IBM's Watson hasn't been in medical school long, but he already has two jobs. Teaming with the Cleveland Clinic, Big Blue researchers have developed WatsonPaths, a diagnosis and education project, and Watson EMR Assistant, a tool for delving deep into medical records. WatsonPaths is the more ...
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/iqlKJd5Khhc/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will meet in the Oval Office at 3:15 p.m. ET (1915 GMT) on Tuesday with Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, and other House Democratic leaders, the White House said in a statement.
The meeting comes as Congress struggles to reach a deal to lift the debt ceiling by a Thursday deadline.
The White House rejected a new House Republican proposal on Tuesday morning and has said it prefers a proposal from Democrats and Republicans in Senate.
(Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Steve Holland; editing by Christopher Wilson)
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Irwin Winkler and Nicholas Pileggi
Discovery Communications is teaming with Academy Award-nominated Goodfellas duo Irwin Winkler and Nicholas Pileggi for its first scripted drama series.
The cabler is developing The Five Families, a the first-ever dramatic account of the founding families of the Mafia. Pileggi, who penned the screenplay for Goodfellas, will pen the pilot script for Five Families. The drama marks the first series to invoke the real figures and actual events in the history of the Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese, Bonanno and Colombo Mafia families -- also known as the famed five crime families of New York. The series will be based on historical events and offer a narrative of true occurrences that occurred during the reign of the most notorious crime families in the city.
STORY: Discovery Producing Scripted Gold Mining Miniseries
Discovery Communications will produce The Five Families as a global event with plans to debut the drama on one or more of its U.S. and international networks.
For Discovery, Five Families marks its first scripted series and comes as the network is using miniseries to pushing into the original space. Discovery is readying limited series North and South, based on John Jakes' best-selling book trilogy, as well as an adaptation of Nigel Tranter's The Wallace and The Bruce Trilogy. The latter, which like the network's first original miniseries Klondike, hails from Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions. Klondike will launch in December.
STORY: AMC Developing 'Goodfellas' TV Series
For their part, Winkler produced and Pileggi wrote Goodfellas, which was nominated in 1991 for best picture (for Winkler), screenplay (Pileggi and Martin Scorsese), editing (Thelma Schoonmaker) and directing (Scorsese). Joe Pesci won the Oscar for best actor, while co-star Lorraine Bracco was nominated for her supporting turn.
Pileggi's recent small-screen credits include CBS' short-lived drama Vegas. He's also prepping a potential series based on 1990's Goodfellas for AMC with Winkler attached. He's repped by Danny Greenberg and Bloom Hergott.
Winkler's credits include The Wolf of Wall Street, The Mechanic and Rocky Balboa. He's repped by CAA, Chasen & Co. and Bloom Hergott.
E-mail: Lesley.Goldberg@THR.com
Twitter: @Snoodit
Pretoria (AFP) - South Africa and France agreed Monday on the need to act "quickly" to prevent an implosion in the deeply troubled Central African Republic at the start of President Francois Hollande's two-day visit.
Host President Jacob Zuma said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who was in the Central African Republic on Sunday, had told him that the "problem in the country is getting worse."
"We agreed that we need to do something and act quickly."
The South African leader added: "We are going to be ready to be part of the solution to help the Central African Republic come back to its normality."
Hollande, whose trip is seen as part of a campaign to drum up support to resolve the crises plaguing African countries, pledged France's "support (to) regional forces that will be formed under the auspices of the United Nations and the African Union" in the Central African Republic.
The French aim is not "to replace" the African forces "but to guide, assist, support (and) train them," Hollande said.
"This is a new relationship between France and Africa," he said.
France is still heavily involved in security and peacekeeping in its former colonies, where it has often stepped in militarily, and analysts have said it is trying to get South Africa to play a bigger role in continental security efforts.
The Central African Republic is in an "emergency" situation as violence still wracks the nation seven months after a bloody coup, Hollande said.
Early this year, South Africa pulled its troops out of the country after 15 of its soldiers were killed when the Seleka rebel coalition seized power.
