DUBAI - The "flying object" that flew over a Japanese tanker before it was rocked by a blast in strategic waters in the Middle East earlier this month could have been a reconnaissance drone, experts have said. The owner of the Kokuka Courageous said the tanker's crew saw a "flying object," just before a blast that caused a fire on board the vessel, sparking a crisis between Washington and Tehran. "The crew members are saying that they were hit by a flying object. They saw it with their own eyes," Yutaka Katada, head of Kokuka Sangyo shipping company, said the day after the mysterious June 13 attack. "We have received a report saying that something seems to have flew in, there was an explosion and it created a hole in the body of the ship," he told reporters in Tokyo.

We are in the midst of an unprecedented convergence of two rapidly growing trends on our roadways: sharply increasing congestion and the deployment of autonomous vehicles. Year after year, highways get slower and slower: famously, China's roadways were paralyzed by a two-week long traffic jam in 2010. At the same time as congestion worsens, hundreds of thousands of semi-autonomous vehicles (AVs), which are vehicles with automated distance and lane-keeping capabilities, are being deployed on highways worldwide. The second trend offers a perfect opportunity to alleviate the first. The current generation of AVs, while very far from full autonomy, already hold a multitude of advantages over human drivers that make them perfectly poised to tackle this congestion. Humans are imperfect drivers: accelerating when we shouldn't, braking aggressively, and make short-sighted decisions, all of which creates and amplifies patterns of congestion.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the swelling populations of newly arrived immigrants in New York City's Lower East Side reached a boiling point, forcing the City to pass the 1901 Tenement House Act. Recalling this legislation, New York City's Mayor's Office recently responded to its own modern housing crisis by enabling developers for the first time to build affordable micro-studio apartments of 400 square feet. One of the primary drivers of allocating tens of thousands of new micro-units is the adoption of innovative design and construction technologies that enable modular and flexible housing options. As Mayor de Blasio affirmed, "Housing New York 2.0 commits us to creating 25,000 affordable homes a year and 300,000 homes by 2026. Making New York a fairer city for today and for future generations depends on it."

The joint effort comes as health systems are stepping up adoption and investment in data analytics, including predictive analytics and AI. In recent survey of CIOs, CTOs and chief analytics officers conducted by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, 84% said such technology will be extremely important to their organization's strategy over the next three years. Other healthcare sectors are investing in AI as well, giving rise to potential safety, efficacy and ethical issues as the technology is more frequently used. One year ago, FDA approved the first autonomous AI diagnostic system for sale in the U.S. The cloud-based IDx-DR software detects diabetic retinopathy in images taken by retinal cameras. And in February, Verily, the life sciences arm of Google parent Alphabet, launched an eye disease screening algorithm at Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, India.

The overarching theme of'Nederland Digitaal Dag' was Artificial Intelligence (AI). As a Dutch AI company operating on a global level, Dashmote was invited to participate in the ongoing debate regarding this topic. Following the many sessions that took place, we would like to share four main takeaways from these sessions and our thoughts on them. Yes, you read that correctly. After the official kickoff, Google's Chief Economist Hal Varian took to the stage.

Switzerland based SaaS startup Sophia Genetics is hoping to give IBM Watson a run for its money in the healthcare diagnostics space. It's built a big data analytics platform that harnesses clinicians' medical expertise to enhance genomic diagnostic via AI algorithms -- leading, it says, to better and faster diagnoses for patients with diseases such as cancer. Hospitals that use the platform are intended to jointly benefit from expert-fed, algorithmic DNA sequencing diagnostic insights exactly because they are shared across the platform. So as the user-base scales -- it says it's adding 10 new hospitals each month -- Sophia Genetics' AIs get smarter and more accurate, and patients anywhere can benefit from the pooled knowledge. The company is announcing a $30 million Series D funding round today, adding UK-based VC firm Balderton Capital to its investor roster, along with 360 Capital Partners.

TBILISI - The speaker of Georgia's parliament stepped down Friday in the wake of violent clashes that left at least 240 people injured, but the move failed to assuage protesters, who returned to the streets demanding that the interior minister also step down over a brutal police response. A night of clashes Thursday was sparked by a Russian lawmaker who took the speaker's seat as a group of international lawmakers met at the Georgian parliament in Tbilisi. It angered the opposition, which sees the current Georgian government as overly friendly to Russian interests. The protests mark the largest outpouring of anger against the ruling Georgian Dream since it took power in 2012. Officials said at least 240 people were injured when riot police fired rubber bullets and tear gas and unleashed water cannon on protesters outside Georgia's parliament building during the clashes that lasted into early Friday.

WASHINGTON - Sebastian Smith and Jerome Cartillier Donald Trump wants to be warlike and he wants to avoid war -- and late Thursday, with U.S. bombers poised to unleash explosive fury on Iran, those contradictory impulses came to a head. The surprise revelation that Trump ordered the bombing of Iran in retaliation for downing a U.S. drone, only to pull back at the last minute, encapsulates the paradox at the heart of the White House foreign policy over the past two years. One is caution, believing that endless, repeated wars have been too costly for the United States," said Rob Malley, a former advisor to President Barack Obama who heads the International Crisis Group. "The other instinct is to look like someone strong, who can't be pushed around." Many days, Trump resembles a geopolitical John Wayne, a swaggering global sheriff out to duel with rivals like China and old allies alike. And even if the 45th president famously managed to avoid serving in his generation's big war, Vietnam, he revels in his role as commander-in-chief. He rarely seems happier than when boasting about the billions of dollars spent on "rebuilding" the military or talking lovingly about the latest, deadliest weapon system. But Thursday evening in Washington, with U.S. forces on the verge of striking three sites in Iran, that hawkish version of Trump suddenly transformed into Trump the dove. "We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die.