Tesla has unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi at a Hollywood studio, though fans of the electric vehicle maker will have to wait until at least 2026 before they are available.CEO Elon Musk pulled up to a stage at the Warner Bros studio lot in one of the company's "Cybercabs", telling the crowd that the sleek, AI-powered vehicles did not have steering wheels or pedals. He also expressed confidence in the progress the company had made on autonomous driving technology that makes it possible for vehicles to drive without human intervention.Tesla began selling the software, which is called "Full Self-Driving", nine years ago, but there are doubts about its reliability."We'll move from supervised Full Self-Driving to unsupervised Full Self-Driving. where you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination," he said on Thursday. "It's going to be a glorious future."Tesla expects the Cybercabs to cost under $US30,000 ($A44,000), Musk said. He estimated the vehicles would become available in 2026, then added "before 2027".The company also expects to make the Full Self-Driving technology available on its popular Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in Texas and California in 2025. "If they're going to eventually get to robotaxis, they first need to have success with the unsupervised FSD at the current line-up," said Seth Goldstein, equity strategist at Morningstar Research."Tonight's event showed that they're ready to take that step forward."Tesla had 20 or so Cybercabs on hand and offered attendees the opportunity to take rides inside the movie studio lot - not on Los Angeles' roads.At the presentation - dubbed "We, Robot" and streamed live on Tesla's website and X - Musk also revealed a sleek minibus-looking vehicle that, like the Cybercab, would be self-driving and could carry up to 20 passengers.The company also trotted out several of its black and white Optimus humanoid robots, which walked a few feet from the attendees before showing off dance moves in a futuristic-looking gazebo. Musk estimated the robots would cost between $US28,000-$US30,000 and would be able to babysit, mow lawns, fetch groceries, among other tasks."Whatever you can think of, it will do," he said.The Cybercab's unveiling comes as Musk tries to persuade investors that his company is more about artificial intelligence and robotics as it struggles to sell its core products, an ageing line-up of electric vehicles.Musk has been saying for more than five years that a fleet of robotaxis is near, allowing Tesla owners to make money by having their cars carry passengers while they are not in use by the owners. But he has acknowledged past predictions for the use of autonomous driving proved too optimistic. In 2019, he promised the fleet of autonomous vehicles by the end of 2020. The announcement comes as US safety regulators are investigating Full Self Driving and Autopilot based on evidence that it has a weak system for making sure human drivers pay attention. By Tom Krisher and Alex Veiga in Los Angeles

An Israeli strike on a school sheltering the displaced in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 27 people, Palestinian medical officials say.The Israeli military said it targeted militants hiding among civilians, without providing evidence.Israel has continued to strike at what it says are militant targets across the Palestinian enclave even as attention has shifted to its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and rising tensions with Iran. The military launched a large-scale air and ground operation against Hamas in northern Gaza earlier this week.The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the bodies were brought on Thursday, said the strike in the central town of Deir al-Balah killed 27 people, including a child and seven women. It said several other people were wounded.An Associated Press reporter saw ambulances streaming into the hospital and counted the bodies, many of which arrived in pieces."We appeal to the world. We are dying!" one man screamed. The Israeli military said it carried out a precise strike targeting a militant command and control centre inside the school. Israel has repeatedly attacked schools that were turned into shelters in Gaza, accusing militants of hiding out in them.Witnesses who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons said the strike occurred while school managers were meeting with representatives of an aid group in a room usually used by Hamas-run police who provide security. They said there were no police in the room at the time.The Hamas-run government operated a civilian police force numbering in the tens of thousands. They largely vanished from the streets after the start of the war as Israel targeted them with airstrikes, but plain-clothes Hamas security personnel still exert control over most areas.Hamas has continued to launch attacks on Israeli forces and fire occasional rockets into Israel more than a year after its October 7 attack ignited the war.Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel and rampaged through army bases and farming communities in that attack, killing some 1200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250 others. They are still holding about 100 captives, a third of whom are believed to be dead.Israel's offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say women and children make up more than half of the fatalities. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90 per cent of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.

