Politics this week-

The FBI waded into the American presidential election by rebooting its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state, four months after exonerating her. The bureau’s director, James Comey, faced fierce criticism for being vague about the new probe. The news was the latest “October surprise” to shake up a race between Mrs. Clinton and Donald Trump that has tightened in its final days. See blog.

Two police officers were shot dead while sitting in their cars in Des Moines, Iowa. Local authorities later arrested a 46-year-old man suspected of carrying out the “ambush-style” attacks.

America’s longest sporting drought ended when the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. They defeated the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in Game Seven of the Major League Baseball finals after enduring more than a century without winning a trophy.

Venezuela’s leftist government and the opposition began talks mediated by the Vatican. Tensions between the two sides increased after the government blocked a referendum to recall Nicolás Maduro’s president. The negotiations will cover restoring the rule of law, the schedule for elections, human rights, and the economic crisis. See article.
Police in El Salvador arrested a former president, Elías Antonio Saca, on suspicion of money laundering and embezzlement. Mr. Saca governed from 2004 until 2009 as a member of the conservative ARENA party. During his tenure, officials put nearly $250m of public money into private accounts, prosecutors say.

Marcelo Crivella, a Pentecostal bishop, was elected mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second-most-populous city. He has promised to continue providing public financing for the city’s gay-pride parade and samba schools. See article.

Trouble brewing

China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), was reportedly preparing to intervene in a row in Hong Kong over whether two legislators who support greater autonomy for the territory should be allowed to take up their posts. The politicians used derogatory language about China when they were sworn in. A court in Hong Kong began hearing a case filed by the local government apparently aimed at blocking them, but the NPC wants to move faster. See article.
A gas explosion at a privately owned coal mine in Chongqing’s southwestern region killed 33 workers trapped underground. Two miners survived the blast.

China allowed Philippine vessels to fish near Scarborough Shoal, a disputed tidal atoll. China’s navy had been chasing them away but seemed to have halted after overtures from the Philippines’ new president, Rodrigo Duterte. See article.

Prosecutors detained Choi Soon-soil, a South Korean woman accused of exploiting her friendship with the president, Park Guen-Hye, to raise money for foundations she controlled and meddle in government affairs. Ms. Park appointed a new prime minister, reshuffled her cabinet, and dismissed ten close aides in response to the scandal. See article.

Thai authorities announced that Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn would assume the throne on December 1st, after his father, King Bhumibol, in October. The prince had initially demurred out of respect for the late king.
Cease

Iraqi troops moved into an outlying district of Mosul, which the Islamic State has held since 2014. But the battle for the city has been running for two weeks, and progress is slow. See article.

Michel Aoun, a Maronite Christian, and former warlord, became president of Lebanon, ending an impasse that lasted two-and-a-half years. See article.

Syrian rebels launched an offensive to try to break the siege of Aleppo. But an escalation of the bombing there is expected within days as a Russian aircraft carrier nears the eastern Mediterranean.

South African prosecutors withdrew flimsy charges of fraud brought against the finance minister, Pravin Gordhan. The politically motivated charges were part of a struggle between Mr. Gordhan and the president, Jacob Zuma. Separately, a report called for a judicial inquiry into corruption involving Mr. Zuma. See article.

Egypt said it would float its pound. The central bank announced a series of reforms designed to help secure a $12bn bail-out from the IMF. The currency had been trading well below the official rate on the black market.

The United Nations sacked the Kenyan head of a peacekeeping force in South Sudan after finding it had failed to respond to civilians’ attacks by South Sudanese forces. Kenya, in turn, said it would withdraw its troops from the force.

The genuine article

The British High Court ruled that the government does not have the right to invoke Article 50, the legal mechanism for triggering Brexit, without the approval of Parliament. The pound rose following the news. The verdict is a setback for Theresa May’s government, which said it would appeal. See article.

Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom, a populist Dutch group leading in the polls, failed to turn up for the first day of his trial for hate speech. Instead, Mr. Wilders took to Twitter to espouse more of the anti-Muslim views that had landed him in trouble.

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Germany’s EU commissioner, Günther Oettinger, apologized after a video showed him mocking Chinese people and decrying gay marriage. Germany’s Social Democrats criticized him, but Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of Mr. Oettinger’s Christian Democrat party, stayed mom.

