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.

Ever since Charles Babbage's conceptual, unrealised Analytical Engine in the 1830s, computer science has been trying very hard to race ahead of its time. Particularly over the last 75 years, there have been many astounding developments – the first electronic programmable computer, the first integrated circuit computer, the first microprocessor. But the next anticipated step may be the most revolutionary of all. Quantum computing is the technology that many scientists, entrepreneurs and big businesses expect to provide a, well, quantum leap into the future. If you've never heard of it there's a helpful video doing the social media rounds that's got a couple of million hits on YouTube.

Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.

Our Digital & Social Media Coordinator Lucy Woods speaks with Neil MacDonald who recently joined Speechmatics as Chief Revenue Officer. Having recently announced Speechmatics to feature as a finalist in the Fast and Furious Pitch Off (press release here) at Venturefest East, we wanted to find out more about this rising start-up. Speechmatics is the culmination of 3 decades of advanced Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence research conducted by our founder Dr Tony Robinson. We apply the latest research in Neural Networks to the task of understanding speech. We provide an automatic speech recognition technology that unlocks the data contained within what we say to each other verbally.

This year's I/O was a big one. Among other things, the Mountain View, California company announced its Daydream VR platform for Android, an evolution of the Google Now assistant in the form of an AI-powered "Google Assistant," a couple of new messaging apps and some hardware to play the part of debuting the Assistant, a new version of Android Wear, and more. The keynote had this overarching theme that Google is no longer just a company that does search and ads. Now, Google is diving head first into artificial intelligence and machine learning, and most of the things that were announced in the keynote fell into that narrative for the most part. This is the stuff that's not coming out for at least half a year.

This year's I/O was a big one. Among other things, the Mountain View, California company announced its Daydream VR platform for Android, an evolution of the Google Now assistant in the form of an AI-powered "Google Assistant," a couple of new messaging apps and some hardware to play the part of debuting the Assistant, a new version of Android Wear, and more. The keynote had this overarching theme that Google is no longer just a company that does search and ads. Now, Google is diving head first into artificial intelligence and machine learning, and most of the things that were announced in the keynote fell into that narrative for the most part. This is the stuff that's not coming out for at least half a year.

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.