Today I'm excited to speak with Parker Clark who is the CTO at Kespry. To start off our chat, could you describe who Kespry is? Kespry is an aerial intelligence company that's focused on aggregates, mining, AEC, and insurance. We build the whole stack, which includes the drone, all the data capture, backend data processing, and analytics. For someone who has many years of experience in Aggregates, Construction, Insurance or Mining but has no experience with drone technology -- how easy would it be for them to use Kespry? We've been autonomous and focused on autonomy since the first day this company existed.

DJI's Spark is the company's first attempt at a true drone for everyone. DJI has made no secret about the fact it thinks non-RC enthusiasts want a lightweight, compact quadcopter that's easy to control. That's exactly what the Spark is. But after spending some time with it (and a Mavic Pro, for comparison), I'm torn. The Spark is, indeed, incredibly fun, simple to use and easy to carry around.

You can hear the drone before it's visible, whining like a mosquito above the hillside grounds of Rwanda's Kabgayi District Hospital. Emerging through a patch of fog, roughly 100 feet in the air, the small plane quickly disappears again, circling in an oblong pattern as it descends toward an altitude low enough to make its drop. After a period of silence, it's suddenly back, swooping over the roof of Kabgayi's accident ward to drop its payload on the driveway with a thud. On the ground lies a red cardboard container, roughly the size of a shoebox, attached to a parachute made of wax paper and biodegradable tape. The contraption may resemble a children's art project, but its contents are lifesaving.

If you've been scratching your head at the FAA's extensive efforts to regulate your personal (or company) drone use, consider the chaos when they start filling the skies. That's why the agency partnered with NASA for a series of nationwide tests to explore potential systems that could track and manage a wide range of drones simultaneously. Google parent company Alphabet's Project Wing tried out its own UAV air traffic control platform yesterday, a system that might one day guide a massive volume of airborne drones to keep them from crashing into buildings, people or each other. Unsurprisingly, Project Wing's UTM (UAS Air Traffic Management) leans heavily on other Google products like Maps, Earth and Street View to navigate drones around obstacles and plan routes. During yesterday's tests, UTM managed flight paths for multiple UAVs simultaneously, according to the group's blog post.

The laws governing the use of drones in the United States are changing so fast it can be hard to keep up. But I'd like to explore here some proposed drone rules that never went into effect because the legislation that described them, Senate bill 2658 (the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act of 2016), was never passed. Why care about rules that didn't become law? It's my theory that although the legislation died in Congress last year, the people championing various parts of it are still around and may yet influence future laws. So an examination of the ill-fated legislation could provide a window on what the future holds for drone operators.

For militaries, tech like this provides an excellent platform for surveillance missions against military and terrorist targets. It can utilize its high flight ceiling to maintain line-of-sight contact with over 400,000 square miles of ground and water. For both militaries and tech firms, covering so much territory makes it an excellent data relay and communications node. This will allow the drone to replace or back up satellite communications, maintain coverage between distant aircraft and ships, or even provide broadband to rural Chinese households. While conversations around drone usage are often limited to their roles as potential missile-toting killers and parcel-delivering quadcopters, some of the most important drones of the future may be those like the Caihong X and Helios Prototype, unseen and high up, gathering data day in and day out.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Hezbollah's Al Manar TV channel said it would broadcast footage on Wednesday of an Iranian drone tracking a U.S. plane over southeastern Syria. It said it would air the footage during its news broadcast at 5:30 p.m. local time (1430 GMT). The announcement came as tensions grow between Washington and the military alliance that backs the Syrian government, including Iranian-backed forces. Not all U.S. presidents are missed once they leave the White House. President Donald Trump announced Wray's nomination for FBI director on Twitter.

In late February, the UN-Secretary General held a press conference, highlighting the risk of starvation in East Africa and the necessity to raise funds to address the emergency situations in Somalia and South Sudan. Drought has been back in these countries and their neighbours since 2016, leading to a huge current food crisis. While governments are trying to handle the situation, how could technology innovations help prevent starvation and improve agriculture management in the future? We met with Laurent Rivière, a French 30 years-old entrepreneur, who shared with us his view on the subject with a combination of engineer pragmatism and changemaker idealism . Founder and CEO at Sunbirds for two years, he explained to us how his "bird of the sun," his solar drone, is addressing the agriculture challenges of the 21st century.

It all started at Baledogle, the old Soviet airport 70 miles northwest of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, where the U.S. runs a deeply clandestine drone operation with around 30 to 40 American personnel. While shrouded in secrecy, Baledogle has reportedly grown over the years into a key point for training Somali commandos and, early last month, for launching a joint strike against al-Shabab. The radical Islamist group grew out of the splintered factions of Sharia-based courts that filled the vacuum of authority after a U.S.-led coalition withdrew from the country in the early 90s. Today, al-Shabab sees itself as the preeminent terror force in Somalia with global ambitions. "These folks are honing their skills in a local conflict that is part of a global war they are waging against the United States," said Katherine Zimmerman, an expert on Al Qaeda at the American Enterprise Institute. Al-Shabab regularly attacks foreigners, including aid workers and Somalis, as it wages an insurgent fight against the U.S.-leaning government.

US Navy researchers have developed a drone system that can detect mines and other hazards. The portable, one-pound remote-controlled quadcopter drone can detect buried or underwater mines during amphibious beach landings conducted by US Marines. It was designed to help explosives disposal teams quickly find mines and dangerous metal structures within coastal areas and shallow water zones. The one-pound quadcopter was unveiled at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California. It has a magnetometer sensor system - which measures magnetism - to detect mines and provide real-time search data to a handheld Android device.