Politicians in Ukraine backtracked on a pay rise that would have doubled their earnings, following public outrage after details of their property holdings were published. Some 50,000 officials had been required to declare their assets, including vintage wine, luxury watches, flashy cars, and a church.

Iceland’s center-right Independence Party came first in the country’s general election and was asked to form a coalition. The result was disappointing for the Pirate Party, which won just 14.5% of the vote despite polling at 40% earlier this year. See article.

Pressure washers are convenient cleaning devices that can be utilized for several cleaning purposes at home and commercial-scale applications. These machines are either controlled by gas or power. Pressure washers are not like any other cleaning equipment; they have to be used correctly to get the right results. Below are some of the most important tips and tricks to keep in mind while using pressure washers for industrial and commercial usage. Read more to find out.

1. Security First

A weight washer isn’t a toy. As weight and volume increments, so do the potential for damage. Therefore you have to be extremely careful. Always have safety gear handy. Put on some protective gear such as safety glasses before using the washer. Never point the splash at yourself or someone else as it could be dangerous.

2. Nozzle Selection

The two most important factors to keep in mind while choosing the nozzle for your pressure washer are the spray angle and the nozzle hole size. These decide the GPM or water flow rate per minute. It determines how many gallons of water should come out of the showerhead each minute at a specific weight of the water stream. To decide the nozzle size, you have to know the GPM (gallons every moment) and PSI (pounds per square) depending upon your activity. Also, understand that the nozzle size and the PSI are inversely proportional to each other, although the flow remains the same.

3. Testing the power

Test your weight washer for its capacity. The best way is to choose a location and begin showering a couple of feet away from any article. Gradually reduce the distance from the surface you need to clean. Move your wand side-to-side a few times and check if the surface is perfect. If extra cleaning is required, draw your wand by bit nearer to the surface (approx. 1-2 feet). The explanation behind the continuous cleaning is on account of weight washers are greatly intensified. On the off chance that you begin excessively close, you could harm the surface or object instead of cleaning it.

4. Buy the Right Hose

If you want your machine to work flawlessly, you have to guarantee that you are using the right hose. Although most pressure washers are provided with a hose, you might have to change it or buy a new one depending upon your needs. Also, don’t forget to buy a quality product and never settle for cheap ones as they won’t guarantee perfection.

5. Follow the right methods

Hold the tip of the weight washing spout at an edge over the surface you are cleaning and at a separation to avoid harm. Always abstain from showering water behind or under vertical surfaces, for example, lap siding, and into light installations or cooling hardware, electrical outlets, soffit vents, or storage room vents.

Follow the given tips to ensure that you are using the pressure washer correctly without causing any harm to yourself and others.

The Canadian armed forces have sent a crew to investigate reports of a mysterious “pinging” sound that seemed to be coming from the seafloor.

Hunters in a remote community in the Canadian Arctic have become concerned about a pinging or beeping sound they say they’ve heard in the Fury and Hecla Strait, a channel of water that’s 120km (75 miles) northwest of the Inuit hamlet Igloolik.

Paul Quassa, a local politician, told CBC that the sound seems to be coming from the seafloor and is scaring animals away from a popular hunting area of open water surrounded by ice that is usually abundant with sea mammals.

“And this time around, this summer, there were hardly any. And this became a suspicious thing,” he said.
Several reports were passed to the military, which sent a CP-140 Aurora patrol aircraft to investigate on Tuesday under the mandate of Operation Limpid, a domestic surveillance program designed to “detect, deter, prevent, pre-empt and defeat threats aimed at Canada or Canadian interests.”

In a statement, Department of National Defence spokeswoman Ashley Lemire said: “The Canadian armed forces are aware of allegations of unusual sounds emanating from the seabed in the Fury and Hecla Strait in Nunavut. The aircrew performed various multi-sensor searches in the area, including an acoustic search for 1.5 hours, without detecting any acoustic anomalies. The crew did not detect any surface or subsurface contacts.

The ‘Windsor Hum’: where is the noise plaguing a city of 210,000 coming from?
“The crew did observe two pods of whales and six walruses in the area of interest.

“At this time, the Department of National Defence does not intend to do any further investigations.”
That hasn’t stopped people from theorizing about the source of the sounds, which have been variously attributed to the sonar surveys of local mining operations or Greenpeace activists.

