A terror network established in south Wales is now suspected to have been a much more elaborate and sophisticated operation. BBC Wales Investigates reveals the complex web which began with the arrival in Pontypridd of a "vulnerable looking" computer engineering student. In late December 2015 a uniformed Pentagon spokesman, Colonel Steve Warren, made a video announcement about "Operation Inherent Resolve", the US military's campaign against so-called the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. The spokesman gave details about 10 senior IS figures who had been targeted and killed, many in drone strikes, over the course of the month. "We are striking at the head of this snake by hunting down and killing ISIS leaders," declared the US army spokesman. Among those killed was Siful Sujan, a Bangladeshi national who was targeted near Raqqa in Syria on 10 December.

This article was written by Kwon Sok Oh, a Financial Analyst at I Know First. Israel currently has over 7000 thousand startups, living up to its reputation as the "startup nation." Israel is considered the most venture capital intense country, with the highest investment funds per capita in the world. Israel's unique combination of innovative and entrepreneurial mentality, technology-oriented ecosystem, government support, and international investment has driven the proliferation of the startup environment. Over 350 multinational companies, including technology giants, such as Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Samsung, and global financial institutions, such as JP Morgan, Citibank, and Barclays, have established R&D Centers in Israel to take advantage of the advent of novel startups and innovative technologies that solve existing problems.

BEIJING (CHINA DAILY/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - China may be ranked seventh globally when it comes to the number of professionals working in the cutting-edge industry of artificial intelligence (AI), but the country is predicted to climb the rankings in the next decade. More than 50,000 AI technical professionals are working in China. India, Britain, Canada, Australia and France took second to sixth place in the rankings, according to the report based on LinkedIn user data. "The core technique of AI is closely related to computer science, in which the US has maintained an absolute advantage in the past 20 years," said LinkedIn China's vice-president Wang Di. Researcher Li Hui at the Shanghai Institute for Science of Science said that AI talent in the US is mainly concentrated in such primary technical fields as chips, machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision and imaging, and far surpasses its Chinese counterparts in numbers. The LinkedIn report found that about one in six employees in the field in the US were born before 1970, compared with only one in 25 in China.

Let me start with a piece of trivia. As of today, research suggests there are already more connected "things" than human beings on earth. Not surprising, really, considering that each of us possesses multiple devices to simply stay connected. Think of these countless everyday physical objects being connected to the internet. Some studies predict that the number of connected devices will touch 50 billion by 2020.

Amazon's Prime Day is July 16. Chinese tech IPOs are the talk of the town this week following Xiaomi's listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In spite of its less-than-ideal debut, analysts expect a flood of Chinese tech firms--including Jack Ma-backed Ant Financial and online food delivery service Meituan-Dianping--to go public this year. A month ago, another Chinese tech company with grand ambitions had already made the jump: Ecovacs Robotics, whose line of robot vacuum cleaners dominate its native Chinese market and on Amazon.com. Headquarted in Suzhou, Ecovacs raised 803 million yuan ($121 million) when it listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange on May 28, making its founder, Qian Dongqi, a billionaire.

Three of China's largest car brands (Chongqing Changan, Dongfeng and FAW Group) have launched a venture that will create a ridesharing platform. T3 Mobile Travel Services will bring in partners from other fields to create the Uber-style service, and it'll unsurprisingly take advantage of the country's burgeoning self-driving car industry. It may not sound immediately relevant if you live outside of China, but the partnership could have a significant effect on the automotive world. All three of these companies have joint ventures with American and European car brands due to Chinese requirements -- outside manufacturers may not have to participate, but it may be hard to resist the allure of ridesharing in such a giant market. If nothing else, this appears to be a shot across the bow of Didi Chuxing, China's dominant ridesharing provider and one of the largest companies of its kind anywhere in the world.

Listen to your vehicle - this is an advice that all car and motorcycle owners are given when they're getting to know more about the vehicle. Now, a new AI service developed by 3Dsignals, an Israel based start-up is doing just that. The AI system can detect an impending failure in cars or other machines, just by listening to the sound. The system depends on deep learning technique to identify the noise patterns of a car. As per a report by IEEE spectrum, 3Dsignals promises to reduce machinery downtime by 40% and improve efficiency.

Surveillance companies are showing an increasing interest in hacking into IoT devices like the Amazon Echo. With an impressive seed raise of $12.5 million and ex-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak as co-founder, alongside an "all-star" leadership team, Tel Aviv-based Toka Cyber can certainly claim to have nailed the definition of an auspicious beginning. But, as it comes out of stealth Monday, Toka is revealing itself as an atypical force in the digital security sphere, acting as a one-stop hacking shop for intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Whatever spy tool they need, Toka will try to craft it for them. Privacy activists are hoping the company follows through on its promise to operate ethically.

A group of roboticists at the University of Tokyo have created a flexible, flying "drone-robot" that could see a multitude of uses. The Dual-rotor embedded multilink Robot with the Ability of multi-deGree-of-freedom aerial transformatiON, is (thankfully) better known by its acronym, DRAGON. As illustrated in the video below, it can change its shape mid-flight and fly through tight spaces. The current version of DRAGON consists of four modules, each equipped with a set of maneuverable thrusters. Battery-powered hinged joints link the modules.

In collaboration with more than 20 national universities, iFlytek launched its "Brain Science and Education" program on Saturday. The program will focus on the study of cognitive development of children, in a bid to explore new methods for individual learning and teaching. The domestic intelligent voice recognition technology company will invest more than 2 billion yuan ($299.03 million) in the program over the next 10 years. "I believe the program will be of great significance to the development of China's cognitive science and education industry," Liu Qingfeng, iFlytek's chairman, said at the launch event for the program, which was held in Beijing on Saturday. Liu also introduced some major breakthroughs the company achieved in the past year that would be applied to the new program.