QUIRKY WORLD ... Robot Boris is a dab hand with dishwasher
But there the similarity to London mayor Boris Johnson ends. Boris 2 is a robot with giant blue arms and huge grasping hands — and even though scientists considered giving him a blonde wig, they decided against the idea. His bold vision is not blazing a trail to Number 10 Downing Street, but loading a dishwasher.
This is no mean feat for a machine, according to roboteer Jeremy Wyatt from the University of Birmingham’s School of Computing Science.
Life-size cardboard cutouts of Pope Francis are being distributed by a church-run radio station to churches, schools, and malls in the Philippine capital to generate “papal fever” before the Pope’s visit in January.
At the country’s largest shopping centre, the Mall of Asia, students, families and other shoppers snapped pictures of themselves beside the Papal standee.
A Utah author says a schoolteacher plagiarised her Christian romance novel, added graphic sex scenes, and passed it off as her own.
Rachel Ann Nunes, author of A Bid for Love, filed a federal lawsuit in August against Tiffanie Rushton, a third-grade teacher in Layton who wrote an electronic book called The Auction Deal.
Both are about competing art dealers who fall in love.
Nunes says Rushton copied her characters and plot, as well as some lines in the work, but added sex to appeal to a more mainstream audience.
She is seeking $150,000 (€116,000) in damages.
Rare lizards have been released into the wild in an area where they once thrived before becoming extinct there around 60 years ago.
The sand lizards, an endangered British species, were bred at a number of specialist centres during the summer. Conservationists say the species has declined significantly as a result of habitat loss caused by farming and building developments on British dunes and heathlands where the lizards were commonly found. In some areas, more than 90% of their natural habitat has vanished.
The lizards, the biggest to be found in the UK, were reintroduced to the dunes at Talacre, North Wales. The reintroduction programme is backed by a number of organisations, including Chester Zoo, which houses one of the breeding programmes.
The US is the most popular country for people in the UK to emigrate to, according to a study of redirected mail.
Royal Mail’s analyses of its International Redirection arrangements during 2013-2014 showed the US topping the list for the second consecutive year.
Out of 138 countries, 16% of all international redirections were for the US in the last 12 months. France remained the most popular European country to feature in Royal Mail’s list, ahead of Ireland, Spain, and Germany.
Supermodel Kathy Ireland has added a new talent to her portfolio — burping.
A celebrity judge at this year’s Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Ireland was challenged by pageant host Dena Blizzard to reveal an interesting fact about herself that no one knows.
Ireland claimed she could “burp the alphabet”. Blizzard, a former Miss New Jersey and now a stand-up comedian, challenged Ireland to do it on-stage.
The supermodel admitted she really can’t burp the alphabet, but she did let out a loud belch on command from the stage during the second night of competition.
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