Imagine you and a group of friends are at the peak of a mountain after a long hike. It's sunset and the sky is alight; you want to take a photo. You pull out your smartphone, but instead of flipping it around to take a long-armed selfie, you unclip a tiny drone from the back of your phone, make it hover at the perfect height, and snap a series of photos, no extendo-arms required. That's the idea behind Selfly, the drone-in-a-phone-case built by camera and recording company AEE. Selfly is a drone that folds into the back of a phone case, and it includes a camera that can record, live stream and take photos in 1080p and 60fps, using a suite of Sony sensors.

The Los Angeles Police Department took another step toward using drones in some tactical situations after its civilian bosses Tuesday approved a $31,500 donation to purchase the controversial devices. The LAPD has yet to fly any drones. The yearlong pilot program, approved by the Police Commission last fall, won't begin until the department buys the drones and teaches officers how to use them. The donation from the Los Angeles Police Foundation will go toward four drones, Assistant Chief Beatrice Girmala told police commissioners at their weekly meeting Tuesday. Each are from DJI, a tech company specializing in drones with offices worldwide.

MOSCOW – Russia said Tuesday that a recent series of drone attacks on its military bases in Syria would have required assistance from a country possessing satellite navigation technology -- a statement that appeared to be aimed at the United States. Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces repelled a series of drone attacks Saturday on the Hemeimeem air base and a naval facility in Tartus, adding that out of the 13 drones involved, seven were shot down and six were forced to land without inflicting any damage. Without blaming any specific country, the ministry said data for the attacks could only have been obtained "from one of the countries that possesses know-how in satellite navigation." In Tuesday's statement, it noted a "strange coincidence" of a U.S. military intelligence plane flying over the Mediterranean near the two Russian bases at the moment of the attack. The Pentagon denied any involvement.

Mevlut Cavusoglu's comments came a day after Syrian government forces captured 14 villages as they advanced on Idlib, the largest rebel-held enclave in the country's north, amid a wave of airstrikes. The troops aim to reach a rebel-held air base and secure the road linking the capital, Damascus, with the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest.

Maybe you've read the statistics on how many drones are filling our skies: The FAA anticipates 7 million by 2020. Perhaps you've heard about how drones are revolutionizing commercial operations. It's possible you know someone who has a drone of their own, or seen a quadcopter hovering over your local park. The reality is there's no shortage of drones filling our homes, stores, skies, and seas. It should come as no surprise that the technology is steadily making its way into our media.

Verity Studios' Lucie drones alone completed more than 20,000 autonomous flights. A Synthetic Swarm of 99 Lucie micro drones started touring with Metallica (the tour is ongoing and was just announced the 5th highest grossing tour worldwide for 2017). Micro drones are now performing at Madison Square Garden as part of each New York Knicks home game -- the first resident drone show in a full-scale arena setting. Since early 2017, a drone swarm has been performing weekly on a first cruise ship. And micro drones performed thousands of flights at Changi Airport Singapore as part of its 2017 Christmas show.

The Justice Department will soon start trying to jam cellphones smuggled into federal prisons and used for criminal activity, part of a broader safety initiative that is also focused on preventing drones from airdropping contraband to inmates. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein told the American Correctional Association's conference in Orlando on Monday that, while the law prohibits cellphone use by federal inmates, the Bureau of Prisons confiscated 5,116 such phones in 2016, and preliminary numbers for 2017 indicate a 28 percent increase. "That is a major safety issue," he said in his speech. "Cellphones are used to run criminal enterprises, facilitate the commission of violent crimes and thwart law enforcement." When he was the U.S. attorney in Maryland, Rosenstein prosecuted an inmate who used a smuggled cellphone to order the murder of a witness.

According to an executive at Ehang UAVs, which provided the swarm, each drone cost $1,500, which is pretty darn cheap considering their capabilities. Take, for instance, the datalink and software used. It lets more than 1,000 flying robots coordinate autonomously and synchronize movements, with a flight deviancy of a mere 2 centimeters horizontally and 1 centimeter vertically. If something goes wrong and a drone can't reach its programmed position, it automatically lands. In the show last month, these machines created striking formations of China, a kapok tree flower, and a ship.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in a surprise visit to that air base on Dec. 11, declared that combat operations were winding down and that the Russian military would stage a "significant withdrawal." It was at least the second time he had made such an announcement since March 2016. Mr. Putin faces a presidential election this March, and although he is expected to win easily, polls indicate that Russians are increasingly disgruntled about the country's military presence in Syria. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to.

You might not know many micro-drones by name, but there's a chance you know Zano. Unfortunately, that's because it was one of the more controversial Kickstarter failures of recent times. Zano raised over $3 million in late 2014, before being shown at CES 2015. The promise was simple, a palm-sized drone with the self-flying and photography smarts of something much bigger (and much more expensive). The problem is, just 12 months later, the product was already delayed, the company had spent all its funding and the creditors moved in to liquidate the assets, leaving thousands of backers high and dry.