Can cloud seeding save us from water bankruptcy? We've long tried to control the weather by engineering rainfall. Now such cloud-seeding efforts are escalating, creating conflict between countries and stoking conspiracy theories. On a cold, windy night in November 2025, a quadcopter drone took off from a farm field at the foot of the Bannock mountain range north of Salt Lake City, rising 4000 metres into thick clouds. A fan with anti-icing propellers kicked into action, blowing yellow dust out of a cannister attached to the back of the drone. Cloud-seeding company Rainmaker was trying to fight dust with dust, spreading silver iodide powder to encourage precipitation and end the deadly dust storms plaguing Utah's capital.

Gödel's seminal work directly contradicted one of the great minds of mathematics and limited the field forever Kurt Gödel, the man who ruined mathematics, was one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. He was born in 1906, smack-bang in the middle of the greatest crisis that maths has ever known. Just a few decades later, he would help resolve this turmoil, but in doing so doom mathematicians to a smaller world than the one that came before. Mathematics, as an intellectual framework, is incredibly powerful. The entire point is taking one set of logical ideas and using them to build another, making maths the closest thing we have to a cognitive perpetual-motion machine - there is always a new mathematical idea lurking across the horizon, and we just need to assemble the steps to get there.

Hundreds of passengers flying to Dubai spent 11 hours on a flight to nowhere after their plane was turned back over Egypt. The Emirates flight EK24 set off from Edinburgh at 21:26 on Sunday and was due to land in Dubai at 06:49 on Monday. However, as the plane flew over Egypt, flights at Dubai International Airport were suspended following a fire caused by an Iranian drone hitting a fuel tank. The plane was forced to return to Edinburgh. Travel journalist Simon Calder told the BBC's Radio Scotland Breakfast programme that although Dubai was on the UK Foreign Office's No go list, many people were still taking the risk of flying there. No injuries were reported following the drone strike but officials said they had taken all necessary measures to ensure public safety.

US's new scramble for Africa is biomedical imperialism Late in February, Zimbabwe pulled out of a proposed $367m United States health funding agreement after objecting to provisions requiring broad American access to sensitive health data. The five-year programme was presented as support for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and epidemic preparedness efforts. However, the terms demanded extensive sharing of national health intelligence, including epidemiological surveillance data and pathogen samples, while offering no binding guarantees that Zimbabwe would receive equitable access to medical technologies developed from them. Harare called the proposal an "unequal exchange", warning that Zimbabwe risked supplying the "raw materials for scientific discovery" while the resulting benefits could remain concentrated in the United States and global pharmaceutical firms. Critics increasingly describe this pattern as biomedical extractivism: a toxic combination of exploitative research practices and colonial thinking that reinforces Western dominance.

Parents in north London have been told their children could be excluded from school if they are not fully vaccinated against measles amid an outbreak of the highly-contagious disease. Unvaccinated pupils identified as close contacts of people with measles could be excluded for 21 days in accordance with national guidelines, Enfield Council said in a letter to all parents in the borough in late January. At least 34 children have contracted measles in Enfield so far this year, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has said, and a number sent to hospital. A local health chief meanwhile told the BBC: We are worried because actually, this is a significantly increased number than what we're used to. Asking unvaccinated, close contacts of measles cases to stay off school is fairly standard practice when there are local outbreaks.

The US economy is growing - so where are all the jobs? When 42-year-old Jacob Trigg lost his job as a project manager in the tech industry he didn't think it would take too long to find a new one - he always had before. But more than 2,000 job applications later he is still hunting, trying to make ends meet with jobs in package delivery and landscaping. It's a huge surprise because I've always been able to get a job very easily, said Trigg, who lives in Texas. It wasn't even on my radar to be prepared for more than six months of unemployment.

Iran says'ready for war' Which are Iran's main opposition groups? The United States military says it shot down an Iranian drone that approached a US aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, amid continued efforts by regional powers to ease tensions between Washington and Tehran. In a statement on Tuesday, US Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesperson Tim Hawkins said a US fighter jet from the USS Abraham Lincoln "shot down the Iranian drone in self-defense and to protect the aircraft carrier and personnel on board". CENTCOM said the drone "aggressively approached" the aircraft carrier with "unclear intent" and it "continued to fly toward the ship despite de-escalatory measures taken by US forces operating in international waters". There was no immediate comment from the Iranian authorities on the incident.

Find out more about our session on Wednesday 21 January.

We're pleased to announce that we will be giving an introduction to science communication for AI researchers at AAAI this year. This will be held on Wednesday 21 January from 13:00 - 14:30. The session is part of the Undergraduate Consortium programme. However, if you are attending the conference and fancy finding out how you can communicate your research to a general audience in different formats, then you are more than welcome to join us. The session will comprise a talk, a Q&A, and the opportunity to try some of the activities presented in the tutorial. You will have the opportunity to receive advice on any science communication ideas or questions you have.

The first non-European Pope in more than 1,000 years, the Oscar-winning star of Annie Hall and The Godfather, a soul legend and one of the world's most famous designers - here are some of the well-known faces no longer with us. Among those we remember are Hollywood stars Robert Redford, Diane Keaton and Gene Hackman, and theatrical dames Joan Plowright and Patricia Routledge. Robert Redford's acting career spanned more than 50 films and won him an Oscar as a director. For many filmgoers though, he was simply the best-looking cinema star in the world - once described as a chunk of Mount Rushmore levered into stonewashed denims. As well as leading roles in hits such as All The President's Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Way We Were, Redford also launched the Sundance Film Festival to champion independent filmmakers. Los-Angeles-born Keaton shot to fame with her role in The Godfather, but enjoyed a long creative partnership with Woody Allen. Annie Hall, a comedy based on their off-screen relationship, earned her a Best Actress Oscar and they collaborated on several other films. She was nominated for three further Oscars - all in the best actress category - for her work in Something's Gotta Give, Marvin's Room and Reds. BASIL! - the unmistakable sound of Sybil Fawlty admonishing her pompous and incompetent husband, is probably how Prunella Scales will best be remembered. Apart from starring in sitcom Fawlty Towers, she played many other roles on screen and stage, including Queen Elizabeth II in Alan Bennett's play, A Question of Attribution.