Drones
Patriot missile involved in Bahrain blast likely U.S.-operated, analysis finds
Patriot missile involved in Bahrain blast likely U.S.-operated, analysis finds Smoke rises following a strike on the Bapco Oil Refinery, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, on Sitra Island Bahrain, on March 9. | REUTERS An American-operated Patriot air defense battery likely fired the interceptor missile involved in a pre-dawn explosion that injured dozens of civilians and tore through homes in U.S.-ally Bahrain 10 days into the war on Iran, according to an analysis by academic researchers examined by Reuters. Both Bahrain and Washington have blamed an Iranian drone attack for the March 9 blast, which the Gulf kingdom said injured 32 people including children, some seriously. Commenting on the day of the attack, U.S. Central Command said on X that an Iranian drone struck a residential neighborhood in Bahrain. In response to questions, Bahrain on Saturday acknowledged for the first time that a Patriot missile was involved in the explosion over the Mahazza neighborhood on Sitra island, offshore from the capital Manama and also home to an oil refinery. In a statement, a Bahraini government spokesperson said the missile successfully intercepted an Iranian drone mid-air, saving lives. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.
'A direct hit' - BBC visits Israeli town after Iranian strike
More than 160 people have been injured in Iranian strikes on southern Israel, emergency services have said. Ballistic missiles hit the towns of Arad and Dimona, which are close to a nuclear facility, on Saturday evening. Iranian state TV earlier said the strikes were in response to an attack on Iran's Natanz nuclear facility. Displaced Palestinians were told to secure their tents to prevent them being blown away as a storm swept through the enclave. UK does not'agree with Trump on every issue' - Cooper Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has hit back at President Trump's criticism of the UK response to the conflict in Iran.
Sudan drone attack on key hospital killed 64 people during Eid, WHO says
Sudan's army has denied it carried out a deadly attack on a major hospital on Friday night in a city in the west of the country held by its rivals, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said 64 people - including 13 children, two nurses and a doctor - had died in the strike on el-Daein Teaching Hospital and 89 others had been wounded. Enough blood has been spilled, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X, urging the warring parties to end the conflict, which started nearly three years ago. The RSF said an army drone had hit the hospital in el-Daein, the capital of East Darfur state, on the day Muslims were marking the festival of Eid. Sudan was plunged into a civil war in April 2023 when a vicious struggle for power broke out between the military and the RSF, who had once been allies after coming to power in a coup in 2021.
BuckTales: A multi-UAV dataset for multi-object tracking and re-identification of wild antelopes
Understanding animal behaviour is central to predicting, understanding, and miti-gating impacts of natural and anthropogenic changes on animal populations andecosystems. However, the challenges of acquiring and processing long-term, eco-logically relevant data in wild settings have constrained the scope of behaviouralresearch. The increasing availability of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), cou-pled with advances in machine learning, has opened new opportunities for wildlifemonitoring using aerial tracking. However, the limited availability of datasets with wildanimals in natural habitats has hindered progress in automated computer visionsolutions for long-term animal tracking. Here, we introduce the first large-scaleUAV dataset designed to solve multi-object tracking (MOT) and re-identification(Re-ID) problem in wild animals, specifically the mating behaviour (or lekking) ofblackbuck antelopes. Collected in collaboration with biologists, the MOT datasetincludes over 1.2 million annotations including 680 tracks across 12 high-resolution(5.4K)
Drone strike near Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad kills officer
Will Gulf states join war? One police officer has been killed in a drone strike by "outlaw groups" on the headquarters of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service in the heart of capital Baghdad. "A drone targeted the headquarters of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service in the Mansour district" at about 10am local time (07:00 GMT), General Saad Maan, head of the Iraqi government's security media unit, said in a brief statement on Saturday. Another drone, filming the operation, crashed into a private members ' sports club popular with the Iraqi elite and foreign diplomats, according to the same source. The drone attack on the headquarters of the National Intelligence Service came hours after another attack on the US military complex.
Russian drone attack kills two in Ukraine ahead of talks in US, officials say
Two people were killed in a Russian drone attack on a home in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, local authorities say. Two children, 11 and 15, were also injured in the attack which took place on the eve of new talks between Ukrainian and American negotiators in the US. Negotiations on ending the war have been on hold since the start of the latest conflict in Iran. President Volodymy Zelensky wants his negotiators to discuss the US decision to ease sanctions on Russian oil - implemented by Washington to help keep down global energy prices. Talks mediated by the US have so far failed to stop the fighting in Ukraine or change Russia's demands, and there is little hope of a breakthrough.