jollibee quirino highway talipapa LISBON, Portugal (AP) — The goals are flying in again for Arsenal — and it just happens to coincide with the return from injury of Martin Odegaard. Make that eight goals in two games since the international break for Arsenal after its 5-1 hammering of Sporting Lisbon in the Champions League on Tuesday, tying the English team’s heaviest ever away win in the competition. Odegaard is back in Arsenal’s team after missing two months with an ankle injury . In that time, Mikel Arteta’s attack stuttered, with a 2-0 loss to Bournemouth and a 1-0 defeat at Newcastle dropping the Gunners well off the pace in the Premier League. There was also a 0-0 draw at Atalanta in the Champions League as well as a 1-0 loss to Inter Milan last month, when Odegaard made his comeback from injury as an 89th-minute substitute. Since then, Arsenal hasn’t lost and the goals have returned. After a 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest on Saturday came the cruise in Lisbon — and Odegaard was at the heart of everything as Sporting’s unbeaten start to the season came to an end. “He’s an unbelievable player,” Arsenal winger Bukayo Saka said of Odegaard. “The day he returned, there was a big smile on my face. You can see the chemistry we have. I hope he stays fit for the rest of the season.” Odegaard was involved in the build-up to Arsenal’s first two goals against Sporting — scored by Gabriel Martinelli and Kai Havertz — and was fouled to win the penalty converted by Saka in the 65th to restore Arsenal’s three-goal lead at 4-1. Odegaard was seen flexing his leg after that but continued untroubled and was substituted in the 78th minute. The last thing Arteta would want now is another injury to Odegaard as Arsenal attempts to reel in first-place Liverpool in the Premier League. Liverpool is already nine points ahead of fourth-place Arsenal after 12 games. AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

No. 16 Cincinnati tests efficient offense vs. Alabama State

Kansas once required voters to prove citizenship. That didn't work out so well

The Cincinnati Bearcats men's basketball team has gotten off to a fast start this season in more ways than one. The No. 16 Bearcats have raced to a 5-0 record while outscoring their opponents by more than 31 points per game, with just one team (Northern Kentucky) coming within 16 points. Cincinnati is averaging a robust 87 points per game with one of the more efficient offenses in college basketball. Cincinnati will look to continue that hot streak when it plays host to Alabama State in nonconference action Wednesday evening. Cincinnati has punished opposing defenses in a variety of ways this season. Despite being the No. 14 offense in the nation in Ken Pomeroy's efficiency ratings, the Bearcats aren't among the nation's leaders in pace. Still, they take advantage of those opportunities when they are there. "Us playing fast is something we want to do," Cincinnati forward Dillon Mitchell said. "When I was being recruited here, that was something Coach (Wes) Miller wanted to do. "There could be games where we're not making shots or something is off, but one thing is we're gonna push the ball, play hard and play fast. That's something he preaches. We'll be in shape and get rebounds." Mitchell is fresh off a double-double with 14 points and 11 rebounds in Cincinnati's 81-58 road win at Georgia Tech Saturday. He is one of four Bearcats to average double figures in scoring this season. That balance was on display once again against the Yellow Jackets, with Connor Hickman and Jizzle James also scoring 14 points each and Simas Lukosius contributing 12 points. In that game, Cincinnati sank 51.6 percent of its shots while regularly getting out into transition with 16 fastbreak points, while winning the rebounding battle 36-29. "Any time you get a road win over a quality, Power 4 team, you're gonna feel good about it," Miller said. "I was pleased with our effort." Lukosius is scoring 16.6 points per game, while James is at 14.0 points, followed by Mitchell at 12.4, while he also grabs a team-best 8.6 rebounds. Alabama State (3-3) has a tough task ahead, especially when considering its 97-78 loss at Akron Sunday, which ended a three-game winning streak. The Hornets allowed the Zips to shoot 46.4 percent from the field and were 53-32 in the rebounding battle. Alabama State gave up a season high in points, after playing the likes of LSU and UNLV earlier this season. Akron standout Nate Johnson lit up Alabama State for 25 points, as the game got away from the Hornets in the second half to keep them winless in true road games. Alabama leading scorers CJ Hines and TJ Madlock still got theirs against Akron, scoring 19 and 17 points, respectively. They were joined in double figures by reserve Tyler Mack (18 points), but recent history says they'll need more help to keep up with the Bearcats. Hines leads the Hornets with 15.7 points per game, while Madlock contributes 14.5 points. In previous Akron Basketball Classic wins last week against Omaha and Lamar, Alabama State featured at least four double-digit scorers in each game. --Field Level MediaJohnson Matthey Plc ( OTCPK:JMPLF ) Q2 2025 Earnings Conference Call November 27, 2024 4:00 AM ET Company Participants Martin Dunwoodie - Director of Investor Relations Liam Condon - Chief Executive Stephen Oxley - Chief Financial Officer Anish Taneja - Chief Executive, Clean Air and Chair, Group Commercial Council Maurits van Tol - Chief Executive, Catalyst Technologies Conference Call Participants Tristan Lamotte - Deutsche Bank Sebastian Bray - Berenberg Bank Ranulf Orr - Citi Charlie Bentley - Jefferies Martin Dunwoodie Good morning, everyone. I'm Martin Dunwoodie, Director of Investor Relations here at Johnson Matthey. Thank you everyone for coming along today and for those of you who have tuned in on the webcast. A little bit of admin before we start. [Operator Instructions] We're going to follow the usual format today. So we'll have a presentation followed by Q&A. And we'll take the Q&A first from the room then the webcast. And I'd say, I'm very pleased to welcome today Liam Condon, our CEO; and Stephen Oxley, our CFO. I'll point to our cautionary statement as usual. And with that, I'll hand over to Liam for the presentation. Liam Condon So thanks a lot, Martin, and a warm welcome to everybody here at the London Stock Exchange, and of course a very warm welcome to everybody who is joining us online today. As Martin said, I will give a brief introduction, say a little bit about what's happening in our markets and what's happening at JM in the past six months. Stephen is going to talk you through the financials. I'll give you an update on our strategic progress, and then we'll have most of the time available for Q&A, which we are very much looking forward to. So if we get straight into it, what you've seen from our results that we

