Flying can be exhausting when you're a tiny, bee-sized robot, but researchers from Harvard have created a new way to let little winged bots take a break. Using static electricity, robots no bigger than a quarter can latch onto the underside of any flat surfaces, a process that uses between 500 and 1,000 times less power than flying. In a study published in this week's issue of Science, researchers say this new perching ability could be key to creating insect-sized aerial robots that can help with a long-term observational tasks -- traffic control, to search-and-rescue. The mechanism was developed by researchers from Harvard for the RoboBee: a tiny flying robot first unveiled by a team from the university in 2013. The RoboBee weighs just 0.08 grams (that's 31 times lighter than a penny), and has a pair of tiny wings that can beat up to 120 times per second.

The Afghan government is looking warily at the conservative religious scholar who has assumed leadership of the Taliban, seeing in him a rigid proponent of hardline orthodoxy who is unlikely to favor peace talks, officials said. A day after the Afghan Taliban announced that Haibadullah Akhundzada would take over after Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan, officials on Thursday were trying to form a picture of a leader best known for relentlessly applying strict sharia, or Islamic law. In his former role as one of the Taliban insurgency's senior judges, he was responsible for issuing a series of death sentences against opponents of Mansour, according to General Abdul Razeq, police chief of Akhundzada's home city of Kandahar. Officials said he appeared to favor a return to the austere and often harsh Islamic rule in Afghanistan before the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-led forces in 2001, something that would be unacceptable to the Afghan government and its Western backers. "He is a simple religious cleric," said Haji Agha Lalai, an adviser to President Ashraf Ghani, who added that Akhundzada would rely heavily on his deputy Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of the feared Haqqani network, for battlefield decisions.

The foreign affairs adviser to Pakistan's prime minister says "all indicators" confirm that Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a U.S. drone strike in the country's southwest while travelling under a false name with a fake Pakistani identity document.

Once known to be used exclusively in military domain, unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) have stepped up to become a part of new logistic method in commercial sector called "last-mile delivery". In this novel approach, small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), also known as drones, are deployed alongside with trucks to deliver goods to customers in order to improve the service quality or reduce the transportation cost. It gives rise to a new variant of the traveling salesman problem (TSP), of which we call TSP with drone (TSP-D). In this article, we consider a variant of TSP-D where the main objective is to minimize the total transportation cost. We also propose two heuristics: "Drone First, Truck Second" (DFTS) and "Truck First, Drone Second" (TFDS), to effectively solve the problem. The former constructs route for drone first while the latter constructs route for truck first. We solve a TSP to generate route for truck and propose a mixed integer programming (MIP) formulation with different profit functions to build route for drone. Numerical results obtained on many instances with different sizes and characteristics are presented. Recommendations on promising algorithm choices are also provided.

A little-known extremist cleric was chosen Wednesday to be the new leader of the Afghan Taliban, just days after a U.S. drone strike killed his predecessor. But within hours of the Taliban's announcement that the group's council of leaders had unanimously selected Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, opposition to him emerged -- a sign that rifts within the insurgency could widen and possibly drive the Taliban further from peace talks with the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban called on all Muslims to support Akhundzada as a matter of religious obligation and declared three days of official mourning for Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour, who was slain Saturday by a U.S. drone in Pakistan. The announcement came as a suicide bomber struck a minibus carrying court employees in Kabul, killing at least 11 people, an official said. The Taliban promptly claimed responsibility for the attack.

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has announced its first drone, pricing it significantly lower than a comparable model by the market leader DJI. The Mi Drone can stay airborne for nearly half an hour and will be sold with a choice of stabilised cameras. The move gives Xiaomi the chance to target a fast-growing market, at a time when it has failed to meet its own sales targets. One expert said the firm now had to win over potential buyers' trust. "The feature set between the Mi Drone and DJI's Phantom 3 is almost identical - they can both be made to return home and circle around a point of interest - but Xiaomi's product is so competitively priced you have to wonder if it can make much profit," Engadget's Chinese editor-in-chief Richard Lai told the BBC. "So, the new drone will probably appeal to beginners.

The Afghan Taliban named an Islamic legal scholar who was one of former leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour's deputies to succeed him Wednesday after confirming Mansour's death in a U.S. drone strike over the weekend. Within an hour of the announcement, a Taliban suicide bomber attacked a shuttle bus carrying court employees west of the Afghan capital of Kabul, killing as many as 11 people and wounding several others, including children. New Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada was named in a United Nations report last year as former chief of the Sharia-based justice system under the Taliban's five-year rule over Afghanistan, which ended with their ouster in 2001. Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of a feared network blamed for many deadly bomb attacks in Kabul in recent years, and Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, son of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, will serve as deputies. The announcement, following a meeting of the Taliban's main shura, or leadership council, ended days of confusion during which the Taliban declined to confirm the death of Mansour in a drone strike in Pakistan on Saturday.

Xiaomi, the world's second-most-valuable startup, launched its first consumer drone on Wednesday and it didn't disappoint. The Mi Drone can capture 4K video, automatically avoids any obstacles and costs 300 less than the best-selling comparable product on the market. It seems like a sure-fire hit and a way for Xiaomi to recoup losses from slowing smartphone sales. The only problem is that Xiaomi's drone may never be seen outside China and the company's inability to scale globally continues to hinder growth. Consumer drones are arguably the first consumer electronics category where Chinese companies are defining the market and dominating sales.

The Afghan Taliban named an Islamic legal scholar who was one of former leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour's deputies to succeed him on Wednesday, after confirming Mansour's death in a U.S. drone strike at the weekend. Within an hour of the announcement, a Taliban suicide bomber attacked a shuttle bus carrying court employees west of the Afghan capital, Kabul, killing as many as 11 people and wounding several others, including children. New Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada was named in a United Nations report last year as former chief of the sharia-based justice system under the Taliban's five-year rule over Afghanistan, which ended with their ouster in 2001. Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of a feared network blamed for many deadly bomb attacks in Kabul in recent years, and Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, son of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, will serve as deputies. The announcement, following a meeting of the Taliban's main shura, or leadership council, ended days of confusion during which the Taliban declined to confirm the death of Mansour in a drone strike in Pakistan on Saturday.

KABUL, Afghanistan – The Afghan Taliban confirmed on Wednesday that their leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a U.S. drone strike last week and that they have appointed a successor -- a scholar known for extremist views who is unlikely to back a peace process with Kabul. The announcement came as a suicide bomber struck a minibus carrying court employees in the Afghan capital, killing at least 11 people, an official said. The Taliban promptly claimed responsibility for the attack. In a statement sent to the media, the Taliban said their new leader is Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, one of Mansour's two deputies. The insurgent group said he was chosen at a meeting of Taliban leaders, which is believed to have taken place in Pakistan, but offered no other details.