A hot and dry spring means early LeaderBrand sweet corn in local supermarkets.

Two people in critical condition and another seriously injured were taken to hospital.

‘We have a culture of believing the aquifer is limitless,’ Napier Mayor Kirsten Wise says.

The fire has spread to 980ha and is still not contained.

The Christmas parade had to be cancelled in 2023.

Men and mining companies dominated the list.

A family left traumatised after thieves broke into their Melbourne home through their doggy door while they slept is calling on more to be done to reduce youth crime, including criminal charges for their parents.

Ben and Kat Mansfield from Armadale in inner Melbourne told Today they were "devastated" and their children remained "terrified" following the early-morning home invasion on Wednesday.

They were woken by their dogs barking about 3.15am in Armadale, only to discover their blue Maserati along with personal items including Kat's handbag were stolen.

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"They really weren't stressed, rushed – they were just taking their time, having fun," the mother of two told Today.

"It's just such a terrible violation of your privacy, but also your safety inside your own home and to see them acting so casually as though this is no big deal is quite striking."

The couple's seven-year-old son Henry was refusing to sleep in his bedroom and was keeping his taekwondo medal – his most prized possession – around his neck at all times.

Dad Ben wants more to be done to tackle youth crime, especially repeat offenders.

"There's about 20 people that make up 50 per cent of the crime in this area," he said.

"The parents need to be held to account.

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"I actually believe that if the youth re-offends, then the parent needs to actually either pay the fine or do the time.

"The families that are actually accountable for these people should have tax and other subsidy benefits and implications on them to actually stop this."

Police are investigating the incident and said the offenders fled in the blue Maserati with the registration CDK439.

The world is at the brink of a third nuclear age, the head of the UK's armed forces warned.

"The world has changed," Admiral Sir Tony Radakin said in a lecture on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) at the UK's Royal United Services Institute. "Global power is shifting, and a third nuclear age is upon us."

This age, he warned, was "altogether more complex" than those that came before it. The first of these ages was the Cold War, Radakin said, while the second was defined by disarmament efforts.

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This third nuclear age, which, according to Radakin, the world was "at the dawn of," was "defined by multiple and concurrent dilemmas, proliferating nuclear and disruptive technologies, and the almost total absence of the security architectures that went before".

Russia's war in Ukraine and multiple conflicts in the Middle East have upended global stability, he suggested.

The deployment of North Korean troops on Russia's border with Ukraine was the year's "most extraordinary development," he said, as well as Moscow's use of Iranian-supplied drones and its threats to arm Yemen's Houthi rebels in retaliation to the West's support of Ukraine.

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In November, Russia updated its nuclear doctrine, two days after US President Joe Biden granted Ukraine permission to strike targets deep inside Russia with American-made weapons.

Despite this, Radakin said there was only a "remote chance" Russia would attack or invade NATO, as it knew that the "response would be overwhelming, whether conventional or nuclear."

"The strategy of deterrence by NATO works and is working," the armed forces chief said. "But it has to be kept strong and strengthened against a more dangerous Russia."

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Global unease was dividing the world into three groups, Radakin said. In one group was authoritarian states "seeking to challenge the global rules," including Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

In the second were "responsible nations," mostly including democracies, but also Gulf monarchies and others who were "committed to partnership and to the maintenance of stability and security in the world," he continued.

The third group was made up of countries "hedging and ducking between the two for maximum advantage," Radakin said.

NATO countries must maintain an advantage over their adversaries in order to defeat them, he added.

In October, an Israeli strike on Iran destroyed Tehran's ability to produce ballistic missiles for a year, and "took down nearly the entirety of Iran's air defense system," he said.

"In this sense, Russia is showing us how not to fight. And Israel, in its response to Iran, has shown us the disproportionate advantage of modern ways of fighting," Radakin said.

The rideshare giant's annual rider ratings rankings has been revealed, which listed the Australian cities with the best (and worst) average ratings.

The patient is submerged in an ice bath as an anaesthetic for its impending surgery.

When sufficient numbness is achieved, University of Queensland student Lachlan Fitzgerald begins the procedure, carefully attaching a tiny circuit board to its back to create a part-living, part-machine biohybrid robot.

The patient is, in fact, a beetle, and the backpack-like device sends electrical pulses to its antennae, allowing Fitzgerald to control its movements, while tapping into its natural agility.

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"Only when it leaves the desired path that we want it to be on do we intervene and tell it to actually go this way instead of the way it was actually heading," says Fitzgerald, who is studying mathematics and engineering.

He hopes to create an army of insect-machine search and rescue workers.

"We see a future where after an urban disaster like an earthquake or a bombing, where humans can't safely access the disaster site, being able to send in a bunch of cyborg beetles to navigate the disaster zone quickly and efficiently," he says.

The biorobotics lab where Fitzgerald works is putting control backpacks onto giant burrowing cockroaches, a species native to Australia which can grow up to eight centimetres long, and darkling beetles. Species from the darkling family can be found scurrying through environments ranging from tropical savannahs to arid deserts across the world.

Having to handle the bugs doesn't bother Fitzgerald: "No, they definitely don't gross me out!"

Cyborg insects have an edge over traditional robots, according to Fitzgerald.

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"Insects are so adaptable compared to an artificial robotic system, which has to perform so much computation to be able to deal with all these different scenarios that might get thrown at it in the real world," he explains.

Fitzgerald says cyborg search and rescue beetles or cockroaches might be able to help in disaster situations by finding and reporting the location of survivors and delivering lifesaving drugs to them before human rescuers can get there.

But first, the Australian researchers must master the ability to direct the movements of the insects, which could take a while. Fitzgerald says that although the work might seem futuristic now, in a few decades, cyborg insects could be saving lives.

He's not the only roboticist creating robots from living organisms. Academics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), for example, are implanting electronic pacemakers into jellyfish to control their swimming speed. They hope the bionic jellies could help collect data about the ocean far below the surface.

In September, Cornell University researchers released robots controlled by a king oyster mushroom. The robots, which sense and respond to the environment by harnessing electrical signals made by the fungus and its sensitivity to light, could have uses like sensing the soil chemistry near crops to decide when to add more fertiliser.

The rise of biohybrid robots has stirred debate about the ethics of the work, and some researchers have advocated for better regulation and oversight.

Caltech academics told CNN that they worked with bioethicists to ensure its interventions don't cause any type of stress response in the jellyfish they work with.

Fitzgerald says that beetles that have had backpacks attached to them have normal life expectancies.

"So I don't think they mind, per se," he says.

"The science is out on whether or not they're actually conscious beings," he adds.

He agrees that concerns about the welfare of the creatures are valid but urges people to consider the benefits.

"I think the potential for this technology to save lives in an urban disaster, it really outweighs any kind of hesitancy you might have towards the field," he said.

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