Story Times: The weekly weird

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The world’s cutest smartphone

If any robot can take over the world, it’s RoBoHoN. He has all the information you put in your smartphone — and can read human emotion.

RoBoHoN is incredibly useful, he can project photographs and films, tell you he loves you if he senses you crying, hail an Uber for you and basically do everything your smartphone can do and more, like dancing.

At the price of £1,300, he isn’t significantly more expensive than an iPhone if you factor in the hundred million charging cords you’ll have to buy when they all inevitably break.

RoBoHoN was created by Japanese electronics firm Sharp and stands at 20cm tall. It can walk around your home and acts as an outrageously cute personal assistant. It reads your texts, announces phone calls, works out alongside you, dries your tears and wakes you up. RoBoHoN can even recognise your face and greets you by name when you enter the room.

Now who wouldn’t want a tiny, adorable personal assistant like that?


Wanna get close to the caged animals?

A woman marvelling at the monkeys at an eastern European zoo got too close to the cage and was grabbed by the hair by a curious baboon.

A video posted to YouTube shows a visitor to the monkey nursery in Sukhumi, Georgia, got too close to the cage and just when she leans in for a closer look at the monkeys, a baboon in the cage reaches out and grabs her by the hair.

The woman screams as fellow visitors come to her rescue and free her hair from the primate’s clutches. The video shows exactly ‘what can happen if visitors come too close to the caged animals.’


Live birds in a traveller’s pants!

Agents with the customs department at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam held a man was searched last week at the airport when suspicious items were detected inside his checked bag.

Investigators said the man had devised special pouches for live avians, which he had concealed in the legs of his baggy pants and his checked baggage. The Institute of Tropical Biology was consulted and determined 11 of the 18 songbirds were from endangered species, including white-rumped shamas, oriental shamas and melodious laughing thrush.

The Vietnamese suspect was allegedly attempting to transport the birds to Taiwan. The investigation is ongoing.


Whale vomit worth $70,000!

A couple in the UK are in negotiations with several buyers after finding a valuable lump of whale vomit, or ambergris, on a local beach.

Gary and Angela Williams found the nearly three-pound lump by tracking its distinct smell while walking on a beach near Morecambe Bay in Lancashire.

“It smells too bad, though. It’s a very distinctive smell, like a cross between squid and farmyard manure,” said Gary Williams.

Ambergris can sell for high prices to perfumers, who use the rare substance to make scent last longer. The Williams’ lump has an estimated value of more than $70,000 and has drawn interest from buyers in France and New Zealand. Ambergris is not traditionally harvested from dead whales. Its sale is banned in countries such as the US and Australia due to laws against exploiting whales.

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 30th, 2015

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