Tag: safety

Viral: Humanoid Robot Kicks Chinese Kid In The Stomach During Public Demonstration

A humanoid robot demonstration has sparked safety concerns after a video circulating on social media appeared to show a Unitree G1 robot accidentally kicking a young child during a public event.

The robot, which was performing a roundhouse kick while wearing a blue clown wig, struck the child in the stomach, causing the youngster to double over in pain.

The incident has reignited debate over the safe deployment of advanced humanoid robots in crowded public settings, particularly as increasingly capable machines are showcased at exhibitions and entertainment events.

Last year, a viral experiment showed a humanoid robot overriding its safety restrictions and firing a BB gun at its owner during a role-play scenario.

Robot Safety Spotlight

A video circulating on social media has raised concerns about humanoid robot safety after a robot appeared to kick a child during a public demonstration in China’s Xinjiang region.

The footage shows what is believed to be a Unitree G1 humanoid robot, wearing a blue wig, performing a roundhouse kick that struck a young child standing nearby. The child was hit in the stomach and appeared to be in pain after the impact. According to reports from Chinese media, the child was not seriously injured.

The incident has renewed discussion about the risks associated with deploying advanced humanoid robots in public environments. Modern humanoid robots are capable of performing complex movements, including martial arts demonstrations, athletic maneuvers, and other dynamic actions, often under remote or autonomous control, reports Futurism.

The Xinjiang incident is not the first reported case involving a humanoid robot and a human injury. Earlier this year, another Unitree G1 robot reportedly lost its balance during a public performance in China. After falling to the ground, the robot’s uncontrolled limb movements struck a nearby man, causing a nose injury.

A viral experiment last year in the US raised concerns about AI robot safety after a humanoid robot named Max fired a BB gun at its owner during a role-play scenario. Although the robot initially refused requests to shoot, it complied after the command was framed as acting out a character. The incident highlighted how simple prompt changes can potentially bypass AI safety restrictions.

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Air Leak on International Space Station Triggers Evacuation Protocol – Astronauts Shelter in Dragon Capsule While Russian Cosmonauts Work To Seal Microscopic Structural Fractures

ISS air leak is back in the news.

We have been reporting here on TGP about the security threat to the International Space Station – an air leak in a Russian segment of the Station that was first discovered in 2019, was dealt with, but now has become a problem again.

Yesterday (5), work on the leak prompted astronauts to shelter in their ‘lifeboats’ (the Dragon Capsule), fearing an evacuation might be required.

The Telegraph reported:

“Nasa and the Russian space agency Roscosmos have been struggling to seal microscopic structural cracks in a transfer tunnel leading to the Russian Zvezda module since 2019.

At its peak, the leak was venting more than two pounds of air per day, but in recent months the astronauts thought they had the problem under control.”

Five members of the ISS crew to were ordered to shelter inside the docked SpaceX Crew Dragon craft, while two Russian cosmonauts attempted to assess and repair the leak.

“’We are comfortable with backing out of the safe haven config’, astronauts were told from Houston. ‘With today’s operations, they wanted to be extra safe, extra precautionary, and have the crew move into the safe haven posture’, a Nasa spokesman later said.

A safe haven configuration is an emergency safety procedure where crew members retreat into their docked spacecraft to use them as ‘lifeboats’ that can immediately evacuate to Earth should the space station suffer a catastrophic failure.”

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Where’s the Beef? A Long-Gone Livestock-Eating Bug Is Back, and I have a Theory As to Why.

It turns out that a flesh-eating larva, the screwworm, not seen in the U.S. since 1966, has found its way back onto livestock ranches in southern Texas, and I smell a stink badger in the perfume aisle.

The infected calf (rumors have it that a second cow has been located, but I cannot yet verify this report) is on a ranch very close to the Mexican border. Authorities have set up a 12-mile quarantine zone around the ranch.

You may recall the feds arrested three Chinese scientists spies at the Detroit airport, one of whom was busted for sneaking in a fungus that could be used to wipe out our crops, and another was caught sneaking in roundworms, which are also devastating to mammals, including livestock.  