Hollande has tried hard to shrug off the negative image of "France-Afrique," a term used to describe the secretive use of political and economic influence between elites in France and its former colonies.
South Africa has in the past criticised France's role in Libya and Ivory Coast.
The two leaders also touched Monday on the unrest in the Democratic Republic of Congo's troubled east, where South Africa is spearheading a UN intervention force.
Meanwhile on the trade front, South Africa clinched $8 billion (nearly six billion euros) in infrastructure deals with France during Hollande's visit, boosting government efforts to tackle a flagging economy and sky-high unemployment.
Africa's largest economy and France signed energy and rail deals and pledged to balance bilateral trade.
An agreement was signed between French energy firm GDF Suez and South Africa for a thermal power plant worth 1.5 billion euros, and also for a solar plant, Hollande told a news conference.
Energy-strapped South Africa has embarked on a multi-billion-dollar building spree to set up new power plants that would double electricity supplies over the next two decades.
A decade of economic growth caught up with the state power giant Eskom in 2008, forcing massive electricity outages that crippled key mining and production industries.
The firm is developing two new giant coal-fired power stations, at least one of which has suffered heavy delays.
Hollande did not give further details on the energy deal in South Africa, which gets 90 percent of its electricity from coal and is exploring nuclear energy as well as shale gas in a bid to reduce this reliance.
"Today marks yet another important milestone in the bilateral relations between South Africa and France," Zuma said. "We have... agreed that we need together to develop trade in a balanced manner."
Hollande's visit is the first by a French leader since Nicolas Sarkozy travelled to Africa's economic powerhouse in 2008 as part of a drive to seek new partnerships beyond France's former colonies.
"France stood by your side during the years of oppression and it will be at your side during the development years ahead," said Hollande.
South Africa received a gloomy warning from the International Monetary Fund this month that it was trailing other emerging market economies and must quickly implement reforms if it wants to avoid a crisis.
The two presidents also finalised a $5.4 billion contract for the overhaul of South Africa's ageing rail fleet by French firm Alstom, which is set to create several thousand jobs.
Under the deal, which was first announced in December last year, Alstom will build 600 trains and 3,600 carriages for South Africa's passenger rail service PRASA over a 10-year period from 2015 to 2025.
About 90 percent of South Africa's current rolling stock is said to date back to the late 1950s.
Over the past year or two, Android phone makers seem to have been in an arms race to see who could release a smartphone with the biggest display. In fact, it’s hard to find a phone with the latest high-end specs that doesn’t have a 4.7 inch or larger screen (unless you buy an iPhone).
Now Sony is taking most of the hardware of its 5 inch Sony Xperia Z1 smartphone and squeezing it into a smaller model called the Xperia Z1f. It’s a 4.3 inch phone that iwll be available soon in Japan from NTT DoCoMo.
Like its larger sibling, the Sony Xperia Z1f has a 2.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage. It has a 20.7MP camera, and a water-resistant case.
Both phones run Google Andorid 4.2 Jelly Bean.
Sony did cut a few corners: The phone has a 1280 x 720 pixel display instead of a higher-resolution 1920 x 1080 pixel screen. But since the phone has a smaller display, it still packs 341 pixels per inch, which is pretty good — but The Verge reports both phones have relatively poor viewing angles.
The smaller phone also has a 2300mAh battery instead of the 3000mAh battery you’d get with the Xperia Z1.
Overall it’s nice to see an Android phone maker offering a smaller phone with top tier specs — although it’s a little odd that we’re living in an age when a 4.3 inch phone is considered small. It wasn’t that long ago that phones with 4.3 inch screens were enormous alternatives to more conventional models with 3.7 inch and smaller displays.
There’s no word on if or when the Sony Xperia X1f will be available outside Japan… or if it will prompt any competitors to release better versions of their “mini” phones.
In a rather surprising about-face, Rogers announced today that despite earlier assertions to the contrary, the Canadian carrier will, indeed, carry the newly announced BlackBerry Z30. It initially told The Globe and Mail that it was going to pass on the latest BlackBerry handset due to limited shelf ...
