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The Harris County Precinct 1 Constable's Office is doing something that no other agency in Harris County is believed to have done yet: Use drones to help fight crime. It's an eye in the sky for law enforcement, without giving up the element of surprise. "It could absolutely save lives," says Constable Alan Rosen. Rosen says the agency's two new $1,200 drones, which have been in use for three weeks, are game changers in getting intel before serving search warrants, on SWAT situations and even looking for escaped inmates. "You're not gonna detect that the drone is there because it's...

Pro tip: Don’t fly your camera drone too close to chimpanzees. They might knock it out of the air using a stick. That’s what happened to one camera drone user over in the Netherlands while flying a drone in a zoo’s chimpanzee habitat. One of the chimps decided that “enough is enough”

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s mixture of personal and work email once resulted in a reply to a crashed drone story with inquiries about home decorations. Files obtained by The Associated Press show that Mrs. Clinton accidentally sent adviser Huma Abedin questions about the attractiveness of shelving units in response to a drone crash in Pakistan. “I like the idea of these. How high are they? What would the bench be made of? And I’d prefer two shelves or attractive boxes/baskets/ conmtainers (sic) on one. What do you think?” Mrs. Clinton wrote, AP reported Tuesday. When Mrs. Abedin then asked if she...

VANCOUVER – Spurned by U.S. regulators, Amazon.com has turned to the one country where flying delivery robots are still welcome: Canada. On Monday, the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper revealed that the online retail giant is testing its latest prototypes for package-carrying drones at a top-secret site in British Columbia. “We are rapidly experimenting and iterating on Amazon Prime Air … including outdoors at a rural test site in Canada,” wrote Amazon spokesperson Kristen Kish in an email to the National Post. --- Located a mere 600 metres from the U.S. border, the Canadian testing grounds fulfill a lingering threat by Amazon...

Aden (AFP) - The United States said it had evacuated all its staff from Yemen, whose embattled president has appealed for "urgent intervention" by the UN Security Council as attacks by Iran-backed rebels bring his country nearer to civil war. Due to the deteriorating security situation in Yemen, the US government has temporarily relocated its remaining personnel out of Yemen," State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said in a statement. The evacuation comes after several suicide bombings claimed by the Islamic State group killed 142 people in Sanaa on Friday, with the jihadists seeking to exploit the chaos gripping the country....

<p>Syria's state news agency says the country's air defense forces have shot down a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft.</p> <p>SANA says the aircraft was downed Tuesday north of the coastal city of Latakia. It provided no further details.</p> <p>State television broadcast footage of what it said was the wreckage, including a wheel and electronic parts. Soldiers in camouflage could be seen loading some of the debris into the back of a truck.</p>

SOME PROFANITY The woman who was captured in a viral video last year attacking a drone photographer and calling him a “pervert” may have her charges dropped and record cleared.

Privacy seems like such a quaint 20th Century concept, doesn’t it? Unbox Therapy has posted a video of the CX-10 Mini Drone, which is described as the world’s smallest drone and is a definite harbinger of things to come. In other words, it looks like privacy is finally toast. The good news with this particular drone is that Unbox Therapy says you’ll have to fly it indoors since it’s so small and light that a good gust of wind could blow it down. This means that you can’t use it to secretly peep on into your neighbor’s window, for instance,...

Explorer Sam Cossman recently employed the help of multiple drones to capture photos and footage of the Marum Crater in an active volcano on the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. He ended up losing multiple drones in the process, but he left the island with spectacular images that will help provide a better understanding of the volcano and the life that exists around it.

Drones have been seen flying over several sensitive landmarks in Paris in a night-time mystery that French police say is being taken seriously. At least five of the unmanned aerial machines were spotted between midnight on Monday and 0600 on Tuesday, and none of the operators has been caught. The first appeared over the US embassy and there were later sightings near the Eiffel Tower and Place de la Concorde. French police believe the drone flights could be linked. Small drones are easy to buy but their appearance in recent months over sensitive locations has worried French authorities.

A Chinese drone maker which created the small quadcopter that recently crashed on White House grounds said Wednesday it is updating its drones to prohibit flight over the US capital.

At some point Sunday night, someone flew a small drone onto the grounds of the White House. White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that the drone -- or, to remove the ambiguity of that overly broad term, the small quadcopter -- posed no threat to the building or its inhabitants. The incident raises the question: Could a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pose such a threat? To answer that, we need to know the answer to three other questions. How far can a UAV fly? How is it controlled? And: What can it carry? Could a larger drone...

Too strange for fiction. At least it didn’t run through the front door of the White House and into the East Room while Secret Service agents figured, no worries, the shrubs will stop it. Because that would never happen. Oh . . . CBS News was one of the first to report it:

NEW DELHI, India — A "device" was found on the lawn of the White House, President Barack Obama's press secretary said Monday. Josh Earnest confirmed the discovery during a briefing on Obama's trip to India. He said the device did not pose any immediate threat.

A drone carrying methamphetamine crashed in Mexico near the San Ysidro Port of Entry on Tuesday night. The unmanned aircraft hauling more than 6 pounds of crystal meth in six packages fell from the sky into the parking lot of a supermarket in Tijuana just before 10 p.m., according to Vicente Calderon, a Tijuana-based freelance journalist for NBC 7.

Zwier Spanjer recently purchased a DJI Phantom 2 camera drone and captured the video above on his first day of flying it outdoors. The flight didn’t turn out the way Spanjer planned.

MIRANSHAH: Ten people including outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur are reportedly killed in drone strike in North Waziristan, Geo News reported. Sources said the unmanned aircraft fired two missiles at the compound of Hafiz Gul Bahadur, killing the TTP commander and 9 others in Alwar Mandi of Shawal area. Several other people also sustained injuries in the strike.

Anybody else have a drone? I'm asking because I decided to get myself a cheapo Christmas present, and got a Hubsan. The small one. It's quite a challenge to fly... so far, I think I've taken off and landed a total of twice. All the other events have been crashes. The first time I tried it, I hooked it up on my coffee table, powered up the controller, and pushed the RPM's up. It VERY promptly took off, crashed into my roof but keep going, and landed at the top of a bookcase about 15 feet away... Wow! Since that...

**SNIP** But it could be difficult to make the most of a 2km range without infringing civil aviation regulations, which require UAS pilots to stay within eyesight of their drone, and use of the camera could infringe the privacy of passersby. The Civil Aviation Authority has issued guidance to help drone operators understand airspace regulations. Technically, drone operators must request permission from the CAA if they plan to fly a camera-equipped aircraft within congested areas, or within 50 metres of people or properties that are not under their control. They must also remain in “visual line of sight” of their...

Killing children is part of the American ideal. It's who we are, says Obama. On behalf of the democrats on the SSIC Sen. Dianne Feinstein released a report describing what she called "torture." There has been much harrumphing about what is and what is not consistent with American values and what we stand for as Americans. Torture is "contrary to our values" says Barack Obama: President Obama said Tuesday he hopes a Senate report detailing “troubling” CIA interrogation practices will help the U.S. prevent actions “contrary to our values” in the future. “One of the strengths that makes America exceptional...