Three military veterans once involved in the U.S. drone program have thrown their support behind a Yemeni man's legal fight to obtain details about why his family members were killed in a 2012 strike. The former soldiers' unusual decision to publicly endorse the lawsuit against President Obama and other U.S. officials adds another twist to Faisal bin Ali Jaber's four-year quest for accountability in the deaths of his brother-in-law and nephew, who he believes needlessly fell victim to one of the most lethal covert programs in U.S. history. The former enlisted service members told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a recent filing that they believe the 2012 drone strike serves as a case study of how mistakes frequently occur in the nation's targeted-killing program, where life-or-death decisions are based upon top-secret evidence. The veterans say they "witnessed a secret, global system without regard for borders, conducting widespread surveillance with the ability to conduct deadly targeted killing operations." Though the veterans did not disclose any personal knowledge of the strike that is alleged to have killed Jaber's relatives, they claim the military frequently labels the deaths of unknown victims as "enemy kills."

A model takes a selfie with CHiQ TV in the background at the launch of the device in Beijing. Watching television in the digital era has just got a lot easier. Sichuan Changhong Electronic Co Ltd, a manufacturer of TVs, has ushered in the era of intelligent TVs. Combining its expertise in sensor modules, speech recognition chips, artificial intelligence and big data, Changhong has produced a TV that promises to eliminate desperate browsing of hundreds of live channels during prime time to figure out what's on and what to watch. Freedom from the struggle with multiple remote-controller buttons is nigh.

We identified over 90 companies that are applying machine learning algorithms and predictive analytics to reduce drug discovery times, provide virtual assistance to patients, and diagnose ailments by processing medical images, among other things. A few investment highlights: Increasingly crowded imaging & diagnostics: 17 out of the 22 companies under imagining & diagnostics raised their first equity funding round since January 2015 (this includes 1st Seed or Series A rounds, as well as a first round raised by stealth startup Imagen Technologies). In 2014, Butterfly Networks raised a 100M Series C, backed by Aeris Capital and Stanford University. This was the third-largest equity round to AI in healthcare companies, after China-based iCarbonX's 154M mega-round and two 100M raises by oncology-focused Flatiron Health . VCs invest in drug discovery: Startups are using machine learning algorithms to reduce drug discovery times, and VCs have backed 6 out of the 8 startups on the map.

VIENTIANE – U.S. President Barack Obama and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte shook hands and had a brief chat on Wednesday, officials said, easing a standoff after Duterte called Obama a "son of a bitch" ahead of a summit of Asian leaders in Laos. The presidents of the two longtime allies were due to hold talks on Tuesday but the White House canceled the meeting after Duterte's insult. "I'm very happy that it happened," Philippines' foreign minister, Perfecto Yasay, said of their short meeting. "It all springs from the fact that the relationship between the Philippines and the United States is firm, very strong." Duterte had his outburst on Monday when he was defending his war on drugs that has killed at least 2,400 Filipinos.

Working here at Pi Towers, I'm always a little frustrated by not being able to share the huge number of commercial businesses' embedded projects that use Raspberry Pis. We don't get to feature many of them on the blog; many organisations don't want their work replicated by competitors, or aren't prepared for customers and competitors to see how inexpensively they're able to automate tasks. Every now and then, though, a company is happy to share what they're using Pis for. Here's a great example: a cucumber farm in Japan, which is using a Raspberry Pi to sort thorny cucumbers, saving the farmer eight to nine hours' manual work a day. Makoto Koike is the son of farmers, who works as an embedded systems designer for the Japanese car industry.

Nick Szabo is no ordinary tech guy. As Chief Operating Officer at Swizzle Labs, he plays a significant role in the expansion of the company in Asia Pacific. With Swizzle, his expertise in revolutionising the new media space resulted in the receiving of the Innovation Award presented by St Louis Business Journal. What puts him and his company way above others as a leading startup has been catching attention from some of us in the music industry. Curious as to how artificial intelligence can pull insights out of large amounts of content in the context of the music industry?

September 8, 1966 was the day Science Fiction on television changed forever. It was the day Star Trek entered our public consciousness. In many ways, Star Trek was the right show, at the right time, this despite the fact that only after its initial run of 79 episodes, and a legendary letter writing campaign by its fans to try to save it, it was canceled by NBC for poor ratings. It came at a moment in our country's history when we were enjoying unprecedented technological advances and yet were experiencing social and political turmoil that threatened to rip apart the fabric of our nation and also potentially destroy our way of life as we knew it. This disparity between technology and humanity were themes that would define Star Trek in its various incarnations for the next fifty years -- and perhaps, if its fans see to make it so, for decades more.

On a summer day in 1968, professor Julian Stanley met a brilliant but bored 12-year-old named Joseph Bates. The Baltimore student was so far ahead of his classmates in mathematics that his parents had arranged for him to take a computer-science course at Johns Hopkins University, where Stanley taught. Having leapfrogged ahead of the adults in the class, the child kept himself busy by teaching the FORTRAN programming language to graduate students. Unsure of what to do with Bates, his computer instructor introduced him to Stanley, a researcher well known for his work in psychometrics--the study of cognitive performance. To discover more about the young prodigy's talent, Stanley gave Bates a battery of tests that included the SAT college-admissions exam, normally taken by university-bound 16- to 18-year-olds in the United States.

In the IT world it is very important to get things exactly right, unless of course you are dealing with fuzzy logic. If your banking system, for example, is out by a decimal place, this can lead to some very unhappy customers or some very happy ones and a less than happy bank. There are many areas where calculations and units of measure are vital, just ask one of the Mars exploration landing teams. Not so obvious are making sure that things like translation services are accurate, as Microsoft found out recently. The Bing search engine saw some very red-faced Redmondites when Saudi Arabian users found that "Daesh" has been translated as "Saudi Arabia". For those not familiar with the term, Daesh is one name for Isis.

The Human Choice and Computers conference is taking place in Manchester, UK and exploring themes related to technology and human intimacy. Experts from the fields of psychology, human behavior and technology are gathering to discuss the impact of tech innovations on wider society. When it comes to the emergence of AI (artificial intelligence) and "robot dolls" in particular, it is said that "robot love" could become addictive enough for it to even be able to overtake human-on-human intimacy. The fear of "The Robots Taking Over" has been well documented, and even world renowned scientist Stephen Hawking once said that "the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," and with any diminishing impact on real human contact, this could literally be the case. In a world where robot technology is able to achieve the same or even better results than a human can, then in the case of robot sex dolls, it could eventually lead to many also deeming amorous encounters with a robot as being better than that with another human being. Robot encounters will certainly require little to no emotional attachments, and no requirement to be rated in terms of ability.