Hurricane Milton has marched across Florida, whipping up deadly tornadoes, destroying homes and knocking out power to more than three million customers.However, the Tampa Bay metropolitan area appears to have escaped without the catastrophic flooding that had been feared.Authorities were still waiting for rivers to crest but so far water levels were at or below what they received with Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said on Thursday morning."So we'll have storm surge damage but nothing like it could have been. It could have been catastrophic for Tampa Bay," she told MSNBC on Thursday.The storm hit Florida's west coast on Wednesday night as a category-three hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, with top sustained winds of 205km/h.While still a dangerous storm, this was less violent than the rare category-five hurricane that had threatened the state as it trekked over the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida.At least two deaths were reported at a retirement community following a suspected tornado in Fort Pierce on the east coast.Milton weakened as it crossed land, dropping to a category-one hurricane with top sustained winds of 145km/h as it reached the peninsula's east coast, the National Hurricane Center said.By Thursday morning, the storm was moving away from the Florida Atlantic coast, lashing communities on the eastern shoreline.(Hurricane Milton's winds shredded the roof of Tropicana Field stadium in St Petersburg, Florida. (AP PHOTO)The eye of the storm had hit land in Siesta Key, a barrier island town of some 5,400 people off Sarasota about 100km south of Tampa Bay.Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he hoped the Tampa Bay area, home to 3 million people and once seen as the potential bull's eye, could dodge major damage. The hurricane still left its mark, tearing open the roof of Tropicana Field, the stadium of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team.The winds also toppled a large construction crane in St Petersburg, sending the structure crashing down onto a deserted street.Milton also spawned at least 19 tornadoes, the governor said, causing damage in numerous counties and destroying about 125 homes, most of them mobile homes.In Fort Myers on the southwest coast, resident Connor Ferin surveyed the wreckage of his home, which had lost its roof and was full of debris and rainwater after a tornado suddenly hit."All this happened instantaneous, like these windows blew out," he said.Floridians face a new clean-up from Hurricane Milton after being battered by Helene two weeks ago. (EPA PHOTO)"I grabbed the two dogs and run under my bed and that was it. Probably one minute total."St Lucie County's Pearson estimated 100 homes were destroyed in the county where some 17 tornadoes touched down, NBC said.More than three million homes and businesses in Florida were without power, according to PowerOutage.us.In a state already battered by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, as many as two million people had been ordered to evacuate before Milton's arrival, and millions more live in the path of the storm.Much of the southern US experienced the deadly force of Helene as it ripped through Florida and several other states.Both storms are expected to cause billions of dollars in damage.Hurricane Milton hit the Florida coast as a category-three storm with winds of 195km/h. (EPA PHOTO)As of Thursday morning, 2209 US flights had been cancelled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware, with the highest number cancellations from Orlando, Tampa and southwest Florida.While human evacuees jammed the highways and created petrol shortages, animals including African elephants, Caribbean flamingos and pygmy hippos were riding out the storm at Tampa's zoo.Nearly a quarter of Florida's petrol stations were out of fuel on Wednesday afternoon.The Federal Emergency Management Agency had moved millions of litres of water, millions of meals and other supplies and personnel into the area.None of the additional aid would detract from recovery efforts for Hurricane Helene, agency administrator Deanne Criswell said.Trucks had been running 24 hours a day to clear debris left behind by Helene before Milton potentially turned them into dangerous projectiles, DeSantis said.About 9000 National Guard personnel were deployed in Florida, ready to assist recovery efforts, as were 50,000 electricity grid workers in anticipation of widespread power outages, he said.By Brad Brooks and Leonara LaPeter Anton in ST. PETERSBURG

The Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to scientists David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for their work with proteins.Baker works at the University of Washington in Seattle, while Hassabis and Jumper work at Google Deepmind in London.Hans Ellegren, secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that decides on the winner, announced the prize on Wednesday.Baker designed a new protein in 2003 and his research group has since produced one imaginative protein creation after another, including proteins that can be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors, the Nobel committee said.Hassabis and Jumper created an artificial intelligence model that has been able to predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified, the committee said.In 2023, the chemistry award went to three scientists for their work on quantum dots - tiny particles just a few nanometres in diameter that can release very bright coloured light and whose applications in everyday life include electronics and medical imaging.Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize. Two founding fathers of machine learning - John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton - won the physics prize on Tuesday.The awards continue with the literature prize on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on October 14.The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($A1.6 million) from a bequest left by the award's creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.By Daniel Niemann nd Mike Corder in Stockholm

