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The robots are being developed for nursery schools and researchers in California reported last year that toddlers even regard the more sophisticated artificial friends as human.

It gets its name from its shape - The Bull With No Horns. And it is composed almost entirely of copper ore: two billion tonnes of it. It could become the most productive copper mine anywhere on earth. Now it belongs, in effect, to China.

Google's conference this week on plug-in electric vehicles and related federal policy clearly positions the search company's RechargeIT program as an EV incubator for startups, R&D initiatives and policy discussions. Dan Reicher, Google.org's director of climate change and energy initiatives, opened the conference, which was heavily attended by beltway insiders, by announcing that Google would invest in multiple ventures to make wide-scale plug-in electric cars viable.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the Nobel prize with Gore, is preparing a Synthesis Report. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, said the report would show that the earth faced a catastrophic temperature rise within the next century.

"The giant Chilean Escondida mine produces more copper than anywhere on earth. Some 1.2m tonnes emerge from the BHP Billiton-run facility each year. For the largest miners, Escondida also serves as a key measure for world copper output. To meet global demand over the next decade, the industry "will have to add the equivalent of a new Escondida every 15 months", says Jean-Sebastien Jacques, head of copper at Rio Tinto, which owns a minority stake in the mine. First Quantum, a mid-tier copper miner, says that if China, India and Brazil were to reach EU levels of copper use by 2020, it would imply nine new Escondidas."