CAIRO – Al-Qaida's chief bomb maker, Ibrahim al-Asiri, who was behind the 2009 Christmas Day plot to down an airliner over Detroit and other foiled aviation-related terror attacks, was killed in a U.S. drone strike, Yemeni officials and a tribal leader said Friday. The killing of al-Asiri deals a heavy blow to the group's capabilities in striking western targets and piles pressure on the group that already lost some of its top cadres over the past years in similar drone strikes. A Yemeni security official said that al-Asiri is dead; a tribal leader and an al-Qaida-linked source also said that he was killed in a U.S. drone strike in the eastern Yemeni governorate of Marib. The tribal leader said that al-Asiri was struck, along with two or four of his associates, as he stood beside his car. He added that al-Asiri's wife, who hails from the well-known al-Awaleq tribe in the southern governorate of Shabwa, was briefly held months ago by the UAE-backed forces and later released. Al-Qaida itself has remained silent about its top bomb maker.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. Researchers at the Human Robot Interaction Laboratory at Tufts are teaching their PR2 to pick up objects by giving the robot instructions using natural language. Pretty cool project, but do they have to use a...knife?

Google has changed a description on its website of when and how exactly it is tracking its users. The revision was made to the explanation of how its "Location History" settings works. The page suggested that it might turn off all location tracking – but it now makes clear that actually turning it off does not necessarily mean Google won't be following you around. The alteration came after the company was criticised over the fact that there one of Google's settings offered the option to switch Location History either on or off. There are a lot of Easter Eggs hidden in Chrome, and more and more are discovered each year.

When you think of artificial intelligence, your mind might conjure images of futuristic robots or computers that are able to act as humans do. It's making a real impact on businesses today and could factor even larger in the years to come. An Accenture Research study found that AI has the potential to boost profitability by an average of 38 percent across select industries. It could also lead to a $14 trillion economic boost in additional gross value added by 2035. So how do businesses most effectively take advantage of this technology to facilitate growth and efficiency?

President Trump's time in office has been punctuated by rising tension with China on a host of economic issues. He's received bipartisan criticism for the impact of tariffs on Chinese goods and the resulting retaliation against American exports. Democrats and Republicans have also unified over concerns about how Chinese state-associated actors are using minority investments in critical technology companies to gain sensitive information -- like IP and know-how -- about startups, many of them VC-backed. Policymakers are worried this technology is being used to propel Chinese advancement in emerging technology like artificial intelligence and robotics. These concerns led to passage of the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA), which was signed into law by the president on August 13. NVCA has been at the table during FIRRMA's consideration because it stands to have a significant impact on the venture and startup ecosystem.

I just got hold of some embarrassing video footage of Texas senator Ted Cruz singing and gyrating to Tina Turner. His political enemies will have great fun showing it during the midterms. Donald Trump will call him "Dancin' Ted." Okay, I'll admit it--I created the video myself. But here's the troubling thing: making it required very little video-editing skill. I downloaded and configured software that uses machine learning to perform a convincing digital face-swap.

More than a thousand Google employees have signed a letter criticising the company's plan to launch a heavily censored version of its search engine in China. In the letter, which is an internal petition, the employees asked for more transparency and oversight of Project Dragonfly, the project's internal title. "We urgently need more transparency, a seat at the table and a commitment to clear and open processes: Google employees need to know what we're building," the letter, seen by the Reuters news agency, reads. The employees are reportedly worried about kowtowing to China by implementing the government's requests for censorship. China restricts internet users massively by blocking websites, censoring words and clamping down on free speech.

Mr. Pichai, speaking Thursday at a weekly all-hands meeting in Mountain View, Calif., was responding to criticism from employees, human rights groups and others who in recent days have voiced concerns over the Alphabet Inc. unit's work with the Chinese government. Google is developing services for Chinese citizens, including a search engine that could adhere to China's strict censors, The Wall Street Journal and others reported last week. At the meeting, Google co-founder and Alphabet president Sergey Brin sounded optimistic about doing more business in China, cautioning that progress in the country is "slow-going and complicated." Mr. Brin was instrumental in Google's decision in 2010 to withdraw its search engine from China to protest the government's censorship regime and attempts to hack into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. At the time, he described the government as having the "earmarks of totalitarianism" of the Soviet Union, where he was born.

Air pollution in cities can be an acute problem leading to damaging effects on people, animals, plants and property. It is an important topic which is getting increased attention as the human population of cities continues to increase. This year it was the subject the 2018 KDD Cup, the annual data mining and knowledge discovery competition organized by ACM SIGKDD. The burning of fossil fuels for transport and home heating is a major contributor to air pollution in urban environments, creating the pollutant nitrogen dioxide (NO2). This is a secondary pollutant produced by the oxidation of NO. It is a major contributor to respiratory problems. In the European Union, the Cleaner Air For Europe (CAFÉ) Directive 2008/50/EC established an hourly limit of 200 μg/m3 and an annual mean limit of 40 μg/m3 in respect of NO2.

Google employees, upset over reports of a secretive search engine project for China, have signed a petition asking for more transparency from company leaders. SAN FRANCISCO -- Hundreds of Google employees have signed a petition protesting a secret project to develop a search engine for China, the latest example of tech workers rebelling against corporate policies that push moral boundaries. The letter, which was posted by Buzzfeed and first reported by The New York Times, says Google's decision to work with China raises "urgent moral and ethical issues," and that employees "do not have the information required to make ethically-informed decisions" about their work, projects and employment. The employees, who represent a fraction of parent company Alphabet's workforce of 89,000, also were upset by the secrecy of the project and in the petition demanded more transparency about the company's myriad ventures, which range from self-driving cars to advanced artificial intelligence. Google was scheduled to have a regular company-wide meeting between senior leadership and global employees late Thursday, during which in-person and remote staffers can ask any question they want.