Vertical Aerospace says government has given £10m backing, taking its total investment in the project to £48m.

British flying taxi start-up Vertical Aerospace has said the UK government has expressed interest in buying a military variant of its aircraft as it races to gain approval for flights with paying passengers.

Vertical also welcomed another £10m grant from the government, taking its total UK state funding to £48m.

The company demonstrated its prototype model of the flying taxi on Monday at the Farnborough international airshow, an industry event at an airfield west of London.

The aircraft is one of several electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft which manufacturers are hoping will revolutionise urban transport by landing quietly – relative to a helicopter – in built-up areas with no direct emissions.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jul/21/uk-military-electric-flying-taxi-vertical-aerospace-evtol

img: AI ChatGPT

Tracking data shows the plane was in the air for about 10 minutes when it abruptly descended 9,000ft (2,700m), with passengers telling local media they heard "some kind of explosion".

A Greek hospital official said a 61-year-old Serbian national was being treated for friction burns. "His wife held onto his legs for around five minutes to stop him from being sucked out," Michalis Giannakos said.

In a statement, Ryanair said its Friday morning flight from the Greek city of Thessaloniki to Germany's Memmingen returned "shortly after take-off when a passenger window dislodged in flight".

"The aircraft landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal. One passenger requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki," the Irish budget airline said.

It added that "a replacement aircraft was arranged to bring passengers to Memmingen" several hours later.

Passengers have told local media the man was left hanging head first out of the window as far as his shoulders before other passengers managed to pull him back inside.

Those on board have also said the window was smashed by pieces of the jet's engine - although Ryanair has not commented on this.

"We immediately realised there had been a decompression. There were screams... for a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door," Christina, a fellow passenger, told Radio Thessaloniki.

"The masks dropped and there was a strong smell. The head and shoulders of one passenger were outside the window. Fortunately, he hadn't taken off his seat belt."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgk65knkyzdo

img: id 2762852061, Karolis Kavolelis / Shutterstock.com

Following twin earthquakes in Venezuela that have killed at least 1,700 people, rescue teams are in a race against time to locate survivors trapped under rubble. Despite passing the critical 96-hour window where survival rates drop sharply, international and local search groups maintain day-one intensity using a multi-layered approach. These include:

• Trained search dogs that can detect human scent as far as 10m under rubble and find hard-to-navigate paths through rubble
• Rescue workers use sensitive listening devices that can pick up faint tapping, scratching or voices deep beneath collapsed structures
• Specialised cameras are threaded into tight gaps to visually inspect voids and micro drones - nicknamed "cockroach drones" - are also being used on the ground

While the physical window for easy rescue has closed, search and rescue experts emphasize that individuals can survive much longer if they have access to air pockets and water. Teams continue meticulously digging through collapsed buildings, balancing heavy machinery with delicate manual tools to avoid further shifts in the rubble, driven by the lingering hope of finding more survivors alive.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn75jk07y5do

img: Einsatzkräfte nach verheerendem Erdbeben in Venezuela von Marco Verch unter Creative Commons 4.0

Ford says it has hired back some human engineers after AI failed to match their skills and experience. In a bid to reap the benefits of the tech, which developers claim can cut costs and boost productivity, the US carmaker adopted it across some parts of its operations including for quality checks. But, according to Bloomberg, its executives said the firm has rehired more than 300 "veteran" quality inspectors in recent years to make up for the pitfalls of automated systems.

"Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it's only as good as the information you use to train it," Charles Poon, vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told reporters. Over prior years, we didn't pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles," he said.

The US automaker is among many to have seized on the buzz around AI, particularly amid Wall Street fervour about the tech's potential to increase margins. "AI will leave a lot of white collar people behind," Ford boss Jim Farley said in an interview with author Walter Isaacson last June. In an October earnings call, external, chief operating officer Kumar Galhotra said the firm was "deploying AI across the entire industrial system". This included rolling out 900 AI-powered cameras in its plants "to detect quality issues at the source and help us mitigate supply disruptions", Galhotra told investors.

But Poon told reporters on Wednesday the firm's AI-driven checks had failed to live up to expectations. "Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product," he said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgrkd41n2v9o

img: ID 40452208 | Ford Assembly Line © Driftinglight | Dreamstime.com