When it was inaugurated in 2006, the First World Hotel & Plaza had “just” 6,118 rooms, and it actually lost the title of ‘world’s largest hotel’ just two years later when the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas expanded to 7,128 rooms. However, with the construction of the second tower, the Malaysian resort regained its title in 2015 and has been holding on to it ever since.

Built by the Genting Group, the world’s largest hotel is situated in Malaysia’s Pahang region, about 50 kilometres north of Kuala Lumpur, the country’s capital. The Genting Highlands is a premier entertainment hub, which sees millions of tourists flocking in from all over South-East Asia.

Although not as famous as its main rival in terms of size, the Venetian, First World Hotel & Plaza maintains a surprisingly high occupancy rate. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, it had an average occupancy rate of 90%, and even today, it is almost always around full capacity.

The success of the First World Hotel & Plaza is based on a series of factors: its strategic location at the heart of the Resorts World Genting, directly connected to theme parks and shopping centres, as well as its proximity to the country’s only legal casino area (gambling is prohibited in Malaysia due to the majority Muslim population).

The First World Hotel & Plaza also has a competitive pricing strategy and an automated check-in system to manage the high volume of guests. It doesn’t cater only to the rich, making it appealing to a larger number of people. It currently has 3,164 standard rooms; 2,922 luxury rooms; 649 luxury triple rooms; 480 superior luxury rooms and 136 World Club rooms.

Patricia Reichman, a councilwoman elected to represent a neighbourhood in Rotterdam, Netherlands, has been criticised for using generative AI to edit the official candidate photo that she personally provided to the point where she became unrecognisable. Despite the obvious difference, she insisted that she is the person in the photo.

“The photo in the neighbourhood paper was of too low a resolution, so I ran it through an online tool to boost the pixel count,” Reichman told Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad. “It really is my photo; that really is me. I look a bit different at the moment, but that is due to medication I’m taking. That will be ending soon.”

The Dutch councilwoman faced a lot of criticism after photos of her next to the one she obviously edited went viral online, but she continued claiming that she genuinely looks a lot younger than 59.

“When I’m out and about with my son, people often assume I’m his girlfriend,” she said. “I hear it all the time, that I look remarkably young for my age.”

Even Reichman’s political party, Leefbaar Rotterdam, acknowledged that her photo was clearly digitally edited, and asked her to resign from her public office, but she refused. So it was left with no choice but to expel her.

“When the information provided during the job interview proves not to correspond with reality, there is no basis of trust to continue working together,” the Leefbaar Rotterdam statement reads. “The photo has clearly been heavily edited with AI and is not a realistic representation.”

Pepper X, the world’s hottest chilli pepper according to Guinness World Records, has a score of 2.69 million units on the Scoville Scale. Most people can’t handle that level of spiciness, but it pales in comparison to pure capsaicin, the substance that gives chillies their spiciness. It is rated at 16 million Scoville units. It’s a powerful irritant and can cause extreme pain and even death when consumed in high-enough quantities. But even capsaicin doesn’t come close to the spiciness of resiniferatoxin.

Photo: Valerie & Agnes/ Wikimedia Commons

It’s hard to imagine just how hot resiniferatoxin feels. It is rated at 16 billion Scoville units, making it 1,000 times more potent than capsaicin and virtually unbearable to mammals, even in minuscule quantities. It’s the most potent natural pain-inducing compound known to man, and is more of a chemical weapon than a spicy substance to be ingested. Resiniferatoxin is capable of producing pain beyond any culinary experience, and any contact can cause severe chemical burns and even destruction of pain-sensing nerve endings. You might be wondering why we’re even comparing it to capsaicin, the spicy substance in chilli peppers, and the answer is that it activates the same TRPV1 receptor in the human body.

But whereas capsaicin stimulates the TRPV1 receptor for a short time, resiniferatoxin binds to this receptor with much greater intensity, causing calcium ions to flood into nerve cells in large quantities, leading to an overload that literally kills nerve endings, leading to permanent desensitisation.

It is believed that the Euphorbia resinifera plant develops this compound as a survival strategy to deter herbivores from approaching. It’s very effective, as even minor contact can cause severe chemical burns.

So the next time you enjoy a spicy chilli pepper or some hot sauce, know that it’s not even close to the world’s spiciest plant.

Featured image: Kplans/Wikimedia Commons

The grandmother of five told investigators that she had lived most of her life in north-central Tennessee and had never even been on a plane. Unfortunately, police in Fargo, North Dakota, had obtained a signed warrant for her arrest on multiple charges, including felony theft and felony unauthorised use of personal identifying information.

Angela Lipps later learned that she had been identified as a suspect in an organised bank fraud case. Investigators reviewing cases in April and May 2025, in which a woman used a fake US Army military ID to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars from banks, used facial recognition software on surveillance camera footage and identified the Tennessee grandmother as the main suspect.

The West Fargo Police Department told CNN that the AI facial recognition software they used in the investigation “identified a potential suspect with similar features to Angela Lipps”, and someone apparently thought that this was enough to have the woman arrested.

