A mentally ill man has been freed after spending the past eight years locked in a cage in south-China.
Hong Zhengqu has spent the best part of the last decade in a rusty 10sqft cage in Jinjiang, Fujian Province.
Mr Hong’s situation only came to light recently when his mother, who had cared for him, passed away.
His family locked him inside cage after he was diagnosed with severe psychological problems and became aggressive.
Mr Hong was rescued from his cage by a group of volunteers, local government officials and policemen.
Mr Hong has now been found a place at a nearby psychiatric home where he will be cared for
Although Mr Hongs’ family’s behaviour may appear cruel and inhumane, this is not unheard of in rural China where there has been several cases of, mainly men, locked in cages for years.
Families are uneducated about what is causing their behaviour, which can sometimes be aggressive towards themselves and others, and believe they are doing them a favour by caging them.
In other cases previously reported by MailOnline, families living in poverty have not been able to pay for psychiatric care for their loved ones.Read more: dailymail.co.uk
Finnish reindeer herders have found a new way of keeping their livestock from being hit by cars - they cover their horns in fluorescent dye.
The herders are trying out different types of reflective paints in the hope of finding a shade which can resist the harsh climate.
It is the the latest attempt to stop thousands of road deaths involving reindeer in Lapland, in northern Finland.
Anne Ollila of the Finnish Reindeer Herder's Association says the antlers of 20 reindeer have been painted with various fluorescent dyes to see how the animals react and whether the paints are resistant to the harsh Arctic climate.
If successful, animals with glittering antlers will be free to roam Lapland — a vast, deserted area in northern Finland where herders tend to some 200,000 reindeer.
Ollila says reflectors and reflective tape have proven unsuccessful as reindeer have torn them off — and road signs warning drivers of roaming reindeer often are stolen by tourists as souvenirs.
Domesticated reindeer has been kept as livestock in northern Scandinavia and Russia for thousands of years, believed to have started in the late Bronze ages as wild reindeer was captured.
In Finland, Sweden and Norway, the indigenous Saami people make up a majority of reindeer herders in the northern parts of Scandinavia.
The animals are bred for their meat, which is very popular in Sweden and Finland, as well as their fur and milk.
A Florida woman is accused of stabbing her boyfriend in the eye because he refused a horizontal dance with her.
The victim told police that La Crystal King-Woolfork, 28, of Vero Beach, came home drunk on Sept. 26 wanting sex, according to TC Palm.
She was with another unidentified woman at the time. The two women "started performing oral sex on one another while [the victim] watched," according to an arrest affidavit. Still, King-Woolfork's boyfriend did not want sex.
When he refused intercourse several times, King-Woolfork allegedly grabbed a knife and attacked him. She stabbed him in the eye and the shoulder, but he was able to disarm her and call another person for a ride to the hospital.
Now King-Woolfork faces attempted murder charges, even though she contended in court that she only attacked the victim with a metal candle holder, according to Vero News. She said her boyfriend punched her in the nose after she hit him with the candle holder.
An unhinged New York man threatened to kill former President George W. Bush so he could get into “a relationship” with his daughter Barbara Pierce Bush.
“Bush will get his,” Pittsford, New York, resident Benjamin Smith, 44, screamed after authorities tracked him to Lexington Ave. and E. 28th St. in Kips Bay — a short distance from the first twin’s Greenwich Village home -- at 6:15 a.m. Friday, officials said.
Investigators arrested Smith after a loaded Rossi .38-caliber rifle and a container of gasoline were found in his vehicle.
The Secret Service had been looking for Smith for more than 12 hours, after he left a note with his mother threatening to kill the 43rd President and disappeared with the rifle, authorities said.“I have to slay a dragon and then Barbara Bush will be mine,” he wrote, according to court documents. Via nydailynews.com
Ali C. runs a snuggle business out of her Manhattan apartment. Her business, Cuddle U NYC, is similar to other cuddle businesses that have popped up in Portland, Rochester and San Francisco. She charges $80 for an hour to lay in bed with her.
Her therapy sessions trade in the leather couch for a memory foam mattress.
Manhattan transplant Ali C. is billing herself as the city's first professional cuddler, holding emotionally-charged snuggle sessions out of her Financial District studio apartment.
