See how Nepal worships its dogs as VIPs with garlands, feasts, and love in the Kukur Tihar festival

AdvertisementArtificial intelligenceTechTech TrendsChinese start-up MiniMax launches record-breaking AI model, challenges Google DeepMindMiniMax M2 has achieved an unprecedented score for an open model on Artificial Analysis’s overall intelligence index
Reading Time:2 minutesWhy you can trust SCMPVincent ChowPublished: 7:00am, 28 Oct 2025MiniMax, a leading Chinese artificial intelligence start-up, released on Monday the M2, which ranks as the world’s leading open model on a prominent leaderboard.AdvertisementMiniMax M2 achieved an unprecedented score for an open model on Artificial Analysis’s overall intelligence index, placing it among the top five models globally. It surpassed Google DeepMind’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, released in June, and sat below leading models from US companies OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI.
With 200 billion parameters, MiniMax M2 adopts the Mixture-of-Experts architecture, which has significantly enhanced the efficiency of Chinese AI models over the past year.
The model act..

AdvertisementScienceChinaScienceWu Yiquan: the Chinese AI researcher scoring big on the basketball courtBrains and brawn: university assistant professor turns heads with his slam dunks
Reading Time:2 minutesWhy you can trust SCMPHolly ChikPublished: 6:00am, 29 Jul 2025Amid China’s tech revolution, a new kind of multidisciplinary star is emerging – one who dominates both coding and sport.AdvertisementWu Yiquan, an artificial intelligence (AI) scientist pioneering legal large language models by day, is also making headlines as a rising provincial basketball sensation.Wu, an assistant professor at the Zhejiang University law school, specialises in developing and training legal large language models for applications in education and research.The 1.8m-tall (5 feet 9 inches) star caught media attention after he scored 22 as the defender for the West Lake team in a Zhejiang Provincial City Basketball League qualifier match on July 17.
In an interview with Henan-based news site Daxiang News on..

In a bold move ahead of his January inauguration, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has confirmed Jessica Tisch as NYPD Commissioner. This choice, while reflecting their divergent views on policing, underscores a shared commitment to enhancing public safety and reducing crime. New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced on Wednesday that Jessica Tisch has accepted his offer to remain as commissioner of the NYPD, securing one of his highest-profile appointments ahead of taking office in January. Tisch was appointed by outgoing mayor Eric Adams and has led the nation’s largest police force through a record drop in crime, including reductions in shootings and homicides.“Leading this department is the greatest privilege of my life, and I am proud to continue doing it,” Tisch wrote in a letter to the NYPD obtained by CNN. “Now, do the Mayor-elect and I agree on everything? No, we don’t. But in speaking with him, it’s clear that we share broad and crucial priorities: the importance of public..