Russia pressures university students to become wartime drone pilots

Russia pressures university students to become wartime drone pilots

fivenewscrypto    mai 18, 2026   

Russian universities are promising free tuition and up to $70,000 to students who are willing to serve as drone pilots in the Russian military for a year—all while claiming students can avoid the risk of frontline combat duty in Ukraine. But there has already been one confirmed battlefield death and possibly more among the new cadre of student drone pilots.

That specific recruitment offer appeared on pamphlets distributed at Bauman Moscow State Technical University, according to Bloomberg. Other universities have dangled incentives such as tax holidays, loan forgiveness, and sometimes free land. The independent magazine Groza counted at least 270 Russian academic institutions promoting military contracts to their students in the fifth year of the war that began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

This new wave of recruitment is targeting a population of approximately 2 million men attending Russian universities, including gamers and students with technical skills that could make them suitable trainees as drone pilots, according to Bloomberg. Russia’s Defense Ministry has specifically called for drone pilot recruits with expertise in flying drones, model aircraft, electronics, and radio engineering, with computer skills also being desirable, NBC News reported.

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Anthropic’s $1.5B copyright settlement is getting messy as judge delays approval

Anthropic’s $1.5B copyright settlement is getting messy as judge delays approval

fivenewscrypto    mai 18, 2026   

After several authors and class members raised objections to Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement over its widespread book piracy to train AI, a federal judge has delayed final approvals of the settlement.

On Thursday, US District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin declined to rubber-stamp what's regarded as the largest copyright settlement in US history. Instead, she wanted to better understand why some class members were objecting and opting out of the settlement. So, she asked authors to address key concerns of objectors, who argued that lawyers' compensation was way too high and payments to class members were a "pittance."

Ars reviewed several objections to the settlement, as well as letters from objectors who claimed that the authors' legal team was trying to unfairly shut them out from voicing concerns.

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US hantavirus case was false positive; outbreak cases drop from 11 to 10

US hantavirus case was false positive; outbreak cases drop from 11 to 10

fivenewscrypto    mai 18, 2026   

In a press briefing Friday, officials for the World Health Organization announced that the case count of the hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship MV Hondius in the South Atlantic has shrunk from 11 cases to 10 after a previously reported US case was found to be a false positive.

That US case was originally reported by US health officials as "mildly positive," and the WHO had considered it "inconclusive," but still counted in the outbreak as a case in the agency's May 13 outbreak report and in a briefing on May 14.

The inconclusive case was in Dr. Stephen Kornfeld, an American doctor aboard the ship who helped respond to the outbreak after the ship's doctor became ill. In an interview with CNN earlier this week, Kornfeld explained that he and others on board had taken nasal swabs early in May, before evacuation, and those swabs were sent for PCR testing in the Netherlands. Two labs in the Netherlands processed Kornfeld's swabs; one lab reported a negative result, and the other reported a faint positive.

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Review: Good Omens finale (mostly) sticks the landing

Review: Good Omens finale (mostly) sticks the landing

fivenewscrypto    mai 17, 2026   

It's been a three-year wait, but Prime Video finally released the series finale for Good Omens: a 90-minute single episode that sought to wrap everything up in a neat little bow. Verdict: Truncating the final season so drastically definitely hurts the first half of the series finale, which feels chaotic and rushed. But once that stupendous on-screen chemistry between co-stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen kicks back in, the old magic shines through, strong as ever, giving us a fitting end to this beloved comic saga.

(Spoilers below for all seasons.)

Here's a brief recap, since it's been a minute since the S2 finale. The series is based on the original 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett. Good Omens is the story of an angel, Aziraphale (Sheen), and a demon, Crowley (Tennant), who gradually become friends over the millennia and team up to avert Armageddon. Season 2 found Aziraphale and Crowley getting back to normal, when the archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm) turned up unexpectedly at the door of Aziraphale’s bookshop with no memory of who he was or how he got there. The duo had to evade the combined forces of Heaven and Hell to solve the mystery of what happened to Gabriel and why.

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Solar power production undercut by coal pollution

Solar power production undercut by coal pollution

fivenewscrypto    mai 17, 2026   

Coal is by far the most polluting fuel that we use. It produces the most carbon emissions per unit of energy, and impurities in the coal produce a lot of sulfur dioxide aerosols, as well as nitrous and nitrogen oxides. Then there’s the coal ash that’s left behind, which typically contains a lot of toxic metals. The health benefits of displacing coal power are typically estimated to be well above the costs of the new generating equipment. 

But a new study suggests that the problems with coal-derived pollution go beyond health; it interferes with other power sources. Researchers have found that aerosols, both natural and human-derived, significantly reduce the power we could be getting from solar panels, to the tune of hundreds of terawatts a year. And a lot of those aerosols come from burning coal.

A big impact

The new work, done by a team in the UK, is based on a new global inventory of solar facilities. This started with known inventories of solar facilities, and was supplemented with AI-analyzed satellite imagery and crowdsourced records of locations. Satellite images were then used to determine the size of these facilities, and location-tagged weather data could then be used to estimate their power production.

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Weather-monitoring firm hangs dark cloud over customers’ heads by forcing new app

Weather-monitoring firm hangs dark cloud over customers’ heads by forcing new app

fivenewscrypto    mai 17, 2026   

Weather-monitoring company AcuRite is forcing device owners to use a new companion app on May 30, frustrating some long-time customers.

AcuRite, which sells devices such as weather stations, indoor thermometers, and rain gauges, began emailing customers last month that they’d soon have to control their devices with the AcuRite Now iOS and Android app. AcuRite first launched the app in June 2025 to control a new weather station, the AcuRite Optimus. However, owners of AcuRite devices had still been able to use the My AcuRite app, which launched in 2016.

Soon, however, My AcuRite will no longer be available, making AcuRite Now the only official app for controlling AcuRite devices. The website for the My AcuRite app currently reads:

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Three's a party: US, China, and now Russia are on the prowl in GEO

Three's a party: US, China, and now Russia are on the prowl in GEO

fivenewscrypto    mai 17, 2026   

The world's leading space powers desperately want to know what the others are up to high above the equator. For more than a decade, the US military has operated a fleet of "inspector" satellites designed to sidle up to other spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit and take pictures. China started launching its satellites for a similar mission in 2018.

Ars has written about these activities in geosynchronous orbit (GEO) before, but the last few months have seen a couple of interesting developments. First, Russia has now joined the fray with the recent arrival of its own suspected inspector (or attack) satellite in GEO. Second, the US Space Force is poised to order more—perhaps many more—reconnaissance satellites of its own to send into the geosynchronous belt.

GEO is special. The laws of orbital mechanics mean a satellite in this type of orbit, some 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) over the equator, moves around the Earth at the same rate as the planet's rotation, causing it to hover over the same location. Commercial and military-owned geosynchronous satellites typically spend years in the same location, or slot, to provide communications services to users.

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