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Mining companies use sonar to make detailed maps of the seafloor searching for offshore oil and gas. The sonar is known to disturb marine mammals such as whales and dolphins. However, the Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation, which has conducted sonar surveys nearby, told CBC it has no equipment in the water at this time.

Others believe that Greenpeace is creating the sound on purpose to scare wildlife away from Inuit hunters – an allegation Greenpeace denies.

Mysterious sounds tend to send people’s imaginations into overdrive. Earlier this year, a high-pitched flute-like noise kept people in Portland, Oregon, awake. The steady whistling noise had also been heard by residents several decades previously.

The sound appears to come from an island surrounded by fences that’s home to a steel plant. The secrecy surrounding the plant has led to wild and unfounded speculation that the sound comes from an alien aircraft or the construction of an underground tunnel by a billionaire.

World stocks wallowed near a four-month low as U.S. election uncertainty knocked the dollar, and futures pointed to the longest losing streak for the S&P 500 since the 2008 financial crisis.

Investors were unsettled by media reports that some agents at the FBI had wanted to press ahead with an investigation of the Clinton Foundation, the latest twist in a long-running investigation into Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Investors generally view Clinton as a known quantity. Still, there is deep uncertainty about what a win for Republican Donald Trump — closing the gap in some polls — might mean for U.S. economic policy, free trade, and geopolitics.

The volatility index, also known as markets’ fear gauge, rose for an eighth straight day for its longest streak in three years and is just one day from a record run. The dollar slipped 0.4% to 102.83 yen, while the euro edged up 0.1% to $1.1098.

A weaker dollar weakness meant sterling was slightly firmer ahead of the UK High Court ruling on whether the government or parliament has the right to trigger the Article 50 Brexit clause to leave the European Union. The Bank of England’s policy decision and inflation report were also ahead.

The dollar also added 0.4% on the Mexican peso, which acts as something of a proxy for investor angst over the risk of a Trump victory. Trump’s position on Mexican migration and trade could severely disadvantage the United States’ southern neighbor if he wins.

Sovereign bonds and the Swiss franc were also in favor, and even the prospect of a December rate increase from the Federal Reserve could not steady the dollar.

“We are not quite at the point where we need to think about canned food and underground wood bunkers, but we are being schooled in understanding the dynamics politics plays on financial markets,” said Chris Weston, chief market strategist at broker IG Research.

“Despite all the thoughts about central bank policy changes, improving inflation trends and ever-changing economics, politics dominates markets above all else.”

Futures pointed to a slightly lower open for the S&P 500, which has already chalked up its longest losing streak in five years and is just one more session away from its worst run since 2008.

Asian shares lost some ground overnight while better-than-expected earnings results lifted European stock markets slightly. , the broader picture was weak, with the MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in 46 countries, languishing close to a four-month month.

Tokyo was on holiday, which was likely just as well as the rising yen would have hurt the Nikkei.

TIGHTENING CYCLE

While some polls put Trump ahead on Tuesday, an average of polls compiled by the RealClearPolitics website showed Clinton retaining a slight lead. A Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll released late on Wednesday showed Clinton ahead by 6 percentage points among likely voters.

Politics also overshadowed the Fed’s November policy meeting, where it kept rates steady as expected and opened the door a little wider to a rate rise next month.

“Barring a shock to the global economy and/or upheaval in financial markets, we continue to anticipate a 25 basis point rate hike at the 14 December meeting,” said Peter Dragicevich, a senior currency and rates strategist at CBA.
“We, and the FOMC, are looking for the tightening cycle to continue to be slow and limited,” he added, predicting just two more rate increases over 2017.

Oil rose on Thursday, lifting prices away from five-week lows, as an attack on a Nigerian oil pipeline concerns supply disruptions.

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Helped also by the weaker dollar, U.S. crude bounced 16 cents to $45.50 a barrel, while Brent added 27 cents to $47.15.
In emerging markets, there were major moves as Egypt floated its currency, the Egyptian pound, which resulted in a near 33% devaluation.

Egyptian stocks and bonds both surged, with Cairo’s blue-chip equity index up 8.3% in the opening minutes and its main dollar-denominated government bonds rallied as much as 2.2 cents in the dollar.

