Baba Vanga, a blind Bulgarian mystic who died in 1996, is said to have predicted a huge scientific discovery for 2018: a new form of energy on the planet Venus. With no planned missions to Venus this year, her prediction is not expected to come to fruition. More than 20 years after her death, people are waiting to see if Baba Vanga's prophecies for 2018 will come to pass. They reportedly include the Venus discovery, as well as China passing the United States in economic power, although it is unclear where these statements are coming from. Baba Vanga, whose real name was Vangelia Gushterova, was blinded as a child during a tornado.

Over the past few weeks Fortune colleagues and I have written at length about China's rise as an "innovation superpower," particularly in sectors involving the Internet, e-commerce and mobile payment. We've marveled at the scale of China's two largest tech giants, Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings, and extolled the creativity and convenience of the multitude of the services they offer. Some of you have written to remind us of Beijing's strict censorship of the Internet. Even so, my view remains that China has emerged as the biggest, liveliest and most sophisticated digital marketplace in the world. But I've also expressed unease in this space about the fact that in China's tech sector, even more than in America's, an enormous amount of market power is concentrated in the hands of a few giant firms, with few safeguards for individual privacy.

In recent years, artificial intelligence has emerged as a concept on the cusp of revolutionizing everything from medical research to workplace collaboration. And while the technology has recently begun touching into government operations in the form of chatbots, a new study finds that states and cities should begin gearing up for big changes -- and big savings -- from AI tech. According to a new report by Deloitte University Press, by automating many of the simple and repetitive tasks government employees perform every day, AI could free up or eliminate millions of hours of labor in the federal government alone. "At the low end of the spectrum, we estimate, automation could save 96.7 million federal hours annually, with a potential savings of $3.3 billion; at the high end, this rises to 1.2 billion hours and a potential annual savings of $41.1 billion," the report reads. Cognitive technologies could help push these cost savings not just by freeing workers from mundane tasks but also by creating more accurate cost projections and overcoming resource constraints, the report notes.

Eighty-five per cent of senior executives plan to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) by 2020, according to a new survey of UK digital leaders by Deloitte. The findings come from the first edition of a new regular report from Deloitte, the Digital Disruption Index. The index will track investment in digital technologies and create a detailed picture of their impact on the largest and most influential business and public sector bodies. The first edition includes responses from 51 organisations with a combined market value of £229bn. Over half of survey respondents expect that by 2020, they will invest more than £10 million in digital technologies and ways of working – such as AI, cloud, robotics, blockchain, analytics, the IoT, and virtual and augmented reality.

An asteroid NASA has called "potentially hazardous" was caught whizzing by Earth shortly before Christmas, showing astronomers the dark void at its heart. The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico used its radio telescope to keep an eye on asteroid 3200 Phaethon during its close approach to the planet, creating radar images that revealed new features of the space rock. According to NASA, the asteroid is roughly shaped like a ball and "has a large concavity, or depression, at least several hundred meters in extent near its equator, and a conspicuous dark, circular feature near one of the poles." Arecibo is in an area that was battered by Hurricane Maria earlier this year, and returned to its asteroid-watching activities this month. Astronomers at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico took radar images of the large asteroid Phaethon as it passed close to Earth this month.

The Federal Aviation Administration has a few words of warning for anyone who unwrapped a drone this holiday season. Drones were a popular holiday gift this year -- Statista estimates that Americans spent $1.2 million on the airborne machines in 2017 -- but they're also prone to crashes and accidents in the hands of amateur pilots. The FAA set out to curtail those mishaps with a video posted on Monday. If you receive a #drone this #holidayseason, you're now part of the #aviation community. Learn how to be a #safe #drone #pilot with these basic #FAA safety tips.

We owe a lot to 9th century Persian scholar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. Centuries after his death, al-Khwarizmi's works introduced Europe to decimals and algebra, laying some of the foundations for today's techno-centric age. The latinized version of his name has become a common word: algorithm. In 2017, it took on some sinister overtones. Take this exchange from the US House Intelligence Committee last month.

PARACHINAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suspected U.S. drone attack along the Pakistani-Afghan border killed an Islamist militant commander and one of his associates on Tuesday, a Pakistani official in the remote area said.

JOHANNESBURG – A group that monitors extremist organizations says the Islamic State group has posted what is thought to be the first video from IS-affiliated fighters in Somalia. The video posted online Monday calls on supporters to "hunt down" what it calls nonbelievers and attack churches and markets. The SITE Intelligence Group says the video urges supporters to take advantage of people's "drunkenness" over the holiday season to attack. The United States last month launched its first drone strikes against Islamic State group-affiliated fighters in Somalia. The Horn of Africa nation has a small but growing presence of the fighters, many of them defectors from the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group.

The United States last month launched its first drone strikes against Islamic State group-affiliated fighters in Somalia. The Horn of Africa nation has a small but growing presence of the fighters, many of them defectors from the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group.