OpenAI saved its biggest announcement for the last day of its 12-day “shipmas” event . On Friday, the company unveiled o3, the successor to the o1 “reasoning” model it released earlier in the year. o3 is a model family, to be more precise — as was the case with o1. There’s o3 and o3-mini, a smaller, distilled model fine-tuned for particular tasks. OpenAI makes the remarkable claim that o3, at least in certain conditions, approaches AGI — with significant caveats. More on that below. o3, our latest reasoning model, is a breakthrough, with a step function improvement on our hardest benchmarks. we are starting safety testing & red teaming now. https://t.co/4XlK1iHxFK — Greg Brockman (@gdb) December 20, 2024 Why call the new model o3, not o2? Well, trademarks may be to blame. According to The Information, OpenAI skipped o2 to avoid a potential conflict with British telecom provider O2. CEO Sam Altman somewhat confirmed this during a livestream this morning. Strange world we live in, isn’t it? Neither o3 nor o3-mini are widely available yet, but safety researchers can sign up for a preview for o3-mini starting today. An o3 preview will arrive sometime after; OpenAI didn’t specify when. Altman said that the plan is to launch o3-mini toward the end of January and follow with o3 shortly after. That conflicts a bit with his recent statements. In an interview this week, Altman said that, before OpenAI releases new reasoning models, he’d prefer a federal testing framework to guide monitoring and mitigating the risks of such models. And there are risks. AI safety testers have found that o1’s reasoning abilities make it try to deceive human users at a higher rate than conventional, “non-reasoning” models — or, for that matter, leading AI models from Meta, Anthropic, and Google. It’s possible that o3 attempts to deceive at an even higher rate than its predecessor; we’ll find out once OpenAI’s red-team partners release their test results. For what it’s worth, OpenAI says that it’s using a new technique, “deliberative alignment,” to align models like o3 with its safety principles. It’s detailed the work in a new paper published Friday. Reasoning steps Unlike most AI, reasoning models such as o3 effectively fact-check themselves, which helps them to avoid some of the pitfalls that normally trip up models . This fact-checking process incurs some latency. o3, like o1 before it, takes a little longer — usually seconds to minutes longer — to arrive at solutions compared to a typical non-reasoning model. The upside? It tends to be more reliable in domains such as physics, science, and mathematics. o3 was trained to “think” before responding via what OpenAI calls a “private chain of thought.” The model can can reason through a task and plan ahead, performing a series of actions over an extended period that help it figure out a solution. In practice, given a prompt, o3 pauses before responding, considering a number of related prompts and “explaining” its reasoning along the way. After a while, the model summarizes what it considers to be the most accurate response. New with o3 is the ability to “adjust” the reasoning time. The models can be set to low, medium, or high compute (i.e. thinking time) — the higher the compute, the better o3 does. Benchmarks and AGI One big question leading up to today was whether OpenAI might claim that its newest models are approaching AGI. AGI, short for “artificial general intelligence,” broadly refers to AI that can perform any task a human can. OpenAI has its own definition: “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work.” Achieving AGI would be a bold declaration. And it carries contractual weight for OpenAI, as well. According to the terms of its deal with close partner and investor Microsoft, once OpenAI achieves AGI, it’s no longer obligated to give Microsoft access to its most advanced technologies (those that meet OpenAI’s AGI definition, that is). Going by one benchmark, OpenAI is slowly inching closer to AGI. On ARC-AGI, a test designed to evaluate whether an AI system can efficiently acquire new skills outside the data it was trained on, o3 achieved a 87.5% score on the high compute setting. At its worst (on the low compute setting), the model tripled the performance of o1. Today OpenAI announced o3, its next-gen reasoning model. We've worked with OpenAI to test it on ARC-AGI, and we believe it represents a significant breakthrough in getting AI to adapt to novel tasks. It scores 75.7% on the semi-private eval in low-compute mode (for $20 per task... pic.twitter.com/ESQ9CNVCEA — François Chollet (@fchollet) December 20, 2024 Incidentally, OpenAI says it’ll partner with the foundation behind ARC-AGI to build the next generation of its benchmark. Of course, ARC-AGI has its limitations — and its definition of AGI is but one of many. On other benchmarks, o3 blows away the competition. The model outperforms o1 by 22.8 percentage points on SWE-Bench Verified, a benchmark focused on programming tasks, and achieves a Codeforces rating — another measure of coding skills — of 2727. (A rating of 2400 places an engineer at the 99.2nd percentile.) o3 scores 96.7% on the 2024 American Invitational Mathematics Exam, missing just one question, and achieves 87.7% on GPQA Diamond, a set of graduate-level biology, physics, and chemistry questions. Finally, o3 sets a new record on EpochAI’s Frontier Math benchmark, solving 25.2% of problems; no other model exceeds 2%. We trained o3-mini: both more capable than o1-mini, and around 4x faster end-to-end when accounting for reasoning tokens with @ren_hongyu @shengjia_zhao & others pic.twitter.com/3Cujxy6yCU — Kevin Lu (@_kevinlu) December 20, 2024 These claims have to be taken with a grain of salt, of course. They’re from OpenAI’s internal evaluations. We’ll need to wait to see how the model holds up to benchmarking from outside customers and organizations in the future. A trend In the wake of the release of OpenAI’s first series of reasoning models, there’s been an explosion of reasoning models from rival AI companies — including Google. In early November, DeepSeek, an AI research company funded by quant traders, launched a preview of its first reasoning model, DeepSeek-R1 . That same month, Alibaba’s Qwen team unveiled what it claimed was the first “open” challenger to o1. What opened the reasoning model floodgates? Well, for one, the search for novel approaches to refine generative AI. As TechCrunch recently reported , “brute force” techniques to scale up models are no longer yielding the improvements they once did. Not everyone’s convinced that reasoning models are the best path forward. They tend to be expensive, for one, thanks to the large amount of computing power required to run them. And while they’ve performed well on benchmarks so far, it’s not clear whether reasoning models can maintain this rate of progress. Interestingly, the release of o3 comes as one of OpenAI’s most accomplished scientists departs. Alec Radford, the lead author of the academic paper that kicked off OpenAI’s “GPT series” of generative AI models (that is, GPT-3, GPT-4, and so on), announced this week that he’s leaving to pursue independent research.