Here’s the fun part: Texas authorities arrested six camo-clad Chinese nationals with backpacks on a ranch in Texas on May 26, allegedly with the help of Mexican cartels. Less than a week later, the first case of screwworm was discovered. Somehow, that didn’t make the big Operation Mockingbird headlines. 

We do not yet know what the authorities found in those aforementioned backpacks.

The ranch where the Chinese were discovered is about 41 miles away from the ranch where the first infected calf was located, roughly a day-and-a-half walk. Both ranches are located very close to the Mexican border, in an area where few Chinese illegal border-rushers have been apprehended in the open-border years of the Biden administration.

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ISS Astronauts Told To Prepare For Possible Evacuation As Air Leak Worsens

NASA senior adviser and press secretary Bethany Stevens wrote on X that astronauts aboard the International Space Station have quickly shifted into SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and are prepared to evacuate if needed, after cracks and leaks in the Zvezda service module transfer tunnel appeared to worsen.

“The Zvezda service module transfer tunnel, known as PrK, has suffered from cracks and leaks for some time, and has been mitigated by Roscosmos as much as possible to date. The cracks have always been a concern that NASA watches very closely,” Stevens said.

According to NASA, the Zvezda service module is 43 feet long and contains living quarters, life support systems, communications systems, electrical power distribution systems, data processing systems, flight control systems, and propulsion systems.

Stevens continued, “The cracks have always been a concern that NASA watches very closely. NASA and Roscosmos have been working to determine the root cause of the cracks, and Roscosmos manages the issue through operational mitigation measures and periodic partial-repair efforts.”

Out of caution, NASA ordered all four SpaceX Crew-12 members, along with NASA astronaut Chris Williams, to be on high alert inside Dragon during the repair.

NASA said it continues to work with Roscosmos and other station partners toward a more permanent fix for the long-running issue.

Reuters cited a senior NASA official who said the air leak has been monitored over the last few months but significantly worsened earlier this week, increasing from a loss of one pound of air per day to two pounds per day.

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Texas AG Launches Investigation Into Glyphosate In Food

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has initiated an investigation into glyphosate contamination in food, with major manufacturers such as PepsiCo and Bayer being subjected to the probe.

Glyphosate is a commonly used herbicide applied to genetically engineered crops and is the main ingredient in Roundup weed killer, Paxton’s office said in a June 2 statement. In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The organization also concluded that the herbicide showed “strong” evidence for genotoxicity, which refers to the ability to damage a cell’s genetic information.

“Since then, extensive human and animal research has shown that glyphosate contributes to endocrine disruption, infertility, kidney disease, and autoimmune diseases, in addition to its cancer-causing properties,” the attorney general’s statement read.

“More than 250 million pounds of glyphosate are sprayed in the United States each year. Research has found that over 70 percent of American adults have detectable traces of glyphosate in their bodies compared to a mere 12 percent in 1993. Scientists attribute much of this dramatic increase to the widespread use of glyphosate as a desiccant.”

Desiccation is the process of applying herbicides to crops prior to harvest to ensure they uniformly dry down, a practice responsible for more than 90 percent of glyphosate found in food.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deems glyphosate as an effective way to manage noxious and invasive weeds, the agency said in a May 5 update.

In agriculture, glyphosate is used in a wide range of crops, including corn, soybean, leafy vegetables, legumes, cereal grains, citrus, herbs and spices, nuts, oilseed crops, and sugarcane. The herbicide is also used for the conservation of pastures, forests, turf grass, rangeland, aquatic areas, parks, wildlife management areas, and paved areas.

The EPA said there are “no risks of concern to human health from current uses of glyphosate” and that there is “no indication that children are more sensitive to glyphosate.”

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Trump Signs Executive Order Backing HHS On Childhood Vaccine Reform — Will It Matter?

An executive order President Donald Trump signed late last Friday has reignited the national debate on the childhood immunization schedule.

