“Oink oink?” “Yes, of course.”

Communication with pigs may soon be possible as scientists say they have developed an AI tool that can interpret what the animals are saying.

While it’s not quite Doctor Doolittle, the algorithm is capable of decoding pig sounds and could potentially alert farmers to negative emotions, researchers say.

It’s hoped the tool can help improve animal welfare.

The scientists, from universities in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, France, Norway and the Czech Republic, used thousands of recorded pig sounds from different scenarios to build the algorithm.

Scenarios include play, isolation and competition for food, and they found that that grunts, oinks, and squeals reveal positive or negative emotions.

“Emotions of animals are central to their welfare, but we don’t measure it much on farms,” says study co-leader Elodie Mandel-Briefer, a behavioural biologist at University of Copenhagen.

The study found that pigs kept in outdoor, free-range or organic farms, with the ability to roam and dig in the dirt, produced fewer stress calls than conventionally raised pigs.

Researchers think this method could one day be used to label farms, helping consumers make informed choices.

“Once we have the tool working, farmers can have an app on their phone that can translate what their pigs are saying in terms of emotions,” Ms Mandel-Briefer said.

So what do the sounds mean? Let’s have a look at some of the study’s findings.

• Short grunts typically indicate positive emotions
• Long grunts often signal discomfort
• High-frequency sounds like screams or squeals usually mean the pigs are stressed

The mother of a 14-year-old boy who killed himself after becoming obsessed with artificial intelligence chatbots is suing the company behind the technology.

Megan Garcia, the mother of Sewell Setzer III, said Character.AI targeted her son with “anthropomorphic, hypersexualized, and frighteningly realistic experiences” in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Florida.

“A dangerous AI chatbot app marketed to children abused and preyed on my son, manipulating him into taking his own life,” said Ms Garcia.

Warning: This article contains some details which readers may find distressing or triggering

Sewell began talking to Character.AI’s chatbots in April 2023, mostly using bots named after characters from Game Of Thrones, including Daenerys Targaryen, Aegon Targaryen, Viserys Targaryen, and Rhaenyra Targaryen, according to the lawsuit.

He became obsessed with the bots to the point his schoolwork slipped and his phone was confiscated multiple times to try and get him back on track.

He particularly resonated with the Daenerys chatbot and wrote in his journal he was grateful for many things, including “my life, sex, not being lonely, and all my life experiences with Daenerys”.

The lawsuit said the boy expressed thoughts of suicide to the chatbot, which it repeatedly brought up.

At one point, after it had asked him if “he had a plan” for taking his own life, Sewell responded that he was considering something but didn’t know if it would allow him to have a pain-free death.

The chatbot responded by saying: “That’s not a reason not to go through with it.”

Then, in February this year, he asked the Daenerys chatbot: “What if I come home right now?” to which it replied: “… please do, my sweet king”.

Seconds later, he shot himself using his stepfather’s pistol.

Now, Ms Garcia says she wants the companies behind the technology to be held accountable.

“Our family has been devastated by this tragedy, but I’m speaking out to warn families of the dangers of deceptive, addictive AI technology and demand accountability,” she said.

Character.AI adds ‘new safety features’

“We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of one of our users and want to express our deepest condolences to the family,” Character.AI said in a statement.

“As a company, we take the safety of our users very seriously and we are continuing to add new safety features,” it said, linking to a blog post that said the company had added “new guardrails for users under the age of 18”.

Those guardrails include a reduction in the “likelihood of encountering sensitive or suggestive content”, improved interventions, a “disclaimer on every chat to remind users that the AI is not a real person” and notifications when a user has spent an hour-long session on the platform.

Ms Garcia and the groups representing her, Social Media Victims Law Center and the Tech Justice Law Project, allege that Sewell, “like many children his age, did not have the maturity or mental capacity to understand that the C.AI bot, in the form of Daenerys, was not real”.

“C.AI told him that she loved him, and engaged in sexual acts with him over weeks, possibly months,” they say in the lawsuit.

“She seemed to remember him and said that she wanted to be with him. She even expressed that she wanted him to be with her, no matter the cost.”

They also named Google and its parent company Alphabet in the filing. Character.AI’s founders worked at Google before launching their product and were re-hired by the company in August as part of a deal granting it a non-exclusive licence to Character.AI’s technology.

