DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - The leader of Pakistani militant group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, who planned some of the deadliest suicide bombings in Pakistan in the last year, died on Thursday after being wounded in a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan, a spokesman said.

The UAE on Thursday appointed Omar Bin Sultan as the country's first Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence as part of a cabinet reshuffle. Aged just 27, Sultan's appointment is part of the UAE's ambition to be at the forefront of the global technological revolution which sees it planning to be build homes on the planet Mars by 2117. The position was announced in a tweet by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Prime Minister and Vice President and ruler of Dubai who said: "The new Government is a Government for the new Emirati percentage. The move comes just days after Sheikh Mohammed announced the UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (AI), a major part of the UAE Centennial 2070 objectives. The initiative aims to improve government performance and create an innovative and highly-productive environment by means of investing in AI. Other new positions created in the reshuffle include a Minister for Advanced Sciences and another for Food Security, according to a series of tweets, written in Arabic. Sheikh Mohammed said: "The new Government is a Government for the new Emirati percentage.

The UK's network of motorway services and petrol stations will be required to install chargers for electric cars, under plans announced by Transport Minister John Hayes. The Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill, which was first announced during the Queen's Speech in June but yesterday had its first reading in Parliament, outlines new powers that will help boost the uptake of electric vehicles across the UK. According to the government, the new network of charging stations will need to be "smart," which means they can interact with the grid in order to manage demand across the UK. Operators will also be required to provide clear information on the location and operating hours of their points, as well as the available charging options, how much they cost and whether they are working order or already in use. Ministers are clear that "all UK motorway services and large petrol retailers" will need to be on board and that the government will be given powers to "make it compulsory for chargepoints to be installed across the country."

Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs will develop a futuristic, billion-dollar community along a sizable swathe of Toronto's waterfront. On Wednesday, the City of Toronto and Sidewalk Labs -- which is the urban innovation arm of Google's parent company Alphabet -- announced a partnership to radically re-imagine 800 acres of the city's largely vacant, post-industrial Eastern Waterfront, and turn it into a tech-integrated neighborhood called Quayside. SEE ALSO: Balloons may be Puerto Rico's best chance for communication Sidewalk Labs released a 196-page document brimming with the company's extensive ideas, including high-speed ferries, parks that can be adapted to the seasons, and robotic waste removal vehicles. Sidewalk Lab's plan to fuse smart urban planning with technology is still just a visionary document, but if realized, would likely benefit both the company and Toronto. Sidewalk Labs doesn't get any ownership of the neighborhood, but gets a massive slab of land to deploy its innovative urban experiment.

The Democratic National Committee's chief technology officer, Raffi Krikorian, says that changes within the post-2016 political party are as much about the culture as they are about security. The MIT grad's time is physically split between his Silicon Valley home and Washington D.C., although he's looking to bridge the cultural gap between tech and politics. Krikorian previously led Uber's Advanced Technologies Center, where he was tasked with putting the ride-sharing company's self-driving cars on the streets of Pittsburgh, Pa. And preceding that, Krikorian was Twitter's vice president of engineering after successfully managing the social media giant's application programming interface. Following last year's hacks, leaks and ongoing discussion about Russian interference, his priority was to move security and communication to a trusted cloud service assisted by Microsoft.

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Wednesday for the U.S. and India to expand strategic ties. He also pointedly criticized China, which he accused of challenging international norms needed for global stability. Tillerson's remarks on relations between the world's two largest democracies, ahead of his first trip to South Asia as secretary of state, risked endearing Washington to one Asian power while alienating another. Tillerson said the world needed the U.S. and India to have a strong partnership. He said the two nations share goals of security, free navigation, free trade and fighting terrorism in the Indo-Pacific, and serve as "the Eastern and Western beacons" for an international rules-based order that is increasingly under strain.

WASHINGTON – CNN received a waiver allowing routine drone flights above crowds, a milestone for the industry seeking greater use of the remote-controlled devices for everything from insurance inspections to covering news. The approval is the first time the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has granted a waiver for unlimited flights over people, the news network said in an emailed statement. The standards used in the application can be applied to other applicants, potentially opening vast new uses by the media and other industries for so-called unmanned aerial systems, or UAS. "This waiver signifies a critical step forward not only for CNN's UAS operations, but also the commercial UAS industry at large," said David Vigilante, senior vice president of legal affairs for CNN. The FAA currently prohibits drone flights overhead, although its regulations allow for waivers if applicants can show there's no risk of injury.

You may have heard that algorithms will take over the world. But how are they operating right now? We take a look in our series on Algorithms at Work. Machine learning algorithms work blindly towards the mathematical objective set by their designers. It is vital that this task include the need to behave ethically.

Paul unlocked the box containing the tape recording that controlled them all. The tape was a small loop that fed continuously between magnetic pickups. On it were recorded the movements of a master machinist turning out a shaft for a fractional horsepower motor. He'd been in on the making of the tape, the master from which this one had been made. He had been sent to one of the machine shops to make the recording. The foreman had pointed out the best man – what was his name? That had been the machinist's name – Rudy Hertz, an old timer, who had been about ready to retire.

American police have certainly used drones before, but not on this scale. The Los Angeles Police Commission has voted in favor of letting the LAPD fly drones in a year-long pilot program, making it the largest US police department to ever rely on the robotic aircraft. The force will use the drones for aerial searches, recon in tense situations (think: standoffs) and other tasks where officers would otherwise be at risk. The machines could save lives, according to the LAPD, but there were numerous concessions made to address privacy concerns -- and some people still aren't convinced these limits will prevent abuse. The trial's rules restrict flights to SWAT team members in dangerous situations, such as when there's a heavily armed suspect on the loose.