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Imagine this. Lightning sparks a wildfire, but "within seconds, a satellite dish swirling overhead picks up on the anomaly and triggers an alarm," writes the Los Angeles Times. "An autonomous helicopter takes flight and zooms toward the fire, using sensors to locate the blaze and AI to generate a plan of attack. It measures the wind speed and fire movement, communicating constantly with the unmanned helicopter behind it, and the one behind that. Once over the site, it drops a load of water and soon the flames are smoldering. Without deploying a single human, the fire never grows larger than 10 square feet. "This is the future of firefighting." On a recent morning in San Bernardino, state and local fire experts gathered for a demonstration of the early iterations of this new reality. An autonomous Sikorski Black Hawk helicopter, powered by technology from Lockheed Martin and a California-based software company called Rain, is on display on the tarmac of a logistics airport in Victorville — the word "EXPERIMENTAL" painted on its military green-black door. It's one of many new tools on the front lines of firefighting technology, which experts say is evolving rapidly as private industry and government agencies come face-to-face with a worsening global climate crisis... Scientific studies and climate research models have found that the number of extreme fires could increase by as much as 30% globally by 2050. By 2100, California alone could see a 50% increase in wildfire frequency and a 77% increase in average annual acres burned, according to the state's most recent climate report. That's largely because human-caused climate change is driving up temperatures and drying out the landscape, priming it to burn, according to Kate Dargan Marquis, a senior advisor with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation who served as California's state fire marshal from 2007 to 2010.... "[T]he policies of today and the technologies of today are not going to serve us tomorrow." Today, more than 1,100 mountaintop cameras positioned across California are already using artificial intelligence to scan the landscape for the first sign of flames and prompt crews to spring into action. NASA's Earth-observing satellites are studying landscape conditions to help better predict fires before they ignite, while a new global satellite constellation recently launched by Google is helping to detect fires faster than ever before. One 35-year fire service veteran who consults on fire service technologies even predicts fire-fighting robots will also be used in high-risk situations like the Colossus robot that battled flames searing through Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris... And a bill moving through California's legislation "would direct the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to establish a pilot program to assess the viability of incorporating autonomous firefighting helicopters in the state."

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Nicola Sturgeon has insisted that she is not 'rushing into a relationship with anyone' - including women.

A woman and two men lost their lives when the blasts ripped through the Black Sea resort area of Zatoka at around 11.30am today.

The Education Secretary said too many youngsters in this group fail to get the help they need to succeed at school.

Many resort to multitasking in an effort to hit activity targets, finding extra opportunities to move when cooking, cleaning and even brushing their teeth

The first woman, in her 50s, sadly passed away after being taken from the sea at Portreath beach, near the picturesque tourist haven of St Ives on Sunday.

Emily Spurrell, a former councillor and PCC for Merseyside, made the donation of public cash to 'save' Liverpool Pride, which was under threat because of a shortage of funds.

John Lewis is selling an emperor size Icelandic eiderdown cover from its 'Ultimate Collection' for £12,460.

Mark Wild, who took over as chief executive of the beleaguered high-speed rail project in December, will pocket a salary of £600,000 for the 2025/26 year.

Visitors of RHS Rosemoor in Torrington, Devon, are now able to walk their pet on short leads three days a week.

On her 68th birthday, Melanie Griffith looked particularly youthful while hosting her own party at her $3.7 million Hollywood Hills home, according to photos exclusively obtained by the Daily Mail.

PLUS: Crypto mixer founders plead guilty; Another French telco hacked; Meta fights WhatsApp scams; And more!

Infosec In Brief  A critical vulnerability in the on-prem version of Trend Micro's Apex One endpoint security platform is under active exploitation, the company admitted last week, and there's no patch available.…

Radio presenter Myleene, 47, hit the headlines after accusing her former husband Graham Quinn of cheating on her with another celebrity, who she has refused to name.

The epicentre of the deadly earthquake was in western Turkey's Sindirgi in Balikesir, as residents started to feel tremors around 8pm local time today.

Afzal Khan arrived in the Turkish-controlled area last week 'for a series of official engagements', a local newspaper reported.

Plans for a solar farm near the village of Weeton in Yorkshire have been opposed by locals who say it will 'transform' the 'cherished' natural landscape into an industrial site.

The Duke of Sussex last week walked away from the charity following a damning report.

Under Labour's shambolic scheme to reduce overcrowding in prisons he might well be deemed a 'low risk' and released after serving just 40 per cent of his time.

On Friday he will sit down in Alaska with his exasperating frenemy Vladimir Putin for what has the potential to be one of the most significant leader-to-leader summits of recent history.

"It sounds like science fiction: a spacecraft, no heavier than a paperclip, propelled by a laser beam," writes this report from ScienceDaily, "and hurtling through space at the speed of light toward a black hole, on a mission to probe the very fabric of space and time and test the laws of physics." "But to astrophysicist and black hole expert Cosimo Bambi, the idea is not so far-fetched." Reporting in the Cell Press journal iScience, Bambi outlines the blueprint for turning this interstellar voyage to a black hole into a reality... "We don't have the technology now," says author Cosimo Bambi of Fudan University in China. "But in 20 or 30 years, we might." The mission hinges on two key challenges — finding a black hole close enough to target and developing probes capable of withstanding the journey. Previous knowledge on how stars evolve suggests that there could be a black hole lurking just 20 to 25 light-years from Earth, but finding it won't be easy, says Bambi. Because black holes don't emit or reflect light, they are virtually invisible to telescopes... "There have been new techniques to discover black holes," says Bambi. "I think it's reasonable to expect we could find a nearby one within the next decade...." Bambi points to nanocrafts — gram-scale probes consisting of a microchip and light sail — as a possible solution. Earth-based lasers would blast the sail with photons, accelerating the craft to a third of the speed of light. At that pace, the craft could reach a black hole 20 to 25 light-years away in about 70 years. The data it gathers would take another two decades to get back to Earth, making the total mission duration around 80 to 100 years... Bambi notes that the lasers alone would cost around one trillion euros today, and the technology to create a nanocraft does not yet exist. But in 30 years, he says that costs may fall and technology may catch up to these bold ideas. "If the nanocraft can travel at a velocity close to the speed of light, the mission could last 40-50 years," Bambi writes in the article, while acknowledging his idea is certainly very speculative and extremely challenging..." "However, we should realize that most of the future experiments in particle physics and astrophysics will likely require long time (for preparation, construction, and data collection) and the work of a few generations of scientists, be very expensive, and in many cases, we will not have other options if we want to make progress in a certain field."

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