“The dollar bonds are understandably up as they won’t be frittering reserves anymore,” said ahead of EM sovereign debt at Aberdeen Asset Management Edwin Gutierrez. “But this was part of the IMF program. It is classic Washington consensus 101, and they are doing all the right things.”

JAKARTA, Indonesia—The biggest street protest in years shook this sprawling capital on Friday, in a stark display of the more conservative, militant strain of Islam taking hold in the world’s largest Muslim country.

Police estimated that 100,000 people turned out for a rally called by hard-line Muslim groups against the capital’s Christian governor, whom they accuse of having committed blasphemy.

Turnout was lower than some organizers had predicted after the nation’s largest Muslim organizations this week discouraged their members from attending.

President Joko Widodo had met with other political leaders amid calls for calm. Still, critics say he has been too slow since taking office in 2014 to respond to deepening tensions for fear of being labeled anti-Muslim.

In a recent interview, Mr. Widodo, a Muslim, said religious and political leaders were responsible for “cool temperatures down,” and he vowed to protect minorities. “My government won’t tolerate any discrimination,” “We are one of the most tolerant countries in the world,’’ Mr. Widodo told The Wall Street Journal.

The Jakarta governor’s bid to win re-election in February is building into a test.

“Religiosity is rising, especially among the middle class,” said Yon Mahmudi, an Islamic politics expert at the University of Indonesia. “A sense of identification is increasing.’’

Protesters were aiming for Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known as Ahok, the most prominent politician among the country’s often-persecuted ethnic Chinese minority—and one of the country’s few Christian lawmakers. He was elected deputy governor in 2012 and elevated to the top job in 2014 after his boss, Mr. Widodo, was elected president.

Some hard-liners had tried to block his ascent then, saying Muslims shouldn’t be governed by a “kafir,” or nonbeliever.
The blunt-spoken Mr. Purnama, 50 years old, also has irritated many with a brash, get-things-done manner that conflicts with Javanese traditions of polite compromise.

Mr. Purnama, now running for re-election with high approval ratings, angered the groups again by citing a verse of the Quran in a public address in late September. He has apologized and said he would cooperate with a police investigation but has since been the target of protests.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla met a group of protest leaders and said that police would pursue a blasphemy case against Mr. Purnama. Local media reported that Mr. Purnama said he would meet with investigators Monday. The maximum penalty for blasphemy is five years’ imprisonment.

Scattered outbreaks of violence were reported as small groups dispersed into neighborhoods, including North Jakarta, where they looted a minimart. About a hundred police officers guarded the complex where Mr. Purnama resides.

Shortly after midnight, Mr. Widodo appeared on television, saying that legal action concerning Mr. Purnama would be swift and transparent, and asked protesters to return home. He also said he deplored the violence that took place after the rally and that “political actors” had taken advantage of the situation. He didn’t elaborate.

According to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s office, Mr. Widodo Saturday postponed a planned three-day visit to Australia to begin Sunday. Mr. Turnbull said in a statement that Mr. Widodo called him to postpone the visit and that the security situation in Jakarta required the president’s personal attention.

Nearly 90% of Indonesia’s 250 million people are Muslim. The Southeast Asian nation—some 18,000 islands straddling the Pacific and Indian oceans—has a long tradition of moderate Islam in a culture influenced earlier by Hinduism and Buddhism Folk Fests.

But the tenor has changed in recent years. Headscarves for women, once rare, are now widely worn, and Islamic schools are expanding. An effort to outlaw cohabitation and sex between unmarried people fizzled in 2013 but has returned this year, with proponents asking the Supreme Court for a constitutional prohibition.

Religious hard-liners staged antigay rallies early this year, and the government threatened to block websites it says promote lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender lifestyles. Netflix ran into trouble with Indonesia’s state-owned telecom provider in part because of complaints about some content.

A movement to ban alcohol is gaining steam, and sales have been banned from convenience stores. Travel to Mecca for the minor pilgrimage of umrah, once a relatively uncommon undertaking for middle-class Indonesians, is newly popular. Security experts say the rising conservatism paves the way for potential violence, pointing to some religious hard-liners who have rebranded themselves as cells of the Islamic State.

