WEIRD STUFF

Robot performs surgery

A surgeon successfully guided a robot through a prostate removal surgery while being 1,500 miles away.

Prokar Dasgupta - a professor of urology who heads The London Clinic's robotic centre of excellence - performed the procedure from the UK capital on 62-year-old Paul Boxton via a hi-tech four-armed robot, which was fitted with a 3D camera, at St. Berbard's hospital in Gibraltar.

The professor used a console in London to guide Microport's Toumai Robotic System through a series of steps to successfully remove the organ, with a lag of just 0.06 seconds between the surgeon and the robot.

Paul - who has prostate cancer - insisted it was a "no-brainer" to be the "guinea pig" for the surgery.

He said: "A lot of people actually said to me: 'You're not going to do it, are you?'

"I thought, I'm giving something back here.

"I love football - we've gone from being in the Championship to the Champions League as far as surgeons are concerned."

The man had expected to need to travel back to England from Gibraltar, where he has lived for 40 years, after he was diagnosed with cancer, but jumped at the chance to take up the robotic option instead.

The surgeon said the "milestone" operation went "extremely well".

He said: "We operated on an NHS patient in Gibraltar from the London Clinic 2,400km away using a robot with a 3D HD camera with four arms.

"The robot is completely controlled from a console, which is like a computer console, using high-speed lines with a time delay of, would you believe it, only 0.06 seconds - that 60 milliseconds."

A team on the ground at St. Bernard's were ready to take over if the connection to London dropped for any reason.

The professor will repeat the remote procedure with another patient on March,14 watched by a livestream audience of 20,000 surgeonsat the European Association of Urology congress.

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Met Office rejects joke weather names

Dame Judi Drench, Bruce Spring Storm, and Elon Gust are among the names that have been suggested for UK storms.

The public have been allowed to suggest names to the Met Office since 2015, but only around 20 are usually chosen, and out of the 50,000+ suggestions submitted for the 2025/26 storm season, a number were puns on the names of public figures.

A Freedom of Information request to the Met Office revealed they were also asked to consider the likes of Stormy McStormFace, Keir Stormer, David Blowy, Storm Prince Andrew, Fifty Shades of Rain, and Stormzy.

A spokesperson for the Met Office told Sky News: "Some of the names are really clever and funny and we enjoy seeing them suggested.

"However, we couldn't ever use comedy names for our storms, because at the heart of it, naming storms has an important safety purpose."

Those chosen for this period are Amy, Bram, Chandra, Dave, Eddie, Fionnuala, Gerard, Hannah, Isla, Janna, Kasia, Lilith, Marty, Nico, Oscar, Patrick, Ruby, Stevie, Tadhg, Violet and Wubbo.

Storm Chandra hit the UK and Ireland at the end of January, meaning the next storm to hit will be known as Storm Dave.

However, as the seasons move into spring, it is unclear how much of the rest of the list will be used before the next storm season begins in September.

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Scientists discover bizarre ancient creature

Experts have discovered the fossilised remains of a creature with an "oddly twisted" jaw and sideways-facing teeth.

Palaeontologists analysed nine bones found in a dry riverbed in Brazil and believe the plant-eating reptiles consisted of "living fossils" when they roamed the earth around 275 million years ago.

The new species has been given the name Tanyka amnicola, with the first word stemming from the local Indigenous Guarani language and meaning "jaw" and the second meaning "living by the river".

The creature had teeth pointed out and to the sides, with smaller teeth lining the inside of the jaws, suggesting they were among the first to grind up plants for food.

Study lead author Dr Jason Pardo of the Field Museum in Chicago said: "The jaw has this weird twist that drove us crazy trying to figure it out.

"We were scratching our heads over this for years, wondering if it was some kind of deformation, but at this point, we've got nine jaws from this animal, and they all have this twist, including the really, really well-preserved ones.

"So it's not a deformation, it's just the way the animal was made."

The scientist believes Tanyka is part of the tetrapod animal group, meaning it was a four-legged creature with a backbone, but a lot about it, including its body shape, is still unknown.

Pardo said: "In the sense that Tanyka was a remaining member of the stem tetrapod lineage, even after newer, more modern tetrapods evolved, Tanyka is a little like a platypus: it was a living fossil in its time.

"We can say, by comparison with close relatives, that Tanyka might have looked kind of like a salamander with a slightly longer snout."