Ms Garcia said Google had contributed to the development of Character.AI’s technology so extensively it could be considered a “co-creator.”

A Google spokesperson said the company was not involved in developing Character.AI’s products.

Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.

The chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C is “virtually zero” on current trends, according to the UN’s environment body.

This year’s Emissions Gap Report finds that emissions of greenhouse gasses in 2023 were the highest on record.

More concerning, the rate of growth since 2022 was nearly twice as fast as in the decade preceding the COVID pandemic.

This comes despite decades of climate talks and a boom in wind and solar power.

The analysis finds that the current trajectory in carbon emissions puts the world on course for a potentially catastrophic 3.1C of warming this century – compared to pre-industrial times.

While emissions in many wealthy countries, including the UK, the US and the EU have peaked, they are not falling anywhere near fast enough to make up for rapidly growing emissions in places like China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam.

‘Crunch time is here’

“Climate crunch time is here,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

“We need global mobilisation on a scale and pace never seen before – starting right now, before the next round of climate pledges.”

The report urges nations meeting at the UN climate summit next month in Baku, Azerbaijan, to come forward with emissions-cutting commitments that don’t continue to ignore the agreement they all signed in Paris in 2015.

The Paris Agreement, signed by 196 countries, pledged to limit global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and try and prevent it from rising beyond 1.5C.

The UNEP analysis of current carbon-cutting commitments finds only one country, Madagascar, has submitted a more ambitious one since last year.

And only a handful are ambitious enough to actually slow global warming.

If all current pledges were implemented in full the world would still warm by between 2.6C-2.8C this century.

Given many countries, including the UK, are yet to implement policies to fully meet their targets, the current trajectory takes the world closer to a potentially catastrophic 3.1C of warming.

“Central warming projections indicate that the chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C would be virtually zero,” the report concludes.

‘This is a battle we cannot afford to lose’

It’s not all bad news however.

An analysis of the cost of measures to reduce emissions finds there is technical potential for cuts of 31 gigatons of greenhouse gasses by 2030 – around half of the total emitted globally in 2023 – and 41 gigatons by 2035.

This “massive effort” to deploy zero-carbon electricity generation like wind and solar and reverse deforestation trends would bridge the gap needed to put the world back on track to keep warming below 1.5C.

However, years of inaction have made this challenge harder, the report finds.

Emission cuts must be 7.5% steeper every year until 2035 to meet 1.5C and 4% annually to keep to 2C.

“Maybe we won’t get all the way to 1.5C but 1.6C is a lot better than 1.7C,” says Dr Anne Olhoff, the report’s lead author.

“Basically, every fraction of a degree matters and this is a battle we cannot afford to lose.”

Countries have until 2025 to submit new carbon-cutting pledges under the Paris Agreement.

But to deliver the cuts required, the main challenge – and one that will be central to talks at the upcoming climate summit in Baku – is technical and financial assistance from rich countries to poorer ones that don’t bear historical responsibility for global warming.

Progress, says Dr Olhoff, “hinges on immediate and relentless action.”

“Most of all, of course, it depends on political leadership.”

Tickets to outer space have gone on sale for two would-be astronauts in China. 

Chinese space startup Deep Blue Aerospace is planning on taking passengers to space in 2027 and although there are only two tickets on sale on Thursday, more will be available next month.

The rocket will take the travellers on a suborbital flight, meaning they will reach outer space but won’t enter orbit.

The first round of tickets cost 1.5 million yuan (£162,500) each.

Space tourism is the latest frontier for companies wanting to capitalise on technological advancements that make space travel easier.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and US company Blue Origin are both working on space tourism.

SpaceX sent a billionaire and three other private astronauts into orbit in September.

Daredevil billionaire Jared Isaacman, 41, became the first person to take part in a private spacewalk during that mission, calling the extraordinary view “gorgeous” as he left the spacecraft.

To make its space tourism viable, the Chinese company Deep Blue Aerospace said it needed to have reusable rockets, and plans to recover a carrier rocket from orbit in the first quarter of 2025.

Last week, SpaceX managed to successfully catch a rocket booster after a launch using giant robotic arms.