In January, Indonesia suffered its first Islamic State-linked attack, with militants receiving funding from the terrorist group via a Syria-based Indonesian who once studied with a hard-line group in central Java. Since then, there have been sporadic attacks, including one last month where an Islamic State sympathizer stabbed three police officers.

“What we’ve seen in the last 18 months to two years is increasing crossover from organizations that started nonviolent-but-hard-line to organizations which are now committed to using violence,” said Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict.

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Still, Islamic parties have done poorly in elections since the downfall of longtime dictator Suharto in 1998. Indonesia has been one of the most stable democracies in the region after overcoming a wave of terrorism and sectarianism in the early 2000s. Many of those at Friday’s protest had ridden for hours on trains and buses from other parts of Java island. They gathered at the Istiqlal mosque, the country’s largest, before marching toward the presidential palace.

A 27-year-old from Pemalang in Central Java said that, while Mr. Purnama isn’t his governor, he sought justice for Islam. Asked about comments from extremists about killing Mr. Purnama, he said: “It is an expression of how upset we are.” Security forces took up positions behind barbed wire around nearby government offices. Authorities said around 20,000 police and military personnel were on duty. There were no immediate reports of violence.

Streets in the famously congested city of 10 million people were relatively devoid of traffic as many workers stayed home. Many shops and offices closed.

Her legal team declined to give details but said prison conditions contributed to her fragile mental state.
Manning was sentenced to 14 days in solitary confinement in September for charges relating to her attempt to kill herself in July.

The transgender Army private, born Bradley Manning, is serving a 35-year sentence for espionage.
In September, she was found guilty by prison officials in Leavenworth, Kansas, of “conduct which threatens” after her initial suicide attempt.

She was also convicted of having “prohibited property” – the book “Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy” by Gabriella Coleman. In July, the former intelligence analyst attempted to take her own life after what lawyers said was the Army’s refusal to provide appropriate health care.

She later went on a hunger strike, which ended after the military agreed to provide her with gender dysphoria treatment For Tricks.

Manning sentenced to solitary confinement
The secret life of a transgender airman
Profile: Private First Class Manning

Her lawyer Chase Strangio described her treatment in a letter, quoted by the AP news agency, as “demoralizing,” adding that it was an “assault on her health and humanity.” “She has repeatedly been punished for trying to survive and now is being repeatedly punished for trying to die,” wrote Mr. Strangio.

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When she was removed from solitary confinement in October, she tweeted that she was “OK” and “trying to get back in the groove of things”. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2013, after being found guilty of espionage for her role in leaking diplomatic cables and battlefield reports to Wikileaks, the anti-secrecy group.

The leak of more than 700,000 documents and videos was one of the largest breaches of classified material in American history.

Turkish authorities ordered the formal arrest of nine staff members of a leading opposition newspaper and detained more pro-Kurdish officials, widening an anti-terror probe that has drawn condemnation from the west.

A day after the co-leaders of the pro-Kurdish opposition, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was jailed pending trial; the arrests are likely to spark more concern among Turkey’s allies about President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s intolerance of dissent.

More than 110,000 officials, including judges, teachers, police, and civil servants, have been detained or suspended following a failed coup in July. Erdoğan’s critics say he is using the coup as a pretext to crush the opposition. Ankara says the crackdown is necessary to root out terrorists.

Authorities ordered the formal arrest of nine executives and journalists from the secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper, including the editor-in-chief, Murat Sabuncu, and senior staff, broadcaster NTV, and other media reported. They had been detained since Monday. Also, nine HDP officials, including some provincial and district heads, were detained in the south-eastern province of Adana, a party official said.

The HDP, Turkey’s third-largest party, made history last year by becoming the first Kurdish-rooted party to win the 10% of the vote required to enter parliament Frett Board.

Erdoğan and the ruling AK Party accuse the HDP of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which for three decades has carried out a violent insurgency in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast. The HDP denies direct links and says it is working for a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish conflict.

On Friday, the co-leaders of the HDP, Selahattin Demirtaş and Feigen Yüksekdağ, were jailed pending trial after being held in overnight raids. Ten other HDP lawmakers were also detained. Some were later released.

The arrests heightened concern among Western allies about the political direction of Turkey, a Nato member and a buffer between Europe and the conflicts raging in Syria and Iraq.

