Goto

Collaborating Authors

 Antarctica


Man arrested on suspicion of starting Pacific Palisades fire

BBC News

A man has been arrested as a suspect in setting the Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles that killed 12 people and destroyed more than 6,000 homes in January. Justice department officials announced at a news conference that 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht had been detained. They said evidence collected from his digital devices showed an image he generated on ChatGPT depicting a burning city. The fire was sparked on 7 January near a popular hiking trail overlooking the wealthy coastal neighbourhood. The Eaton Fire, ignited the same day in the Los Angeles area, killed another 19 people and destroyed about 9,400 structures, officials said.


Three killed in latest Ukrainian strike on Russia's Belgorod region

BBC News

Three killed in latest Ukrainian strike on Russia's Belgorod region Three people have been killed and at least nine others injured in Ukraine's latest attack on the Russian border region of Belgorod, according to its governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov. The deaths happened following a strike on the village of Maslova Pristan early on Wednesday, Gladkov said. Emergency workers were continuing to search for people feared trapped under rubble. It is the third consecutive day that Ukraine has struck the region, leaving thousands of people without power and at least two other people dead. Ukraine has not commented on the attacks but has repeatedly struck targets inside Russia, including Belgorod, during the conflict, which is now in its fourth year.



Students use AI to find possible cave entrances on Moon

BBC News

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been used to find two previously undiscovered possible cave entrances on the Moon, which could support human survival on future space missions. Daniel Le Corre, a PhD researcher at the University of Kent, surveyed less than 0.3% of the lunar surface before finding the two pits. The South Marius Hills Pit, which the university said was previously overlooked by researchers, is in an area thought to be rich in lava tubes, while the Bel'kovich A Pit is close to the Moon's north pole and more likely to be a source of water. The pits were detected using an AI model that was trained to scan publicly available Nasa images and identify pits based on their distinctive shape. The AI model is named Essa, which is short for entrances to sub-surface areas and a nod to the Cornish name of Mr Le Corre's hometown, Saltash.


Scammers using AI to lure shoppers to fake businesses

BBC News

Unscrupulous foreign firms are using AI-generated images and false back stories to pose as family-run UK businesses to lure in shoppers. Customers say they feel completely ripped off after believing they were buying from independent boutiques in England but were delivered cheap clothes and jewellery, mass-shipped from warehouses in east Asia. Among the websites is C'est La Vie, a shop purporting to be run by couple Eileen and Patrick for 29 years and based in Birmingham's historic Jewellery Quarter - but with a returns address in China. Consumer guide Which? said the growing use of AI tools was making it possible for fraudsters to mislead the public on an unprecedented scale. Another website appearing to use AI-generated images is Mabel & Daisy, a seemingly quintessential, mother and daughter-owned clothing firm, which claims to be based in Bristol but has an address in Hong Kong.


Sea level rise could plunge 100 MILLION buildings underwater, warn scientists - so, is your home at risk?

Daily Mail - Science & tech

AOC hit by shockingly crude sex insult by White House after she mocked'TINY' Stephen Miller Biden ordered CIA cover-up of his'corrupt' business ties to Ukraine, astonishing secret files show NYC girls aged 12 and 13 meet tragic end after going subway surfing across Williamsburg Bridge at 3.10am ERIC TRUMP: The darkest day in my dad's marriage to Melania... before the ugly truth was exposed More girls are starting their periods younger than ever before - scientists think they've finally found what's causing it Taylor Swift reveals truth behind raunchy song about Travis Kelce's manhood Meghan is accused of'giggling as model stumbles on the catwalk': More Paris Fashion Week disasters emerge, including awkward moment with Kristin Scott Thomas The TRUTH to the doting mother who slaughtered her children and husband told by those she'd been quietly tormenting for years The troubled background of delivery man stabbed by Mark Sanchez... as he launches million-dollar lawsuit and sparks civil war at Fox Revealed: Which slimming jab REALLY works best. The doctors' ultimate expert guide on which to pick, how to save money, beat every side effect... and what you need to know about the'golden dose' I haven't heard that name in so long' Ominous warning for humanity as birds suddenly adopt'unsettling' behavior And a humiliating lifeline: Backroom secrets of Taylor Swift and Blake Lively... after hit new song Bottled water contains dangerous levels of microplastics that lodge in vital organs and raise cancer risk', scientists warn Sea level rise could plunge 100 MILLION buildings underwater, warn scientists - so, is your home at risk? Rising sea levels could plunge more than 100 million buildings underwater by 2100, scientists have warned. The experts in Canada estimated how many buildings in Africa, Southeast Asia and Central and South America would be flooded by different sea level changes. Their assessment found that sea level rises of just 1.6 feet (0.5 metres) would flood three million buildings in the global south alone.


