The robot will be completely autonomous and should be able to help with everything from fetching tools to holding objects and even assisting with cleaning and engineering tasks. The project is a collaboration between the technology arm of the online supermarket and four universities across the European Union. The robotics team at Ocado Technology believe it could become "the most advanced assistive robot in the world".

SecondHands will use 3D vision to see both depth and colour, with artificial intelligence allowing it to learn by example and respond to its surroundings. Once trained in a series of basic tasks the robot should be able to increase its own intelligence and act independently. SecondHands will also be able to understand natural speech, allowing it to respond to voice commands.

The robot will eventually be put to work alongside engineers at Ocado's vast logistics factories in the UK, which handle more than 167,000 orders per week. When something goes wrong with a mechanical component SecondHands will help engineers carry out repairs quickly and safely. It could also operate in areas too dangerous for humans, examining high-speed conveyors at close quarters and handling toxic materials. The EU is funding the project to the tune of €7 million (£5.1 million) as part of its Horizon2020 initiative…

In 2014, Chinese factories accounted for about a quarter of the global ranks of industrial robots — a 54 percent increase over 2013. According to the International Federation of Robotics, it will have more installed manufacturing robots than any other country by 2017.

Midea, a leading manufacturer of home appliances in the heavily industrialized province of Guangdong, plans to replace 6,000 workers in its residential air-conditioning division, about a fifth of the work force, with automation by the end of the year. Foxconn, which makes consumer electronics for Apple and other companies, plans to automate about 70 percent of factory work within three years, and already has a fully robotic factory in Chengdu.

Chinese factory jobs may thus be poised to evaporate at an even faster pace than has been the case in the United States and other developed countries. That may make it significantly more difficult for China to address one of its paramount economic challenges: the need to rebalance its economy so that domestic consumption plays a far more significant role than is currently the case.

According to the Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, Nato has expressed deep concerns about the materials seized by Isis from research centres and hospitals that would normally only be available to governments.

The threat of Isis’s radioactive and biological weapons stockpile was so severe that the Australia Group, a 40-nation bloc dedicated to ending the use of chemical weapons, held a session on the subject at its summit in Perth last week. “This is really worrying them,” Ms Bishop said in an interview with The Australian.

The growing concerns about Isis’s development of weapons of mass destruction come at a time when experts fear the militant group will be “more active than ever” to mark the start of Ramadan and the one-year anniversary of its declaration of a “caliphate”.

Isis said it was changing its name to “Islamic State” following the first public address by its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Mosul on 29 June last year, and the US-based Institute for the Study of War has noted that the group usually reserves its major operations to coincide with the Islamic holy month.

In addition to the Humvees, Iraqi forces previously abandoned significant types and numbers of heavy weapons to Islamic State. For example, losses to Islamic State include at least 40 M1A1 main battle tanks, as well as small arms and ammunition, including 74,000 machine guns, and as many as 52 M198 howitzer mobile gun systems. “We lost a lot of weapons,” Abadi admitted.

Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi may be the most honest politician on the planet, at least judging by this one statement. His troops most certainly did “lose a lot of weapons.” Let’s add this up. Iraqi forces abandoned and/or lost some 2,300 armored Humvees, 40 M1A1 battle tanks, 74,000 machine guns and 52 howitzers. This is not simply “a lot of weapons.” It is more weaponry – and better weaponry – than the entire army has in many nations, and doesn’t include what the Islamic State acquired in its many subsequent victories.

Last November, in “How The Petrodollar Quietly Died And No One Noticed,” we said the following about the slow motion demise of the system that has served to perpetuate decades of dollar dominance.

Two years ago, in hushed tones at first, then ever louder, the financial world began discussing that which shall never be discussed in polite company - the end of the system that according to many has framed and facilitated the US Dollar's reserve currency status: the Petrodollar, or the world in which oil export countries would recycle the dollars they received in exchange for their oil exports, by purchasing more USD-denominated assets, boosting the financial strength of the reserve currency, leading to even higher asset prices and even more USD-denominated purchases, and so forth, in a virtuous (especially if one held US-denominated assets and printed US currency) loop.

The main thrust for this shift away from the USD, if primarily in the non-mainstream media, was that with Russia and China, as well as the rest of the BRIC nations, increasingly seeking to distance themselves from the US-led, "developed world" status quo spearheaded by the IMF, global trade would increasingly take place through bilateral arrangements which bypass the (Petro) dollar entirely. And sure enough, this has certainly been taking place, as first Russia and China, together with Iran, and ever more developing nations, have transacted among each other, bypassing the USD entirely, instead engaging in bilateral trade arrangements.

To summarize: Western economic sanctions on Russia have pushed domestic oil producers to settle crude exports to China in yuan just as Russian oil is rising as a percentage of total Chinese crude imports. Meanwhile, the collapse in crude prices led to the first net outflow of petrodollars from financial markets in 18 years, and if Goldman's projections prove correct, the net supply of petrodollars could fall by nearly $900 billion over the next three years. All of this comes as China is making a concerted push to settle loans from its newly-created infrastructure funds in renminbi.

Putting it all together, the PetroYuan represents the intersection of a dying petrodollar and an ascendant renminbi.

Alexis Tsipras, the Greek Prime Minister, has reportedly agreed to consider measures previously deemed a "red line" in the debt talks. Namely, raising the rate of VAT. “I think we’re very close to an agreement,” he told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. The new plan is also said to include a variety of financing options which could tide over the embattled economy and give the country until next March to reach a final deal.

