CARACAS – Drones armed with explosives detonated near Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in an apparent assassination attempt that took place while he was delivering a speech to hundreds of soldiers being broadcast live on television, officials said. Caught by surprise mid-speech, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, looked up at the sky and winced after hearing the sound of an explosion pierce the air. "This was an attempt to kill me," he said later in an impassioned retelling of the events. "Today they attempted to assassinate me." Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said the incident took place shortly after 5:30 p.m. as Maduro was celebrating the National Guard's 81st anniversary.

CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro dodged an apparent assassination attempt when drones armed with explosives detonated while he was delivering a speech to hundreds of soldiers being broadcast live on television, officials said. Caught by surprise mid-speech, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, looked up at the sky and winced Saturday after hearing the sound of an explosion pierce the air. "This was an attempt to kill me," he said later in an impassioned retelling of the events. "Today they attempted to assassinate me." Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said the incident took place shortly after 5:30 p.m. as Maduro was celebrating the National Guard's 81st anniversary.

On Saturday, as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro gave a speech in Caracas before a large military assemblage, drones carrying explosives approached, detonating near the stage. While Maduro was unharmed, Venezuelan information minister Jorge Rodriguez said that the attack injured seven soldiers. It's a method of assault that only a few years ago felt unthinkable, but has quickly become inevitable. Details remain scarce about the exact nature of the attack, which Rodriguez characterized as an "assassination attempt," including what type of drones were used and the nature of the explosives involved. In a televised address to his country, Maduro appeared to attribute the strike to far-right factions in Venezuela and Columbia.

With greater investment from healthcare organisations and surgical robot technology about to become generic, the conditions are perfect for a boom in the surgical robotics market. But how can design engineers and technical medical staff ensure these new systems operate reliably and safely? Michele Windsor, global marketing manager at surgical robot battery manufacturer Accutronics, has a solution. While they may sometimes feel like a new medical technology, surgical robots have actually been around for several decades. The first robot system successfully conducted a neurosurgical biopsy in 1985, while the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved its first surgical robot -- the da Vinci surgical system -- in 2000.

Machine learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio has signed a letter with global AI experts and organizations, vowing to play no role in the creation of autonomous weapons, according to a report from CNN. The letter published online features signatories and input from over 160 AI-related companies and organizations, and 2,400 researchers from 36 countries, who are calling for a global ban on the development of lethal autonomous weapons. The purpose of the letter was to bring together governments and AI leaders to commit to "neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade, or use of lethal autonomous weapons." "In this light, we the undersigned agree that the decision to take a human life should never be delegated to a machine." Other Canadian institutions and companies that have signed the letter include the Vector Institute, Element AI, Clearpath Robotics, and the Canadian Association for Artificial Intelligence.

A Russian official posted a video on his Facebook page of FEDOR, a humanoid robot being worked on by the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects. It's shown using tools, driving a car and shooting guns at targets.

Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro may be the first major leader to have faced a drone-based assassination attempt. Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez claimed that at least one bomb-laden drone had exploded close to Maduro while he was giving a speech at a Caracas event on August 4th. The authoritarian leader was unhurt in the incident, but seven National Guard soldiers were reportedly injured. Video from state TV showed Maduro and officials looking up in a moment of panic before the camera cut away, with the assembled troops running soon afterward. The country has seen mounting unrest over recent years due to both Maduro's anti-democratic policies and an economic collapse triggered in part by plummeting oil prices.

Venezuelan officials say explosive drones went off as President Nicolás Maduro was giving a live televised speech in Caracas, but he is unharmed.

CARACAS, Venezuela – Drones armed with explosives detonated near Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as he gave a speech to hundreds of soldiers in Caracas on Saturday but the socialist leader was unharmed, according to the government. Seven people were injured in the apparent attack which came as Maduro celebrated the National Guard's 81st anniversary, said Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez. Maduro's speech was abruptly cut short and soldiers could be seen breaking ranks and scattering. "At exactly 5:41 p.m. in the afternoon several explosions were heard," Rodriguez said in a live address to the nation minutes after the incident. "The investigation clearly reveals they came from drone-like devices that carried explosives."

The use of machine learning (ML) is on the rise in many sectors of software development, and automotive software development is no different. In particular, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Driving Systems (ADS) are two areas where ML plays a significant role. In automotive development, safety is a critical objective, and the emergence of standards such as ISO 26262 has helped focus industry practices to address safety in a systematic and consistent way. Unfortunately, these standards were not designed to accommodate technologies such as ML or the type of functionality that is provided by an ADS and this has created a conflict between the need to innovate and the need to improve safety. In this report, we take steps to address this conflict by doing a detailed assessment and adaption of ISO 26262 for ML, specifically in the context of supervised learning. First we analyze the key factors that are the source of the conflict. Then we assess each software development process requirement (Part 6 of ISO 26262) for applicability to ML. Where there are gaps, we propose new requirements to address the gaps. Finally we discuss the application of this adapted and extended variant of Part 6 to ML development scenarios.