to remain in place. strong winds are threatening further destruction across the city. three fires still rage as firefighters try to gain control. disappointment for jeff bezos. the launch of a blue origin rocket is cancelled in florida for technical reasons. the government sets that new plans to use ai reasons. the government sets that new plans to use alto boost growth and help with efficiency. hello. welcome to bbc news. the number of people known to have died in the los angeles wildfires has risen to 24. with high winds forecast over the coming days and fire crews are now facing a race against time to avert further destruction. but from the ashes many remarkable stories are rising as people battled to stop their neighbourhoods from burning down. our correspondent helen humphrey has this report.

oh, my house! for 36 years, fighting fires was rich snyder's profession. now retired, when flames tore through his community in pasadena, it was personal. armed with a hose, and with his bare hands, suddenly, he wasn't just saving strangers. he was saving his neighbours and their homes. lord help us. lord, with your hands. whether it was divine intervention, or rich's sheer determination, their lives were saved. among them, a neighbour with additional needs, confused amid the chaos. no, no! greg, your house is on fire. your house is... greg, greg! you have to come with me. i've still got to process it. yeah, my neighbour needed, needs assistance, and we told him early on to leave, and he said, no, i'll stay. and i grabbed him and i was pulling on him, and he was fighting me, because he was going to go

back in his burning house and lock the door. you know, we got him out and we looked back and his house was fully enveloped. across la county, some 60 square miles of land now scorched earth. firefighters have gained ground against the two largest blazes, the palisades and eaton fires. but the devastation left behind is staggering. this is malibu. normally, you wouldn't be able to see the pacific ocean from here. but all of those multi—million dollar mansions are gone. it is destruction as far as the eye can see, and the road to recovery will be long. and with forecasters warning that the fierce santa ana winds could return, the battle is far from over. residents in the fires�* path face a cruel waiting game, fearing that the nightmare will strike again. i am terrified because if it does change, i actually don't know where i would go, to be honest. like, i don't have family here.

i have friends, but they're all affected. so i don't have a set plan in mind and it's terrifying. amid the terror, a political storm brews. president—elect donald trump has criticised what he calls incompetent california politicians for the crisis. injust over a week, it will be one he inherits. is the incoming president expected to come here? i believe so. what awaits donald trump, if he comes, may reveal an even bleaker reality than what is known so far, as the number of missing continues to grow. helena humphrey, bbc news, los angeles. former california legislator and la resident mike gatto told us anger is mounting at how the authorities have reacted. there is a lot of anger here, i'm not going to lie to you. you know, i am a democrat, california is a state that is run by democrats. there's a lot of voters

here who are democrats. but more and more i am hearing quite a bit of rage from people who live in los angeles at our democratic elected officials. the common phrase that's going around was that this was 50% weather and 50% incompetence. it's things like the response time, the preparation, did we heed the warnings? i mean, angelenos, to give you a sense of things, the other day we all got a frantic notice on our cell phones that said you need to evacuate. just about everybody in this county of 10 million thought that their house was on fire or their street was on fire. it turned out to be a false alarm. they announced it was a false alarm. and then a few hours later we got another evacuation notice that was another false alarm. and so, you know, it's just things like that don't really impart much of trust with authorities. if you can't listen to the evacuation notices and it becomes the boy who cried wolf, people are going to die because they are going to ignore the next one. our correspondent david were listed in brentwood in la and says many there have lost everything they have found.

as you can see behind me a curfew is in place on this, at the outskirts of brentwood, the latest upmarket enclave to find itself in the cross hairs of the worst disaster in california's history. the evacuation orders are in place around here and the power is out all around us in this part of sunset boulevard after winds picked up over the weekend. and those winds are expected to gain in strength over the next three days to hurricane force and that has prompted officials here to declare the evacuation orders will remain in place until thursday morning at the earliest before they are lifted, to the chagrin of many people who have been displaced from their homes

and they are anxious to see what if anything remains of their homes and their belongings. a little earlier on it was revealed cadaver dogs have been brought in to help with the search for human remains in the worst affected areas of these fires. the la coroner's office has revealed 24 people are now known to have died in these fires with 16 people still missing. that death toll is almost certain to rise. you mentioned those displaced people, where are they and are they getting the food and shelter and help they need at this time? there are about nine separate evacuation centres that have been set up around los angeles. funded by church groups and other community organisations. some people have gone there. others have housed themselves in hotels, air b&b is offering

