A drone explodes during a Russian drone strike in Kyiv on Nov. 14. LONDON - Explosive weapons killed or injured children at record levels last year, as wars increasingly move into urban areas, Save the Children said in a report published Thursday. Nearly 12,000 children were killed or injured in conflict last year worldwide, said the U.K.-based charity, citing U.N. figures. This is the highest number since records began in 2006, and is 42% higher than the 2020 total. Previously, children in war zones were more likely to die from malnutrition, disease or failing health systems. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

Hu et al. [1] suggested using uncrewed vehicles in civil infrastructure asset management. Similarly, Bechtsis et al. [2] propose using uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs) in precision farming. One of the emerging areas where such vehicles can prove helpful is assisting in postdisaster evacuation. Natural disasters, including earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions, can severely damage the urban infrastructure, leading to considerable losses. Following such events, providing timely relief and disseminating crucial information, such as safe evacuation routes, becomes essential for affected individuals' safe and organized movement. Recently, among the advanced technologies integrated into disaster response missions include uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) that have been crucial in assessing the state of critical infrastructure essential services, including telecommunications, transportation, and buildings, to facilitate efficient disaster response and evacuation [3]. UAV systems have proven to be increasingly valuable in disaster relief and emergency response (DRER) efforts by enhancing the capabilities of the first responders, offering advanced predictive insights, and enabling early warning systems [4]. UAVs have assisted in diverse tasks, including remote sensing, search and rescue, forest fire detection, survey and surveillance [5].

Developing reliable UAV navigation systems requires robust air-to-air object detectors capable of distinguishing between objects seen during training and previously unseen objects. While many methods address closed-set detection and achieve high-confidence recognition of in-domain (ID) targets, they generally do not tackle open-set detection, which requires simultaneous handling of both ID and out-of-distribution (OOD) objects. Existing open-set approaches typically rely on a single uncertainty score with thresholding, limiting flexibility and often conflating OOD objects with background clutter. In contrast, we propose a lightweight, model-agnostic post-processing framework that explicitly separates background from unknown objects while preserving the base detector's performance. Our approach extends open-set detection beyond binary ID/OOD classification to real-time three-way classification among ID targets, OOD objects, and background. To this end, we employ a fusion scheme that aggregates multiple confidence estimates and per-detection features using a compact multilayer perceptron (MLP). Incorporating different logit variants into the MLP consistently enhances performance across both binary and three-class classification without compromising throughput. Extensive ablation and comparative experiments confirm that our method surpasses threshold-based baselines in two-class classification by an average of 2.7% AUROC, while retaining or improving open-set mAP. Furthermore, our study uniquely enables robust three-class classification, a critical capability for safe UAV navigation, where OOD objects must be actively avoided and background regions safely ignored. Comparative analysis highlights that our method surpasses competitive techniques in AUROC across datasets, while improving closed-set mAP by up to 9 points, an 18% relative gain.

This paper proposed a novel fully-actuated hexacopter. It features a dual-frame passive tilting structure and achieves independent control of translational motion and attitude with minimal actuators. Compared to previous fully-actuated UAVs, it liminates internal force cancellation, resulting in higher flight efficiency and endurance under equivalent payload conditions. Based on the dynamic model of fully-actuated hexacopter, a full-actuation controller is designed to achieve efficient and stable control. Finally, simulation is conducted, validating the superior fully-actuated motion capability of fully-actuated hexacopter and the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.

UAV swarms have emerged as transformative systems for complex missions including wildfire surveillance ( Julian and Kochenderfer 2019), intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance ( Kolar 2020), situational awareness ( Scharre 2018), and cooperative interception ( Balhance et al. 2017). In these applications, trajectory optimization is the cornerstone for ensuring both mission success and operational s afety ( Sezer 2022; Qian et al. 2020; Sanchez-Lopez et al. 2020). Over the past decade, trajectory optimization techniques hav e evolved from sophisticated single-agent formulations to distributed multi-agent frameworks, driven by the increasing scale and complexity of swarm-based missions ( Saravanos et al. 2023). For individual UAV trajectory optimization, a variety of numerical m ethods have demonstrated strong performance. Pseudospectral methods achieve high-accuracy solution s by discretizing continuous-time problems ( Chai et al. 2017), while sequential quadratic programming (SQP) ( Hong et al. 2021) and sequential convex programming (SCP) ( Deligiannis et al. 2019) provide flexible tools for handling nonlinear dynamics and constraint s.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll arrives in Kyiv on a fact-finding mission to meet with Ukrainian officials and discuss efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

A new pilot program aims to help EMS respond quicker, not act as a replacement. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. When they aren't baffling the public or grounding wildfire planes, drones have some pretty solid uses. Apart from unnecessarily fast same-day deliveries, the pilotless aircrafts may soon become a lifesaving emergency response tool . A collaborative team of health experts, community organizations, and universities are in the middle of a pilot program using drones and automated external defibrillators (AEDs).

Is the fall of Pokrovsk inevitable? Is Trump losing patience with Putin? At least 19 people have been killed and dozens wounded in Russian drone and missile attacks across Ukraine, according to the country's emergency service. The attack came overnight on Wednesday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to arrive in Turkiye, where he hopes to revive talks over ending the war caused by Russia's full-scale invasion two years ago. Effective sanctions and assistance to Ukraine can change this," the president said in a social media post on Wednesday, calling for air defence missile aid from allies.

The UK lacks a plan to defend itself from military attack, a committee of MPs has warned. In a highly critical report, the defence committee says the UK is over-reliant on US resources and that preparations to defend itself and overseas territories in the event of attack are nowhere near where they need to be. The committee's chair, Labour MP Tan Dhesi, said: Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine, unrelenting disinformation campaigns, and repeated incursions into European airspace mean that we cannot afford to bury our heads in the sand. It comes as the Ministry of Defence (MoD) identified parts of the country where six or more new munitions factories could be built. In June, Defence Secretary John Healey announced plans to move the UK to war-fighting readiness, including £1.5bn to support the construction of new munitions factories, which will be built by private contractors.

Is the fall of Pokrovsk inevitable? Is Trump losing patience with Putin? Russian drones struck two central districts - Slobidskyi and Osnovyansk - in Ukraine's second largest city Kharkiv, injuring five people in an apartment building and triggering a fire, authorities said. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said 22 residents had been evacuated from one section of the damaged apartment building while another drone struck an area outside a medical facility, injuring a doctor and damaging the building and nearby cars. The Kharkiv region's governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said 11 drones were deployed in the attack and seven people were injured in total.