How is Russia replenishing its military? What is a'coalition of the willing'? How China forgot promises and'debts' to Ukraine How are Europe, the US pulling apart on Ukraine? A Ukrainian drone attack killed three people and injured 16 near the town of Foros on the Crimean Peninsula, the Russian-appointed head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, wrote in a post on Telegram. Russia's Ministry of Defence said the attack occurred "using strike drones equipped with high-explosive payloads", in a resort area "where there are no military targets whatsoever".

We present Agentic Aerial Cinematography: From Dialogue Cues to Cinematic Trajectories (ACDC), an autonomous drone cinematography system driven by natural language communication between human directors and drones. The main limitation of previous drone cinematography workflows is that they require manual selection of waypoints and view angles based on predefined human intent, which is labor-intensive and yields inconsistent performance. In this paper, we propose employing large language models (LLMs) and vision foundation models (VFMs) to convert free-form natural language prompts directly into executable indoor UAV video tours. Specifically, our method comprises a vision-language retrieval pipeline for initial waypoint selection, a preference-based Bayesian optimization framework that refines poses using aesthetic feedback, and a motion planner that generates safe quadrotor trajectories. We validate ACDC through both simulation and hardware-in-the-loop experiments, demonstrating that it robustly produces professional-quality footage across diverse indoor scenes without requiring expertise in robotics or cinematography. These results highlight the potential of embodied AI agents to close the loop from open-vocabulary dialogue to real-world autonomous aerial cinematography.

Abstract--Drones have recently emerged as a faster, safer, and cost-efficient way for last-mile deliveries of parcels, particularly for urgent medical deliveries highlighted during the pandemic. This paper addresses a new challenge of multi-parcel delivery with a swarm of energy-aware drones, accounting for time-sensitive customer requirements. Each drone plans an optimal multi-parcel route within its battery-restricted flight range to minimize delivery delays and reduce energy consumption. The problem is tackled by decomposing it into three sub-problems: (1) optimizing depot locations and service areas using K-means clustering; (2) determining the optimal flight range for drones through reinforcement learning; and (3) planning and selecting multi-parcel delivery routes via a new optimized plan selection approach. T o integrate these solutions and enhance long-term efficiency, we propose a novel algorithm leveraging actor-critic-based multi-agent deep reinforcement learning. Extensive experimentation using realistic delivery datasets demonstrate an exceptional performance of the proposed algorithm. We provide new insights into economic efficiency (minimize energy consumption), rapid operations (reduce delivery delays and overall execution time), and strategic guidance on depot deployment for practical logistics applications. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UA Vs), commonly known as drones, have gained significant attention as a solution for last-mile delivery, especially in recent years [1]. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the vulnerabilities of traditional delivery methods, as deliverymen risk spreading the virus. This was particularly problematic in quarantine zones, where customers faced difficulties in accessing logistics services [2], [3]. In contrast, drones offer a safer and more flexible alternative. Due to their high mobility, carrying capacity, and accurate GPS navigation, drones are able to deliver parcels directly to small places such as doorways and balconies, avoiding human contact and traffic congestion.

Our model generates realistic video sequences from a single frame, enriched with corresponding action spaces to enable reasoning-driven navigation in dynamic environments. Beyond direct policy learning, FlightDiffusion leverages its generative capabilities to synthesize diverse FPV trajectories and state-action pairs, facilitating the creation of large-scale training datasets without the high cost of real-world data collection. Our evaluation demonstrates that the generated trajectories are physically plausible and executable, with a mean position error of 0.25 m (RMSE 0.28 m) and a mean orientation error of 0.19 rad (RMSE 0.24 rad). This approach enables improved policy learning and dataset scalability, leading to superior performance in downstream navigation tasks. Results in simulated environments highlight enhanced robustness, smoother trajectory planning, and adaptability to unseen conditions. An ANOV A revealed no statistically significant difference between performance in simulation and reality (F(1, 16) = 0.394, p = 0.541), with success rates of M = 0.628 (SD = 0.162) and M = 0.617 (SD = 0.177), respectively, indicating strong sim-to-real transfer . The generated datasets provide a valuable resource for future UA V research. This work introduces diffusion-based reasoning as a promising paradigm for unifying navigation, action generation, and data synthesis in aerial robotics.

Why is Israel still in southern Lebanon? A war to shape Lebanon's future An Israeli drone strike has killed five people, including three children, in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, Lebanon's Health Ministry has said, as Israel continues to target its neighbour despite a US-brokered truce that took effect in November. The state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported on Sunday that the strike targeted a motorcycle and a vehicle, and wounded two other people. Why then did Israel attack Syria? The mother of the children was injured in the attack.

UN'gravely alarmed' by deteriorating situation in Sudan's el-Fasher The United Nations secretary-general has called for an immediate ceasefire in Sudan's Darfur region after a deadly drone attack on Friday killed more than 70 worshippers in el-Fasher, expressing "grave" alarm about the "rapidly deteriorating situation". "The fighting must stop now," Antonio Guterres said in a statement issued by his spokesperson on Saturday, urging the warring parties to engage in dialogue and provide humanitarian corridors, with the brutal civil war wracking the nation in its third year. El-Fasher, the capital of the North Darfur region, remains the government-backed Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and its allies' last major stronghold across Darfur. It has been under siege for more than a year by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which launched a renewed offensive to capture the city in recent weeks. Humanitarian organisations have raised alarm about growing hunger in the city as hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped without access to food, medicine and other essentials.

How is Russia replenishing its military? What is a'coalition of the willing'? How China forgot promises and'debts' to Ukraine How are Europe, the US pulling apart on Ukraine? Russian forces launched a large-scale missile and drone attack, targeting areas across Ukraine, killing at least three people and wounding dozens more, according to Ukrainian officials. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia launched 580 drones and 40 missiles, and that the attacks took place across nine regions, including Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, Zaporizhia, Poltava, Kyiv, Odesa, Sumy and Kharkiv.

Dutch police deployed water cannons and tear gas to disperse a protest in The Hague. The protesters were rallying for immigration restrictions and stricter policies for asylum seekers. AI creates new'memories' of Palestinians killed in Gaza Drone strike on mosque kills dozens in Sudan's el-Fasher Russia becoming'more dangerous', EU foreign affairs head warns

What does recognising a Palestinian state mean? AI creates new'memories' of Palestinians killed in Gaza NewsFeed AI creates new'memories' of Palestinians killed in Gaza People are using AI to create new'memories' of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza, generating touching images of them with their loved ones. Drone strike on mosque kills dozens in Sudan's el-Fasher Russia becoming'more dangerous', EU foreign affairs head warns

Notre-Dame's iconic towers reopen six years after fire The iconic Medieval towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris have reopened to the public, six years after a massive fire ravaged parts of the historical landmark and forced its closure. The central part of the cathedral was reopened in December 2024, but it has taken longer for Notre-Dame's twin towers to be accessible once again for visitors. A huge restoration project has taken place over the past few years to bring the cathedral back to its former glory after parts of it were substantially damaged during 2019's fire. French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday reopened the newly-restored towers to the public. The BBC's Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg, reports from joint manoeuvres by Russia and Belarus, as part of the Zapad 2025 (West 2025) military drills.