The US is using methods of violence against domestic protests it has repeatedly used in its imperial adventures abroad. As the world was gripped by the shocking scenes of police brutality against the Black community in the United States and the aggressive posture adopted by President Donald Trump against the protestors, an important development was missed by many observers. On May 29, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency flew a Predator drone, the machine used to kill suspected terrorists around the world, over the protestors in Minneapolis. The use of the drone led to immediate condemnations from civil rights groups on the ground, as the city of Minneapolis lies outside the 100-air-mile border zone where the CBP has jurisdiction. The incident is significant because it reflects the willingness of the US authorities to use technology developed to propagate imperial designs abroad against their own citizens.

Logged forests cover four million square kilometres of the tropics and restoring these forests is essential if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, yet monitoring recovery is challenging. Tracking the abundance of visually identifiable, early-successional species enables successional status and thereby restoration progress to be evaluated. Here we present a new pipeline, SLIC-UAV, for processing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) imagery to map early-successional species in tropical forests. The pipeline is novel because it comprises: (a) a time-efficient approach for labelling crowns from UAV imagery; (b) machine learning of species based on spectral and textural features within individual tree crowns, and (c) automatic segmentation of orthomosaiced UAV imagery into 'superpixels', using Simple Linear Iterative Clustering (SLIC). Creating superpixels reduces the dataset's dimensionality and focuses prediction onto clusters of pixels, greatly improving accuracy. To demonstrate SLIC-UAV, support vector machines and random forests were used to predict the species of hand-labelled crowns in a restoration concession in Indonesia. Random forests were most accurate at discriminating species for whole crowns, with accuracy ranging from 79.3% when mapping five common species, to 90.5% when mapping the three most visually-distinctive species. In contrast, support vector machines proved better for labelling automatically segmented superpixels, with accuracy ranging from 74.3% to 91.7% for the same species. Models were extended to map species across 100 hectares of forest. The study demonstrates the power of SLIC-UAV for mapping characteristic early-successional tree species as an indicator of successional stage within tropical forest restoration areas. Continued effort is needed to develop easy-to-implement and low-cost technology to improve the affordability of project management.

WASHINGTON--The government's use of cutting-edge surveillance to monitor protests is coming under scrutiny by lawmakers and activists, including conservatives who see it as a threat to constitutional rights, amid a national rethinking of the role of police. The issue came to the fore after a Predator drone operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection was observed flying over protests in Minneapolis on May 29 in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in police custody there. Drone flights have also been reported over San...

U. S. Representatives Stephen F. Lynch and Ayanna Pressley along with a group of other House Democrats have launched an investigation into the Trump administration's surveillance of people protesting last month's killing of an African-American man by a white Minneapolis police officer. "We write with grave concern about the use of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) resources--including drones and armed uniformed officers--to surveil and intimidate peaceful protesters who were exercising their First Amendment rights to protest the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department," the members of the Committee of Oversight and Reform wrote. Lynch, writing as chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, and Pressley, a member of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, joined Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney of New York; Jamie Raskin of Maryland; and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York in sending a letter to the Department of Homeland Security demanding the Trump Administration explain its use of Customs and Border Patrol resources to conduct surveillance of people protesting George Floyd's killing. CBP admitted to flying a surveillance drone, commonly known as a "Predator B," over protests in Minneapolis on May 29. The drone reportedly was far outside the bounds of CBP's jurisdiction.

US soldiers deployed in Syria are testing a new electronic rifle scope that won't allow a shot to be fired until an onboard targeting system can guarantee it will hit its target. Called SMASH 2000, the scopes use a Linux-based imaging system to calculate the most accurate bullet trajectory to a specific target, which soldiers first'mark' by aiming the scope and pressing a small button near the rifle grip. When the soldier is ready to fire, the system determines if their aim is true, and if the soldier's aim is off, the system won't allow the gun to fire even if the trigger is pulled. US troops in Syria are testing a new scope, called SMASH 2000, that won't allow soldier's to fire unless the targeting system believes the shot will hit its target In field testing at the US Army's al-Tanf base in Syria, near the country's southeastern borders with Jordan and Iraq, soldiers have used the SMASH 2000 scope to target small drone-mounted boxes as they move across the sky. The scopes have previously been used in the field by the Israel Defense Force, but according to manufacturer Smart Shooter Ltd., this marks the first time they've been used in Syria.

The US Air Force has long been exploring the way artificial intelligence (AI) can assist in its operations -- back in 2016 we saw combat AI beat some of the Air Force's top tactical experts, for example. Now, researchers are working on an autonomous drone designed to take down a piloted plane in air-to-air combat, with a showdown slated for July 2021. As reported by Air Force Magazine, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has been developing an autonomous fighter jet since 2018, with plans to use machine-learning technology in less advanced planes initially -- such as the F-16 -- before graduating to newer models, such as the F-22 or F-35. Of course, details are a little hazy -- it's a military project after all and therefore subject to hefty classification. In a video, however, head of the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan said the AFRL is "pushing the boundaries" of AI in a military application, adding that the team is quietly confident that the "machine [will] beat the human."

Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. This past week it was announced that Microsoft has let go several journalists and instead will be implementing AI (Artificial Intelligence) that has the ability to perform those same jobs. Nearly 30 journalists were given a month's notice following Microsoft's decision to no longer employ people who would research, edit, and choose the various news articles for one of their pages. While the individuals who worked on the site run by Microsoft did not write the stories they were curating, they did edit and pick stories from other news outlets and occasionally edit headlines and material when needed. My firm implements some Microsoft products.

Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. This past week it was announced that Microsoft has let go several journalists and instead will be implementing AI (Artificial Intelligence) that has the ability to perform those same jobs. Nearly 30 journalists were given a month's notice following Microsoft's decision to no longer employ people who would research, edit, and choose the various news articles for one of their pages. While the individuals who worked on the site run by Microsoft did not write the stories they were curating, they did edit and pick stories from other news outlets and occasionally edit headlines and material when needed. My firm implements some Microsoft products.

Sometimes the capturing of an image or a single video can have a transformative effect. George Floyd's killing is an example. The eight-minute, 46-second video speaks for itself. That is why it sent so many Americans onto the streets. And anyone contending with state violence, whether they are in Minneapolis, Hong Kong or the Middle East, knows that sometimes all they need to prove their point - to expose illegality - is the right picture.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. New York City's police department is reportedly considering the use of "pandemic drone" technology to determine if people are infected with coronavirus, even though a Connecticut town has already scrapped its plan due to privacy concerns. Westport residents were successful in stymying plans for a drone that could detect a person's temperature, along with their heart and respiratory rates, from as high as 190 feet in the air, The New York Post reported. The NYPD reached out to Westport police for contact information regarding Draganfly, the Canadian company that manufactures the drone.