At least 45 people have been killed in Israeli military strikes on Gaza in the past 24 hours, Palestinian medics say, as Israeli forces press on with a raid on the Jabalia refugee camp in the enclave's north.The Israeli military says the raid, now in its fifth day, is intended to stop Hamas fighters staging further attacks from Jabalia and to prevent them regrouping.It has repeatedly issued evacuation orders to residents of Jabalia and nearby areas, but Palestinian and UN officials say there are no safe places to flee to in the Gaza Strip.The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said it had received unconfirmed reports that dozens of Palestinians might have been killed in Jabalia and other areas of northern Gaza, but is unable reach them because of Israeli bombardments."At least 400,000 people are trapped in the area," Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, posted on X on Wednesday."Recent evacuation orders from the Israeli Authorities are forcing people to flee again & again, especially from Jabalia Camp."Many are refusing because they know too well that no place anywhere in #Gaza is safe."Lazzarini said some UNRWA shelters and services were being forced to shut down for the first time since the war began and that with almost no basic supplies available, hunger was spreading again in northern Gaza."This recent military operation also threatens the implementation of the second phase of the #polio vaccination campaign for children," he said.Israel did not immediately comment on Lazzarini's remarks.Israeli authorities have previously said they facilitate food deliveries to Gaza despite challenging conditions.The Gaza health ministry said the army had ordered three hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate.Hundreds of patients and medics were trapped inside those facilities, it said in a statement on Wednesday.Israel's military, which is now also in conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon, says Hamas militants use residential areas as cover in densely populated Gaza, including schools and hospitals. Hamas denies this.Hamas exiled official Izzat El-Reshiq said in a statement Israel's escalation in northern Gaza aimed to punish residents for refusing to leave their homes.He blamed the United States for being partners with Israel in the "war of genocide" in Gaza.In one Israeli strike overnight on a house in Shejaia, a suburb of Gaza City, nine people of the same family were killed, medics said.Others were killed overnight in central areas of the Gaza Strip.Israel began its offensive against Hamas in Gaza after fighters from the Palestinian militant group attacked southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, killing about 1200 people and taking about 250 hostage, according to Israeli tallies.Nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive, the Gaza health ministry says.Most of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced and much of the enclave has been laid to waste.By Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has claimed there are "a lot of bad genes" in the United States while discussing murders allegedly committed by immigrants living illegally in the United States."How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers," Trump said in an interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt, while discussing the immigration policies of his Democratic opponent in the November 5 election, Vice President Kamala Harris."Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they're now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it's in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now."The former president has frequently attacked migrants on the campaign trail, particularly those who have been implicated in crimes. At times, he has used dehumanising language, and he has increasingly turned to extremely graphic depictions of the crimes even though a range of studies show immigrants do not commit crime at a higher rate than native-born Americans.Trump appeared to be referring to a letter from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Republican Representative Tony Gonzales, released in September, which showed that 13,099 people have been convicted of homicide who are on ICE's "non-detained docket".That docket includes various types of immigrants who entered the country legally and illegally.(US Vice President Kamala Harris during a visit to the US-Mexico border in September. AP PHOTO)A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security called those statistics misleading."The data in this letter is being misinterpreted," the spokesperson wrote in an email. "The data goes back decades; it includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this Administration. "It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners."In a statement, the Trump campaign defended his comments, saying he was speaking only about murderers, not immigrants."President Trump was clearly referring to murderers, not migrants," Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. "It's pretty disgusting the media is always so quick to defend murderers, rapists, and illegal criminals if it means writing a bad headline about President Trump."The White House condemned Trump's remarks."That type of language is hateful, it's disgusting, it's inappropriate, and it has no place in our country," White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said.By Gram Slattery in Washington, D. C.

Scientists John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton have been awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for discoveries and inventions that formed the building blocks of machine learning."This year's two Nobel Laureates in physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today's powerful machine learning," the Nobel committee said in a statement.Hopfield's research is carried out at Princeton University and Hinton works at the University of Toronto.Ellen Moons, a member of the Nobel committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said the laureates "used fundamental concepts from statistical physics to design artificial neural networks that function as associative memories and find patterns in large data sets".She said such networks had been used to advance research in physics and "have also become part of our daily lives, for instance, in facial recognition and language translation".The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded on Tuesday, a day after two American scientists won the medicine prize for their discovery of microRNA.Three scientists won the 2023 Physics Nobel for providing the first split-second glimpse into the super-fast world of spinning electrons, a field that could one day lead to better electronics or disease diagnoses.The 2023 award went to French-Swedish physicist Anne L'Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz for their work with the tiny part of each atom that races around the centre and is fundamental to virtually everything: chemistry, physics, our bodies and our gadgets.Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize for their discovery of tiny bits of genetic material that serve as on and off switches inside cells that help control what the cells do and when they do it.If scientists can better understand how they work and how to manipulate them, it could one day lead to powerful treatments for diseases like cancer.The physics prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($A1.6 million) from a bequest left by the award's creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. It has been awarded 117 times. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.Nobel announcements continue with the Chemistry Physics Prize on Wednesday and Literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on October 14.By Daniel Niemann and Mike Corder in Stockholm

