The economy of the European Union (EU) is deeply grounded into Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). SMEs represent about 99.8% of the active enterprises in the EU-28 non-financial business sector (NFBS), accounting for almost 60% of value-added within the NFBS and fostering the workforce of the EU with two out of every three jobs (European Commission, 2019a). Thus, there is a wide literature covering various economic aspects of SMEs, with a particular attention to default prediction (for an up-to-date review see Ciampi et al., 2021), which is of interest not only for scholars but also for practitioners such as financial intermediaries and for policy makers in their effort to support SMEs and to ease credit constraints to which they are naturally exposed (Andries et al., 2018; Cornille et al., 2019). Whether it is for private credit-risk assessment or for public funding, independently on the type of data imputed to measure the health status of a firm, prediction of default should success in two aspects: maximise correct classification and clarify the role of the variables involved in the process. Most of the times, the contributions based on Machine Learning (ML) techniques neglect the latter aspect, being rather focused on the former, often with better results with respect to parametric techniques that provide, on the contrary, a clear framework for interpretation.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. The Pentagon will continue to conduct drone strikes against ISIS-K militants and other targets within Afghanistan when necessary even after the permanent withdrawal of the U.S. military presence within the country, spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday. The U.S. launched deadly drone strikes against an individual described as an "ISIS-K planner" as well as a suspected suicide car bomber in recent days after the terrorist group claimed responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 13 U.S. service members. Kirby indicated the Pentagon would utilize drone strikes if threats arose in the future.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) signed a deal with blockchain analytics firm AnChain.AI to help its efforts in monitoring the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. What Happened: According to a Forbes report, AnChain.AI CEO and Co-Founder Victor Fang explained that the collaboration started because "the SEC is very keen on understanding what is happening in the world of smart contract-based digital assets," and the firm can help with that. The company's service focuses on tracking illicit activity across crypto exchanges, DeFi protocols, and traditional financial institutions. The contract between the blockchain analysis firm and the SEC started in May and probably played a role in AnChain.AI securing a $10 million Series A round led by Susquehanna Group affiliate SIG Asia Investments LLP. Why It Matters: The regulator is seemingly leveraging the contractor to monitor the DeFi ecosystem more closely, as expected after recent remarks by SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.

The drone-strike disaster in Afghanistan on Sunday--a U.S. missile meant for a terrorist that, in fact, killed 10 civilians, five of them children, all relatives of an interpreter who'd worked for Americans during the war--shows what often happens when weapons are fired from the air with no intelligence on the ground. President Biden has said that he will keep up the pressure on the Taliban after the departure of U.S. troops through "over-the-horizon" (OTH) methods--information gathered, and weapons fired, from afar. Yet the farther away you are (and the nearest U.S. military base to Afghanistan is 1,000 miles away), the more uncertain the methods are. Or, as Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst, now director of the Brookings Intelligence Project, succinctly puts it, "OTH is not precise." Usually, in planning air strikes, including remotely controlled drone strikes, myriad sources of intelligence are integrated into as complete a picture as possible--images from satellites and spy planes, views from the pilot in the plane firing the missile (if it's overhead), and communications intercepts.

It is not a simple proposition, but the pandemic aftertimes, coupled with the novel use of some not-so-new technology, could provide an interesting test bed for hiring the right person for the right job as public agencies backfill open positions, all with the bonus of mitigating implicit bias against job candidates. As with most inflection points, the moment has a number of moving parts. Employers, including public agencies, are scrambling to figure the flavor of hybrid working setups that will meet with the least resistance from employees while supporting basic operations. The best-case scenario would be to put public employees closer to the people who need government services -- that probably is not the old office, but probably is not the employees' homes either. According to a Korn Ferry estimate, up to 40 percent of employees are contemplating a career change prompted at least in part by their pandemic experiences.

When Ezmarai Ahmadi returned home from work on Sunday evening in Kabul, the usual gaggle of squealing children were waiting to greet him -- his sons and daughters, and a slew of nieces and nephews. He pulled his white sedan into the driveway of a modest house in Kwaja Burga, a densely populated neighbourhood in the northwest of the Afghan capital, and handed the keys to his eldest son to park. Youngsters piled into the vehicle -- pretending the parking routine was an adventure -- while Ezmarai watched from the side. Then out of the blue Afghan sky, a missile came screeching down -- striking the car with a terrible force and obliterating the lives of 10 people in an instant. The United States said Sunday it had destroyed an explosive-laden vehicle in an air strike, thwarting a bid by the Islamic State to detonate a car bomb at Kabul airport.

Artificial intelligence is going to reorganize the world and change the course of human history. With China increasingly using technology to usher in a new form of authoritarianism, the world's democracies must come together and stand up for their own values and strategic interests. The world is only starting to grapple with how profound the artificial-intelligence revolution will be. AI technologies will create waves of progress in critical infrastructure, commerce, transportation, health, education, financial markets, food production, and environmental sustainability. Successful adoption of AI will drive economies, reshape societies, and determine which countries set the rules for the coming century.

The Defense Ministry on Tuesday requested a ¥5.4 trillion ($49 billion) budget for fiscal 2022, aiming to accelerate enhancement of capabilities in new domains and promote the development of new technologies to deal with China's growing military presence. The request would exceed a record ¥5.3 trillion allocated in the initial budget for fiscal 2021 started in April, rising for the tenth consecutive year. It does not include outlays linked to hosting U.S. military bases, which have been about ¥200 billion annually. The ministry said it also left out the cost of upgrading 70 F-15 fighter jets. It aims to install Lockheed Martin's air-to-surface standoff missile and will continue negotiations with the United States to decrease the estimated total cost of ¥398 billion.

Participants sit at computers to play a video game at the 2019 DreamHack video gaming festival in Leipzig, Germany. GPUs were originally designed for the video gaming industry because they are particularly good at matrix arithmetic. As AI and machine learning become more and more widespread in the global economy, there is an increasing focus on the hardware that drives them. Currently, nearly all AI systems run on a chip known as a GPU that was designed for video gaming. Are current chip designs fit for purpose in an AI future, or is a new type of chip needed?

China's strict limits on how long minors can play online video games just got stricter. Chinese children and teenagers are banned from online gaming on school days, and limited to one hour a day on weekend and holiday evenings under government rules issued Monday. The rules released by the National Press and Publication Administration tightened restrictions from 2019 aimed at what the government said was a growing scourge of online game addiction among school children. Under the old rules, players younger than 18 were limited to no more than 90 minutes of gaming on weekdays and three hours a day on weekend. Parents had complained that was too generous and had been laxly enforced, the administration said.