List of All Articles with Tag 'viral'

Indians are reacting sharply to Bollywood's remake of Pasoori, a popular Pakistani pop sing released last year.

A short story from 1919 becomes a code word for discontent among jobless graduates.

If you happen to be near the iconic Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, then you stand a chance of getting a photo taken with a ‘giant human poo’ which has been dumped on the shore to mark World Environment Day on Monday. You may well think that plopping a poo on the coastline isn’t exactly a good look on a day designed to draw attention to protecting nature and the planet, but it’s actually made of rescued plastic from south east Asia, and intended to spread a pretty important message. On a webpage explaining their publicity stunt, the New Zealand-based company Better Packaging said: “We’re kicking up a stink because humanity has a problem. We just can’t seem to stop making more and more new plastic, most of it never gets recycled and far too much of it ends up in our oceans. “Basically, we treat plastic like s***.” We see what you did there. They continued: “This giant poop represents the amount of plastic that enters the ocean every 30 seconds. Scary huh. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “Most of it enters via land, and most of that from Asia. These regions don’t have any formal waste management or recycling infrastructure – plastic just gets thrown ‘away’, buried or burnt. “Eventually, with the next monsoon rains, that plastic will get washed into a ditch, then a stream, a river, and then the ocean. We want to stop that happening!” Hence the four-metre high turd, which is made mostly of recycled plastics and second-hand fishing nets, with a wooden tree structure at its base to “keep it upright”. You wouldn’t want a floppy plop, after all (sorry). The artwork – if we can call it that – is titled "Plastic Pile of S***, 2023". Its unveiling follows a report by the United Nations’ Environment Programme (UNEP) in May which it said plastic pollution could fall by as much as 80 per cent by 2040 if both countries and companies make “deep” shifts in policies and markets through the use of “existing technologies”. “The way we produce, use and dispose of plastics is polluting ecosystems, creating risks for human health and destabilising the climate,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the UNEP. Oh, and if you fancy witnessing the ‘excrement’ but are nowhere near Australia, then you might be in luck, as Better Packaging have said they’d “love to take it ‘on tour’” after going into temporary storage. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A couple who posted videos of themselves deliberately causing car crashes on YouTube and committed insurance ford have been jailed. Christopher and Kimberly Phelps from California uploaded videos on social media driving dangerously and claiming other drivers were responsible [via Dexerto]. They posted the videos on YouTube under the profile name “BLU3 GHO57”, and used it as leverage to pursue compensation from their insurance company. The videos typically received fewer than 100 views each, but there were around 62 dash cam videos posted on the channel of various collisions and dangerous near misses. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The prosecutors also stated that the couple’s child had been present in the car for many of the incidents. An investigation was first launched after the California Department of Insurance uncovered the YouTube channel and discovered a video showing a “suspicious collision” which saw Christopher stop for no apparent reason before a crash. Southern California couple arrested, accused of intentional car crash scams www.youtube.com The pair were arrested in March this year and they’ve now received jail sentences. Christopher has been ordered to serve three years in jail. Kimberly was also sentenced to 90 days in weekend county jail and three years of supervised probation. She was also ordered to attend a 52-week child abuse prevention program. When they were first arrested, the California Department of Insurance issued a statement saying: “Christopher Phelps has been charged with six felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon, 11 felony counts of insurance fraud, and five felony counts of child endangerment. Kimberly Phelps has been charged with two counts of felony child endangerment and one count of felony insurance fraud. “Christopher Phelps was previously charged with one felony count of assault with a deadly weapon and one felony count of causing a vehicle collision for the purpose of presenting a false claim following his arrest [earlier this year].” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

If there’s one thing we like on indy100, it’s a good time traveller story. There’s been an influx of people on TikTok claiming to be from the future over recent times, but nothing will come close to the story of Sergei Ponomarenko for sheer weirdness. In one of the most infamous cases of its kind, the story centres around a man who turned up in Kyiv, Ukraine back in 2006 claiming to be from years in the past. He told authorities that he was born in 1932. He looked the part, carrying an old-fashioned camera and a dated outfit. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The most compelling thing was that he held a Soviet document from the 1950s, which he claimed showed he was the age of 25. @bethany.gets.weird Time Traveler Sergei Ponomarenko #timetravel #ufo #conspiracy #unexplained Ponomarenko then proceeded to show people pictures that he claimed he’d taken on his camera in Kyiv. After they’d been developed, authorities found that the images did indeed show Kyiv in the 50s, and they also showed him with an unnamed woman – as well as an image that Ponomarenko claimed showed a UFO. The bizarre story took another turn when authorities looked back into the records and found a man by the same name who went missing in 1958. Strangely, they tracked down the man’s girlfriend who by that time was in her 70s. It turns out that the girlfriend was the woman in the photographs. She then told authorities that Ponomarenko had disappeared for two years and then reappeared in the 50s. Not only that, but she then received a photograph showing him as an older man, with the picture purporting to have been taken in Kyiv in 2050. It’s all kinds of weird, but the mystery might finally have been solved all these years later. YouTuber Joe Scott has delved back into the case, and come up with an explanation that might put the whole incident to bed. As Joe finds, the picture of Ponomarenko purportedly from 2050 Kyiv has been “cloned” and possibly includes the Empire State Building. More compellingly, Joe also found that the photos were taken from the Ukrainian TV show Aliens. The show discusses the possibility of extraterrestrial life and is similar to the type of show you would see on The History Channel but according to Scott has a number of inaccuracies. The Most Convincing Time Traveler Story www.youtube.com It was fun while it lasted, but it looks like the ‘time traveller’ has been busted. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Trevor Jacob will plead guilty to obstructing an investigation by destroying the wreckage.