Israel has stepped up its air and ground offensive in Gaza with more attacks on Hamas militants and command posts as both sides marked the first anniversary of a war that has destroyed much of the territory and changed Palestinians' lives forever.For its part, Hamas said it struck Israel's commercial capital Tel Aviv with a missile salvo on Monday, setting off sirens in central Israel. Two people were lightly injured, according to the Israeli ambulance service.The rocket volley signalled Hamas's enduring ability to hit back despite a protracted Israeli military onslaught aimed at destroying its combat capabilities, a year after the shock cross-border Hamas incursion into Israel that kindled the war.(Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza has sparked a hunger and health crisis. AP PHOTO)Hamas's smaller ally Islamic Jihad said it hit Sderot, Nir Am and other Israeli towns near Gaza with rockets. The Israeli military said it intercepted five rockets fired from Gaza.Hamas-led militants stormed through Israeli towns and kibbutz villages near the border on October 7, 2023, killing 1200 people and taking about 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.Israel's subsequent military campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to the small coastal enclave's health ministry, displaced nearly the entire 2.3 million population, and caused a hunger and health crisis.On Monday, Israeli tanks advanced into Jabalia, the largest of Gaza Strip's eight historical urban refugee camps, after encircling it, residents said. Soon after the rocket volley, the Israeli military expanded evacuation orders in Jabalia to cover areas in the northern towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.Residents said Israeli forces pounded Jabalia from the air and the ground, and medics said several Palestinians had been killed.The Israeli military said it killed dozens of militants and dismantled military infrastructure in Jabalia, saying the operation would continue to prevent Hamas regrouping.In the central city of Deir Al-Balah, where a million displaced people are sheltering, an Israeli air strike hit tents inside Al-Aqsa Hospital, wounding 11 people, Palestinian medics said. The Israeli military said it struck at Hamas militants operating from a command centre embedded inside the hospital.Monday was the first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack, which has given rise to a multi-front conflict across the Middle East as Israel sharply escalates its campaign against the Iranian-backed militant movement Hezbollah in Lebanon.US-backed Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt have been unable to broker a Gaza ceasefire that could also help defuse the Lebanon hostilities and see the release of hostages held in Gaza as well as many Palestinians jailed by Israel.Israel and Hamas each accuse the other of adding conditions that are impossible to meet.Hamas wants a deal that ends the war and gets Israeli forces out of Gaza, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed the war can end only with the eradication of Hamas.By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Hussam al-Masri in Cairo

A Russian court has sentenced 72-year-old American citizen Stephen James Hubbard to six years and 10 months in prison after convicting him in a closed-door trial of serving as a mercenary for Ukraine.Investigators said Hubbard, a native of Michigan, was paid $US1000 ($A1500) a month to serve in a Ukrainian territorial defence unit in the eastern city of Izyum, where he had been living since 2014.They said Hubbard was provided with training, weapons and ammunition when he allegedly signed up in February 2022, the same month Moscow sent thousands of troops into Ukraine. He was detained by Russian soldiers on April 2 of that year, the RIA state news agency quoted the prosecutor as saying last month.Russian state media said Hubbard had pleaded guilty to the charge.But in interviews in September, Hubbard's sister Patricia Hubbard Fox and another relative cast doubt on his reported confession, telling Reuters he held pro-Russian views and was unlikely to have taken up arms at his age.On Monday, Hubbard, wearing a beige sweater, sat in a glass courtroom cage in handcuffs. He stood up, seemingly with difficulty, to hear the judge in the Moscow City Court pronounce him guilty, removing his hat to reveal a shaved head.Hubbard listened without visible emotion to the judge before conferring with his lawyer, who later declined to comment to reporters. Though RIA reported that Hubbard's lawyer will appeal the verdict.Reuters was unable to confirm how Hubbard was detained. The Ukrainian foreign ministry has not replied to multiple messages seeking comment.A spokesperson for the US embassy in Moscow said it was aware of the detention of an American citizen, but declined further comment on Monday.In interviews, Fox and the other relative portrayed Hubbard as an isolated figure who had grown estranged from some of his family during his decades abroad teaching English, including in Japan and Cyprus.Fox said Hubbard moved to Ukraine in 2014 and lived there for a time with a Ukrainian woman, surviving off a small pension of around $US300 a month. He never learned Russian or Ukrainian, and had few connections to locals, she said.Hubbard is one of at least 10 Americans behind bars in Russia, nearly two months after a prisoner swap on August 1 between Moscow and the West freed three Americans and dozens of others.Separately, on Monday, a court in Voronezh, south of Moscow, sentenced US citizen and ex-marine Robert Gilman to seven years and one month in prison for assaulting a prison official and a state investigator while serving time for an earlier assault conviction.