some sort of dispensation to people who can't afford their normal prices. and there are those who have moved out of town completely, some to relatives in other states, some perhaps to seek a new life away from the sort of threat these fires can pose. it will be a massive rebuilding operation and i think there are quite a few people who won't have the stomach for it. can you explain why the curfew is in place? it is basically to prevent people who may want to come back into the evacuation zones, possibly to steal or loot, from being able to do so. there were reports of looting in the first few days of this disaster and as a result the national guard officers who you may see behind me have been drafted in, hundreds of them, to help the police secure these areas

and make sure people who have gone through one tragedy don't have to endure a second such tragedy. we will bring you more on the la fires shortly with a cbs correspondent. in a blow to amazon founderjeff bezos the launch of a reusable space rocket by his space rocket origin has been called off. there engineers were unable to solve engineers bugging the rocket so the take—off was stopped. after several earlier delays the rocket is being bring to you and there is no word on when the next launch opportunity may be. in a statement blue origin said it would be troubleshooting what it called a vehicle subsystem issue in the downtime. the new glenn has been touted as a serious rival to the elon musk space x rocket. our science

correspondent pallab ghosh explained why delays like this are to be expected. this is the first time he is trying out this rocket, new glenn. a gigantic rocket, 98 metres tall. it ultimately is a competitor to elon musk�*s rocket but in its very first launch this is expected to happen, if everything isn't going to plan, call it off, and try again another day. when elon musk tried with his rockets there were lots of explosions and crashes and delays. this is part of the development process. i would imaginejeff bezos would want it to have gone up and performed successfully but i think it was more likely than not there would either be a delay or some little bit wouldn't go right. this is normal and part of the development process but the billionaires will be competing with each other in space very soon. the question is when new glenn will be ready for launch. it probably won't be

in the next few days because they are draining it of fuel and they will have to put fuel back into it which is time—consuming and they will have to resolve whatever issue it was and the launch window closes on the 16th of january so there is too much to do i think to do it in that time. if i were to guess, i might be wrong, but it will probably be in a few days they will have another go. it is a good job they are billionaires, because i am guessing it is costly. they blamed a vehicle subsystem failure and do we know what went wrong? something in the rocket wasn't working properly is the translation. so many things in a rocket have to go right, hundreds of things. before each launch, notjust for a test flight like this, isn't something quite

right they call the launch off. they try and fix it and have another go. this is the norm but for the first maiden test flight, they are especially careful. you talked about this window and that it finishes on the 20th of january, why is that? there are lots of launches happening. once upon a time you would have a launch every now and again but there are launches every day so it is a question of air traffic. they have booked these slots and if they miss them they have to rebook and convince the federal aviation authority that everything is good to go so we will have to wait and see but once it does launch we are in store for a really exciting battle between the billionaires because elon musk has achieved great things with starship and his falcon rockets. he has flown 400 times into orbit. jeff bezos hasn't flown a single time yet so he has a lot of catching up to do but he plans to make up for lost time. the uk government will set out

its plan later today to use a! across the country to try to boost growth and deliver public services more efficiently. the ai action plan will be backed by leading tech firms and includes so—called growth zones where development will be focused but running such advanced technology is an energy hungry affair as our ai correspondent marked his act reports. ahead of the government's a! strategy launch, science and technology secretary peter kyle was shown the latest research into nuclear fusion at the uk atomic energy authority at culham in oxfordshire. scientists predict fusion could one day produce near limitless supplies of clean energy. it's still in development, but ideal for energy—hungry data centres, necessary to power a world filled with al. last summer, the government tasked ai adviser matt clifford with creating a uk a! action plan. the plan includes 50 recommendations, all of which are now being implemented.

some of the standouts include an energy council, led by peter kyle and energy secretary ed miliband, to address costs and solutions. a national data library, with the promise of secure access to public sector data. and support for uk—based ai companies and improved computing capabilities. and this empty field in the atomic energy authority site is part of a plan to partner with a private firm to build a data centre here, a pilot scheme for al growth zones across the uk — these zones offering enhanced power access and streamline planning permissions. the power—hungry demands of a! are just one thing on a long list of challenges facing the technology. and when we consider that some of the biggest players in al are based in the united states, how does the uk ensure it has a significant voice when it comes to the development of the technology, a voice which isn't drowned out by political, regulatory or commercial concerns across the atlantic? now, at the moment, we don't

