Israeli horticulturists have developed a new variety of tomato that is red on the inside, and black on the out.

Dubbed the ‘Black Galaxy‘, the strange fruit was bred to contain higher than normal levels of antioxidants and Vitamin C, which means it may be more nutritious than a regular tomato.

Technological Seeds, the company behind the achievement, says the color is the produce of a special pigment, which was derived from blueberries and introduced into the new species.

The ‘Black Galaxy’ is intended for luxury hotel market due to its unique color. The new crossbreed will make its worldwide debut next week at the Arava Agricultural R&D Exhibition, which is also open to the public. The show will also feature seedless lemons, a new species of strawberries, red lemons and rainbow carrots – which are yellow, purple and pink.

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Israeli scientists breed antioxidant-rich black tomatoes

Some new sandals have been created by an Australian footwear company so wearers can feel the same sensation as walking barefoot on a freshly cut lawn.

KUSA’s grass flip flops are made with a thick layer of artificial turf that looks and feels pretty similar to the real deal. The material occasionally needs to be fluffed but doesn’t require weeding, mowing or fertilizing.

“KUSA flip flops give you an extra layer of comfort. Comfort you can’t feel anywhere else (short of walking on real grass). Our unique Syn-Turf material conforms to and is naturally shaped by the individual contours of your feet,” proclaims the company website.

The sandals are currently available online from around $30.

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Love the feeling of bare feet on freshly mowed grass? Then these flops are for you.

What type of job do you dream about? I know someone who dreams of becoming a fashion model, and another one who wants to be a famous musician. Then, there’s this particular guy who hopes of becoming a politician, and those who seek fame as a reality star.

But imagine being paid $70,000 annually to “partake of sexual services” at brothels in New South Wales. I like to call this “Every Man’s Dream Job“.

From this website:

“Applicants [for Brothel Buster Investigator] were required to be unmarried and preferably single, to be willing to have protected sexual intercourse with prostitutes and to provide sworn evidence in court.”

According to Lachlan Jarvis, operations manager of Lyonswood Investigations and Forensic Group in Sydney, it was a completely legal service the firm had provided for local councils in New South Wales for a long time. Councils hire the private eye to go to suspected illegal brothels and gather evidence to prove they are offering sexual services, he added.

Applicants were also required to have a private investigator license, awareness of occupational health and safety, and good command of written and spoken English.

Unfortunately, Jarvis said the position had since been filled.

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Brothel Buster Investigator: Every Man’s Dream Job

The idea of elephants wearing contact lenses may seem absurd at first. But when their vision has clouded to the point of total impairment, people find strange ways to help them get better.

Take for example the case of Win Thida, a 45-year-old Asian elephant living in Amsterdam’s Artis Zoo. Her cornea was badly injured during a scuffle with her jumbo pals so a veterinarian decided to put a contact lens over the patient’s eye.

The operation is delicate and requires special training for veterinarians. Vet Anne-Marie Verbruggen, who had only ever put contact lenses into horses, had to use a ladder to reach the elephant’s left eye and perform the procedure– which lasted just under an hour.

“The main difficulty was her height,” Verbruggen said. “Elephants can’t lie down for long before their immense weight impairs their breathing, so I used a ladder to get close enough. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked. She seemed happier straight away.”

Win Thida, the oldest elephant in the zoo’s herd, is expected to make a full recovery.

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Elephant gets contact lens

I know nothing about wine, but a Cabernet Sauvignon aged with a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite from the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter sounds interesting.

The wine, called Meteorito, was created by Ian Hutcheon, an Englishman who owns a vineyard and an observatory in Chile. Hutcheon claims the meteorite is roughly three inches in diameter, and is believed to have hit the country’s Atacama Desert around 6,000 years ago.

The astronomer/winemaker thinks that the infusion of a bit of meteorite gives his Cabernet a “livelier taste.”

“The idea behind submerging it in wine was to give everybody the opportunity to touch something from space; the very history of the solar system, and feel it via a grand wine,” Hutcheon said.

The extra-terrestrial blend is currently only sold at Hutcheon’s Centro Astronomico Tagua Tagua, but Hutcheon hopes to export the product around the world soon.

[Hat tip to Discovery News]

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Wine aged with 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite now on sale

The Artist has already won three Golden Globes (including one for best musical/comedy), but the perky comedy is also causing quite a stir in the United Kingdom.

According to reports, moviegoers are walking out of cinemas and demanding their money back after discovering the French film has no sound and the screen is smaller. A spokesperson for Odeon Liverpool One confirmed “it has issued a small number of refunds to guests who were unaware that The Artist was a silent film”.