That was close! Huge asteroid comes within 300 miles of hitting Earth - and NASA only noticed AFTER the close encounter

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Ominous warning for humanity as birds suddenly adopt'unsettling' behavior Meghan is accused of'giggling as model stumbles on the catwalk': More Paris Fashion Week disasters emerge, including awkward moment with Kristin Scott Thomas More girls are starting their periods younger than ever before - scientists think they've finally found what's causing it The TRUTH to the doting mother who slaughtered her children and husband told by those she'd been quietly tormenting for years Insiders confirm what everyone suspects about Taylor Swift and Blake Lively... the private apology... and how any future friendship hangs on one humiliating condition Outrage as Baltimore's Dem mayor spends $164k of taxpayer cash on ultra-luxurious new SUV I have no sympathy for them - but this disturbing new trend isn't the answer: JANA HOCKING Taylor Swift reveals truth behind raunchy song about Travis Kelce's manhood Trump stuns CNN reporter as he muses about Ghislaine Maxwell pardon: 'I haven't heard that name in so long' Revealed: Which slimming jab REALLY works best. The doctors' ultimate expert guide on which to pick, how to save money, beat every side effect... and what you need to know about the'golden dose' Functioning alcoholics hide in plain sight... so are YOU one? Trump brands NFL's Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show selection'absolutely ridiculous' The troubled background of delivery man stabbed by Mark Sanchez... as he launches million-dollar lawsuit and sparks civil war at Fox A huge asteroid came within 300 miles of hitting Earth, and scientists only noticed after it had already skimmed past the planet. The 9.8-foot (three metre) space rock, dubbed 2025 TF, flew over Antarctica in the early hours of October 1. Passing at an altitude of just 265 miles (428 kilometres), the rock came closer to the Earth's surface than the orbit of the International Space Station . However, space agencies only realised the near-miss had occurred when the asteroid was detected by the Catalina Sky Survey a few hours later.


More holidaymakers using AI to plan trips

BBC News

More holidaymakers are turning to AI when planning or booking their trips, according to travel association ABTA. The body found that 8% of travellers were using AI - up from 4% last year - with younger holidaymakers more likely to use the technology when planning their trips. However, AI still lagged a long way behind more established methods - such as general internet searches and asking family and friends. Overall, the number of people taking a holiday continued a recent trend of climbing back towards pre-pandemic levels, ABTA said. The travel body described the increase in customers using AI as both a challenge and an opportunity.


MrBeast says AI advance is scary for YouTube creators

BBC News

MrBeast: AI means it's'scary times' for YouTube creators The world's biggest YouTuber, MrBeast, says the rapid advance of generative artificial intelligence (AI) is scary for the millions of creators currently making content for a living. AI tools that can create fully-formed videos from simple text prompts by users have made rapid advances in recent years. On social media, MrBeast, real name Jimmy Donaldson, asked what would happen to people like him when AI videos are just as good as normal videos. Fears about the impact AI will have on the jobs market are widespread - but particularly acute in the creative industries. In the film and video game industries, there has been extensive industrial action over the use of AI.


Score-based generative emulation of impact-relevant Earth system model outputs

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Policy targets evolve faster than the Couple Model Intercomparison Project cycles, complicating adaptation and mitigation planning that must often contend with outdated projections. Climate model output emulators address this gap by offering inexpensive surrogates that can rapidly explore alternative futures while staying close to Earth System Model (ESM) behavior. We focus on emulators designed to provide inputs to impact models. Using monthly ESM fields of near-surface temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, and wind speed, we show that deep generative models have the potential to model jointly the distribution of variables relevant for impacts. The specific model we propose uses score-based diffusion on a spherical mesh and runs on a single mid-range graphical processing unit. We introduce a thorough suite of diagnostics to compare emulator outputs with their parent ESMs, including their probability densities, cross-variable correlations, time of emergence, or tail behavior. We evaluate performance across three distinct ESMs in both pre-industrial and forced regimes. The results show that the emulator produces distributions that closely match the ESM outputs and captures key forced responses. They also reveal important failure cases, notably for variables with a strong regime shift in the seasonal cycle. Although not a perfect match to the ESM, the inaccuracies of the emulator are small relative to the scale of internal variability in ESM projections. We therefore argue that it shows potential to be useful in supporting impact assessment. We discuss priorities for future development toward daily resolution, finer spatial scales, and bias-aware training. Code is made available at https://github.com/shahineb/climemu.