Heavy rains have caused landslides in the region of Liguria, as shown in this video footage released by firefighters.

TOKYO • Come 2020 when the Olympic Games are held in Tokyo, drone deliveries, driverless taxis, and home robots will be the norm in one part of Japan. Visitors will see a beeline of drones in the sky in Chiba prefecture, just an hour away from the capital by train. At the designated drone zone, to be called Drone City, there will be around 200 of these flying robots whizzing through the air across a 10km distance at any one time, delivering goods from warehouses in Tokyo Bay to apartments that come with built-in landing ports for delivery drop-offs. Leading drone expert and pioneer, Dr Kenzo Nonami of Chiba University, is looking forward to living in such an apartment in Drone City, due for completion in three years' time. "If you don't like drones, don't live there," quipped Dr Nonami, who has helped develop drone technology over the past 20 years, and who painted the 2020 vision to The Straits Times.

Recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and machine learning are enabling computers to understand the world and respond intelligently to it. Google is already embracing these technologies for Android, but they're poised to have bigger implications, touching everything from drones to medical diagnosis. He made his fortune as co-founder of Netscape two decades ago, and more recently his firm has invested in successful companies like Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Slack, and Lyft. Andreessen is in constant contact with entrepreneurs and investors trying to build the next great technology company. Andreessen argues that recent breakthroughs mean artificial intelligence has the potential to spawn a new generation of big, important technology companies. At the same time, he acknowledges that certain industries have proven stubbornly resistant to technological change -- and he argues that more work is needed to bring the power of software to every corner of the economy. We spoke by phone in late September. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Neil Prakash, an Australian recruiter for the Islamic State group (also called ISIS), was arrested somewhere in the Middle East after surviving drone attacks by the FBI, the New York Times reported Thursday. The 25-year-old, who was linked to militant plots in Australia and had appeared in several ISIS propaganda videos, was believed killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq in April. According to the Times, which cited an unnamed senior American military official, Prakash was wounded in an airstrike earlier this year but survived. Another senior U.S. military official reportedly said the former Melbourne resident was arrested some time in the last few weeks by an unidentified Middle Eastern government. Prakash, who converted to Islam from Buddhism and took the name Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, left Australia in 2013 and has been recruiting fighters for ISIS since then.

Dodge drone crashes with the Phantom 4 from DJI, which includes a collision avoidance system that uses two forward-facing sensors to detect obstacles as far as 49 feet ahead. When the drone detects an object in its path, it will go around it or pause and hover. The quadcopter also features the Tap Fly functionality: if the human pilot taps on a specific object via the smartphone app, the drone will fly toward it.

The forests of beech, oak, and ash trees that dot the Danish countryside erupt in shades of orange and gold each fall. As beautiful as it is to see from the forest floor, it's even more impressive from above. "When you look down, the colors are more dense," says Danish photographer Michael B. Rasmussen. "You see much more of them at once." Rasmussen discovered this in November, 2015, after his wife bought him a DJI Phantom III drone for his birthday. He took it for a spin in the woods near his home in Naestved, and snapped a few photos.

American surveillance drones have been flying over the Tunisia-Libya border to tackle threats by the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi said late Tuesday. He said that the drones will use his country's military bases for Tunisia's benefit. In a local television interview, Essebsi said that the U.S. drones were unarmed and they were flying over the border on Tunisia's request. It remained unclear that whether the aircraft flew across Libyan territory. Last month U.S. government sources told Reuters that American drones have started flying missions into Libya from a Tunisian air base.

Domino's is taking a page out of Santa's book on efficient winter transportation. The global pizza chain, which has already invested in high-tech delivery methods like autonomous robots, drones, "zero-click" ordering apps and satellite tracking to deliver food, is now training reindeer to transport pies. Reindeer delivery may be part of a contingency plan for Domino's Japan ahead of what is expected to be a particularly cold and snowy winter, RocketNews24 reports. The chain is attempting a trial period for performing training exercises in the city of Ishikari-- a particularly ice-prone area in Hokkaido-- to figure out if its reindeer delivery initiative is feasible. The technique will involve insulated pizza containers strapped to the animals' backs.

Just Eat, the world's leading marketplace for online food delivery, today gave a sneak peek into the future, bringing together exciting technologies in the fields of Virtual and Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, self-driving delivery robots and other innovations aimed at transforming how people discover, order and enjoy food. At an event in the Village Underground in Shoreditch, London titled "The Future Now – Redefining Food Discovery", Just Eat showcased the future of online food technology. Just Eat's dedicated product development team provided guests with a hands-on experience of the innovations that will help improve food experiences for both customers and restaurants in the decades to come. David Buttress, chief executive of Just Eat, said: "Technology is at the heart of everything we do at Just Eat. We are always seeking ways to help our restaurant partners grow and ensure new and existing customers have a reliable, convenient and, increasingly, fun experience when they order from us. Technology innovation helps us bring the greatest breadth of choice to consumers while giving our fantastic restaurant partners the tools and resources to further their own ambitions."

New Zealand-based drone manufacturer Altus Intelligence wants to make sure its US$39,000 survey drones don't end up as rubble. Most of Altus' customers use its flagship drone, the Long Range Extreme Weather (LRX), for construction and engineering surveying/mapping and expect a rugged, dependable vehicle to get the job done. That's where the LRX's three separate fail-safe systems come in. The first is a triple auto pilot design, meaning that if anything goes wrong with one of the GPS streams, the other two will take over. The LRX is also armed with eight staggered propellers.