If you happen to see a robot on the side of the road this summer, don’t be afraid to pick him up. That’s just hitchBOT, a friendly hitch-hiking robot trying to make his (her? its?) way from Boston to San Francisco.

Designed by Canadian researchers, hitchBOT is part art project, part social experiment. Can robots trust humans? Or, perhaps more importantly, can drivers trust hitchBOT?

If you see hitchBOT along the side of the road or outside a coffee shop, you’re free to take him with you. He just wants to see the country — from Times Square to the Grand Canyon, and everywhere in between. HitchBOT can’t move on his own, so once you get tired of dragging him around, feel free to pass him off to a friend or stranger. Or just leave him out in a public place.

Boulder marijuana company says it has a new breakthrough for medical marijuana patients.

× Marijuana time-release pill gives med patients ‘cannabis alternative’

Boulder marijuana company says it has a new breakthrough for medical marijuana patients.

BOULDER, Colo. — A Boulder marijuana company has produced a breakthrough marijuana capsule that looks and acts more like traditional pharmaceuticals.

The company, Wana Brands, has produced capsules called Wana Caps, that it says are an alternative to smoking or edible marijuana.

The State Fair is a great American pastime, and what's more American than bragging about how dank your weed is?

The Washington D.C. State Fair, which describes itself as a "culinary, artistic and agricultural showcase of the District," will be holding a Best Bud competition this year, a grueling trial that will recognize the most impressive marijuana flower grown in D.C.

The man in the Mickey Mouse shirt was clinging to a light pole on H Street NE when police showed up, and then he dropped his pants. Another man near Eastern Market was laughing so hard that paramedics had trouble keeping him on a stretcher. A third, whom police found prancing through Capitol Hill, started kicking and screaming when eight police and fire officials tried to restrain him.

Paramedics rushed all three men to hospitals in separate incidents Thursday night, and all three said they had taken ­synthetic drugs — a set of substances so alarming to District authorities that Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier recently likened them to crack cocaine in their propensity to induce violence and death.

Now that a few medical marijuana cultivation facilities have been authorized to grow cannabis, dispensaries are getting ready to disperse the medicine to the public.

Although dispensaries in Illinois aren’t expecting product until this fall, facility owners are getting ready to open their buildings to educate the public about the process.

Cameron Lehman, co-founder and CEO of Terra Herbal Health, LLC, said the building at 8195 Express Drive, in Marion, is still under construction, but he plans to have it complete by mid-August.

The dispensary is renovating an 8,000-square-foot building across the street from the airport in Marion.

Panicking people with false fears about the kids is a proven election ploy, but there's a limit to how much guano the voters will accept. The laughably inept Proposal 1 campaign this past spring tried to convince us the lives of children were at stake if we didn't vote yes on the convoluted tax and spending plan, and then racked up one of the biggest rejections of a ballot proposal in state history.

Another tough test of this theory might arrive before the year is out. This time, we'll be asked to protect the kids from pot.

His 1975 autobiography raised eyebrows, and 40 years later, it still shocks. Now, baseball's all-time partier reflects on a life lived to the limit

Joe Pepitone is in an upbeat mood today. "Everything's good, and that's honest," he confides over the phone to Rolling Stone. "Next time you talk to me, and I'm screaming and yelling at you and don't want to talk to you, you'll know everything's horseshit."

Some Illinois medical marijuana cultivators received the green light to begin growing medicine this past week from the state.

Officials at Ataraxia, the marijuana cultivator in Illinois State Police District 19 in Albion, announced Monday it received state authorization to begin growing medical cannabis.

The announcement for one of the first cultivators to begin growing product comes nearly two years after former Gov. Pat Quinn signed a law making medical marijuana legal in Illinois.

Gov. Bruce Rauner granted the cultivation and dispensary licenses in February.

Amid a rise in the use of increasingly potent forms of synthetic marijuana, state officials Friday announced updated regulations intended to curb its dissemination.

Marketed as legal products such as incense, herbal mixtures, or potpourri, synthetic cannabinoids typically consist of plant material coated by chemicals intended to mimic THC, the mood-altering ingredient in marijuana. Producers have skirted state regulations by using chemicals that are not specifically prohibited.