Robots with the strength of 500 men

Robots will become Britain’s “fourth emergency service” within 50 years and be relied on during extreme weather, according to one of the country’s leading technology experts.

It is predicted that by 2068 hundreds of autonomous human-like droids will be on round-the-clock standby to help in hazardous situations too dangerous for humans.

With the strength of 500 men, limitless endurance and the ability to work in sub-zero temperatures, they will carry out search and rescue missions, and perform other practical tasks that people and existing machines cannot do.

In the event of another Storm Emma and ‘Beast from the East’, the cyborgs would be on hand to pull stricken cars out of snow drifts, overturn fallen lorries and plough entire stretches of motorway in a fraction of the time of current rescue vehicles.

They would even carry out roadside first-aid, transport the injured to hospital and offer “words of human-like comfort” to those in distress, according to Mat Shore, an author and global authority on innovation, artificial intelligence (AI) and futuristic tech.

Mystery of three-fingered skeletal remains discovered

Bizarre skeletal remains with just three fingers and three toes could be alien — despite having many similarities to humans, it is claimed.

The mysterious remains, which were found in Peru alongside a nine-month-old baby mummy, have been named Maria by a research team.

Tests reportedly reveal that Maria is humanoid — because she does have 23 chromosomes — but she does have a number of things that mean she is not human.

Professor Konstantin Korotkov, from the Russian National Research University says he has also seen four other male mummies found by colleagues in Peru, which date back as far as 6,500 years.

He told Sputnik News: “Each of the little mummies has two arms, two legs, a head, a pair of eyes and a mouth. Tomographic scans reveal their skeletons. The tissue has biological nature and their chemical composition indicates that they are humans. Their DNA features 23 pairs of chromosomes, just like we have. “All the four of them are males, each with a Y-chromosome. They appear human but they are not. Their anatomic structure is different.”

Plastic rubbish kills whale

A 32-foot sperm whale that washed up dead on Spanish coast was found with huge amounts of garbage in its stomach. Authorities in Cabo de Palos, southeast Murcia, revealed the young male had ingested approximately 29kg of rubbish before it died.

This included plastic bags and fishing nets, with the El Valle Wildlife Rescue Centre concluding through an autopsy it wasn’t able to digest objects that were stuck in its peritonitis. Consuelo Rosauro, Murcia’s regional government’s director-general for the natural environment, warned, “The presence of plastics in seas and oceans is one of the greatest threats to the conservation of wildlife throughout the world, since many animals are trapped in the trash or ingest large amounts of plastics that end up causing their death.”

Ms Rosauro announced her government had launched a campaign to reduce the amount of waste in oceans. It’s being backed by the European Fund for Regional Development and the European Environmental Association. It is estimated plastic waste weighing a staggering 19 billion pounds is released into oceans each year, with the problem set to continue if nothing is done about it.

Published in Dawn, Young World, May 5th, 2018