Amazon has been busy testing out its new Prime Air initiative at a secret location in the English countryside. The service's promise of a 30-minute delivery by specially designed drones may look like click-bait PR, but it's an early sign of the significant changes coming to cities around the world. For the moment, much of the hype around drones is full of caveats: safety is always the first priority, and nobody quite knows the full extent of what's possible. Amazon has been busy testing out its new Prime Air initiative at a secret location in the English countryside. This undated image provided by Amazon.com

During my commute the other day, I ended up on a dark subway car. The train still had power--the air conditioning was on, the announcements were coming through--but all the lights were dead. I live near an above-ground stop, so at first there was morning sunshine coming in through the windows. But when the train went underground, we were plunged into complete darkness. I found myself suddenly in a sea of floating, ghostly faces, illuminated by the glow of smartphones.

Apple is in the final stages of constructing a mammoth new campus in California to house the bulk of its workers. It's been lovingly called the "Spaceship" for years, and the latest drone flyover of the site shows you why. As per usual, two drone pilots have been conducting flyovers of the facility using DJI Inspire 1 and Phantom 4 quadcopters. They show an outer building that's mostly done, with details like landscaping and solar panels being finished at speed. The first video, filmed by Duncan Sinfield with his Inspire 1, does a good job of showing you around campus.

A Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Wisconsin spent nearly half a million dollars on equipment it couldn't use, including two robots purchased to move supplies throughout the facility. Staffers at the VA Medical Center in Madison, Wisconsin, purchased two robots for about 313,000 in September 2012 without determining whether they could move effectively through the hospital's hallways, according to a Friday report released by the agency's inspector general substantiating allegations of wasted funds at the medical center. The robots were not used for two years. The watchdog found that the hospital wasted about 410,000 on the robots and a laser lead extractor, which was leased by the facility's cardiology department for nearly 100,000 and not used for two and a half years. The audit provides the latest evidence of wasted funds at the federally run network of hospitals, which has been faulted for spending billions each year on contracts for goods and services without sufficient oversight.

Indian and Pakistani troops fired at each other in disputed Kashmir on Monday, as Indian troops searched an army camp elsewhere in the region where suspected militants killed an Indian paramilitary soldier. Indian army Lt. Col. Manish Mehta said Pakistani troops fired without provocation using small arms and mortar shells in the Poonch sector of the Line of Control separating the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir. Pakistan's army said in a statement that its troops were responding to unprovoked firing by Indian soldiers. Both sides said the exchange of fire was continuing. In Islamabad, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met with the leaders of all Pakistani political parties to discuss the ongoing clashes.

One balmy May evening, thirty of Silicon Valley's top entrepreneurs gathered in a private room at the Berlinetta Lounge, in San Francisco. Paul Graham considered the founders of Instacart, DoorDash, Docker, and Stripe, in their hoodies and black jeans, and said, "This is Silicon Valley, right here." All the founders were graduates of Y Combinator, the startup "accelerator" that Graham co-founded: a three-month boot camp, run twice a year, in how to become a "unicorn"--Valleyspeak for a billion-dollar company. Thirteen thousand fledgling software companies applied to Y Combinator this year, and two hundred and forty were accepted, making it more than twice as hard to get into as Stanford University. After graduating thirteen hundred startups, YC now boasts the power--and the peculiarities--of an island nation. At the noisy end of the room, Graham was cheerfully encouraging improbable schemes. At the quiet end, Sam Altman was absorbed in private calculations. When founders came over to ...

Los Angeles County Museum of Art director Michael Govan will kick off South by South Lawn: A White House Festival of Ideas, Art and Action, which starts Monday morning with Govan's breakfast conversation with light-and-space artist James Turrell and architect David Adjaye. The event is a White House riff on the South by Southwest Conference & Festivals, where President Obama appeared this year in a keynote conversation. Govan's talk with Turrell and Adjaye, architect of the Smithsonian Institution's new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, will take place at the nearby Newseum. "I'm excited the arts are a lead in the White House's efforts to get us all to think big," Govan said by email. "James Turrell and David Adjaye are two big thinkers who have worked persistently to pursue their art and make meaningful contributions to our culture."

Africa's wildlife is in a constant state of danger. Between 2009 and 2015, Tanzania and Mozambique lost more than half of their elephants, many of them to poaching for ivory smuggling. The decline has propelled African vulture populations, who feed on elephant carcasses, toward extinction too. And attempts at curtailing poaching and ivory smuggling haven't helped the dwindling elephant population. In South Africa, rhinos are a prized poaching target too, for their horns.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display