have any cutting edge companies that are british—owned. we have deepmind, which started in britain, but is now american—owned. now, we want to keep all of those ingredients that enable that kind of scale of innovation and investment to exist in britain. mark zuckerberg, ceo of meta, which of course owns facebook, whatsapp, instagram, he said recently, meta would work with president trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after american companies, and pushing to censor more. how can the uk effectively regulate the development of ai, and also the wider tech industry, against companies that are taking that kind of a stance? now, we have the online safety act. that has obligations on companies that want to come to britain and offer services to british citizens to keep people safe and make sure that safety is baked into products. if meta falls foul of the online safety act, what will happen? every company that operates

within britain must adapt and adhere to the law. every company. not negotiable. research into fusion energy here at culham continues, demonstrating uk innovation. but will the government's ai action plan result in a home—grown company that can challenge the global a! power players? marc cieslak, bbc news. for more details on why prime minister keir starmer is focussing so strongly on al, i spoke to chief political correspondent henry zeffman. the prime minister i think is throwing his personal authority behind this and is trying to demonstrate the message that the action plan expresses which is the uk wants to be a hospitable

home for the ai sector and for al companies. i am really struck by the optimistic rhetoric that we have heard overnight and we will hear more from the prime minister on artificial intelligence because previous governments have flitted between stressing caution about the potential dangers of ai and optimism about the potential upsides. keir starmer and his government appear to have definitively landed on the side of the upsides and i think that is what we are getting in this speech and announcement and action plan today. do you think he will talk about the practical use because when you mention al to the normal person they will be thinking how can this improve and affect our lives? the government is trying to stress the ways in which a! could be used to improve what they do, the public sector, so you have had them talking about ways in which they could use a! analysis of scans in the nhs, so that a doctor is not looking at the scans and the doctor is freed up to do clinical work but also some evidence

the government says is that actually having a computer program analysing scans mean they might be able to detect disease, cancer for example, better than the human eye can. similar applications in terms of freeing up teachers in the education sector to teach and using ai to do some of the more mundane tasks they face, the government is even talking about ways in which a! can be used to detect pot holes which so aggravate motorists. so on that level you will hear the government talking about the ways in which it can be used practically in the public sector. the other side to this is economic because the government is quite open about the fact that if they are using a! more in the public sector they hope that will mean they are spending less money frankly on humans in the public sector and saving money in that way. around the world and across the uk. this is bbc news.

looking back. let's return to our top story — weather forecasters in california are warning fierce winds which fuelled the infernos around los angeles are expected to pick up again this week, as fire crews on the ground race to make progress controlling three wildfires. let's speak to cbs correspondent charlie de mar. here in the palisades area. can you start by telling us the situation around you? good morning- — situation around you? good morning- as _ situation around you? good morning. as you _ situation around you? good morning. as you can - situation around you? good morning. as you can see i situation around you? good morning. as you can see it | morning. as you can see it really does look like a war zone. that is how so many residents described their own homes. i have talked to a lot of people who have been trying to return to their homes, look at what this file did to it and they can't even recognise their own homes. they have lived here for decades and now the street where they live and they have even cross—referenced it with their phone and you can see behind mejust what their phone and you can see behind me just what the sprouted, reducing these homes

down to bare metal. as for the weather, firefighters did make great progress over the weekend. the winds were a bit more calm so they did get ahead of the fire and also a lot of resources were called in and a lot more resources than the beginning when this fire started. there are firefighters from around the country and this is also an international battle. there are helicopters and aircraft from canada and firefighters also from mexico have joined the front lines. the big concern is the centre and i went moving in and it could bring gusts of up to 60 mph and that is the concern right now on the ground for firefighters that even though they made all this progress they made all this progress they could be dealing with a lot more in the coming hours. we know people have been evacuated from areas of concern and still waiting to find out if their homes will be ok. that is the frustrating _ if their homes will be ok. that is the frustrating part - if their homes will be ok. that is the frustrating part for - if their homes will be ok. twat is the frustrating part for so many because so many have been

evacuated and still are. residents aren't allowed back in here yet and there are safety reasons. there are power lines down and it won't be safe for people to go in. leaders here are urging people not to slip through their belongings even though it is a natural tendency to see if i think survived the fire because they are concerned about some of the toxic materials that could be contained in the ash. the national guard has been called in to help with security and there has been concern and about 30 arrests polluting so at this point residents that have been evacuated aren't able to come back to their homes and in many cases the last time they saw their homes standing was when that fire was moving in and they didn't have any other choice other than to evacuate. other choice other than to evacuate-— other choice other than to evacuate. ~ . , ., , , ., evacuate. what is happening to those peeple — evacuate. what is happening to those people whose _ evacuate. what is happening to those people whose homes - evacuate. what is happening to l those people whose homes have been destroyed and what is the next step for them? that been destroyed and what is the next step for them?— been destroyed and what is the next step for them? that is the bi est next step for them? that is the biggest question. _

