Technology

The Pentagon on Wednesday morning went live with a new, slicker interactive military commissions website — with no new information — ahead of a decision from a senior Defense Department official on whether to go forward with the first death penalty war crimes prosecution of the Obama administration.

A Kuwaiti court on Sunday sentenced a Sunni Islamist activist to three months in jail for writing remarks on his Twitter account deemed derogatory to Shiite Muslims, a legal source said.

Apple hasn't said when it will release the next version of the iPhone, but former Vice President and current Apple Inc. board member Al Gore believes "new iPhones" will be here in October.

A daycare centre in the southern Swedish city of Malmoe said Wednesday it planned to test GPS devices for tracking children when they are out on excursions.

One afternoon last fall at Fort Benning, Ga., two model-size planes took off, climbed to 800 and 1,000 feet, and began criss-crossing the military base in search of an orange, green and blue tarp. The automated, unpiloted planes worked on their own, with no human guidance, no hand on any control. After 20 minutes, one of the aircraft, carrying a computer that processed images from an onboard camera, zeroed in on the tarp and contacted the second plane, which flew nearby and used its own sensors to examine the colorful object. Then one of the aircraft signaled to an unmanned car on the ground so it could take a final, close-up look. Target confirmed. This successful exercise in autonomous robotics could presage the future of the American way of war: a day when drones hunt, identify and kill the enemy based on calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans. Imagine aerial “Terminators,” minus beefcake and time travel.