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The European Union foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said she was “extremely worried” by the arrests and raised her concerns in telephone calls to Turkey’s foreign and EU affairs ministers late on Friday. The United States expressed “deep concern.”

News of the arrests also shook financial markets on Friday, with the lira currency falling to a record low. Hours after the detentions on Friday, a car bomb killed 10 people and wounded more than 100 near a police station in the south-eastern city of Diyarbakir. Islamic State claimed responsibility.

After claiming the earthquakes that have shaken the country, an Italian priest has angered the Vatican, killing hundreds and leaving thousands homeless, which were “divine punishment” for gay civil unions.

Fr Giovanni Cavalcoli, a theologian known for his hardline views, made the comments on 30 October, the day central Italy was struck by a 6.6-magnitude quake – the most powerful to hit the country in 36 years.

Italy earthquake: residents fear historic towns will never look the same.
It was the third major quake in the region in just over two months.

Cavalcoli told Radio Maria that the seismic shocks were “divine punishment” for “the offense to the family and the dignity of marriage, particularly through civil unions.”

Italy is one of the last western European countries to legally recognize same-sex relationships, having introduced legislation last month to allow gay civil unions, Genius Zone.

The radio station distanced itself from Cavalli’s views, and the Vatican has issued a stinging rebuke, saying the idea of a vengeful God was “a pagan vision” dating from “the pre-Christian era.”

Archbishop Angelo Becciu, number two in the Vatican’s powerful Secretariat of State, said Cavalli’s comments were “offensive to believers and disgraceful for non-believers.”

Becciu asked for forgiveness from quake victims and reminded them they had the “solidarity and support” of Pope Francis. However, Cavalcoli refused to back down, insisting to another radio station that earthquakes were caused by “the sins of man” and telling the Vatican to “read their catechism.”

It is not the first time comments by members of the Italian clergy have embarrassed the Catholic church. Last month a priest was suspended from his parish in Trento after apparently defending pedophilia during a live TV interview, arguing that “children often seek affection.” Fr Gino Flaim of the San Giuseppe and Pio X parish claimed he “understands pedophilia” but added, “I’m not sure about homosexuality.”

When asked to explain his comments, he told the La7 channel: “Paedophilia is a sin, and like all sins have to be also accepted.” He went on to describe homosexuality as “a disease.” Following his suspension, the priest said his words, “do not represent the positions of Trento archdiocese and the general sentiment of the parish.”

In 2012 another Italian priest sparked outrage by delivering a Christmas message that claimed women were to blame for men’s violence towards them because they wore “filthy clothes” and served “cold suppers.” Fr Piero Corsi put a leaflet on his church’s noticeboard in San Terenzio, northwest Italy, asserting that 118 women killed by men in Italy that year only had themselves to blame.

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“Is it possible that men have turned crazy all of a sudden? We don’t believe so. The point is that more and more women provoke, fall into arrogance, believe [themselves] to be independent and exacerbate tensions,” the leaflet read.

“Children have left outside alone; homes are dirty, meals are served cold … clothing is filthy. They [women] trigger the worst instincts leading to violence and sexual abuse. They should do a self-examination and think: did we ask for it?”

The priest received a torrent of abuse after a scan of the leaflet was posted online, and his Facebook account was closed. Senior religious figures distanced the church from Corsi’s comments, and he was forced to resign.

Google’s DeepMind is teaming up with the StarCraft video game makers to train its artificial intelligence systems. The AI systems “playing” the game will need to learn strategies similar to those humans need in the real world, DeepMind said Jack Blog.

Its ultimate aim is to develop artificial intelligence that could solve any problem. It has previously taught algorithms to play a range of Atari computer games. StarCraft II was an early pioneer in e-sports, with many elite players.

StarCraft II, made by developer Blizzard, is a real-time strategy game in which players control one of three warring factions – humans, insects, or alien elves. The in-game economy governs players’ actions, and minerals and gas must be gathered to produce new buildings and units.

Each player can only see parts of the map within the range of their own units and must send units to scout unseen areas to gain information about their opponents. In a blog post, Oriol Vinyals, a research scientist at DeepMind, said: “DeepMind is on a scientific mission to push the boundaries of AI, developing programs that can learn to solve any complex problem without needing to be told how.” The game is more complex than Go, which DeepMind previously developed an algorithm to win.