ATLANTA (AP) — Deliberations are underway in Atlanta after a year of testimony in the gang and racketeering trial that originally included the rapper Young Thug. Jurors are considering whether to convict Shannon Stillwell and Deamonte Kendrick, who raps as Yak Gotti, on gang, murder, drug and gun charges. The original indictment charged 28 people with conspiring to violate Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Opening statements in the trial for six of those defendants happened a year ago . Four of them, including Young Thug, pleaded guilty last month. The rapper was freed on probation. Stillwell and Kendrick rejected plea deals after more than a week of negotiations, and their lawyers chose not to present evidence or witnesses. Both seemed to be in good spirits Tuesday morning after closings wrapped the previous night. Kendrick was chatting and laughing with Stillwell and his lawyers before the jury arrived for instructions. The jury started deliberating Tuesday afternoon and was dismissed at 5 p.m. Jurors are expected to resume deliberations Wednesday morning. If they don’t reach a verdict by 3 p.m. Wednesday, the judge will send them home for the Thanksgiving weekend and they will return Monday morning. Kendrick and Stillwell were charged in the 2015 killing of Donovan Thomas Jr., also known as “Big Nut,” in an Atlanta barbershop. Prosecutors painted Stillwell and Kendrick as members of a violent street gang called Young Slime Life, or YSL, co-founded in 2012 by Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams. During closings on Monday, they pointed to tattoos, song lyrics and social media posts they said proved members, including Stillwell, admitted to killing people in rival gangs. Prosecutors say Thomas was in a rival gang. Stillwell was also charged in the 2022 killing of Shymel Drinks, which prosecutors said was in retaliation for the killing of two YSL associates days earlier. Defense attorneys Doug Weinstein and Max Schardt said the state presented unreliable witnesses, weak evidence and cherry-picked lyrics and social media posts to push a false narrative about Stillwell, Kendrick and the members of YSL. Schardt, Stillwell's attorney, reminded the jury that alleged YSL affiliates said during the trial that they had lied to police. Law enforcement played a “sick game” by promising they would escape long prison sentences if they said what police wanted them to say, Schardt said. He theorized that one of those witnesses could have killed Thomas. The truth is that their clients were just trying to escape poverty through music, Schardt said. “As a whole, we know the struggles that these communities have had,” Schardt said. “A sad, tacit acceptance that it’s either rap, prison or death.” Young Thug’s record label is also known as YSL, an acronym of Young Stoner Life. Kendrick was featured on two popular songs from the label’s compilation album Slime Language 2, “Take It to Trial" and “Slatty," which prosecutors presented as evidence in the trial. Weinstein, Kendrick’s defense attorney, said during closings it was wrong for prosecutors to target the defendants for their music and lyrics. Prosecutor Simone Hylton disagreed, and said surveillance footage and phone evidence supported her case. “They have the audacity to think they can just brag about killing somebody and nobody’s gonna hold them accountable,” Hylton said. The trial had more than its fair share of delays. Jury selection took nearly 10 months , and Stillwell was stabbed last year at the Fulton County jail, which paused trial proceedings. Judge Paige Reese Whitaker took over after Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Ural Glanville was removed from the case in July because he had a meeting with prosecutors and a state witness without defense attorneys present. Whitaker often lost patience with prosecutors over moves such as not sharing evidence with defense attorneys, once accusing them of “poor lawyering.” But the trial sped up under her watch. In October, four defendants, including Young Thug , pleaded guilty, with the rapper entering a non-negotiated or “blind” plea, meaning he didn't have a deal worked out with prosecutors. Nine people charged in the indictment, including rapper Gunna , accepted plea deals before the trial began. Charges against 12 others are pending. Prosecutors dropped charges against one defendant after he was convicted of murder in an unrelated case. Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Kramon on X: @charlottekramonNone

