While everyone sits around and debates the cost of solar power and that anything that could effectively power your home right now would cost more than feeding your family for about a year, a teenager in Nepal has come up with a solution that NONE of us thought of…

Using human hair instead of silicon to generate electricity from our buddy, the sun.

Along with fellow students, this kid created a solar panel made using human hair that can generate enough electricity to charge a smartphone! It also brings the prices of this thing down to under $40.

Most people would be like, “Big whoop-de-doo. He can charge a phone.”

When you’re living in some of the less-developed parts of the world? The available wall-sockets are just a little…uh…limited.

Oh..did we mention? He’s a freakin’ KID!

[Design Taxi]

On the 13th of June 2011, some kids were accused of stealing the mobile phone of a person they were bathing with near a village well.

Three boys and the accuser all lived in the Girol Village, a backward Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh in India. Interestingly, Madhya Pradesh is oftentimes referred to as the “heart of India.”

The boys needed to prove their innocence by supposedly dipping their hands in boiling oil in the house of the alleged victim’s uncle.

The oil-dipping was followed by an oath at the Hanuman Temple, where the boys proclaimed their innocence.

When the boys’ families reported the incident to the police hoping to get some sort of justice, the staff at the Agasod Police treated them badly.

The police superintendent meanwhile said that the uncle of the person who lost the mobile phone had been booked under Sections 323 and 324 of the IPC.

He also assured them that the boys’ hands were not dipped in boiling oil–-rather, it was boiling water!

As if this makes us feel any better!

At first this headline sounded like a joke. This kind of treatment doesn’t still happen ala the Salem witch trials, does it?

It apparently and disturbingly does.

Muree bin Ali Issa al-Asiri was executed several days ago in Saudi Arabia for possession of books and talismans associated with witchcraft.

Asiri wasn’t executed old-school before-the-gun-style either…he was beheaded.

Details on the incident are slowly leaking out at this point. Sebastian Usher, the BBC’s Arab Affairs Editor states that the country’s powerful conservative religious leaders strongly prohibit such practices. A few of them even calling for highest possible punishment for anyone caught practicing ‘sorcery’ which includes fortune tellers and faith healers.

The very real threat of losing your dome over practicing ‘sorcery’ isn’t stopping people from getting all ‘witchy-like’. While pressure from human rights groups saved a television host of a fortune-telling show in 2010, it didn’t save a Saudi woman last December or a Sudanese man last September even after Amnesty International called for their release on both occasions.

Travel tip? Don’t try to catch up on True Blood while you’re there.

[BBC News]

In one tax office in India, what was an ordinary day turned into chaos as three bags of snakes were released in a tax office. Yes, three BAGS of snakes. A state official from Utter Pradesh stated that around 40 snakes were unleashed in the office, including several deadly cobras. The office workers stood on desks and chairs, not unlike a cartoon, to escape the serpentine onslaught.

Thankfully, no one was injured in the attack, which officials say was due to the tax office allegedly withholding tax records from the farmers in exchange for bribes. Yes, the farmers decided to unlease a swarm of venemous serpents on the corrupt tax officials, which is now how I’m going to deal with all my problems when people don’t give me the money I’m owed.

Apparently, this reptilian revenge is a common practice, as people have recently taken to extreme forms of demonstration to combat the rampant bribery from officials. Over one thousand videos have been uploaded detailing the names of supposedly corrupt officials, while others have been lobbying for the creation of a watchdog group.

The two men responsible for this dastardly deed, Hukkul Khan and Ramkul Ram, are still being sought. Khan is known locally as a snake charmer, so it is a seemingly fitting method of revenge for him to choose.

An image of some of the snakes fearsomly staring down the office workers.

[Metro UK]

Recently, we hit the seven billionth person on the planet. India already has 1.3 billion, and doesn’t want more. This has resulted in a special giveaway. If you only go into the hospital and opt-into sterilization, you can win prizes. Yes, you read that right. Prizes to have your junk snipped. Now, some people would do this for free, which is understandable. And of course, you need to be perfectly and absolutely sure that you want to get sterilized, but when you do, oh the gifts that you will win.

