'Houses burn and train derails on hottest day' and'Britain on fire' Image caption, A striking photo of homes ablaze under the headline Houses burn and train derails on hottest day dominates the front of the Times. Perhaps unusually, it is a headline that encompasses three separate stories from Thursday - the fires that raged across the West Midlands. It opens its coverage of the hottest day of the year saying: Wildfires caused apocalyptic scenes last night as they engulfed homes. Image caption, A similar photo of the houses on fire is also splashed across the front of today's Daily Mirror beside the headline Britain on fire. It also runs an inset on the train derailment near Lewes as part of its coverage of what it calls Heatwave devastation.

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. A child and three firefighters were among those taken to hospital as several fires raged across the West Midlands, destroying homes and forcing dozens of residents to evacuate from their houses. As the UK recorded its hottest day of the year, fire services in the region said they experienced extreme levels of demand on Thursday. A huge blaze near Stourbridge Golf Course saw about 100 firefighters battling the fire which spread rapidly through dry grass and woodland, setting alight six homes. Elsewhere in the region four homes were destroyed by fire in Stoke-on-Trent, a woman was seriously injured in a blaze in Castle Vale, Birmingham, and a major incident was declared because of a fire in Warwickshire.

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After months of tweets and teases, Elon Musk Tesla's new humanoid Optimus robot was slammed by AI and robotics experts during its unveiling on Friday. Despite the high-octane lights and music that surrounded it, the company's human-shaped robot did not deliver bells and whistles at its AI Day presentation in Palo Alto, California. 'None of this is cutting edge,' tweeted robotics expert Cynthia Yeung. 'Hire some PhDs and go to some robotics conferences @Tesla.' The robot was meant to be the star for the tech giant's conference, as Musk claimed it would'be a fundamental transformation for civilization as we know it.'

Video shows destroyed blocks of flats and a shopping mall in the besieged Ukrainian port city.

Drone footage taken by the National Trust has revealed the extent of the devastation being wrought on British woodlands by ash dieback, a deadly fungal infection. The shots taken this autumn show trees dying in Hanging Wood, part of the Trust-administered Hughenden Estate in Buckinghamshire. Some 300 ash trees on the estate will need to be felled this year in the interests of public safety -- with many more left to decay and create homes for wildlife. However, the Trust warned, this is a mere fraction of the 40,000-odd trees that will need cutting down in total across the lands they manage in the UK. Ash dieback -- though to have originated in Asia before spreading as a result of the global plant trade -- is caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a train wreck in slow motion. This crash could turn out to be the spark that ignites a whole-of-global-society meltdown like in the world wars of the 20th century. Those were conflicts within humanity. Few may have recognised it yet, but the world wars of the 21st century have already begun and unlike those of the past century, the new conflicts are between humanity and nature. The COVID-19 pandemic is nature's first global-scale assault on the uber-modern human world.

Those who dream of getting an Amazon package, a prescription drug, or even a beer delivered to their doorsteps via drone might have their wishes fulfilled sooner than expected.

Already, Americans are learning not to believe what they see on TV--but new developments in artificial intelligence could give them even more cause for concern. At the moment, digitally manipulating an image is very possible, but time-consuming, expensive and often quite ineffective. Brand new AI systems, however, can generate "fake" videos near-instantaneously, using advanced neural networks that "translate" ordinary circumstances into extraordinary ones. A street freckled with house-cats is suddenly beset by cougars. A Hawaiian street scene is covered in snow.

Widespread devastation in Athens, Greece, was depicted Thursday in new drone footage following heavy flooding and violent storms. The destruction has left many surrounding areas underwater in what Mandra Mayor Yianna Krikouki called a "biblical" flood. Several regions in Greece have faced inclement weather for about a week. The situation escalated when heavy rain resulted in severe flooding Wednesday night. The death toll has risen to at least 16, and at least four civilians are reportedly still missing.