An explosion in the crowded Chelsea neighborhood of New York City on Saturday night left 25 people with minor injuries, authorities said. Police spokesman J. Peter Donald said on Twitter that the blast happened about 8:30 p.m. on West 23rd Street, a major thoroughfare with many restaurants. Donald said several of the injured were taken to hospitals. The Fire Department tweeted that none of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening. No information about the extent of the damage was immediately available.

This post is authored by Jaya Mathew & Hong Lu, Data Scientists at Microsoft, in collaboration with the team at ServusNet. Governments worldwide are actively promoting the use of renewable energy because of the growing concern over climate change and carbon emissions. Among the available renewable energy sources, harnessing energy through wind turbines offers a compelling alternative. There are a growing number of wind farms throughout the world now, and, as the industry matures at a rapid pace, it is increasing its focus on operational efficiency and cost-competitiveness. Given the inherent variability in wind energy production, the ability to analyze the data generated by wind turbines to characterize historical behavior and create a framework to predict future performance can be a critical asset and business differentiator.

Elos Medtech Pinol in Gørløse, Denmark, is one of Europe's leading development and production partners for medical technology products and components. In recent years, increasing demands for quality, process documentation, and product consistency have forced customers to use fewer suppliers. Customers have selected Elos Medtech Pinol largely due to targeted optimization, standardization, and automation in the last decade. The automated factory – a mantra used within the company that impacts all employees – includes ambitious investments in user-friendly and flexible production equipment and the latest automation technology, including an MiR100 robot from Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR). In 2011, Danish robot scientist Niels Jul Jacobsen came up with a new product idea that a few years later was transformed into a product that handles internal transport logistics.

Russia and Syria on Saturday accused U.S.-led forces of launching an airstrike that killed 62 Syrian soldiers and wounded more than 100 at an air base in eastern Syria. U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said in a statement that American warplanes carried out a strike south of Dair Alzour but it could not confirm that they hit Syrian forces. "Coalition forces believed they were striking a Daesh fighting position that they had been tracking for a significant amount of time before the strike," the statement said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. "The coalition airstrike was halted immediately when coalition officials were informed by Russian officials that it was possible the personnel and vehicles targeted were part of the Syrian military." There have been fears that the U.S. military could accidentally strike Syrian or Russian forces since the air campaign against Islamic State began more than two years ago.

A pipe bomb exploded in a Jersey Shore town Saturday shortly before thousands of runners were due to participate in a charity 5-kilometer race to benefit Marines and sailors, authorities said. No injuries were reported in the blast at Seaside Park around 9:30 a.m. Saturday, said Al Della Fave, spokesman for the Ocean County prosecutor's office. He also said no surrounding structures suffered any apparent damage. The third annual Semper Five run was canceled and the immediate area was put on lockdown. The pipe bomb was in a plastic garbage can when it exploded, Della Fave said.

Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian who stabbed a soldier in the West Bank, the military said Saturday, a day after Palestinians carried out several assaults. The weekend assaults were the latest violence in a year of Palestinian attacks that at times have been near-daily occurrences but have recently been on the decline. On Saturday, the military said a Palestinian pulled out a knife during a security check in the West Bank city of Hebron and stabbed a soldier, prompting forces to open fire and kill the attacker. The incident came a day after what Israeli authorities said were several Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians, police and a soldier. In the first Friday attack, a man came out of Jerusalem's walled Old City brandishing a knife in each hand, police said.

Abu Sayyaf extremists on Saturday freed a Norwegian man kidnapped a year ago in the southern Philippines with two Canadians who were later beheaded and a Filipino woman who has been released by the ransom-seeking militants, officials said. Kjartan Sekkingstad was freed in Patikul town in Sulu province and was eventually secured by rebels from the larger Moro National Liberation Front, which has signed a peace deal with the government and helped negotiate his release, Philippine government officials said. Sekkingstad, held in jungle captivity since being kidnapped last September, was to stay overnight at the house of Moro National Liberation Front chairman Nur Misuari in Sulu and then be flown to the southern city of Davao on Sunday to meet with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, said Jesus Dureza, who advises Duterte on peace talks with insurgent groups. A plan to fly the freed hostage out of Sulu, a jungle-clad Muslim region about 590 miles south of Manila, on Saturday was scrapped because of bad weather, Dureza said. Dureza said that when he spoke on the phone with Sekkingstad, the Norwegian expressed his gratitude to Duterte.

Ryan Hunter-Reay said this week has brought a full range of emotions, with the birth of his third son coming only hours before he learned that his father-in-law was dead in an apparent murder-suicide. The former Indianapolis 500 winner is married to Beccy Gordon, and the couple welcomed son Rhodes Maverick Hunter-Reay on Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Not long afterward, they were informed that her father, former racer "Baja" Bob Gordon, had been found dead alongside his wife in their Orange home. Police said Bob Gordon died of a gunshot wound and Sharon Gordon was strangled. Hunter-Reay said the Gordon family wanted him to proceed to Sonoma Raceway in Northern California, where IndyCar concludes its season Sunday.

Kerry leads three important functions at Rubikloud: people, sales, and technology disruption. Rubikloud helps retailers monetize their data to power personalized campaigns through the use of advanced machine learning techniques, effectively bridging the gap between marketing automation and retail management consultants. In his role, Kerry works to manage and maintain a thriving company culture that recruits the best and brightest in the industry, while also maintaining relationships with global retailers and investors. He is passionate about machine learning and big data, and enjoys providing enterprise retailers with the tools and knowledge needed to enhance their overall business goals. If you're only using big data to target consumers based on demographics or purchase history, you're making a mistake that will cost your company a significant amount of revenue.

It has been 73 years since the Supreme Court ruled that students in public schools couldn't be forced to pledge allegiance to the American flag or engage in other patriotic demonstrations. But some educators obviously haven't gotten the message. In recent days, a principal in Florida told students they would be ejected from sports events if they didn't stand during the national anthem. A student in Northern California said her class-participation grade was lowered because she refused to stand during the Pledge of Allegiance, her chosen form of protest over the mistreatment of her Native American ancestors. A high school football player in Massachusetts said he was told he would be suspended if he emulated San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and knelt during the national anthem.