"It's a very healing experience,” Ali, 47, who asked that her last name not be disclosed due to privacy concerns, told The Daily News. “People are very vulnerable during the process.”
The expert nuzzler launched her unorthodox venture, Cuddle U NYC, in November and has already had more than 30 clients — all men except for one female — come to her doorman building.
Ali’s cuddle business — she strictly prohibits any unwanted advances or sexual contact with a legal waiver — is modeled after similar services that have popped up in Portland, San Francisco and Rochester, N.Y.
It’s a peculiar phenomenon that is being replicated throughout the country — and uncharted waters for city regulators.
A city Law Department spokesman said the agency wasn’t aware of any statutes on the books that govern cuddling.
The state Office of the Professions, which governs therapy services such as acupuncture and massage in the city, has no regulations or licenses for “snuggling,” a spokesman for Gov. Cuomo said.
Ali’s rates are comparable to a massage parlor: $60 for 45 minutes of spooning, $80 for one hour. An overnight stay, which has yet to be requested, is $500.
She even offers a $200 movie and cuddle package, but is waiting for someone to take her up on the offer before buying a TV for her minimalistic apartment.
A tissue box sits on a metal chair next to her full-sized mattress at all times, she said.
“They're absolutely necessary," she said. “There's a lot of tears.”
Prospective nestlers must make social media profiles and related websites accessible, as well as provide a copy of their driver’s license. A pre-snuggle interview is also conducted.
“My vetting process is pretty stringent,” she said. “My creepy meter is pretty finely tuned.”
Ali first flirted with the idea of touch therapy at a nursing home as a teenager in Detroit. She’d place her hand on the arms of ill people and watch their mood change instantly. She said eventually like to expand her fledgling service to people with disorders such as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“I was a really shy kid, at home there wasn't a lot of affection,” she recalled. “I had nobody to cuddle me and hold me and tell me it's going to be alright."
A shocking video shows a teacher helplessly stuck in the middle of a classroom fight - with no one coming to her aid.
The footage, recorded by a teenage boy in the class at Gibbs High School in St Petersburg, Florida, shows two young girls exchanging a war of words with their classmates egging them on.
The female teacher initially stands between the girls, trying to get them to calm down, but then the students start lashing out at each other - and she can do nothing but stand back and watch.
Other students clear tables to make way for the fight, while they encourage the girls to scrap.
The fighting students can be seen pulling each other's hair, slapping each other's faces and dragging each other across the floor in the four-minute footage.
The teacher can do nothing but abandon any effort to continue teaching the class.
At some point, she called for help, but it is not clear when, Pinellas County Schools spokeswoman Melanie Marquez Parra told the Tampa Bay Times.
A campus monitor, two administrators and another teacher responded to the fight, Parra said. On the video, a group can be seen pulling the two girls apart.
She would not reveal the grade or name of the teacher because it could identify the students.
St. Petersburg police spokesman Mike Puetz told the Times that officers were not called to the scene.
'The (school resource officer) wasn't aware of this until well after it was over,' he said. 'It is our understanding that the school is handling it internally.'
The video of the fight was posted on Facebook and later removed - but it continued to circulate.
The student who filmed the fight, as well as the two students involved, are now both facing punishment, which could be anywhere between suspension, school reassignment and expulsion. Board members said that Gibbs High has struggled with a poor reputation due to the number of fights on campus, and said they feared that this incident would only worsen that belief.
'I am extremely hurt because we have really been making strides and Gibbs itself has been making strides,' board member Rene Flowers said. 'Now you have this situation that sets it back.'
She added that she was stunned to see the disrespect the students showed the teacher.
Lisa Wheeler-Brown, president of the Council of Neighborhood Associations, agreed.
'Number one, I don't see how this could go on in a classroom - the students could just blatantly disrespect the teacher and the other students who want to learn,' she told the Times.
'It's a sad reality that in too many of our classrooms, teachers spend just as much time trying to keep control as they do teaching.'
Last year, Gibbs High School issued 76 out-of-school suspensions for fighting, the most of any Pinellas high school. It also had the highest rate of suspensions, with 20.5 percent of students suspended for at least one day last year.
But Parra said the number of school arrests had dropped, from 23 this time last year to 13.
