Lionsgate's R-rated buddy romp "The Hitman's Bodyguard," as predicted, topped the domestic box office for the second weekend in a row as Hollywood's newest releases slumped into theaters, all three opening short of $6 million. Starring Samuel L. Jackson as an imprisoned assassin who needs the help of bodyguard Ryan Reynolds, "Hitman" (which cost $30 million to make) earned $10 million this week in the U.S. and Canada for a cumulative total of $39.6 million. The action comedy, which received mixed reviews -- earning a B rating on CinemaScore but a stale 39% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes -- made $21.6 million in its opening weekend and has dropped 53% since last week. Maintaining the No. 2 spot (despite a 53% drop since last weekend) was Warner Bros' horror prequel "Anabelle: Creation." The film brought in $7.6 million in its third week for a cumulative total of $77.9 million domestically.

I recently consulted with the US Navy on all things "transhuman." In those conversations about how science and technology can help the human race evolve beyond its natural limits, it was clear that military is keen on replacing human soldiers with both fighting and peacekeeping machines so American military lives never have to come under fire or be in harm's way. However, it's the peacekeeping technology that is particularly interesting for many civilians. While you wouldn't want an armed Terminator in your home, you might like a robot that travels with you and offers personal protection, like a bodyguard. In a survey by Travelzoo of 6,000 participants, nearly 80 percent of people said they expect robots to be a significant part of their lives by 2020 -- and that those robots might even join them on holidays.

Donald Trump invoked the possibility of a violent assault on Hillary Clinton once again on Saturday, a day after he suggested that her Secret Service bodyguards disarm and "let's see what happens." In a post Saturday morning on Twitter, Trump falsely accused Clinton of trying to take away Americans' 2nd Amendment rights, just as he did Friday night at a Miami rally where he said her Secret Service agents should "drop all weapons." "Will guns be taken from her heavily armed Secret Service detail? Trump said Friday night that Clinton's Secret Service detail should disarm because she supports gun control. "What do you think, yes?" he asked the crowd. Let's see what happens to her. Take their guns away, OK? It would be very dangerous."

However, as is well known, the but-for test is not always sufficient to determine causality. Consider the following The original Halpern-Pearl definition of causality well-known example, taken from [Paul and Hall, 2013]: [Halpern and Pearl, 2001] was updated in the journal Suzy and Billy both pick up rocks and throw them version of the paper [Halpern and Pearl, 2005] at a bottle. Suzy's rock gets there first, shattering to deal with some problems pointed out by Hopkins the bottle. Since both throws are perfectly accurate, and Pearl [2003]. Here the definition is modified Billy's would have shattered the bottle had it not yet again, in a way that (a) leads to a simpler definition, been preempted by Suzy's throw.

In this paper we consider a scenario where one or more robotic bodyguards are protecting an important individual (VIP) moving in a public space against harassment or harm from unarmed civilians. In this scenario, the main objective of the robots is to position themselves such that at any given moment they provide maximum physical cover for the VIP. The robots need to follow the VIP in its movement and take into account the movements of the civilians as well. The environment can also contain obstacles which present challenges to movement but also provide natural cover. We designed two algorithms for the movement of the bodyguard robots: Threat Vector Resolution (TVR) for a single robot and Quadrant Load Balancing (QLB) for teams of bodyguard robots. We evaluated the proposed approaches against rigid formations in a simulation study.