Direct Line has rejected a £3.3bn takeover offer from FTSE 100 insurer Aviva , the second suitor it has rejected so far this year. In a stock exchange announcement, Aviva confirmed that it had submitted an offer last week, which valued the FTSE 250 firm at 250p per share. The offer represented a premium of 60 per cent to Direct Line’s share price on the day before the proposal was submitted. Direct Line said the deal was “highly opportunistic and substantially undervalued the company”. “The Board has considerable conviction in the capabilities of our newly established leadership team and stands firmly behind their delivery of our strategy,” the insurer said in a statement . “The Board considered the proposal to not reflect the standalone value that can be delivered by the Company,” it added. Direct Line is undertaking a turnaround plan, which it hopes will deliver around £50m in cost savings in 2025. In its third quarter trading update, released earlier this month, the firm said it was considering cutting around 550 roles as part of its savings programme. The firm has already rebuffed two approaches from the Belgian insurer Ageas this year, with the latter valuing the firm at £3.1bn. The board unanimously rejected Ageas’ approach back in March, also describing it as “highly opportunistic”. However, Aviva said the deal would deliver unlock value that is “inaccessible to Direct Line standalone” and would deliver “material cost and capital synergies, incremental to Direct Line’s existing cost savings programme”. Shares in Direct Line have fallen over 14 per cent in the year-to-date, giving it a market cap of around £2.1bn. Under UK takeover rules Aviva has until Christmas Day to announce an intention to make an offer or walk away.