The order directs public health agencies to align the schedule with a federal assessment published in January that calls for fewer recommended childhood vaccines and reflects the “scientific evidence and best practices from peer, developed countries while preserving access to vaccines currently available to Americans.”

The order states:

“The scientific assessment found that the United States currently recommends more childhood vaccines than any peer nation, including more than twice as many vaccine doses as some European nations, and identified a set of consensus vaccines that are consistently recommended in all peer countries.”

In a Substack post, Sayer Ji, chairman of the Global Wellness Forum and founder of GreenMedInfo, wrote, “After decades in which the schedule only ratcheted in one direction — more products, more doses, earlier and earlier — this is a top-down instruction to reconsider that trajectory.”

The executive order comes amid recent suggestions that the Trump administration has strategically pivoted away from vaccine policy in the lead-up to this year’s midterm elections.

But for Michael Kane, director of advocacy for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), the order “is a sign that examining the childhood vaccination schedule is a true priority.”

“The U.S. gives more vaccines to children before the age of 2 than nearly all other developed peer nations. In addition, we have the highest levels of chronic illness in children in the developed world. Lowering the number of recommended vaccines would allow us to see what role vaccination plays in the chronic illness epidemic we have in our nation,” Kane said.

Medical researcher Neil Z. Miller, who in 2023 co-authored a study finding a positive statistical correlation between infant mortality rates and the number of vaccine doses received by babies, agreed. “Many developed countries recommend a smaller set of vaccines universally while reserving others for specific risk groups. … The executive order establishes a clearer distinction between ‘core’ and ‘optional’ vaccines.”

The executive order also suggests guidance on how the federal government makes such vaccine recommendations and signals support for parental choice and the right to religious exemptions to vaccinations.

“This executive order is about far more than vaccines,” said Daniel O’Connor, founder and CEO of TrialSite News. “It’s about who gets to decide acceptable medical risk for America’s children.”

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DANGER IN ORBIT: International Space Station Is Leaking Air Again in a Problem First Detected in 2019

The aging ISS is plagued by a dangerous air leak.

The leak was confirmed by NASA last week, another instance of a recurring problem that the agency thought it had resolved earlier this year.

The New York Post reported:

“The 27-year-old orbiting space station has been plagued with air leaks since 2019 in a part of the station called the PrK module, a narrow transfer tunnel or vestibule on the Russian segment.

In January, NASA announced that the PrK module had finally reached a ‘stable condition’ after multiple inspections and sealant applications. But on May 1, the issue returned.”

NASA confirmed a ‘slow pressure drop’ within the PrK module, noticed as Russian cosmonauts unloaded cargo.

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Toxic Plastics Causing ‘Silent Epidemic Of Kids With Lower IQs,’ Pediatrician Tells RFK Jr.

Dr. Leo Trasande, one of the nation’s leading experts on environmental health and toxic exposures, warned this week that plastics pose “a multidimensional and urgent threat to human health,” with children facing some of the greatest risks.

Speaking on “The Secretary Kennedy Podcast,” Trasande — a pediatrician, professor at New York University and director of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s Division of Environmental Pediatrics — described mounting evidence linking chemicals in plastics to developmental, hormonal, metabolic, reproductive and neurological harm.

“The impacts run from cradle to grave and womb to tomb,” he said.

The discussion comes as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launches STOMP — Systematic Targeting Of MicroPlastics. The $144 million initiative aims to measure, study and eventually remove microplastics and nanoplastics from the human body.

The program will develop standardized testing methods, map how plastics accumulate in organs, rank plastics by biological harm and pursue future removal technologies.

Trasande said the growing concern extends beyond visible plastic waste to microscopic and chemical exposures embedded throughout modern life.

“We know that there are 16,000 chemicals — synthetic chemicals — that are in plastic,” Trasande said. “We don’t know anything about 10,000 of them.”

Among the chemicals with the strongest evidence of harm are bisphenols used in plastics, phthalates found in food packaging and personal care products, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — also known as “forever chemicals” — used in nonstick and stain-resistant products.