One major Greek proposal was an idea, first floated by finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, for debt held by the European Central Bank to be transferred to the eurozone's crisis-fighting fund, the European Stability Mechanism, which is widely seen as softer, sources told AFP. The move would delay two major payments owed by Greece to the ECB this summer, allowing Athens urgently needed breathing space.

“The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression,” the astrophysicist said. “It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or a partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all.” The human quality the scientist would most like to magnify was empathy. “It brings us together in a peaceful loving state.”

German television station ARD said the German army had decided to opt for the next-generation Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) in a deal that could be worth up to $4.5 billion to the companies involved. MBDA is a consortium that includes Italy's Finmeccanica SpA, Airbus Group and Britain's BAE Systems Plc.

In New York, where Lockheed has a large facility, the Syracuse Post-Standard quoted Senator Charles Schumer as confirming the decision. He told the paper he had been informed about the decision by the German embassy. Lockheed could not confirm the news. No comment was immediately available from Schumer's office.

Lockheed Chief Executive Marillyn Hewson told an investor conference last month that Lockheed saw strong continued demand for missile defense systems, and a MEADS contract award from Germany could "open the door" for orders from other countries. She said the MEADS system offered 360-degree protection from missile strikes and had proven its ability to simultaneously intercept two targets coming from different directions.

The United States, Italy and Germany spent several billion dollars developing MEADS over the past decade as a successor to the Patriot system, but Washington decided in 2012 to withdraw, citing budget cuts.

“At least half of Germans, French and Italians say their country should not use military force to defend a NATO ally if attacked by Russia,” the Pew Research Center said it found in its survey, which is based on interviews in 10 nations.

Ivo H Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO and the president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said that after a quarter-century in which NATO worried little about defending its territory against Russia, “it will take a serious effort by the alliance to convince its public of the need to prepare for, deter and, if necessary, respond to a Russian attack.”

The survey is likely to send an unsettling message to Baltic members of the alliance, which have been looking for more assurances from NATO that it will protect them from Russian meddling.

“I was really quite grumpy about it, I didn’t want to put myself on display like that,” he says. But as chief executive of Profusion, a data science consultancy, he had been urging his team of number crunchers to plan more ambitious internal projects — and this was the one they had come up with.

For 10 days, Profusion’s data scientists used Fitbits and other apps to track 171 personal metrics for 31 staff who volunteered (including the somewhat reluctant Mr Weston). Combing through the data, the analysts found they could group the staff into clusters, based on shared patterns of behaviour. They labelled one group “Busy and Coping”; another “Irritated and Unsettled”.

Technology has made it possible for employers to monitor employees more closely than ever, from GPS trackers for delivery drivers to software that tracks which websites office workers visit. Companies such as Profusion think wearable gadgets could open a new frontier in workplace analytics, albeit one that would further blur the lines between our work and private lives.

Speaking on the sidelines of a seminar in Florence, Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar in Cairo, strongly criticized Western powers and particularly the United States. Describing himself as "an ordinary citizen" given that the Sunni Muslim seat of learning has no political role, the imam said: "The emergence of Daesh (an Arabic term for ISIS) in such a spontaneous manner leads us to ask what are the deep causes.

"And the man in the Arab street thinks that the West has something to do with it. The arms Daesh has are American, they are not made in the Arab world. ISIS developed so quickly and that required enormous amounts of capital. Where did these enormous sums of money come from? The man in the street says the West is not serious about taking on Daesh."

Trying to support his conspiracy theory, Tayeb cited three parachute drops of arms which ended up in the arms of ISIS fighters. "They said it was a mistake," he said, while sidestepping a question about the documented role of some Arab states, notably in the Gulf, in the development and financing of ISIS.

The movement wants a referendum by December at the earliest, and for it to be done by January 2016. The movement’s main message is not an exit from the European Union, but from the euro as a currency.

From when the senate receives the signatures, “there are no more excuses,” Grillo wrote on his page. He explained that the citizens and political parties have two options before them: “ignore the signatures of citizens, as has happened before, or allow them to express themselves on a topic fundamental to the economic life and social development of the country, which has never seen real debate.”

He warned that there are people in parliament willing to “do battle” for M5S, and “to take care that all the stages that lead to the referendum are… observed.” “The euro referendum is a vote on the future of Italy. Do not let it go to waste!” he added. According to M5S MP Carlo Sibila, Italy’s debt increased dramatically after the introduction of the euro. He also noted that Italy’s unemployment rate hovers around 12.7 percent, the sixth-highest in the EU.

No fewer than three serving European prime ministers will be attending, from the Netherlands, Finland and Belgium. They will be discussing “European strategy” with the head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, and the president of Austria, Heinz Fischer. Two European finance ministers are on the list: one Dutch, the other George Osborne. The UK chancellor is a regular attendee of the Bilderberg summit, and this year he will be showing off his post-election glow.

Europe’s hottest financial potato, Greece, is on the conference agenda, and it’s good to know Benoît Coeuré, a member of the executive board of the European Central Bank, will be there to discuss it in strictest privacy with interested parties, such as the heads of Deutsche Bank, Lazard, Banco Santander and HSBC.

The scandal-hit HSBC and everyone’s favourite vampire squid, Goldman Sachs, are both extremely well represented at this year’s conference. HSBC in particular by its chairman, its busy chief legal officer, and board member Rona Fairhead, who is also on the board of PepsiCo and chair of the BBC Trust. Good to know the BBC is in such safe hands.

Finally, it’s worth noting the growing presence of Google at Bilderberg. The company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, is on the group’s steering committee; he’ll be joined in Austria by his vice-president for engineering, advanced technology and projects, and the vice-president of engineering for the not-at-all terrifying sounding Google DeepMind. They, presumably, will be leading the session on artificial intelligence.