“If the only thing you have is facial recognition, I might want to dig a little deeper,” Angela’s attorney told WDAY News.

After spending over three months in a Tennessee jail, at the end of October 2025, Angela Lipps was put on a plane and flown to North Dakota, where she was once again jailed simply because an AI recognition software decided her facial features, body type and hairstyle matched those of a crime suspect.

On December 23, the detective in the bank fraud case, the state’s attorney and the judge who had signed her arrest warrant “mutually agreed to dismiss the charges without prejudice to allow for further investigation.” At this point, Angela Lipps’ attorney had produced her bank records, which clearly showed that she had been about 1,200 miles away in Tennessee when the crimes were committed.

Angela was released from custody in North Dakota on Christmas Eve, without so much as an apology. She was left stranded in a place she didn’t know, with no way of returning home. Her attorney helped cover a hotel room and food on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and a non-profit eventually helped fly her home.

Apart from the trauma and humiliation Angela Lipps had to endure throughout this six-month ordeal, the Tennessee woman also ended up losing her house and her pets, because she couldn’t pay her bills. Her lawyers are currently exploring civil rights claims but have yet to file a lawsuit. As for Angela, she’s just glad the nightmare is finally over.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” she told WDAY. “I’ll never go back to North Dakota.”

Lucy Milgrim is not your typical 9-year-old! While most girls her age spend most of their time on their phones, she lifts several times her own body weight, wrestles professionally, and trains five times per week. She has already set three U.S records through the USA Powerlifting organisation, and recently shocked the world by deadlifting 180 lbs in front of a cheering crowd.

Last month, while attending the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio, Lucy performed an athletic feat that instantly made her an online sensation. At just nine years of age and weighing just 60 lbs, she managed to deadlift 180 lbs in one clean motion.

Lucy’s proud father, Brett Milgrim, told People Magazine that she had always been a “naturally strong kid,” and that she had a different baseline than most kids. He and his wife would train in the gym when Lucy was just a toddler, and she started emulating them.

“My mom and dad; they were working out in the gym, and I saw them doing all this cool stuff, and I wanted to try it too,” the 9-year-old confirmed. I got interested in wrestling because my dad [is] a wrestling coach and he used to bring me and my brother to wrestling practices.”

While certainly impressive for her age and light weight, Lucy Milgrim’s achievements have sparked controversy on social media. As clips of her deadlifting three times her body weight started going viral online, some started speculating that the heavy lifting could have serious health-related consequences.

“While impressive, I’m not sure this is a good thing for a 9 year old to be doing,”one person commented. Her bones & muscles are not at a stage to be bulked up like this yet. I worry she is going to injure herself”.

“This is unsafe…she still has her growth plates. Children aren’t supposed to lift till they are in high school, past puberty. Pelvic floor will suffer quickly…” someone else wrote.

Lucy Milgrim have yet to respond to the criticism on social media.

In the video shot by Bryan Polanco, a worker with permanent residency, from the roof of the property in Cambridge, Maryland, federal agents can be seen waiting on the lawn in front of the house for his co-workers to come down from the roof. As he is filming, Polanco says he and his co-workers had come to fix the homeowner’s roof, but she repaid them by calling ICE to have them taken into custody.

“We came to fix this lady’s house, and she’s the one who turned us in. Fixing up her house and still with hatred in her heart,” Polanco says.

“What she did tell me, and I told one of the other guys, is that if immigrants come back again to finish the project, she’s always going to call ICE,” the roofing worker added.

It has been alleged that the homeowner reported the Guatemalan workers to ICE to avoid having to pay them the $10,000 she owed them for fixing the roof. While some sources claim that ICE arrived soon after they started working on the roof, others report that the homeowner waited until they were almost done with the repairs before calling the ICE agents.

The woman, identified as Karen T., insists that neither she nor her father called ICE, but claims that the backlash on social media over her alleged actions has been so great that she now fears for her safety and that of her family.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said that, if the allegations against the homeowner are true, she could face legal consequences under the Maryland law prohibiting the use of immigration threats to obtain labour or avoid payment.

Last week, Wiklöf was caught doing 59 km/h (37 mph) in a 30 km/h (19 mph) zone while driving his sports car in the Åland Islands archipelago, in the Baltic Sea. In Finland, exceeding speed limits by over 20 km/h is considered a serious offence and is punished accordingly. Worse still, fines are linked to the offender’s income.

In Anders Wiklöf’s case, the speeding ticket was set at 120,000 euros ($138,600). The Finnish businessman could have disputed the facts, appealed the fine in court, or simply complained about the astronomical sum, but he declared himself lucky to still have a license, considering that drivers doing 30 km over the speed limit have their license suspended.

Photo: Unsplash

“If I made a mistake, I made it, I accept it, and there’s nothing more to say,” Wiklöf told Finnish newspaper Nya Åland.

Interestingly, this isn’t Anders Wiklöf first expensive mistake. In 2023, he made national news headlines after getting a similar fine, and he himself admits that he spent almost 400,000 euros ($460,000) on speeding tickets in the last 13 years.