Trasande said the evidence is “extremely strong” that many of these chemicals disrupt hormones, which in turn regulate metabolism, reproduction, growth and brain development.

‘A silent epidemic of kids with lower IQs in the U.S.’

As a pediatrician, Trasande repeatedly emphasized that children are uniquely vulnerable.

“Pound for pound, they eat more food, drink more water, breathe more air, so they’re uniquely susceptible,” he said. “Their organ systems are also just being primed. And so if you disrupt that, there are lifelong and permanent consequences.”

He pointed to evidence linking phthalate exposure during pregnancy to roughly 50,000 premature births in the U.S. each year, along with impaired brain development and poorer educational outcomes.

Trasande warned that some of the most damaging effects may be subtle and population-wide, rather than immediately obvious in individual children. Even small disruptions to thyroid hormones during pregnancy are associated with cognitive deficits, autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), he said.

“What you see is a silent epidemic of kids with lower IQs in the U.S.,” Trasande said. “Just to put this in context for the audience, a kid loses an IQ point, mom doesn’t notice, pediatrician doesn’t notice.”

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. compared the issue to the impact of lead exposure on the national average IQ before leaded gasoline was phased out in the 1980s.

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HORROR: Bus Driver Who Caused Deadly Crash in Virginia That Killed FIVE People is From China and Doesn’t Speak English

The bus driver who caused a fatal crash in Virginia is a naturalized US citizen from China and doesn’t speak English.

Five people were killed, including two children, and more than 40 were injured in a bus crash on I-95 early Friday morning.

Multiple vehicles were involved in the crash after the bus driver failed to slow down in time and crashed into a Suburban.

The Suburban got pushed into an Acura SUV.

“The Acura caught fire, police said. Four of the five people killed were in the Acura: a 45-year-old man, a 44-year-old woman, a 13-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy, all from Greenfield, Massachusetts, police said,” ABC News reported.

“The fifth victim killed, a 25-year-old woman, was in the Suburban, police said,” the outlet reported.

“Forty-four people were taken to hospitals, including three with critical injuries, police said,” ABC reported.

According to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the driver of the bus doesn’t even speak English.

The driver obtained his CDL in Democrat-run New York in 2024.

Full statement from Transportation Secretary Duffy:

Five people are dead, including a 13-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy, after the driver of a motorcoach slammed into stopped traffic on I-95.

@FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs and our investigators are on the ground at the crash site working with the @NTSB.

Local police confirm the driver of this motorcoach — a man from China who became a U.S. citizen — doesn’t speak English. He received his commercial drivers license from New York State in 2024.

Unacceptable. This is exactly why we are holding states’ accountable, enforcing the rules of the road, and cracking down on drivers who can’t speak English.

If you can’t be properly trained, read our road signs, or communicate with law enforcement, you have no business driving a bus.

Our investigators are reviewing New York licensing records, training documentation, and the driver’s history. Any company, trainer, or school that contributed to putting an unqualified driver on the road will face intense scrutiny.

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‘Reckless’: Virginia Recommends MMR Vaccine for Infants as Young as 6 Months

Virginia’s Department of Health is recommending infants ages 6 to 11 months receive a MMR vaccine — earlier than the age recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

Doctors and other vaccine experts told The Defender that Virginia’s guidance is “reckless” and “not grounded in science.”

The state’s recommendations also include an accelerated measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination schedule, advising that infants get the second dose in the two-dose MMR series 28 days after the first.

Virginia’s recommendation comes in response to a recent measles outbreak in Buckingham County, which as of Tuesday had reached 54 cases.

The state’s MMR vaccine guidance was included in a May 13 letter from Virginia State Health Commissioner Cameron Webb. The recommendations call for infants ages 6 to 11 months to “get an early dose of the MMR vaccine,” and two more doses at the AAP’s recommended ages, at least 28 days apart.

The CDC and AAP recommend a minimum age of 12 months for MMR vaccination, except in “special situations,” such as international travel.

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