Free Republic

The 49-year-old, named as Mr Zhou, was working on the night shift at a porcelain factory in Hunan province when he was struck by a falling mechanical arm. Six steel rods fixed on a steel plate pierced his right shoulder and chest, and four penetrated elsewhere in his body. The accident resulted in him being impaled with foot long, half-inch thick metal rods, the People’s Daily reported. He was first taken to a local hospital before he was transferred to the Xiangya Hospital of Central South University due to the severity of his injurie

An elderly man has killed himself by programming a robot to shoot him in the head after building the machine from plans downloaded from the internet. Francis Tovey, 81, who lived alone in Burleigh Heads on the Australian Gold Coast, was found dead in his driveway. According to the Gold Coast Bulletin, he had been unhappy about the demands of relatives living elsewhere in Australia that he should move out of his home and into care. Notes left by Mr Tovey — who was born in England — revealed that he had scoured the internet for plans before constructing his...