In India, AI-enabled cameras are sending out tiger alerts in real time
CNN
TrailGuard is an innovative camera trap that detects specific species, like tigers, and transmits images of them instantly.
Silently padding through the jungle, the tiger slinks between tree trunks and hanging vines, her stripes a seamless veil among the dappled shadows on the forest floor. Hard to spot for a human — harder still if you’re a deer — but not so difficult for artificial intelligence. Developed by US-based NGO Resolve, TrailGuard AI is an innovative camera trap that is designed to detect specific species and transmit images of them instantly. While the technology was originally developed to combat poaching — the camera’s first field-test was in a reserve in East Africa in 2018, where Resolve says it led to the arrest of 30 poachers — conservationists in India saw potential for its use in managing human-tiger conflict. TrailGuard uses an advanced vision chip with embedded AI that can recognize up to 10 species — such as tigers, leopards, elephants and humans — and transmit the data in real-time to park rangers via cell phone signal or long-range radio. Because it only recognizes select species, it uses less energy than regular camera traps, so it can stay in the field for more than two years, rather than needing its battery changed every month. Last year, TrailGuard AI deployed 12 cameras in a two-month trial in the Kanha–Pench corridor in Madhya Pradesh, known as India’s “tiger state.” The 3,150-square-kilometer (1,216-square-mile) landscape includes the Pench Tiger Reserve, the Kanha Tiger Reserve, and a forest corridor connecting the two, and is home to over 300 tigers, the largest population in central India. Tigers, which need extensive space to roam, can freely move between the two reserves, which helps the population flourish and aids genetic diversity. But the tigers aren’t the only ones who live in the forest: it’s also home to around 600,000 people living in 715 villages scattered through the corridor, and there are 2.7 million people living within five-kilometers (3.1 miles) of the tiger conservation landscape – which can create conflict with the big cats.
A California woman told police that Trump Cabinet pick Pete Hegseth physically blocked her from leaving a hotel room, took her phone, and then sexually assaulted her even though she “remembered saying ‘no’ a lot,” a police report obtained by CNN shows.
For more than a decade, Chinese students have flocked to the United States, drawn by the prestige of an overseas education and the glamor of the American Dream. But that’s changing now – and recent statistics suggest the allure may be wearing off.
After rarely being seen in public in the two weeks since he delivered a brief, 46-second victory speech on election night, JD Vance reemerged this week to play one of the most important roles he will be expected to fill as Donald Trump’s No. 2: His point person on Capitol Hill.
A Florida man was arrested Wednesday and charged in a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange this week, according to the FBI.
The Senate on Wednesday voted down an effort led by Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to block a series of planned US weapons sales to Israel.
Republicans on the House Ethics Committee fell in line behind GOP leaders and voted not to release the results of their investigation into Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz, despite growing calls from the Senate GOP to make the findings public ahead of his confirmation hearing.
Senate Democrats have confirmed some of President Joe Biden’s picks for the federal bench this week in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for a total GOP blockade of judicial nominations – in part because several Republicans involved with the Trump transition process have been missing votes.
A former University of Virginia student pleaded guilty Wednesday to fatally shooting three football players and wounding two other students on the Charlottesville campus in 2022.
Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality and people who have served on his US Secret Service detail to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.
The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, on the grounds it would not have secured the release of hostages.
A Democratic election official in Pennsylvania offered an impassioned apology Wednesday for claiming “precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country” to justify counting about 600 faulty ballots in defiance of state Supreme Court rulings.