A near miss between a drone and a Lufthansa aircraft landing at Los Angeles International Airport may give impetus to moves to regulate consumer drones more closely, including by using technologies like geofencing. "This is one more incident that could have brought down an airliner, and it's completely unacceptable. A near-miss of 200 feet should serve as a stark reminder of the dangers posed by reckless drone use," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, in a statement. The senator said the Senate must pass legislation she introduced last year, called the Consumer Drone Safety Act, which would require safety features for consumer drones and strengthen the federal laws that govern their operation. The bill would, among other things, direct the Federal Aviation Administration to require safety features for newly manufactured consumer drones, such as geofencing to govern the altitude and location of flights and collision-avoidance software.

Japan is spending more than 1 billion to resurrect the area around the wrecked Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant as the country's "Innovation Coast." The region is trying to capitalize on technology developed in the five years spent cleaning up the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, including Hitachi Ltd. and Toshiba Corp. robots that slither like snakes or cruise through radioactive water like speed boats to investigate the flooded reactors. Fukushima Prefecture -- like Beirut or post-bankruptcy Detroit -- is ripe to develop a strong tech community, according to Samhir Vasdev, an innovation consultant at the World Bank. "To lead the future from Fukushima, we must overcome our failures," Fukushima Gov. Masao Uchibori said at the Foreign Press Center in Tokyo last month. "Creating new industries will attract new people, which will be vital to revitalizing the region."

Note: This is Part 2 of a two-part series on AI. We have what may be an extremely difficult problem with an unknown time to solve it, on which quite possibly the entire future of humanity depends. Welcome to Part 2 of the "Wait how is this possibly what I'm reading I don't get why everyone isn't talking about this" series. Part 1 started innocently enough, as we discussed Artificial Narrow Intelligence, or ANI (AI that specializes in one narrow task like coming up with driving routes or playing chess), and how it's all around us in the world today. We then examined why it was such a huge challenge to get from ANI to Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI (AI that's at least as intellectually capable as a human, across the board), and we discussed why the exponential rate of technological advancement we've seen in the past suggests that AGI might not be as far away as it seems. This left us staring at the screen, confronting the intense concept of potentially-in-our-lifetime ...

Say what you will about civilian drones and drone pilots, but when the going gets tough, these drone pilots will get going. According to published Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) commercial drone exemption requests, a big chunk of drone pilots are willing to lend a hand for possible emergencies. A total of 19 percent mentioned emergency services--that's six times as many requests from the last quarter of 2015. With all these pilots willingly to help out in case of emergencies, this could mean that private pilots can easily aid officials during search and rescue missions and other equally critical emergency scenarios. Despite this magnanimous offer to lend a hand, it doesn't necessarily guarantee pilots flying time. Certain legal restrictions may keep them on the ground– according to an FAA spokeswoman who spoke to The Verge, "a civilian must have a 333 exemption" to participate in emergency services.

The Diet on Thursday enacted a law banning drones from flying over important facilities such as the Prime Minister's Office while giving police the power to destroy drones if necessary. The legislation is expected to take effect before a foreign ministerial meeting of the Group of Seven industrial nations takes place in Hiroshima on April 11-12. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling coalition had been seeking early enactment of the bill to strengthen anti-terrorism measures ahead of the G-7 summit in Mie Prefecture in late May. The Civil Aeronautics Law was revised to regulate drone flights in September after a small drone was found on the roof of the building housing the Prime Minister's Office last April. A man was later convicted over the incident.

And no sound bite I come up with, no matter how good my English gets, will bring them back to life." First written in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 Israeli war on Gaza, these words from Rafeef Ziadah's poem "We Teach Life, Sir" became popularised by a 2011 performance that went viral. A Palestinian performance poet based in London, Ziadah is an activist in her own right and a member of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee. She has helped spearhead many of the initiatives calling for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel until it adheres to the demands granting Palestinians rights under international law. The poem is now featured on Ziadah's latest album of the same name, which blends her poetry with original music composed by Phil Mansour. Al Jazeera spoke with Ziadah about her latest album, the inspiration and politics of her art, as well as her UK-based activism. Al Jazeera: Your poems were previously known for your captivating performance. Why did you decide to add music to your poems? Rafeef Ziadah: Both my first album "Hadeel" and this second one "We Teach Life" have been collaborations with wonderful musicians who deliberately worked to ensure the music strengthened and emphasised the words. With an album, unlike live performances, people are not able to see me and relate to my facial expressions or hand gestures - on the album we wanted to recreate that connection and music really helped to bring the poems to life. I was happy to work with activist-artist Phil Monsour (who produced the album). The music has also helped introduce the work to a broader audience and is beginning to have radio play on independent radio stations around the world. Al Jazeera: How long did it take you to make this album? Why have you decided to release it now and what do you hope will come out of its release? Ziadah: The album was a slow collaboration that started with a number of poetry pieces and slowly grew in number. It took about 12 months to complete the final production, but the poems were written over several years and recorded in a few countries depending on accessibility. It is really an attempt to capture in words a number of recent experiences of Palestinians inside historic Palestine and in exile as well. This work is also - in many ways- a collective effort beyond myself and the musicians because we launched a crowd funding campaign to support the final stages of production and many people generously donated to make sure narratives that are largely absent in the Western mainstream can be heard. As I explain in the album's artwork "the poems and music here have been written over several years, three wars, two sieges, too many borders and many protests and picket lines.

There's still a huge amount of radioactive waste cleanup to do at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. Some of that cleanup can be done by careful humans. And there's some that's too dangerous for humans, but not quite dangerous enough to dissuade robots. Clearing the fuel rods out of the pool in reactor 3 is one of those tasks, and Toshiba has built a robot to tackle it. If you had to pick somewhere to eat a picnic lunch in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, inside the containment building of reactor 3 probably wouldn't be at the top of your list, but it also wouldn't be at the very bottom.

It is the year 2023, and for the first time, a self-driving car navigating city streets strikes and kills a pedestrian. A lawsuit is sure to follow. But exactly what laws will apply? Today, the law is scrambling to keep up with the technology, which is moving forward at a breakneck pace, thanks to efforts by Apple, Audi, BMW, Ford [pdf], General Motors, Google, Honda, Mercedes, Nissan, Nvidia, Tesla, Toyota, and Volkswagen. Google's prototype self-driving cars, with test drivers always ready to take control, are already on city streets in Mountain View, Calif., and Austin, Texas. In the second half of 2015, Tesla Motors began allowing owners (not just test drivers) to switch on its Autopilot mode.

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. The DARPA Robotics Challenge this past summer showcased how far humanoid robots have come--but also how far they have yet to go before they can tackle real-world practical applications. Even the best of the DRC behemoths stumbled and fell down, proving, as IEEE Spectrum noted at the time, that "not walking is a big advantage." There is, in fact, a new not-walking way for robots to perform many kinds of tasks better and faster: the dexterous drone.

The U.S. highway safety agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, has determined that a computer system can qualify as the legal driver of a car, Reuters reports. The opinion is expressed in a letter, dated 4 February, from NHTSA Chief Counsel Paul A. Hemmersbaugh to Chris Urmson, head of Google's self-driving car project. The letter, which appears on NHTSA's Web site, comes in response to Urmson's request three months earlier that the government allow for the possibility of a car that truly drives itself. "As a foundational starting point for the interpretations below, NHTSA will interpret'driver' in the context of Google's described motor vehicle design as referring to the SDS [self-driving system], and not to any of the vehicle occupants," Hemmersbaugh writes. "We agree with Google its [self-driving vehicle] will not have a'driver' in the traditional sense that vehicles have had drivers during the last more than 100 years."