But Wiklöf’s exploits pale in comparison to the highest speeding ticket ever recorded. In 2010, a Swedish motorist was fined around $1 million after being caught doing 290 km/h (180 mph) in a 120 km/h zone in Switzerland. The fine was also determined by his income and his net worth.

Karlapudi doesn’t live in the mansion himself, but instead rents it out on Airbnb for passive income. He never imagined that he could become the victim of some teenagers looking for a place to stage the mother of all parties.

“Somebody booked it, saying they needed the property for a party of seven people,” Kishore Karlapudi told Fox4 News.

According to Celina Police Chief John Cullison, that small party of seven swelled to between 500 and 800 people after the event was advertised on social media. On the evening of March 21, police started receiving calls about a massive gathering at the mansion, followed by reports of gunshots being heard on the property.

“We started getting the 911 calls with the shots fired. We also got a call that there was 10 men at the front gate, and they had guns, and they were threatening to kill someone. So, this of course amped our officers up just a bit to make sure we go inside and keep everybody safe,” Chief Cullison said. “But it wasn’t until they went inside and they actually realized how vast this party was.”

Footage captured by police dash and body cams shows large crowds of running from the property as the officers arrive.

“We had shots fired. We had assaults. We had people threatening to kill people. We have bloody sheets on location. All these things are just an incredibly bad mixture that can end up in your child getting hurt,” Chief John Cullison said.

Owner Kishore Karlapudi visited the property last Saturday and declared himself “shocked” by what he saw there.

“We were totally shocked, and they damaged the property, you know,”Karlapudi said. “They took all the furniture out from the living space, and they put it in the garage. They took all the wall fixtures, everything out. They broke the wall fixture. They broke, the island was broken. The granite countertop was broken because it looks like kids danced on those.”

The AI actors already have their own social media accounts and regularly post updates for their followers. They promised to read and respond to all comments, asking people to interact with them. However, their presentation has been met with skepticism by the general public and sparked outrage among human talent worried that they may soon lose their jobs.

“Behind the unemployment of a single celebrity lies a whole group of ordinary workers who could lose their jobs — extras, cinematographers, lighting crew, catering staff, post-production teams, makeup artists, stagehands, and so on,” one person commented on Weibo.

Some social media users also addressed the shocking resemblance of the two AI actors with real Chinese film stars. For example, Qin Lingyue is said to have borrowed the look of actor Zhai Zhilu, while Lin Xiyan bears a striking resemblance to several actresses, like Zhao Jinmai, Zhang Zifeng, and Liang Jie.

Not everyone in the Chinese film industry feels threatened by AI actors. Studios are said to plan a gradual replacement of supporting actos, extras and stunt doubles with AI, in order to reduce costs, while still relying on human stars to promote their creations.

“Actors with real skill, talented writers, capable directors, you don’t need to worry. Humans will prevail. We should adapt to the times, but also have confidence in ourselves,”  film producer Yu Zheng said.

AI actors have been sparking controversy in the Western world as well. Last year, we wrote about Tilly Norwood, an AI-powered actress that could one day match Scarlett Johanson’s fame and success.

“I was returning home with Lucas, and they surprised me on my street,” Monniky told her followers. “There were three armed men, and at first I thought they were going to take my car. When they ordered us to get out of the car and get into another vehicle, I understood that the situation was much more serious.”

Recounting the ordeal through a series of social media posts, Monniky Fraga said that she and her husband were taken to a forest by a river and forced to pay their own ransom. The armed men kept warning them that they were going to shoot them if they didn’t comply, and the influencer was convinced they would never see their family again.

“In my head, I was only thinking about my children and saying, ‘I’ll give you everything you want, you don’t have to do anything with me, when I leave here I’ll forget about it,'” Monniky recalled. “They were threatening me all the time. ‘I’m going to shoot you in the knee, I’m going to shoot you in the foot,’ but I begged so much that nothing happened.” 

Monniky and Lucas were eventually released in a rural area after their families paid the ransom demanded by the kidnappers. The influencer’s husband, who was reportedly beaten by the three armed men, decided to go straight to a police station and file a formal complaint. The Civil Police launched an investigation through the Special Operations Group (GOE) to identify those responsible.

Soon after police began investigating Monniky’s kidnapping, they realised something was off. Phone records showed that she had maintained contact with one of the alleged kidnappers before and after the crime, and analysis of the evidence showed that “this extortion by kidnapping was nothing more than a plot between the alleged victim and one of the perpetrators,” according to a police commissioner.

There was just one thing that didn’t add up. Monniky’s husband didn’t seem to have had any part in setting up the kidnapping, and the investigation concluded that he had been the only victim. Not only did he believe his and his wife’s lives were at risk, but he was also beaten by the armed men during the kidnapping.

On March 25, almost a year after her kidnapping, Monniky Fraga was arrested on suspicion of extortion, 
procedural fraud, and filing a false police report. One of her three alleged accomplices is also in custody, another one died last year, and a third is still being sought by police.

Monniky’s lawyer has declined to comment on his client’s situation at this time.