Free Republic

Police brass haven’t talked about drones as potential weapons, until now, CBS News correspondent Jeff Pegues reported Wednesday. The NYPD is actively looking for ways to stop an attack by a drone. The department told Pegues there is no intelligence showing an imminent threat, but over the last year the country’s largest police force has been increasingly concerned about a potential terror attack from the air by a drone. “We look at it as something that could be a terrorist’s tool,” Deputy Chief Salvatore DiPace said. “We’ve seen some video where the drone was flying at different targets along the...

Let’s kick the Halloween week off with a couple of classic themed costumes: 1. The radio-controlled witch costume, designed by Otto Dieffenbach III, as seen flying over the ocean near Carlsbad California earlier this month: 2. The Religion of Pieces costume, designed by a radio controlled bomb compliments of the U.S. Air Force, as seen on a former member of ISIS, flying somewhere in the skies near Kurdistan earlier this month. Whichever costume you choose, please be sure to keep your head while wearing it, as these are actual flying models and may be dangerous if used improperly. Because what...

Helicopter-type Gorizont drone © ITAR-TASS/Valery Matytsin (archive) MOSCOW, October 15. /TASS/. Ship designers are advancing the blueprint for a new-generation, multi-purpose warship to join Russia’s navy. Features of the planned corvette are still under wraps but the vessel is thought likely to carry a helicopter-type Gorizont drone within its armory. Planners at Russia’s Central Marine Engineering Design Bureau Almaz and United Shipbuilding Corporation expect the keel to be laid next year, possibly at St. Petersburg’s Severny shipyard though it is still unconfirmed. “As technical design is in progress I will not reveal the features of this new vessel but it...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – A hawk swooping in and attacking a drone while it was flying over a park in Massachusetts Wednesday was captured on video. (HT Drudge)

Gwyneth Paltrow's Los Angeles neighborhood is home to some unwelcoming artwork. Posters plastered on telephone poles and utility boxes mock the Oscar-winning actress's support for President Obama ahead of his visit to her home for a Democratic fundraiser on Thursday. There appear to be two different posters, each tacked up in multiple areas around Brentwood. One features a photo of Obama, torn away from the American flag. The poster reads "Conscious Uncoupling," a phrase popularized by Paltrow and her ex, rocker Chris Martin, when they called it quits

Video at source. Thousands of demonstrators turned out in downtown Hong Kong on September 29 to support a protest over Beijing’s decision to reject calls for open nominations for the election of Hong Kong’s chief executive in 2017. In this footage, a drone captured the scale of the crowd making its way through the skyscrapers of the former British colony’s central business district.

Aerial footage filmed by a drone shows the large number of people joining pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

"LOWER TOWNSHIP, N.J. (CBS) — A New Jersey man was arrested after police say he shot down a neighbor’s remote control drone."

Drone Exemptions for Hollywood Pave the Way for Widespread Use By BROOKS BARNESSEPT. 25, 2014 LOS ANGELES — The commercial use of drones in American skies took a leap forward on Thursday with the help of Hollywood. The Federal Aviation Administration, responding to applications from seven filmmaking companies and pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America, said six of those companies could use camera-equipped drones on certain movie and television sets. Until now, the F.A.A. has not permitted commercial drone use except for extremely limited circumstances in wilderness areas of Alaska. Put bluntly, this is the first time that...

Meet Nixie, a wearable camera that flies off your wrist and turns into a remote-controlled quadcopter. It's the bizarre-yet-appealing wearable camera drone nobody asked for... and now we kind of want it. Intel is holding a competition to encourage new wearable technology ideas, and the Nixie is one of the finalists. So far, it's still in development, so the flying wristlet camera is rough around the edges. Team captain Christoph Kohstall eventually wants you to be able to send the the Nixie flying with a gesture. It would recognize where you're standing, snap a picture, then return to the wrist,...

A small, hobby-sized robot could herald the pilot of the future. At just 39.7cm (15.6in) tall, PIBOT -- a portmanteau of "pilot" and "robot" and not to be confused with Raspberry Pi-powered PiBot or 3D printer PiBot -- has been trained by researchers at KAIST to fly a human-sized aeroplane. The robot, presented at IROS Chicago earlier this month, has a video camera built into its "face", with software built in for runway detection and other visual cues. The rest of the buttons, sticks and switches allow the robot to control throttle, braking pitch, yaw, altitude, velocity, and direction, information...