Hospitals have begun to offer prizes including televisions, cash, motorcycles, and even cars. Yes, they are giving away cars for sterilization. A local charitable trust apparently donated a Nano, the world’s cheapest car, five motorcycles, and a bunch of televisions and blenders (for whatever reason), while other participants can receive cash incentives. This follows on the heels of a similar program wherein approximately 150 men received vasectomies in exchange for gun licenses in a region that has been described as “bandit-invested.” That’ll end well.

India’s population has been growing out of control, and is currently on track to surpass China’s population within the next 20 years. Currently, India’s population is at around 1.21 billion.

Not a bad deal if you’re 100% certain you never want children. But is a television, or even a new car, worth the ol’ snip snip?

[Telegraph]

We’ve all heard horror stories about domestic abuse. Husbands hitting wives, and wives hitting husbands. Its a terrible thing, and we aren’t going to make fun of that today.

However, we are going to make fun of this: In Andhra Pradesh, a region of India, a bounty is being offered on spouse abusers. To quote the minister that came up with this brilliant idea…

“Beat your drunken husband blue and black if he touches you. I will pay you a Rs 1,000 reward per slap. The more you beat him the better, because you can win up to Rs 10,000,”

Basically, he’s saying that if your husband hits you, you can beat him 10 times back , and get Rs 10,000 back, which is comparable to about $200.

“Once you do this, your husband will come home early instead of visiting the toddy shop and will also respect you and spend time with the family,” he added.

The minister advised women to carry out the act in front of as many people as possible so that their husbands would be shamed that much more.

This is insane. Its telling people to start brawls for payment, kind of like the Wild West. If you are beaten by your husband, you have the right to hit him back, and get paid Rs 1000 for each slap, up to ten slaps. You’re also told to beat them in public, which is quite frankly, terrifying. It should deter people from spouse-abusing, but to be honest, its a little depressing that its so necessary for this measure.

To get the Rs 1000, you have to make sure that you are beaten with an eye-witness insight, so they can verify that you deserve the bounty. This means that you need to make sure you’re abusing spouse hits you while people can see.

[Telegraph India]

Taking the idea of “nothing to do” up too many dangerous notches, two young men in India have thrown caution (and the better part of their brain matter) to the winds as they get their kicks jumping trains on Mumbai’s overcrowded subway lines.

This train-jumping craze, which is apparently staged to impress young women traveling in the different cars, always occurs between Mumbai’s Cotton Green and Reay Road stations and officials have called for an end to these death-defying stunts.

This situation has been aggravated by a recent video (shown below), which spread through YouTube and went viral. It clearly shows two young men hanging onto the handrail of a moving train, risking their lives for a few seconds of glory.

Officials have begged the stuntmen to stop before someone gets killed or maimed but the stupid craze continues. Commuters witnessing this stunt have been advised to pull the chord and stop the train if they see these two young men in action.

This perilous stunt is an extreme manifestation of a Mumbai tradition in which passengers who don’t want to pay the fare will sit on the roof of the train as it passes through stations. This is dangerous, illegal and subject to both a fine and three months jail time.

It is difficult to say, “whatever floats your boat” when it comes to these two train-hopping young men.

Perhaps they should consider swimming in a pool with hungry sharks or spending significant time in the vortex of a tornado?

Go figure.

[Dangerous Train Stunt in India]

In the northern Indian city of Patna, a woman with has given birth to twins. However, these twins are not normal twins. Well… the twins themselves are, but the way that they were born isn’t. Rinku Devi, 28, conceived her sons a month apart with eggs from different ovaries.

Wait a minute, the biologically minded of you are saying. Thats not possible, once an egg has been fertilized, the womb is lined with a uterus lining that stops other eggs from being carried. Normally, this is true. However, in Ms. Devi’s case, another conception was possible because of her two wombs.

When having the babies, she was surprised to learn that they were not twins, as she had been led to believe. She stated…

“I didn’t know how to react. I was in pain and quite scared. I had not heard of anything like this before. I got to know about the rarity and severity of this condition days after my delivery…I am very happy and feel proud to have survived this,”

Defying odds, Devi had the children through a C section, beating odds of 1 to 50 million that the children would survive.  The condition, known as uterus didelphys, or double uterus meant that the children had to be born at 4 months, meaning that they are very premature, but the two children are healthy which Devi is happy to see.

