A cafe with robots!

THE future is here... at least to this cafe owner Song Jugang who has hired robot workers to cook and serve customers.

It may sound like a scene from a sci-fi movie but a new café located in Kunshan, eastern China, relies on over a dozen of robots for tasks such as greeting customers, waiting on tables and cooking basic meals.

Owner Song Jugang told that the robots cost around £4000 — the same as the yearly pay for a human employee. These futuristic machines have limited vocabulary and take two hours to charge enough to complete a five-hour shift.

WE might shriek with just the thought of rat meat but to some it is a healthy delicacy due to field rats’ free-range lifestyle and largely organic diet.

With harvest under way in the rice fields of Cambodia, tens of thousands of rice field rats (Rattus argentiventer) are being trapped alive each day to feed a growing export market for the meat of rural rodents. Rat-catching season reaches its height after the rice harvest in June and July when rats have little to eat in this part of rural Kompong Cham province. Lack of food and seasonal rains force these rodents onto higher ground, and into the rat traps local farmer Chhoeun Chhim, said.

“Wild rats are very different. They eat different food,” said Mr Chhim. However, common rats “are dirty and they have a lot of scabies on their skin,” Mr Chhim said. “That’s why we don’t catch them.” Somewhat proudly he listed off the superior eating habits of these rats: rice stalks, the vegetable crops of unlucky local farmers, and the roots of wild plants. All their catch is exported exclusively to Vietnam.

THERE is no limit to an artist’s artistry just like Keira Rathbone, a London-based artist, creates complex images by typing away on multiple typewriters.

She told: “I was in my room, typewriter in front of me, with nothing to write; but a desire to see those distinctive marks made me start tapping. Suddenly I felt really excited about where I could push it.”

Rathbone has sold art around the world, online and even in Selfridges department store. The selection of images on Imgur has already had 484,087 views.

Sources: mirror.co.uk; metro.co.uk; upi.com; .bbc.com