Iran calls on the United Nations’ atomic agency to condemn Israel over the drone Iran downed above the Natanz uranium enrichment site. Snip .... accused Israel of a "flagrant violation" of the Islamic Republic's territorial integrity "in contravention of the principles of international law and provision of the United Nations charter." The Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Air Force claimed that the drone was an Israeli-made "Hermes" drone with a maximum flight range of 1,600 km (994 miles) and a 800-km (500 mile) combat radius. Israeli officials declined to comment on the allegation by its arch foe, which the Jewish state and...

(WXYZ) Allen Park, Mich. - A mystery drone is the talk of Allen Park, as a family there watched the flying device land in their backyard. The operator--nowhere to be found. "We freaked out," said homeowner Roman Urista. He and his family were sitting in the backyard around a fire recently, when the drone hovered overhead, lights on and propellers roaring. It crash landed in the family's yard, still buzzing. "It didn't look like a hobby toy to me," said Urista. The Drone, valued at around $500, was equipped with an onboard camera. The family was scared to go near...

It looks like Stonehenge. A doughnut. A giant sand castle. Those were just some of the comments a new drone video taken with a GoPro camera of the futuristic Apple Campus 2 was garnering after the eight-minute raw piece was posted to YouTube. As of Monday, the aerial image of the campus under construction in Cupertino on Tantau Avenue had more than 1.3 million views and 500 comments. "Wow, this looks huge," Dustin W. Stout wrote in the comments section of the video. "I've seen mockups previously of what the site is going to look like, but seeing it like...

AUSTIN (KXAN) — University of Texas Police are investigating the use of a drone over Darrell K. Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium Saturday night during the Longhorns’ home opener. KXAN’s cameras spotted the drone flying above the stadium. The drone had red and green lights on it. It also had a camera. We weren’t the only ones who spotted it. Police did too. During the second half of the game, officers found the operator of the drone, made him land it and then took the man into custody. The department told KXAN the man was a UT student, and he...

Winging it Google announces its own delivery drones project Aug 29th 2014 | SAN FRANCISCO | Business and finance AT THE end of 2013, Amazon made quite a media splash when it revealed that it had been testing the use of small drones to deliver packages. The company is betting that the airborne marvels will eventually be able to transport parcels to customers within a ten-mile radius of the vast network of warehouses that it runs. But it is not the only tech giant with its eyes on the sky. On August 28th Google announced that its secretive "Google X"...

Google has built and tested autonomous aerial vehicles, which it believes could be used for goods deliveries. Google said that its long-term goal was to develop drones that could be used for disaster relief by delivering aid to isolated areas. They could be used after earthquakes, floods, or extreme weather events, the company suggested, to take small items such as medicines or batteries to people in areas that conventional vehicles cannot reach. "Even just a few of these, being able to shuttle nearly continuously could service a very large number of people in an emergency situation," explained Astro Teller, Captain...

President Obama has authorized the use of drones for surveillance in Syria even as the Assad regime demanded that the U.S. seek permission before launching any airstrikes on its territory against Islamic State targets. A senior U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that Obama this weekend authorized the use of drone surveillance over Syria for the first time. The action is considered the first “intrusive” surveillance by the U.S. in Syria since the country’s civil war began. This differs from protective surveillance, such as the U.S. used in the failed mission to rescue American hostages held in Syria. The authorization...

Professor and political activist Cornel West declared President Barack Obama a “war criminal,” arguing that his support of Israel and his drone policy make him complicit in the deaths of innocent people. The controversial activist made the comments at a pro-Palestinian rally in Washington, DC on Saturday, according to Talking Points Memo. West began his speech by pointing to the deteriorating situation in Gaza, where more than 1,800 Palestinians and more than 60 Israelis have been killed, criticizing Israel’s offensive in the region in front of a “Free Palestine” banner. His comments regarding President Obama begin at around the three-minute...

Winners of the 2014 Dronestagram Photo Contest have finally been selected! Picking winners was a very difficult task especially because of the great quality of the photos that have been submitted. We tried to reward the photos that show the best the fantastic potential offered by drones in terms of image. It’s been an amazing first edition with many photos entered from everywhere in the world. Thank you all for joining in.We would like to extend a special thanks to our contest sponsors National Geograpic, Go Pro, Picanova, Droneshop and Parrot for generously offering amazing gifts !Are you one of...