If drone photography is something you've always wanted to try, one of Amazon's Prime Day deals may be your ticket into the hobby. The retailer has discounted the DJI Mini 2 Fly More Combo to $479, down from $599. The bundle comes with almost everything you need to get the most out of DJI's entry-level drone, including two spare batteries, a charging hub and a carrying case for the aircraft. At $479, you're effectively paying $60 more than it would cost to buy the standard $419 Mini 2 kit on its own. While Engadget hasn't had a chance to review the Mini 2, it's widely considered one of the best beginner drones you can buy. It can also capture smooth 4K video at 30 frames per second, thanks to a 12-megapixel sensor.

The Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, has met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv and reaffirmed his country's support for Ukraine "politically, militarily and economically." Rutte said he visited "various place where the Russian army has left behind a horrific trail of death and destruction. I am deeply shocked by what I witnessed today". "These appalling crimes must not go unpunished. This is also the subject of the Ukraine Accountability Conference which will be held later this week in The Hague," Rutte said, adding that the conference is organised by the Dutch government, the International Criminal Court and the European Commission.

The use of Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAVs) offers many advantages across a variety of applications. However, safety assurance is a key barrier to widespread usage, especially given the unpredictable operational and environmental factors experienced by UAVs, which are hard to capture solely at design-time. This paper proposes a new reliability modeling approach called SafeDrones to help address this issue by enabling runtime reliability and risk assessment of UAVs. It is a prototype instantiation of the Executable Digital Dependable Identity (EDDI) concept, which aims to create a model-based solution for real-time, data-driven dependability assurance for multi-robot systems. By providing real-time reliability estimates, SafeDrones allows UAVs to update their missions accordingly in an adaptive manner.

Iran is planning to supply hundreds of drones with combat weapon capabilities to Russia for use in Ukraine, a top US official said Monday. Jake Sullivan, the White House national security advisor, said the information received by the United States supported views that the Russian military is facing challenges sustaining its weaponry after significant losses in Ukraine. "The Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), including weapons-capable UAVs, on an expedited timeline," Sullivan told reporters. "Our information further indicates that Iran is preparing to train Russian forces to use these UAVs, with initial training sessions slated to begin as soon as early July," he said. Sullivan said it was not clear whether Iran had delivered any of the drones to Russia yet.

Starship Technologies, one of the earlier companies to enter the outdoor robot delivery market, recently laid off 11% of its global workforce. The company, which has engineering headquarters in Estonia and business headquarters in San Francisco, said it has been negatively impacted by the "dramatic downward shifts" in the global economy and investment market. While it's unclear exactly how many employees Starship has, a LinkedIn search finds 622 people list Starship as their current employer. On top of the layoffs, Starship is closing a small number of unnamed service locations in the U.S. and Germany over the next two months. It said all of the changes focus on cost savings and improving profitability.

This article was published as a part of the Data Science Blogathon. Nowadays, people around the world think about drones -- and not just how fun they are to fly, but how much drones have improved our modern life. From delivering packages on demand to surveying disaster zones, drones are crucial to many businesses and civilians' daily lives. But all this technology comes with significant overhead: as drones get more complex and sophisticated, so does the amount of work that goes into developing them and integrating their features properly. Drones are becoming increasingly popular for a variety of uses, including photography, videography, and delivery.

In March, a troop of engineers gathered in an unkept green field in rural Nottinghamshire, England. They were there to test a drone piloting software that they hoped could one day be in charge of maintaining the high-voltage pylons that transmit electricity across the country. Assuming the software was working, a drone was about to inspect a pylon from a few meters away, maneuvered not by a nearby pilot but a computer in a control station hundreds of meters away. Seconds later, the dance began. Whizzing around, the drone took 65 photos that documented the condition of the pylon's steel arms, fittings, and conductors.

The UK's National Health Service has announced that it will test delivering vital chemotherapy drugs via drone to the Isle of Wight. The body has partnered with Apian, a drone technology startup founded by former NHS doctors and former Google employees. Test flights are due to begin shortly, and it's hoped that the system will reduce journey times for the drugs, cut costs and enable cancer patients to receive treatment far more locally. The Isle of Wight is an island two miles off the south coast of England with a population just under 150,000. Due to the short shelf-life of most chemotherapy drugs, medicines are either rushed onto the island or patients take the ferry to the mainland.

He added that it was hoped the new delivery method, which has been created in partnership with tech company Apian, would offer a better option for cancer patients living on the Isle of Wight, many of whom currently have to travel to the mainland for treatment.

The NHS plans to use drones to fly chemotherapy drugs to cancer patients in England to avoid the need for long journeys to collect them. The devices will transport doses from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight in a trial that, if successful, will lead to drones being used for similar drops elsewhere. They will take 30 minutes to travel across the Solent, which will save patients on the island a three to four-hour round trip by ferry or hovercraft. On Tuesday, Amanda Pritchard, NHS England's chief executive, unveiled the move to help mark the 74th anniversary of the health service's creation by the postwar Labour government. "Delivering chemo by drone is another extraordinary development for cancer patients and shows how the NHS will stop at nothing to ensure people get the treatment they need as promptly as possible, while also cutting costs and carbon emissions," she said.