As questions continue to mount about the Niger firefight that killed four U.S. soldiers in early October, here's a timeline on what happened based on new details from the Department of Defense. U.S. military officials sought permission to send an armed drone near a patrol of Green Berets before a deadly ambush Oct. 4 in Niger, but the request was blocked, raising questions about whether those forces had adequate protection against the dangers of their mission. New information shows the Green Beret team was part of a larger mission, one potentially more dangerous than initially described, and one believed to merit an armed drone. But the request was blocked in a chain of approval that snakes through the Pentagon, State Department and the Nigerien government, according to officials briefed on the events. One focus of military investigations into what happened in Niger will be what a military official now says were two changes in the mission of the Green Beret team--from initially training Nigerien forces, to advising on a mission to capture or kill a wanted terrorist, to investigating the terrorist's abandoned camp.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. A new RoboBee from Harvard can swim underwater, and then launch itself into the air with a microrocket and fly away. At the millimeter scale, the water's surface might as well be a brick wall.

Flying drones and robots now patrol distribution warehouses - they've become workhorses of the e-commerce era online that retailers can't do without. It is driving down costs but it is also putting people out of work: what price progress? It could be a scene from Blade Runner 2049; the flying drone hovers in the warehouse aisle, its spinning rotors filling the cavernous space with a buzzing whine. It edges close to the packages stacked on the shelf and scans them using onboard optical sensors, before whizzing off to its next assignment. But this is no sci-fi film, it's a warehouse in the US - one of around 250,000 throughout the country, many gargantuan in size: retail giant Walmart's smallest warehouse, for example, is larger than 17 football fields put together.

'White Widow' Sally Jones reportedly killed in U.S. drone strike; Trace Gallagher reports from Los Angeles. When it came to recruiting foreigners to flee the comforts of home for the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, ISIS succeeded like no other -- encouraging more than 40,000 fighters from more than 110 countries to travel to the fighting fray both before and after the declaration of the "caliphate" in June 2014. Subsequently, authorities have warned about the threat of returning jihadists to their homeland and since the falls of Mosul, Raqqa and the rapidly receding footprint of ISIS, such fears have come to the forefront. According to a new report, "Beyond the Caliphate: Foreign Fighters and the Threat of Returnees," released this week by the Soufan Center -- a Washington-based security intelligence consultancy -- there are now at least 5,600 citizens or residents from 33 countries who have returned home -- accounting for about 15 percent of the fighters. FILE - In this file picture taken on Friday, July 21, 2017, Kurdish soldiers from the Anti-Terrorism Units, carry a blindfolded an Indonesian man suspected of Islamic State membership, at a security center, in Kobani, Syria.

It is hard to obtain biological samples from whales. However, whales do shed lots of material as oily slicks behind them and in their massive exhalations, or blows, at the surface. Exhalations contain tissue debris and respiratory microorganisms. Apprill et al. used a small drone furnished with a Petri dish and a 96-well plate to capture exhaled material from 28 humpback whales off Vancouver Island, Canada, and Cape Cod, USA. Fortunately, in this study, no known cetacean respiratory pathogens were detected. These data offer a glimpse into what a healthy microbiota state might look like for a baleen whale.

Amazon's drone delivery dream is edging closer with a new US program to expand when and how the devices can be tested. President Donald Trump is giving local governments more authority to allow drone tests over crowds, at night, and out of sight of operators, the White House said. In an announcement on Wednesday, the administration said it wants to free up new commercial uses for the craft and create jobs. Amazon and Google's parent company Alphabet are among a growing number of firms hoping to make package delivery by drones a reality. Amazon and Google's parent company Alphabet are among a growing number of companies hoping to make package delivery by drones a reality.

Whatever Americans think about drones filling the big blue skies of these United States, the president is jazzed about the idea of increasing air traffic--and he's working to make it happen. On Wednesday, Donald Trump signed a memo directing the Department of Transportation to create a plan to make it easier to fly a drone for commercial purposes in US airspace. Other countries have pushed ahead with national drone networks, and professional operators in the US have longed yearned to follow them up, up, and away. To that end, the feds are indulging them with a new effort: the Unmanned Aircraft System Integration Pilot Program. This new initiative will likely excite companies like Amazon and 7-Eleven, but this is bigger than getting quick delivery of Soylent or Slurpees.

WASHINGTON – Some Americans could see a lot more drones flying around their communities as a result of a Trump administration test program to increase government and commercial use of the unmanned aircraft. President Donald Trump gave the go-ahead Wednesday, signing a directive intended to increase the number and complexity of drone flights. The presidential memo would allow exemptions from current safety rules so communities could move ahead with testing of drone operations. States, communities and tribes selected to participate would devise their own trial programs in partnership with government and industry drone users. The administration anticipates approving at least five applications, but there is no limit on the number of communities that can join.

A pilot program in coordination with localities will allow us to test technology solutions that address concerns, generate data to inform policy and create partnerships that promote the use of drone technology to benefit communities,

DARPA is looking to develop robotic swarms that can assist troops from the ground and skies, with hundreds of drones all working together. The Pentagon's research branch has revealed its Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program is seeking ideas for new systems that could allow for'human-swarm teaming.' The program has awarded contracts to teams from Raytheon and Northrop Grumman to design, develop, and deploy the technology in physical and virtual environments – and eventually, they're hoping to create swarms of over 250 robots. The Pentagon's research branch has revealed its Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program is seeking ideas for new systems that could allow for'human-swarm teaming' in cities High-tech weapons that the Secret Service is not trained to cope with pose a'grave threat' to the White House, a former agent has warned. Swarms of weaponized drones or even 3D printed plastic guns could be used to launch unforeseen attacks on the president, according to Dan Bongino, author of Protecting the President.