[The Mirror]

Typically, in a marriage, there is some degree of trust between the two people in the marriage. Even more typically, most married couples know the gender of the person they are becoming married to. Not in this case, however. This past week, Minati Khatua, a 26-year old woman from Orissa, India, was married to her fiance, Sitakant Routray, who received a large dowry, due to Indian tradition. This included a Indica car, a gold watch, and about $575 in cash. This all seemed normal to Khatua, who was also very happy because Routray was readily accepted by her family, and the marriage blessed.

However, Kautua began to get suspicious when her husband refused to let her touch him for a year, due to ‘religious reasons’. She kept trying to consumate the marriage, and eventually stumbled into the bathroom while he was washing. This was where Khatua got a massive shock. Her husband wasn’t really her husband. He was her wife.

The police are trying to find out more about this case, but are having trouble as Rautay absconded with a jeep which was bought using loans taken out in Kautua’s name.

Source [Orange]

On the 15th of May, 2001, the first of many reports about a mysterious creature known as a ‘man-monkey’, who was attacking people as they slept on their roofs during the insanely-hot summer months in Dehli. These attacks caused one death and at least 35 injuries as people were injured by the assailant or in the panic to escape from him. The effects of these attacks were so severe that in one suburb of Delhi ordered its police officers to shoot-on-sight at the creature.Described as ‘short, dark and hairy, with human legs and an ape-like face’, the monkey-man of Dehli sounds as if he could infact be a pre-historic human, such as a Neanderthal.

What adds mystery to the assailant is his apparent ability to survive leaps that would kill a normal human being, and his ability to cover long distances in a short amount of time. Because of this, he inspires terror into all that see him, causing a man to die as he jumped from the roof as his house in an attempt to save himself.

The police on the night of these first attacks, received 29 ‘distress calls’ from the eastern and north-eastern areas of Dehli. Patrols were stepped up, and police were tasked to investigate the mysterious happenings. However, this wasn’t the last sighthing of the Monkey-man, as he is still being sighted today, becoming something of a legend amongst the people of New Dehli.

[Wikipedia]

P. Selvakumar was a man cursed. Being physically fit 15-years ago, the man had attacked and killed two dogs through stoning. This violence caused him, in the eyes of him and his family, to be stricken by the inability to move his limbs freely and loss of hearing. He tried salves and other such cures to make him better, but nothing would work. However, 3 years ago, he went to an astrologer.

This astrologer gave him some advice: marry a dog.

By marrying a dog, he would appease the spirits and show that he had atoned for his crimes. This is actually quite a common aspect of Indian culture, with many people marrying animals and sometimes objects to appease spirits. A famous example is actress Ashwarya Rai marrying a tree so that her engagement to another Bollywood actor wouldn’t have bad signs against it, as they would already be spent on the tree. However, this practice is actually illegal in India, as it practices the caste system, something that has been deemed illegal and taken out of the constitution.Rai has been taken to court about the matter.

The bride, named Selvi, who you see picture above was dressed in an orange sari, was taken to the temple where vows were exchanged, somehow, and the couple were married. The villagers cheered the newly-weds, and soon enough, Selvakumar alleges he was cured.

[Telegraph]

Image source:

In Damoh, an agricultural section of Madhya Prayesh (a province), a woman named Deepa Ahirwar has told the police that her husband has been siphoning her blood with a syringe, emptying it into a glass, and then drinking it. The only thing that stopped the woman from calling the police were her husbands threats of brutality. However, that isn’t the weirdest part of the story.

The husband claimed to gain strength from the blood, saying that it revitalized him, giving the impression that this man was in fact a vampire. Even more shockingly, the husband continued to siphon the poor womans blood over the course of three years even while she was pregnant. Eventually, Deepa escaped to her parents house with the child, and filed a complaint with the police. After some redtape and beuracracy, this eventually got passed onto the correct authorities, who now have the husband in custody for torturing his wife.

[Times of India]

Screw expensive and ineffective cloud seeding, if your farmland is dry and infertile, try frog marriage, valued by Indian holy men as the most fun and creative way to end drought.

That may be the most adorable frog bride we have ever seen, but is froggy matrimony really the way to go to bring rain? For the sake of the people of Assam, we sure hope so.