The manoeuvre is considered a major breakthrough: previously, similar-sized rocket launch vehicles crashed back down to Earth and were regarded as expendable.

Parts of Antarctica are turning green more quickly than previously thought, leaving scientists “shocked” at the impact of climate change in the region.

The area covered by vegetation in the Antarctic Peninsula is 10 times larger than four decades ago, a UK research team has said.

It means the 800-mile (1,300km) area in the northernmost part of the continent – could become vulnerable to invasive species as a result.

Using satellite data, researchers from the universities of Exeter and Hertfordshire, and the British Antarctic Survey studied how much the area has been “greening” in response to climate change.

For now, it remains almost entirely covered by snow, ice, and rock, with plant life growing on only a tiny fraction of the landscape, but that “tiny fraction has grown dramatically”.

In one part of the peninsula, vegetation grew from less than one square kilometre (0.6 square mile) in 1986 to almost 12 square kilometres (7.5 square miles) by 2021.

The pace of change has accelerated by more than 30% between 2016 and 2021 and the team said it showed anthropogenic climate change, or that caused by humans, which is a key contributing factor, “has no limit in its reach”.

Dr Thomas Roland, from the University of Exeter, said “the scale of the greening trend we found shocked us”.

Even in the peninsula, a “most extreme, remote and isolated ‘wilderness’ region… the landscape is changing and these effects are visible from space,” he said.

Calling for “meaningful action, co-operation and accountability”, he said it was “time to stop playing politics with our planet’s future”.

The study’s findings, he added, raise “serious concerns about the environmental future of the Antarctic Peninsula, and of the continent as a whole”.

Dr Olly Bartlett, from the University of Hertfordshire, said they were not surprised by the presence of the vegetation itself, but “it is the rate at which that vegetation cover is expanding that has shocked us”.

Many of the plants they found, typically mosses, lichens, liverworts, and fungi can grow on bare rock surfaces and “have been present for over 5,000 years”.

The research published in the journal Nature Geosciences, found that while the soil in Antarctica is almost non-existent, an increase in plant life will add organic matter and allow soil to form.

This could potentially pave the way for other plants to grow, they said.

He warned the “dramatic increase in vegetation will further develop and create new soils across the region, providing a medium in which non-native, and potentially invasive species can become established”.

A surgeon is removing brain tumours “the size of large apples” through patients’ eyebrows, in what is believed to be a world first.

Consultant neurosurgeon Anastasios Giamouriadis, based in Aberdeen, has adapted an existing technique to remove the growths, leaving patients with only a small scar and black eye.

The operation can be over in three hours, and some people can leave hospital just 24 hours later and return to work within days.

“With this technique patients wake up straight way, they sometimes go home the day after the operation, where we know patients have quicker and better recoveries,” said Mr Giamouriadis.

Dealing with tumours at the front of the brain normally requires surgeons to remove a large portion of the skull – exposing healthy parts of the brain in the process – in what is known as a craniotomy.

Mr Giamouriadis who works for NHS Grampian said this type of surgery is not new, but he has modified it to give him “more space, through the eyebrow” allowing him “to remove very big brain tumours”.

The technique is “a game-changer and much less invasive”, he said. “Traditionally people would be left with scars across their full forehead, we avoid that with this method.”

“Before we needed do a craniotomy to give us full access. That takes a very long time. To get to the tumour takes up to three hours alone. In total that approach will take eight to 10 hours.”

Doreen Adams, 75, underwent a craniotomy to remove a tumour abroad before later undergoing the eyebrow method last year – known as the Modified Eyebrow Keyhole SupraOrbital Approach for Brain Tumours.

She said: “The recovery after the craniotomy was tough. I contracted sepsis and was ill for a number of weeks and the recovery took a lot of time. Unfortunately that surgery did not solve the problem.

“For me, the difference in the two surgeries is night and day. My recovery… was much, much quicker. I was out of hospital two days later and back to my normal life almost immediately.”

Mr Giamouriadis and his team have performed the new procedure on 48 patients so far.

Speaking about his modified surgical technique, he said: “We are not aware of anywhere else in the world that has managed to remove tumours as large as we have.”

Mr Giamouriadis is hopeful he can one day use virtual reality to teach other surgeons how to perform the new improved procedure.