During Kuwait's third National Competition for Robotics held at the Nusaibah Bet Kaab School for girls on April 18, one question continually came to the fore: can robotics play a role in improving education? Robotics competitions offer a chance to encourage students to build their own solutions to real-world problems using science and maths. Building a robot is a meticulous and difficult process that requires collaborative efforts from all team members. "The role of these competitions is important to develop the abilities and potential of students and to encourage innovation in scientific sectors, which might see great leaps today," said Kuwait's minister of education and higher education Bader Al-Issa. Around 20 projects developed by elementary and middle school students were exhibited at the competition.

The Afghan government and a senior Taliban commander confirmed Sunday that the extremist group's leader, Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour, has been killed in a U.S. drone strike. Mullah Abdul Rauf, who recently reconciled with Mansour after initially rebelling against his ascension to the leadership, told The Associated Press that Mansour died in the strike late Friday "in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area." Afghanistan's intelligence agency announced that Mansour had been killed in an air attack Saturday afternoon. In a statement, the National Directorate of Security, as the secret service is known, said the attack took place in Baluchistan province, in southwestern Pakistan. It is believed to have been the first drone strike on Baluchistan, which could explain why Mansour was traveling in an unarmored car without a convoy, decoys or bodyguards.

This photo taken by a freelance photographer Abdul Salam Khan using his smart phone on Sunday, May 22, 2016, purports to show the destroyed vehicle in which Mullah Mohammad Akhtar Mansour was traveling in the Ahmad Wal area in Baluchistan province of Pakistan, near Afghanistan's border. A senior commander of the Afghan Taliban confirmed on Sunday that the extremist group's leader, Mullah Mohammad Akhtar Mansour, has been killed in a U.S. drone strike.

SAN FRANCISCO – At the top of the corporate world, Apple and Google are in a back-and-forth battle to be No. 1. It is not clear which of the two Silicon Valley giants will emerge on top in a contest that highlights the contrast of very different business models. Apple then regained, lost and recovered the leader position in May in a battle that appears set to continue for some time. As of the end of Friday, Apple was worth some 522 billion, to 496 billion for Alphabet. The two companies have both been hugely profitable in recent years, for different reasons. Apple has delivered a line of must-have iPhones and other gadgets that have set trends around the world but now "appears to be a little bit immobile," says Roger Kay, analyst at Endpoint Technologies Associates.

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LAGOS--Nigeria is beating the West at its own word game, using a strategy that sounds like Scrabble sacrilege. By relentlessly studying short words, this country of 500 languages has risen to dominate English's top lexical contest. Last November, for the final of Scrabble's 32-round World Championship in Australia, Nigeria's winningest wordsmith, Wellington Jighere, defeated Britain's Lewis Mackay, in a victory that led morning news broadcasts in his homeland half a world away. It was the crowning achievement for a nation that boasts more top-200 Scrabble players than any other country, including the U.K., Nigeria's former colonizer and one of the board game's legacy powers. "In other countries they see it as a game," said Mr. Jighere, now a borderline celebrity and talent scout for one of the world's few government-backed national programs.

It is hard to miss the warnings. In the race to make computers more intelligent than us, humanity will summon a demon, bring forth the end of days, and code itself into oblivion. Instead of silicon assistants we'll build silicon assassins. The doomsday story of an evil AI has been told a thousand times. But our fate at the hand of clever cloggs robots may in fact be worse - to summon a class of eternally useless human beings.

A senior commander of the Afghan Taliban confirmed on Sunday that the extremist group's leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, has been killed in a U.S. drone strike. Mullah Abdul Rauf, who recently reconciled with Mansour after initially rebelling against his ascension to the leadership, told The Associated Press that Mansour died in the strike late Friday "in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area." The office of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani confirmed in a statement that the strike took place but could not confirm Mansour's death. Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, however, said that Mansour is "more than likely" dead. Speaking live on television as he chaired a Cabinet meeting, Abdullah said Mansour's death would have a positive impact on attempts to bring peace to Afghanistan, where the Taliban have been waging an insurgency for 15 years.

A senior Taliban commander confirmed early Sunday the death of the group's Afghan leader Mullah Mansour in a U.S. drone strike. A U.S. official told Fox News Saturday that Mansour was "likely" killed in the strike, while the White House is awaiting official confirmation of Mansour's death before releasing their own statement about the strike. President Obama authorized the strike, which occurred at about 6 a.m. Mansour was traveling in a vehicle when the strike occurred. It was carried out my multiple unmanned aircraft operated by U.S. Special Operations Forces.

Baidu is planning to shift its focus to Artificial Intelligence (AI).(Photo Baidu Inc. is planning to overhaul its business model, shifting from its current search oriented model to one that focuses on'artificial intelligence.' Baidu CEO Li Yanhong said in a company's internal letter on Tuesday that this change will help the company to develop new products in areas such as search, automatic translation, and driverless vehicles. Industry observers say that the shift in business model will likely affect the company's short-term profitability. Li also promised to put more emphasis on user experience and set up a department to weed out any action or behavior that damages its user' experience.