DAVOS, Switzerland In this Swiss Alps town where the global elite have gathered to debate the world's problems, there seems to be little room on the radar for Africa, a continent of over a billion people where a commodity-fueled growth boom has soured with a vengeance.

SANAA/ADEN – Suspected U.S. drone strikes have killed three alleged al-Qaida operatives in Yemen's southwestern Bayda province, security and tribal officials said, the first such killings reported in the country since Donald Trump assumed the U.S. presidency Friday. The two Saturday strikes killed Abu Anis al-Abi, an area field commander, and two others, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release the information to journalists. U.S. drone strikes against suspected al-Qaida targets have been commonplace in the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, as a retaliatory measure against the group. The use of unmanned aircraft as well as airstrikes in the Arab world's poorest country rose dramatically under President Barack Obama, with data from the Britain-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism showing spikes in attacks, especially in 2012 and 2016. On Thursday, U.S. intelligence officials said as many as 117 civilians had been killed in drone and other counterterror attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere during Obama's presidency.

In fact, in many countries, the internet, the very thing that was supposed to smash down the walls of authoritarianism like a sledgehammer of liberty, has been instead been co-opted by those very regimes in order to push their own agendas while crushing dissent and opposition. And with the emergence of conversational AI -- the technology at the heart of services like Google's Allo and Jigsaw or Intel's Hack Harassment initiative -- these governments could have a new tool to further censor their citizens. Turkey, Brazil, Egypt, India and Uganda have all shut off internet access when politically beneficial to their ruling parties. Nations like Singapore, Russia and China all exert outsized control over the structure and function of their national networks, often relying on a mix of political, technical and social schemes to control the flow of information within their digital borders. The effects of these policies are self-evident.

The internet was supposed to become an overwhelming democratizing force against illiberal administrations. It was supposed to open repressed citizens eyes, expose them to new democratic ideals and help them rise up against their authoritarian governments in declaring their basic human rights. It was supposed to be inherently resistant to centralized control. In fact, in many countries, the internet, the very thing that was supposed to smash down the walls of authoritarianism like a sledgehammer of liberty, has been instead been co-opted by those very regimes in order to push their own agendas while crushing dissent and opposition. And with the emergence of conversational AI -- the technology at the heart of services like Google's Allo and Jigsaw or Intel's Hack Harassment initiative -- these governments could have a new tool to further censor their citizens.

Machine learning has come a long way since Hollywood painted it as shiny robots fueled by artificial intelligence. In the Hollywood version, robots usually end up replacing humans. But today, we're actually using machine learning to supplement many of the things that humans do best. They feel foreign, scientific, and hard to understand. And for many professionals, the phrase still sounds like highly technical jargon.

Stealth bombers and armed drones launched airstrikes Wednesday night against two Islamic State encampments in northern Libya in an expansion of the air war there, according to the Pentagon. The attacks were authorized by President Obama two days before he leaves office and are a reminder of the continuing turmoil in the oil-rich nation where a U.S.-led air war helped insurgents overthrow strongman Moammar Kadafi in 2011. Islamic State militants in Libya have established what officials say is the group's largest and most powerful affiliate outside its core areas in Syria and Iraq, although its area of control has shrunk considerably over the last year. B-2 bombers targeted two desert camps about 30 miles southwest of Surt, a port city on the central Mediterranean coast that U.S.-backed Libyan forces recaptured last year from the militants. U.S. officials said dozens of militants had escaped from Surt to the desert camps.

When five television studios became entangled in a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against CBS, the cost was immense. As part of the obscure task of "discovery" -- providing documents relevant to a lawsuit -- the studios examined six million documents at a cost of more than $2.2 million, much of it to pay for a platoon of lawyers and paralegals who worked for months at high hourly rates. But that was in 1978. Now, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, "e-discovery" software can analyze documents in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. In January, for example, Blackstone Discovery of Palo Alto, Calif., helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000.

An orangutan has been captured performing DIY better than some humans. The incredible new footage reveals a female great ape using a saw to skilfully divide a branch in two. The talented ape uses her right hand to hold the tool and her feet to grip the tree branch like a vice. She even blows away the sawdust to inspect her work like a true craftsman. An orangutan has been captured performing DIY better than some humans.

January 18, 2017 --Barren circles dot the dry grasslands across about 1,500 miles of the Namib Desert stretching down the southwestern coast of Africa, emerging, growing, shrinking, and disappearing in lifetimes of 30 to 60 years. The empty patches are accentuated by a rim of particularly tall grasses that ring the circles, which range from 6 feet to 115 feet wide. The fairy circles, as the strange bare soil spots are called, have long puzzled scientists. Although they look a bit like imprints left by massive raindrops, impacting meteors, or as legend would have it, the feet of gods, researchers suspect the pattern may form as a result of a more systematic natural process. But just what that process might be has been the subject of much debate.

To the average person, it may seem that the biggest technology advances of 2015 were the larger smartphone screens and small app updates. But a lot more happened than that. A broad range of technologies reached a tipping point, from cool science projects or objects of convenience for the rich, to inventions that will transform humanity. We haven't seen anything of this magnitude since the invention of the printing press in the 1400s. In the developed world, we have become used to having devices that connect and inform us and provide services on demand, and the developing world has largely been in the dark.