“StarCraft is an interesting testing environment for current AI research because it provides a useful bridge to the messiness of the real world. “The skills required for an agent to progress through the environment and play StarCraft well could ultimately transfer to real-world tasks.”

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Prof Yoshua Bengio, head of the Institute for Learning Algorithms at the University of Montreal, told the BBC: “It is a much more complex game than games previously studied by AI researchers, like the Atari games or even the game. Of Go.” DeepMind famously developed an algorithm that could play the complex game of Go and beat one of the world’s best players.

“Progress on this game could translate in many areas,” said Prof Bengio. “One of which I am particularly interested in is natural language dialogue.”

The game will be opened up to other AI researchers next year. DeepMind said it hoped that the new environment would be “widely used to advance the state-of-the-art” field of artificial intelligence.

A Russian frigate armed with cruise missiles has passed through the Bosphorus on its way to the eastern Mediterranean in a potentially ominous development for the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo. The Admiral Grigorovich, part of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, arrived off the Syrian coast on Friday as the latest pause in the Russian bombardment of eastern Aleppo came to an end, adding to an emphatic Russian show of naval force in the Mediterranean.

Unlike the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier and Peter the Great nuclear-powered battle cruiser, whose arrival in the region has drawn considerable publicity, the newly commissioned Grigorovich has a fearsome ground attack capability in the form of Kalibo land-attack cruise missiles.

Three Russian submarines from Russia’s northern fleet capable of firing Kalibr missiles are also reported to have arrived in the Mediterranean.

Russia has used Calibre missiles, equivalent to US Tomahawk missiles, against Syrian targets a handful of times over the past year. The concentration of forces in the eastern Mediterranean supporting the Syrian regime’s ambitions to retake Aleppo from rebel forces suggests they may be used again in the coming few days or hours.

Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin warned Syrian rebels and civilians trapped in eastern Aleppo to leave the city by Friday night, when a temporary moratorium on air strikes was set to expire.

But opposition groups told the Guardian that promised safe passages out of besieged areas did not exist. As the deadline drew near, opposition groups pushed on with an assault on loyalist west Aleppo, while residents seemed resigned to a resumption in airstrikes.

“Nothing can be done. Nobody can stop the planes,” Bears Mishal, an official with the White Helmets volunteer rescue service, told Reuters Icas Network.

The Kuznetsov battle group paused in its approach towards Syria off the east coast of Crete on Thursday to carry out aviation exercises. The Russian ministry of defense footage showed warplanes taking off and landing on its deck. The Kuznetsov is carrying about 10 Sukhoi-33 and four Mig-29 fighter aircraft and up to two dozen helicopters. Although the Su-33’s have recently been adapted to drop bombs more accurately, the plane has never been used for ground attacks. Only the Mig-29 is designed for that purpose.

If the planes are used to bomb targets in Syria, it will mark the first time Russia has used its only aircraft carrier in combat. That lack of experience, however, may limit its usefulness.

“There are very few carrier-trained pilots. In fact, there are more planes than pilots, and most of the planes on board are not made for the ground attack. This is largely a training run for naval aviation,” Michael Kofman, a Russian specialist at the Centre for Naval Analyses, a federally funded research institute.

“They haven’t done anything done anything like this in a long time, and it is getting heavily covered by the local and international media,” said Peter Zwack, a retired US brigadier general and former military attache to Moscow now at the National Defence University. “They are arriving in the eastern Mediterranean right before our election. It’s posturing and secondarily adding capability in Syria.”

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The visit of its flagship to the Mediterranean is also a morale-boosting demonstration of military capacity for the Russian navy, which has not played a significant role in Ukraine or Syrian conflicts, but which is seen by Vladimir Putin as vital to Russian self-image as a global power.

“Russia’s naval presence in the Mediterranean is as much about military posture and ability to project power beyond its region as much as the Syria campaign in general. Moscow sees it as important attributes of a ‘great power,’” said Maxim Suchkov, an expert on the Russian Foreign Affairs Council and an editor at Al-Monitor covering Russian relations with the Middle East.

The importance of image to this naval expedition is illustrated by how Russian sailors have spent several days during its Mediterranean journey painting its deck bright blue, presumably. Hence, it looks better in aerial photographs.