It has been described as Germany's most spectacular bank heist in years. On a quiet weekend just after Christmas, a group of thieves broke into a High Street bank in the western town of Gelsenkirchen, by boring through a wall with an industrial drill. They looted more than 3,000 safe deposit boxes and made off with millions of euros. Over a month later, police have yet to make an arrest. For the bank's clients, some of whom say they have lost their life savings and precious family jewellery and valuables, this is a time of anger, confusion and shock.

Drone fleets equipped with onboard cameras, computer vision, and Deep Neural Network (DNN) models present a powerful paradigm for real-time spatio-temporal decision-making. In wildfire response, such drones play a pivotal role in monitoring fire dynamics, supporting firefighter coordination, and facilitating safe evacuation. In this paper, we introduce AeroResQ, an edge-accelerated UAV framework designed for scalable, resilient, and collaborative escape route planning during wildfire scenarios. AeroResQ adopts a multi-layer orchestration architecture comprising service drones (SDs) and coordinator drones (CDs), each performing specialized roles. SDs survey fire-affected areas, detect stranded individuals using onboard edge accelerators running fire detection and human pose identification DNN models, and issue requests for assistance. CDs, equipped with lightweight data stores such as Apache IoTDB, dynamically generate optimal ground escape routes and monitor firefighter movements along these routes. The framework proposes a collaborative path-planning approach based on a weighted A* search algorithm, where CDs compute context-aware escape paths. AeroResQ further incorporates intelligent load-balancing and resilience mechanisms: CD failures trigger automated data redistribution across IoTDB replicas, while SD failures initiate geo-fenced re-partitioning and reassignment of spatial workloads to operational SDs. We evaluate AeroResQ using realistic wildfire emulated setup modeled on recent Southern California wildfires. Experimental results demonstrate that AeroResQ achieves a nominal end-to-end latency of <=500ms, much below the 2s request interval, while maintaining over 98% successful task reassignment and completion, underscoring its feasibility for real-time, on-field deployment in emergency response and firefighter safety operations.

Scientists have identified more than fifty ways that houses can ignite. It's possible to defend against all of them--but it's arduous, and homeowners can't do it alone. In June, 2012, hundreds of homes in Mountain Shadows, Colorado, a subdivision in the foothills of the Rockies, were reduced to ash during the wind-whipped Waldo Canyon Fire. On a cul-de-sac called Hot Springs Court, however, four dwellings somehow remained standing. The mystery of their survival nagged at Alex Maranghides, a fire-protection engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (), who worked with several colleagues on a meticulous reconstruction of the fire. How did the homes make it through? Was there something special about them--a fireproof roof, say, or a fancy sprinkler system? The team collected weather reports, topographic data, G.P.S. records from fire engines, photos, videos, and property-damage reports.

Drone footage has captured a group of polar bears living inside an abandoned research station on Russia's Kolyuchin Island. Travel blogger, Vadim Makhorov, shared video that shows several bears inside the scattered building, looking through windows and walking around the island. A bear could be seen trying to catch the blogger's drone as it approached. The Kolyuchin weather station was abandoned in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russian Alexey Molchanov breaks his own 2024 world record in one of the most technically challenging freediving events.

'Looks like a toy, but it's real': BBC examines a downed Russian drone At least three Russian drones were shot down in Poland's airspace during attacks on Ukraine, the Polish prime minister said on Wednesday. The BBC's Sarah Rainsford has been looking at the exact type of Russian drone that flew into Poland, and is proving a massive challenge for Ukraine's territorial defence forces. The BBC's Sarah Rainsford says Sunday's attack caused a huge amount of damage. One of Kyiv's main government buildings was hit in overnight missile and drone strikes by Russia. 'The hit was very hard': Eyewitness in second carriage shares video of crash moment The incident in Lisbon's funicular has left 16 dead and multiple injured.

The giant, remote-controlled vehicle -- somewhere between a tractor trailer, a tank and a Zamboni in appearance -- slowly rolled across the dry, brittle grass growing between the tangle of freeways making up the 101 and 23 interchange in Thousand Oaks. And as it rolled over the land, that fire incinerated any brush it encountered, leaving only a thin smoke cloud billowing from the top of the machine, some flashes of orange and red from behind its metal skirt and, in its wake, a desolate, smoldering black line. BurnBot isn't the fastest way to rid a landscape of dangerously flammable vegetation (it tops out at around 0.5 mph) but it can do something that traditional vegetation management techniques cannot: with almost surgical precision, it can kill the flammable brush sitting within feet of homes and highways on even the hottest and driest days and with virtually no safety risks or disruptions to daily life. On a recent summer afternoon, as wildland firefighters maneuvered the machine and mopped up the charred earth on a stretch of highway about 30 miles west of Los Angeles on the 101, a who's who of SoCal's wildfire leadership looked on -- from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, local fire departments, Caltrans, the U.S. forest and park services, Southern California Edison and state Legislature. The sweet smoky smell of wildland fire permeated the hot midday air.

The spark becomes a flame, and within seconds, a satellite dish swirling overhead picks up on the anomaly and triggers an alarm. An autonomous helicopter takes flight and zooms toward the fire, using sensors to locate the blaze and artificial intelligence 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. Los Angeles knows how to weather a crisis -- or two or three. Angelenos are tapping into that resilience, striving to build a city for everyone.

A Russian missile strike has destroyed homes and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine's southern city of Mykolaiv, local officials say. At least three civilians were reported injured in the city near the Black Sea, which has been repeatedly shelled by Russian forces. Ukraine's State Emergency Service posted photos of firefighters at the scene after the missile strike. Early on Sunday a massive oil depot fire was raging near Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi - blamed by the Russian authorities on a Ukrainian drone attack. Sochi's airport in the same area - Adler district - suspended flights.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. On July Fourth, amid a cacophony of fireworks and flame-throwing propane grills, a seemingly ordinary lightning strike hit somewhere in Grand Canyon National Park. The resulting spark ignited surrounding dry vegetation, and strong winds quickly spread the flames for miles. Over the course of several weeks, that initial spark has grown into a blaze engulfing more than 100,000 acres, officially classifying it as a "megafire" and the largest wildfire of 2025…so far. As of this writing, "The Dragon Bravo Fire" has already destroyed 70 buildings, including the historic Grand Canyon Lodge.

Although it is easy to be enthusiastic about the sea's ability to regulate climate and to produce both oxygen and delicious marine life that goes well with melted butter, it is also easy to recognize that the sea is an uncompromising bringer of death, a hotheaded bully who is perpetually ready to rumble. The other day in the Rockaways, on the shore at Beach Eighty-seventh Street, the ocean was exhibiting its pugilistic side: four-foot waves, strong undertow--perfect conditions for test-driving one of the city's new beach-patrol initiatives. For the past three years, New York City beaches have relied on drones to detect sharks and riptides, and now the gizmos are being used to drop flotation devices on swimmers in trouble. This summer, a stretch of the Rockaways will be patrolled by two all-terrain vehicles, each bearing a drone pilot as well as a rescue swimmer, who can assist lifeguards as needed. A correspondent who had volunteered to pose as a swimmer in distress cast a wary eye at the surf.