Upcoming vote puts Armenia's European future to the test
When Armenians vote on 7 June, they will be voting in an election shaped by months of political change and a rapidly deepening relationship with the E...
Microsoft is working on a new generation of in-house artificial intelligence reasoning models designed to rival those from OpenAI, according to a report by The Information.
The company, which has been a major backer of OpenAI, is exploring options to reduce its dependence on external AI technology and may eventually offer these models to developers via an application programming interface.
The report indicates that Microsoft is testing models from xAI, Meta, and DeepSeek as potential replacements for the technology currently powering its Microsoft 365 Copilot. Reuters reported in December that Microsoft had been actively integrating both internal and third-party AI models into Copilot to diversify its technological foundation and lower costs, given that the service was originally built on OpenAI's GPT-4.
Microsoft’s AI division, led by Mustafa Suleyman, has reportedly completed training a family of models internally known as MAI. These models are said to perform nearly as well as leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic on standard benchmarks. In addition, Suleyman’s team is developing reasoning models that use chain-of-thought techniques—methods that generate answers through intermediate reasoning steps—to directly compete with similar models from OpenAI.
Suleyman’s team is already experimenting with replacing OpenAI’s models in Copilot with the newly developed MAI models, which are significantly larger than an earlier series known as Phi. Microsoft is considering a release of these models later this year in the form of an API, which would enable external developers to integrate the advanced AI reasoning capabilities into their own applications.
Neither Microsoft nor OpenAI immediately responded to requests for comment.
U.S. rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, performed to a crowd of 118,000 people in Istanbul on Saturday night, marking his first concert in Europe in more than a decade, despite being barred from performing in several countries over past antisemitic remarks.
Okinawa lost transport links and suffered widespread power outages on Monday (1 June) as Severe Tropical Storm Jangmi brought destructive winds and heavy rain to Japan's south-western islands.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has held talks with Lebanese President and Israeli Prime Minister on efforts to ease tensions between Israel and Lebanon. According to a U.S. official, Washington has proposed a plan aimed at achieving a gradual de-escalation of hostilities.
The World Health Organisation’s designation of the Bundibugyo Ebola virus outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) is a stark reminder that Ebola remains a persistent global health threat rather than a disease of the past.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) says the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda is continuing to spread, with 263 confirmed cases and 43 deaths reported as of 30 May.
Russian air attacks on major Ukrainian cities such as Kyiv, Dnipro and Kharkiv killed at least nine and wounded more than 60 early on Tuesday, authorities said, following days of warnings that Moscow was planning a major assault.
Chile's far-right President José Antonio Kast, who took office in March, promised a legislative agenda that prioritises fighting crime, cutting spending and boosting economic growth in his first national address on Monday.
Denmark’s Social Democratic leader Mette Frederiksen said on Monday (1 June) she has agreed to form a new centre-left coalition government, securing a third consecutive term as prime minister amid heightened diplomatic tensions with the United States over Greenland.
An Iraqi man accused of helping plan attacks on behalf of the Iran-backed militia Kata'ib Hezbollah pleaded not guilty on Monday (1 June) to U.S. terrorism-related charges, declaring in a New York courtroom that he was innocent and describing the allegations against him as part of wartime context.
More than 1,500 pages of government documents relating to Peter Mandelson's appointment and tenure as UK ambassador to the U.S. have been published, revealing private exchanges with ministers, criticism of Prime Minister Keir Starmer and details of the vetting process that preceded his appointment.
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