Written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist has no dialogue, just subtitles. The film was purposely reduced to a smaller screen size to give it a more authentic, silent movie feel.

The Artist tells the story of silent star George Valentin (played by Jean Dujardin) whose career is destroyed by the “talkies”. The film is nominated for 12 BAFTAs and is tipped to dominate next month’s Academy Awards.

Check out the trailer after the jump.

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Brits walk out over lack of dialogue in ‘The Artist’

A teenager from Leeds has become the first sex-change person in Great Britain to participate in the Miss England beauty contest.

Eighteen-year-old Jackie Green became the UK’s youngest transsexual after an operation in Thailand two years ago. British tabloid The Sun said Green, who was born Jack, adopted a female lifestyle at age 10 and is now an aspiring model.

Green, who has already participated in Britain’s Next Top Model, said: “Miss England is a prestigious competition. I’d love to win and I have as good a chance as anyone.”

The contest is a major step forward for Jackie, who was bullied and had attempted to commit suicide five times.

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Transsexual Jackie Green enters Miss England pageant

Here’s a supermodel acting out something that looks like “take my clothes off and make love to me!”. At first glance, this is a seemingly an ordinary ad campaign for a push-up bra… until you realize that the gorgeous blonde is actually a guy!

Andrej Pejic, a 20-year old Melbourne-raised Bosnian with no breasts at all, was hired by Dutch department store HEMA to star in its line of bras that supposedly promise to double the average cup size. Pejic is famous for his androgynous good looks. He has previously modeled for the likes of Marc Jacobs and Jean-Paul Gaultier, and was even voted the 98th sexiest woman in the world by the readers of FHM earlier this year.

The new campaign has caused controversy in the Netherlands, and it was trending on Twitter just hours after the advertisements were released.

One user wrote: “That HEMA campaign is brilliant: Andrej Pejic sporting a push-up bra?! If a man looks good in that bra, it must be good stuff.”

The campaign was shot in Amsterdam in late September.

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Male model stars in new lingerie campaign for Dutch fashion chain HEMA

A Pakistani woman has been arrested for allegedly killing her husband, chopping off his body parts and attempting to cook them.

Police in the Pakistani city of Karachi announced on Friday that they arrested 32-year-old Zainab Bibi. Bibi allegedly received help from her nephew, Zaheer Ahmed, in killing her husband, Ahmad Abbas, on Tuesday. According to authorities, Bibi tried to hide the crime by cooking the chopped body parts of her deceased husband, but neighbors alerted police after foul odor started engulfing the neighborhood.

Bibi, who is detained at the police station, reportedly did not deny killing her husband, saying that she did it to protect her daughter, with whom the victim allegedly tried to have physical relationship with. CNN said the suspect did not show any remorse in killing her husband. “I killed my husband before he dared touch my daughter,” Bibi reportedly told local TV channel ARY news.

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Woman Held for Trying to Cook Chopped Body of Husband

It’s one thing to accidentally ingest bleach, as one of my friends recently claimed to have done, but surely no one would do so on purpose, right? However, some teenagers in Alabama have been ingesting it to pass drug tests.

The idea behind this is that bleach will wash away any drugs in your system. But officials are warning people that swallowing the household chemical could cause abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea.

“We have had cases where they have ingested straight bleach, and it caused significant damage to their body,” said Sergeant Joe Mahoney with the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office.

Drug tests also have gotten sophisticated and can determine the presence of foreign chemicals.

“Specific gravity tests will let us know the urine is not just pure urine coming from the body or if these other compounds are present or if there is a tremendous amount of water in the system where they’ve tried to flush the system,” Mahoney added.

Mahoney said there is one way to pass a drug test: Do away with illegal substances.

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Teens resort to drinking bleach to pass drug tests

On every 15th of December millions of tea drinkers around the world celebrate International Tea Day. While most of our teacups will be filled with the usual aromatic beverage from local supermarkets on that day, some will be sipping cups of tea made with panda droppings.

Yes, you read that right – panda poop!

A man in China has collected around five tons of panda excrement to create a new type of tea. It doesn’t come cheap, though, as the morning wakeup brew could fetch up to $80,000 per kilogram.

An Yanshi, who gathers the droppings from the Giant Panda breeding center in Chengdu, Sichuan province, wants to break the Guinness World Record for the most expensive tea once his first batch of blend is ready for sale. The tea is very expensive because of its rarity. After all, there aren’t many pandas left.

