Ankara / AP Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday said Syrian Kurdish militia forces must remain outside the scope of a ceasefire agreed between Syria’s warring parties, in a blow to the deal days before it is due to be enforced. Lashing out at Western policy in Syria, he said the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its …

Darfur / AFP Abuobeida Ali was a toddler when militiamen stormed his village in Sudan’s Darfur in 2003, murdering his father and driving his family out, ending his hopes for a normal childhood and education. Now aged 17 and out of school for nine years, he is one of the more than 870,000 Darfuri children living in camps for the …

Little noticed amid the daily news bulletins about the IS and Syria, the Pentagon has begun a push for exotic new weapons that can deter Russia and China. Pentagon officials have started talking openly about using the latest tools of artificial intelligence and machine learning to create robot weapons, “human-machine teams” and enhanced, super-powered soldiers. It may sound like science …