed to showcase China’s cutting-edge in drone technology. Even though about 25 drones failed to take off, the remaining 22,580 units were more than enough to set a new Guinness World Record for the most drones operated simultaneously.

Such stunning light shows are meant to consolidate China’s position as a global leader in drone technology, but military experts believe that they also serve as a means to project power to rivals, as drone swarm technology could theoretically also be used for “aerial saturation attacks”, where superior numbers of AI-controlled low-cost drones can overwhelm advanced enemy defences.