SINGAPORE – A boom in consumer drone sales has spawned a counter-industry of startups aiming to stop drones flying where they shouldn't, by disabling them or knocking them out of the sky. Dozens of startup firms are developing techniques -- from deploying birds of prey to firing gas through a bazooka -- to take on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are being used to smuggle drugs, drop bombs, spy on enemy lines or buzz public spaces. The arms race is fed in part by the slow pace of government regulation for drones. In Australia, for example, different agencies regulate drones and counter-drone technologies. "There are potential privacy issues in operating remotely piloted aircraft, but the Civil Aviation Safety Authority's role is restricted to safety. Privacy is not in our remit," a CASA official said.

BEIRUT – An air raid has struck several cars in northwestern Syria, killing at least eight people, including al-Qaida-linked fighters and a senior commander with a Chinese Islamic militant faction, an activist group and a local jihadi commander said Monday. The attack occurred late Sunday on a road leading from the town of Sarmada to the Bab al-Hawa area on the border with Turkey, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and a local commander with the Fatah al-Sham Front, an al-Qaida-linked group. The militant spoke via text messages on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack, but the Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman said it is widely believed to have been carried out by the U.S.-led coalition. The U.S. has killed some of al-Qaida's most senior commanders in Syria over the past two years in airstrikes.

Whether it was a billion compromised Yahoo accounts or state-sponsored Russian hackers muscling in on the US election, this past year saw hacks of unprecedented scale and temerity. And if history is any guide, next year should yield more of the same. It's hard to know for certain what lies ahead, but some themes began to present themselves toward the end of 2016 that will almost certainly continue well into next year. And the more we can anticipate them, the better we can prepare. Here's what we think 2017 will hold.

Government launches new consultation on drone safety. The government plans to introduce new measures to ensure the successful uptake of drones is matched by strong safeguards to protect the public. The consultation will also consider whether there is a need for a new criminal offence for misuse of drones. The government is determined to make the most of this emerging technology, estimated to be worth around £102 billion by 2025. But ministers are clear it will only be a success if it is done safely, and with the consent of the public.

When the general public first learned about drones, the context was largely related to military applications and spy tactics, so the unmanned aircraft were cast with a bad rap. Years later, a number of creative technologists have found ways to use drones to help people, animals, and the environment. Drones are being used to protect endangered animals from poachers in Africa, to beam internet access to parts of the world never before served, and even as remote flying builders. Drones are helping humans work on projects - from the curious to the comical - that wouldn't have been possible without the small autonomous aircraft. Read on to learn about some of the most amazing ways drones are helping people and the planet.

Major natural or man-made disasters such as Hurricane Katrina or the 9/11 terror attacks pose significant challenges for emergency responders. First, they have to develop an understanding of the unfolding event either using their own resources or through third-parties such as the local population and agencies. Second, based on the information gathered, they need to deploy their teams in a flexible manner, ensuring that each team performs tasks in The most effective way. Third, given the dynamic nature of a disaster space, and the uncertainties involved in performing rescue missions, information about the disaster space and the actors within it needs to be managed to ensure that responders are always acting on up-to-date and trusted information. Against this background, this paper proposes a novel disaster response system called HAC-ER. Thus HAC-ER interweaves humans and agents, both robotic and software, in social relationships that augment their individual and collective capabilities. To design HAC-ER, we involved end-users including both experts and volunteers in a several participatory design workshops, lab studies, and field trials of increasingly advanced prototypes of individual components of HAC-ER as well as the overall system. This process generated a number of new quantitative and qualitative results but also raised a number of new research questions. HAC-ER thus demonstrates how such Human-Agent Collectives (HACs) can address key challenges in disaster response. Specifically, we show how HAC-ER utilises crowdsourcing combined with machine learning to obtain most important situational awareness from large streams of reports posted by members of the public and trusted organisations. We then show how this information can inform human-agent teams in coordinating multi-UAV deployments, as well as task planning for responders on the ground. Finally, HAC-ER incorporates an infrastructure and the associated intelligence for tracking and utilising the provenance of information shared across the entire system to ensure its accountability. We individually validate each of these elements of HAC-ER and show how they perform against standard (non-HAC) baselines and also elaborate on the evaluation of the overall system.

A complex network of automated logistics would support this flying warehouse and drone delivery system. Sensors within would keep track of inventory in real-time, allowing shoppers on the ground to browse and make purchases. Drones, once loaded with packages, would glide to their destinations below, using power only for slight steering adjustments. After delivery, they'd flitter off to a ground station to recharge or be loaded onto shuttles bound for their home in the sky. The airship would float at high altitude--up to 45,000 feet above ground, according to the patent--but with the lighter-than-air interior of the airship doing most of the lifting, there is no mention of the power it would need to operate or stay afloat.

While Amazon only just recently started delivering to real customers via drone, it has even bigger ideas. A patent filing reveals a system where they take off from floating blimps stocked with commonly requested products. The adult industry and CES have a longer relationship than you might know. From 1984 to 1998 porn was a part of CES, until AVN split off for its own concurrently running show. Now, the two expos take place weeks apart, and porn has almost no presence at the electronics show.

LONDON – Drones delivering blood and medicine to rural areas of Tanzania could help to save the lives of many mothers and newborn babies in a country where one of the biggest causes of maternal deaths is blood loss during childbirth, the U.K. aid department said. The Department for International Development (DFID), which has given funding for the trial due to start early next year, said the drone deliveries could assist more than 50,000 births a year in the East African country. The drones will be able to carry up to 1 kg (2 pounds) of medical supplies and reduce delivery times to 19 minutes from the 110 minutes it takes on average by vehicle. "The U.K. is at the forefront of investing in cutting-edge technology to tackle the global challenges of today such as disease pandemics, medical emergencies and disaster responses," said Priti Patel, U.K.'s international development secretary. "This innovative, modern approach ensures we are achieving the best results for the world's poorest people and delivering value for money for British taxpayers," she said in a statement Thursday.

Hundreds of drones are expected to hit the Singapore skies in the near future, but with limited airways and a dense population, many question how they will safely fly over the city. Now, researchers have unveiled a traffic management system, which is much like the traffic laws and infrastructure cars have on roads. Named Traffic Management of Unmanned Aircraft Systems, this initiative would designate air-lanes and use virtual fences to reroute drones around restricted geographical locations. Traffic Management of Unmanned Aircraft Systems is the brainchild of Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. The team has been studying different ways for drones to fly efficiently and safely - even with hundreds in the sky.