next step for them? that is the biggest question. some - next step for them? that is the biggest question. some peoplej biggest question. some people have vowed to rebuild but this will take months and years. right now the goals of these fires is still under investigation but when it is all said and done the two largest fires, the palisades fires and also the eaton fires, they will be costly, up to $150 billion, with the destruction estimate. it is too early for people to even think about rebuilding because of you can see it is a mess. there is a lot to clean up before a rebuild could even be thought for so many. rebuild could even be thought for so many-— rebuild could even be thought for so many. thank you. one of the world's _ for so many. thank you. one of the world's largest _ for so many. thank you. one of the world's largest religious - the world's largest religious festivals starts today in india. mahakumbh mela only happens every 12 years and hindus are expected to take part. our correspondence hussain sent us the latest from

prayagraj. this is where everyone will take a dip. hindus believe taking a dip where the ganges river meets this point, at this particular time it will read one of their scents. that is the religious part of it and what has really brought so many thousands of people here today on this first day. there is a real sense of community here. there are lots of people that are selling different items, there is also food available. there is someone even doing circus tricks and there is a real community kind of feel. people travel far and wide

to come to this, don't they? they do. just to give you a sense of how large these programmes are we are talking about 15 square miles, roughly about 40 square kilometres, that is how large this area is. if you think about a comparison, if you think about something like 4000 football pitches. and at each different area you have different sections. there is one area that is full of tents, cotton tents meant for the common man that will be here for the next several days or even for the entire 45 day festival. then there is another section where you have more of the religious leaders and they are set up in these ornate tents that are decorated in orange and lights. it is really all about coming to take a dip here in the waters

just off the side. you can look at some amazing pictures from the festival on our website and we are following the latest on those la buyers. we have heard from the pasadena fire chief who the fires in los angeles could take off again on tuesday and wednesday as we were hearing from our cbs correspondent charlie de mar. the high winds are forecast and the fire chief as saying they are at a fork in the road in the fight against the road in the fight against the blaze. to keep up—to—date with that on our website but for now stay with us here on bbc news. hello again. this week's weather is looking much more settled than last week. it's also not looking as cold either. in fact, as we go through this week, after this morning in the south, it's been so cold, things will turn less

cold through the week ifanything, milderforsome of us, as represented by the yellows and also the ambers on the charts. today we've got two weather fronts sinking south, both of them bringing some rain with them in doing so. and there's a squeeze on those isobars. it's going to be windy today across northwest scotland, through the irish sea and to the east of the pennines. our rain pushing through scotland and northern ireland, getting into northern england only to have a second band of rain following on behind. ahead of it, though, a lot of cloud to start with, with some spots of drizzle, but we'll see some hazy sunshine develop in places through the afternoon. but temperatures, six to about 13 degrees. now through this evening and overnight, our weather front continues as a weak feature to sink south. it's bumping into a ridge of high pressure so we'll have a band of cloud, some drizzle, maybe some patchy mist and fog forming in the southeast where we've got lighter winds, but stronger winds in the north with our overnight lows, 1 in st helier to an overnight low of 10 in belfast. so that takes us into tomorrow.

our weak weather front still with us as this band of cloud. again, you may see the odd spot of drizzle from this. any mist and fog slow to clear, but the brightest skies, eastern scotland and northeast england, with a band of rain pushing north into shetland. in shetland, the top temperature will be 9 degrees, but the high tomorrow is looking at around about 11 and the milder air is seeping into the southeast. so tuesday night into wednesday the high pressure is still with us, effectively keeping these weather fronts at bay. a squeeze in the isobars tells you once again it's going to be windy across the northwest and there'll be some fog around as well. now this fog could take its time to clear. it may lingerfor much of the day, but on the other side of it, some dry conditions, some sunny spells developing before the weather front brings in rain to the northwest. temperatures on wednesday, 9 to about 11 degrees. 8 in the channel islands. then, as we head into thursday, we still have this area of cloud across the south. some fog in there as well. a lot of dry weather, some sunshine. a weather front, though,

coming in across the northwest, will introduce some rain. and temperatures — well, we're looking at about 7 in liverpool to highs of 11.

the number of people headlines. the number of people killed in the los angeles wildfires has risen to 24 with at least 16 people still missing. the strong winds are threatening further destruction across the city. three fires are still burning as firefighters try to regain control. israel and hamas consider a so—called final draft of a possible ceasefire deal. can the nhs afford to prescribe weight loss jabs for all eligible patients? we will have the latest. a