Angling to pre-empt complaints over Japan's perennial trade surplus with the U.S., Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly plans to propose a sweeping economic cooperation initiative meant to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S. when he meets with President Donald Trump later this month. Abe and Trump are expected to meet on Feb. 10. Major Japanese newspapers cited a draft of the proposal that calls for cooperation on building high-speed trains in the U.S. northeast, Texas and California. Japan would share technology on artificial intelligence, robotics, small-scale nuclear power plants, space and Internet technology. The reports Thursday said the proposed public-private initiative would create several hundred thousand jobs, reports said, and involve $450 billion in new investment.

WikiLeaks has turned its focus to the upcoming French presidential election, revealing that its archives contain thousands of potentially sensitive documents on three candidates. A series of posts on its Twitter account targeted Republican Francois Fillon, far-right leader Marine Le Pen and independent candidate Emmanuel Macron. WikiLeaks claims to have over 3,000 files on Fillon, whose popularity has dropped amid allegations that he paid his wife close to €1 million of public money with little evidence of work. Fillon denies any wrongdoing, but calls for him to drop out of the presidential race are mounting. Le Pen, who is currently leading the polls according to the latest numbers from Elabe, is the subject of a further 1,138 WikiLeaks documents.

Mechanical masterminds have spawned the Bat Bot, a soaring, sweeping and diving robot that may eventually fly circles around other drones. Because it mimics the unique and more flexible way bats fly, this 3-ounce (85-gram) prototype could do a better and safer job getting into disaster sites and scoping out construction zones than bulky drones with spinning rotors, said the three authors of a study released Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics. For example, it would have been ideal for going inside the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, said study co-author Seth Hutchinson, an engineering professor at the University of Illinois. The bat robot flaps its wings for better aerial maneuvers, glides to save energy and dive bombs when needed. Eventually, the researchers hope to have it perch upside down like the real thing, but that will have to wait for the robot's sequel.

The 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric and U.S. citizen who was killed in a drone strike in 2011, was reportedly among those killed Sunday during a raid in Yemen. The Guardian reported that Nawar al-Awlaki was killed after suffering a gunshot wound to the neck. The girl's grandfather told the paper that he did not believe the girl was targeted. "I don't think this incident was intentional," the former government minister said. He told the paper that the location of the strike was confusing because it was not a hotbed for Al Qaeda, rathera tribal sheikhs fighting the government, which is supported by Iran-backed Houthis.

Facebook is celebrating "Friends Day" around the world, showing a video to more than a billion people. The company has celebrated the made up holiday – ostensibly to celebrate "the importance of connecting" – the last two years. But in 2015 and 2016 it was celebrated on 4 February, which Facebook said at the time was also its birthday, and comes two days after it is being celebrated this year. It isn't clear how the day came about, how it is intended to help its users or what it's actually for. Facebook is celebrating by showing a video to every one of the more than a billion people who log into it each day, in which a person made up of tiny pictures of a users' friends is shown dancing around.

Abe and Trump are expected to meet on Feb. 10. Major Japanese newspapers cited a draft of the proposal that calls for cooperation on building high-speed trains in the U.S. northeast, Texas and California. Japan would share technology on artificial intelligence, robotics, small-scale nuclear power plants, space and Internet technology.

Retail Real Estate is experiencing greater change than ever before. The impact of changes in real estate and the consumer retail world is comparable to tectonic plates shifting across the surface of the earth, producing an energy force that few know how to harness or predict the outcome. The way we conduct retail and real estate are rubbing, creating friction & forces, sometimes against, and sometimes in harmony with each other. Year-end 2016 came and went with little time to pause and reflect as Amazon Go made the headlines in the final few weeks and continues to do so. We asked some of the Movvo team to share their predictions for 2017, the trends & innovations that will have an impact on retail real estate as we know it. "2016 is going to be remembered as the year a retail platform came from nowhere to hit Apple & Google where it hurts. Alexa from Amazon is an intuitive AI interface already flexing its muscle and proving incredible popular. Alexa is already present in 4% of US households and dozens of Alexa-enabled devices launched at CES Las Vegas from fridges to cars. It's an early vision of the death of the keyboard as an interface & will have an impact on the way consumers shop".

I didn't worry too much when computers beat humans at checkers, chess, or Go. It was, after all, only a matter of time before someone built a powerful computer with a vast database of known game situations. But now that machines are beating professionals at poker -- a game of imperfect information -- a question must be asked: Is artificial intelligence starting to threaten people in creative jobs? In terms of game complexity -- the number of allowed positions reachable in the course of a game -- no-limit Texas Hold'em poker, isn't an AI researcher's worst nightmare. The chess game tree has 10 to the 120th degree nodes. The one for Go has 10 to the 170th degree.

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