“Pandas have a very poor digestive system and only absorb about 30 per cent of everything they eat. That means their excrement is rich in fibres and nutrients,” Yanshi explained. “It has a mature, nutty taste and a very distinctive aroma while it’s brewing.”

Studies show that drinking three to four cups of tea a day reduces risk of heart attack, maintains hydration and improves alertness and mood.

The world’s most expensive coffee, Kopi Luwak, is made from the partially digested coffee beans plucked from the Indonesian civet cat’s poop.

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Man creates panda poop tea

A 30-year-old English man who choked his wife to death after she destroyed his cherished collection of “Star Wars” toys was jailed for life yesterday.

Rickie La Touche, also known as Rickie Nehls, killed Pornpilai Srisroy in April during a violent row that began as soon as they woke up in the morning. After killing her 28-year-old wife, La Touche ran down the street sobbing to his mother’s house, which was nearby. He later told police his wife had damaged his Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker figures which he had been collecting since he was a kid.

The couple met in 2001 and married two years later. La Touche claimed that Srisroy had previously hit him with with a pool cue, and had threatened to kill him while he was asleep and “cut him up and eat him,” according to The Telegraph.

La Touche denied murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He will be eligible for parole in 12 years.

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Wife killed for smashing husband’s Star Wars toys

A New Zealand man got the surprise of his life when his longtime girlfriend arranged a secret park wedding over the weekend.

According to Stuff, Cherie Butler told boyfriend David Shoemark Saturday morning that they would be having a picnic in the afternoon. Shoemark was completely unaware of the plan that he even went fishing in the morning. He directly went to Pollard Park after his morning fishing trip hoping to join his girlfriend at the picnic. However, what he saw when he arrived was a radiant Butler in a black and white wedding dress, along with around 40 family members and friends, with an officiating officer ready to solemnize the marriage.

Luckily for everyone, Shoemark had asked girlfriend Butler to marry him several times and always got “one day” as a reply. So, the only drama was the sort of things that can bring tears of joy. Had it been otherwise, this could have been a disaster that would have easily resulted in an embarrassment of epic proportion for the bride-to-be while also probably causing the groom-to-be to run berserk.

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Boyfriend Gets Surprise Park Wedding

A 36-year-old woman has given birth to a healthy baby boy inside a New York art gallery, but not because she couldn’t make it to the hospital on time.

Performance artist Marni Kotak, who says that giving birth is the “highest form of art,” spent each day of the last month of her pregnancy inside the Microscope Gallery in Bushwick as part of her latest exhibition, which she called “The Birth of Baby X.”

The infant, named Ajax, was 21 inches long and weighed 9 pounds, 2 ounces. Time.com has more details on the unusual exhibit:

For anyone who missed the event, the exhibition runs through November 7 and will feature a video of the whole ordeal, along with “remnants” from the birth. For Kotak, it seems her performance is just beginning, as she appears to view Ajax’s entire upbringing to be an art project in itself. Her next project is called “Raising Baby X” and, as she outlines on her website, will be a long-term undertaking in which she’ll write and publish an “anthology of memoirs” of her experiences with motherhood, encompassing Ajax’s life “from birth through attending college and developing an independent life.”

The gallery has a Vimeo account, but it’s unclear if they will post the childbirth video there.

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Woman gives birth in museum as part of art exhibit

There are lots of bizarre medical conditions in the world that make most of us go WTF?! For most of us, it is just another great conversation topic, but for few people though, it is a sad truth. Nguyen Thi Phuong, a 26-year-old woman from Vietnam, now looks like a septuagenarian after a disease doctors treating her described as “very weird,” changed her appearance.

From Gizmodo:

The photo on the left shows how 26 year old Nguyen Thi Phuong looked just a few years ago, before she experienced an extreme allergic reaction after eating seafood. Initially her face broke out in an itchy rash that had her scratching her skin all day and night. But when the medication her husband had bought her did nothing to alleviate the symptoms, she sought the advice of a local doctor who wrote her a prescription for what he assumed to be dermatitis.

And this is where things went from bad to worse. The dermatitis medication caused her face to swell, followed by hives appearing on her skin. After a week she stopped taking those meds and instead turned to more traditional treatments which did help reduce the swelling, but then caused her to gain weight. She eventually had to give up all of the treatments when she could no longer afford them, and in just three short years the skin from her stomach upwards aged dramatically, making her look like a woman some fifty years her senior.

What could she be suffering from? Some have argued that the condition is lipodystrophy, while others believe it is Cushing’s syndrome. Check out a local news report on Phuong’s condition below:

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Vietnamese woman ages 50 years in just a few days [VIDEO]