Quoting a British intelligence source who had been briefed by U.S. counterparts, The Sun reported that Jones and her son had been killed in June close to Syria's border with Iraq, as she was attempting to flee the IS stronghold of Raqqa.

Akron Public Schools officials have issued warnings to parents about a suspicious drone flying near township schools and playgrounds that is attempting to lure kids away. "Witnesses have claimed that the voice in the drone has attempted to lure children off school grounds," she wrote in the letter obtained by the Beacon-Journal. Akron Public Schools spokesman Mark Williamson reiterated that the drone was seen or reported in evenings and over the weekend, but has not been present during school hours. Akron Police spokesman Rick Edwards said local law enforcement has not received complaints about the suspicious drone speaking to children near school grounds.

It was supposed to be an easy $1,000 job. All 25-year-old Jorge Edwin Rivera had to do was pilot a drone, carrying a lunchbox filled with 13 pounds of methamphetamine, from one side of the US-Mexico border to the other where an accomplice could retrieve the smuggled cargo. What he didn't count on was Border Patrol agents spotting the UAV in flight and tracking it back to his hiding spot, 2,000 yards from the national divide. This isn't the first time that smugglers have used commercially-available drones to carry contraband. In 2015, the Border Patrol caught a two people dropping off 28 pounds of heroin in Calexico, California, and, in the same year, caught another drug ring delivering 30 pounds of cannabis to San Luis, Arizona.

Here in the U.S., small consumer drones are fairly benign nuisances--buzzing around beaches, filming neighborhoods from 400 feet, and hopefully keeping clear of airports. To U.S. armed forces fighting overseas, though, small drones can be huge threats. They can be rigged with explosives and firearms, or simply be deployed as surveillance tools to spy on the soldiers. Raytheon rolled out its answer to this threat yesterday at the Association of the United States Army Exposition in Washington, DC. And boy, it looks kinda fun.

Hurtigruten cruise line introduces a new way to see what lurks beneath the world's most remote polar waters. On its expedition ships, the company is introducing an underwater drone that streams real-time video of orcas, leopard sharks, penguins and other creatures beneath the water. Or passengers can wear masks with digital displays that may make them feel like they're on a dive deep in the ocean Hurtigruten plans to start by outfitting two hybrid-powered ships -- the Roald Amundsen and the Fridtjof Nansen -- with the new underwater drone. "[W]ith underwater drones on our ships we can take our guests to areas less explored than the surface of Mars," company Chief Executive Daniel Skjeldam said in a statement.

An automated delivery service could mean the difference between life and death for people who have suffered a cardiac arrest. Flirtey is launching a fleet of drones in Nevada that will carry defibrillators to the scene of to ensure patients receive treatment as promptly as possible in a world first. Previous research has found that for every minute a cardiac arrest victim waits to receive defibrillation, their odds of survival decrease by about 10 per cent. An automated delivery service could mean the difference between life and death for people who have suffered cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrests, which are often confused by the public with heart attacks, are a leading cause of death worldwide, killing more than six million people each year.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is nearing completion of new "buy American" rules to make it easier to sell U.S.-made military drones overseas and compete against fast-growing Chinese and Israeli rivals, senior U.S. officials said. While President Donald Trump's aides work on relaxing domestic regulations on drone sales to select allies, Washington will also seek to renegotiate a 1987 missile-control pact with the aim of loosening international restrictions on U.S. exports of unmanned aircraft, according to government and industry sources. At home, the U.S. administration is pressing ahead with its revamp of drone export policy under heavy pressure from American manufacturers and in defiance of human rights advocates who warn of the risk of fueling instability in hot spots including the Middle East and South Asia. The changes, part of a broader effort to overhaul U.S. arms export protocols, could be rolled out by the end of the year under a presidential policy decree, the administration officials said on condition of anonymity. The aim is to help U.S. drone makers -- pioneers in remote-controlled aircraft that have become a centerpiece of counterterrorism strategy -- reassert themselves in the overseas market, where China, Israel and others often sell under less cumbersome restrictions.

Pakistani officials have long struggled to impose security in the Pashtun tribal heartland. The area stretches for hundreds of kilometers, including rugged mountainous terrain, and has been a hotbed of arms and heroin smuggling for decades. U.S drone strikes have also targeted militants from al Qaeda and other groups in the region.

Consumer drones have more or less conquered hovering, but are there easier ways to stay in place? Researchers from Imperial College London have a possible answer: The SpiderMAV, a UAV that shoots ropes that magnetically cling to surfaces to anchor itself in place. Imperial College London's Aerial Robotics Lab presented the SpiderMAV at the Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) conference in Vancouver last week. The UAV concept is a DJI Matrice 100 drone modified with two anchor-firing systems: A "perching' emitter on top that uses compressed gas to shoot magnet-threads upward that reel in until taut, spider-style, and a "stabilizing" pod on the bottom that fires three anchors outward to keep the SpiderMAV in place. The SpiderMAV isn't fully operational: Once its anchors are deployed, it doesn't have mechanisms to detach them.

Over 100 CEOs of artificial intelligence and robotics firms recently signed an open letter warning that their work could be repurposed to build lethal autonomous weapons -- "killer robots." They argued that to build such weapons would be to open a "Pandora's Box." This could forever alter war. Over 30 countries have or are developing armed drones, and with each successive generation, drones have more autonomy. Automation has long been used in weapons to help identify targets and maneuver missiles.