Government
GOP senator 'p---ed off' by Russia forcing down US drone: 'We cannot allow that to happen'
Republican Sen. Mike Rounds told Fox News' Jennifer Griffin Tuesday at a Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute summit that he is angered by Russian fighter jet colliding with a U.S. drone over international waters. Republican Sen. Mike Rounds described himself as "p---ed off" following the reported collision of a Russian fighter jet with a U.S. military drone. U.S. military command alleged Tuesday that a Russian fighter jet dumped fuel on a U.S. drone over the Black Sea, clipped the drone's propeller and forced it into the water. Asked by Fox News' Jennifer Griffin for his feelings on the matter, Rounds. R-S.D., said he was "p---ed off."
Russia blames US for 'hostile' flights near its borders after forcing down US drone
Fox News correspondent Mike Tobin has the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war on'Special Report.' Tensions remain between Russia and the United States after a collision in international airspace. U.S. military command officials said Tuesday that a Russian fighter jet dumped fuel on a U.S. drone over the Black Sea, clipped the drone's propeller and forced it into the water. An MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft is parked in a hanger at Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada. Russia is now denying that the aircraft touched one another, and accusing the U.S. of unnecessarily escalating the issue.
UK, Germany scramble fighters to block Russian jets hours after US drone crash
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. The U.K. and Germany scrambled fighter jets to intercept two Russian aircraft flying near Estonia late Tuesday. The Russian aircraft, a Russian Il-78 Midas refueling plane and an Antonov 148 military transport, approached NATO airspace without contacting Estonian authorities. The incident was the first time the U.K. and Germany have conducted a joint air intercept as part of the NATO treaty.
Can young robotics fans unite a troubled Libya?
Youssef Jira, a fresh-faced 18-year-old in a hoodie with a bandana around his head, has big ambitions in a Libyan society where dictatorship and violence has dominated, rather than youthful creativity. Jira is one of a group of young tech fanatics who took part in the Libya Regional Championship for robotics in a suburb of Tripoli this month. Some 20 teams of 12-to-18-year-olds competed in the inclusive event. He wants to encourage other young people to use hi-tech to help modernise the divided and conflict-scarred country. "We want to send a message to the whole of society, because what we've learned has changed us a lot," Jira said, adding that he has gained new skills and learned about teamwork in pursuit of a common goal.
US accuses Russian jet of downing US drone: What we know so far
Washington's claim that a Russian fighter jet collided with a US surveillance drone near Crimea causing it to crash is both a rare military incident between the two superpowers and a serious escalation in already tense relations since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine last year. US and Russian officials have given conflicting accounts of what occurred on Tuesday over the Black Sea between the MQ-9 Reaper drone, valued at more than $30m and packed with sensitive US spying technology, and two Russian Su-27 fighter jets that were deployed to intercept the US aircraft. The Pentagon said two Russian Su-27 aircraft intercepted the drone and proceeded to dump fuel on the MQ-9 Reaper model as it conducted routine surveillance over the Black Sea in international airspace. US officials said the Russian jets flew around and in front of the drone several times for 30 to 40 minutes, and then one of the Su-27 fighters "struck the propeller" of the drone, "causing US forces to have to bring the MQ-9 down in international waters". A Pentagon spokesman said the collision likely damaged the Russian fighter jet, though the Su-27 did land.
Mix-and-match kit could enable astronauts to build a menagerie of lunar exploration bots: Robotic parts could be assembled into nimble spider bots for exploring lava tubes or heavy-duty elephant bots for transporting solar panels. -- ScienceDaily
To avoid a bottleneck of bots, a team of MIT engineers is designing a kit of universal robotic parts that an astronaut could easily mix and match to rapidly configure different robot "species" to fit various missions on the moon. Once a mission is completed, a robot can be disassembled and its parts used to configure a new robot to meet a different task. The team calls the system WORMS, for the Walking Oligomeric Robotic Mobility System. The system's parts include worm-inspired robotic limbs that an astronaut can easily snap onto a base, and that work together as a walking robot. Depending on the mission, parts can be configured to build, for instance, large "pack" bots capable of carrying heavy solar panels up a hill.
DIA's New China Mission Group to Track Threat Posed by AI Development - Nextgov
Improved defense intelligence collection and analysis of emerging technologies will rely on forming new partnerships between government and industry, according to leadership at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Doug Wade, the head of the DIA's China Mission Group, spoke during a Tuesday media discussion about his agency's effort to bring together the best of industry to identify specific threats China poses and coordinate responses . "So China is investing heavily right in its AI and ML capabilities," Wade said. "China's ability to use things like AI to ensure that they have strongโฆsurveillance coverage of citizens, whether they're China citizens or whether they export that technology to other regimes around the world, and then those regimes use it to exert totalitarian control." Wade said that this potential exportation of AI technology should be an area of concern as a threat to U.S. national security, as well as to ally nations in Europe.
How AI could write our laws
"Microlegislation" is a term for small pieces of proposed law that cater--sometimes unexpectedly--to narrow interests. Political scientist Amy McKay coined the term. She studied the 564 amendments to the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") considered by the Senate Finance Committee in 2009, as well as the positions of 866 lobbying groups and their campaign contributions. She documented instances where lobbyist comments--on health-care research, vaccine services, and other provisions--were translated directly into microlegislation in the form of amendments. And she found that those groups' financial contributions to specific senators on the committee increased the amendments' chances of passing.
A Formalization of Operads in Coq
Flores, Zachary, Taranto, Angelo, Bond, Eric, Forman, Yakir
What provides the highest level of assurance for correctness of execution within a programming language? One answer, and our solution in particular, to this problem is to provide a formalization for, if it exists, the denotational semantics of a programming language. Achieving such a formalization provides a gold standard for ensuring a programming language is correct-by-construction. In our effort on the DARPA V-SPELLS program, we worked to provide a foundation for the denotational semantics of a meta-language using a mathematical object known as an operad. This object has compositional properties which are vital to building languages from smaller pieces. In this paper, we discuss our formalization of an operad in the proof assistant Coq. Moreover, our definition within Coq is capable of providing proofs that objects specified within Coq are operads. This work within Coq provides a formal mathematical basis for our meta-language development within V-SPELLS. Our work also provides, to our knowledge, the first known formalization of operads within a proof assistant that has significant automation, as well as a model that can be replicated without knowledge of Homotopy Type Theory.