Elephant Robotics to Exhibit at CES 2025: Featuring Cutting-Edge Innovative Robotics Solutions and AI Bionic Robots Debut

Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) aspirants have been demanding a re-examination of the 70th Combined Competitive Examination (CCE), which was held on December 13, alleging irregularities in the exam. However, their protest intensified on Sunday in Patna and the police resorted to cane-charge and the use of water cannons. Thousands of students gathered at Gandhi Maidan and later marched toward JP Golambar. A heavy police presence was deployed to manage the escalating protests. The police team was led by Patna Central SP, Sweety Sahrawat. But who is IPS Sweety Sahrawat? She became Patna Central SP earlier this year. She is a Bihar cadre IPS officer who cleared the UPSC exam with All India Rank (AIR) 187. IPS Sahrawat was earlier posted as Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) in Aurangabad, Bihar. The young officer holds a B.Tech (ECE) degree from Delhi Technological University. Her father was a Delhi Police head constable who died in a road accident in 2013. IPS Sahrawat had quit her job as a design engineer to fulfil her father’s dream of seeing her become an IAS officer. She cracked UPSC CSE 2019 to become an IPS officer. She is a native of Aurangabad district. She is now in the news because she is leading the police team during the BPSC protest in Patna. Last year in September, a video of her talking with Kerala's former Governor and retired IPS officer Nikhil Kumar went viral. Kumar went to the residence of then ASP Sehrawat after several people complained to him about rising cases of theft in the city.Nvidia Just Delivered a Beat-and-Raise Quarter. There’s 1 Red Flag Investors Shouldn’t Ignore.

Arteta wanted his team to prove their European credentials following some underwhelming displays away from home, and the Gunners manager got exactly what he asked for. Goals from Gabriel Martinelli, Kai Havertz, Gabriel Magalhaes, Bukayo Saka and Leandro Trossard got their continental campaign back on track in style following the 1-0 defeat at Inter Milan last time out. A memorable victory also ended Sporting’s unbeaten start to the season, a streak of 17 wins and one draw, the vast majority of which prompted Manchester United to prise away head coach Ruben Amorim. The Gunners had failed to win or score in their two away games in the competition so far this season, but they made a blistering start in the Portuguese capital and took the lead after only seven minutes. Declan Rice fed overlapping full-back Jurrien Timber, who curled a low cross in behind the home defence for Martinelli to finish at the far post. Arsenal doubled their lead in the 20th minute thanks to a glorious ball over the top from Thomas Partey. Saka escaped the clutches of his marker Maximiliano Araujo to beat the offside trap and poke the ball past advancing goalkeeper Franco Israel for Havertz to tap home. It was a scintillating first-half display which completely overshadowed the presence of Viktor Gyokeres in Sporting’s attack. The prolific Sweden striker, formerly of Coventry, has been turning the heads of Europe’s top clubs with his 24 goals in 17 games this season – including a hat-trick against Manchester City earlier this month. But the only time he got a sniff of a run at goal after an optimistic long ball, he was marshalled out of harm’s way by Gabriel. David Raya was forced into one save, tipping a fierce Geovany Quenda drive over the crossbar. But Arsenal added a third on the stroke of half-time, Gabriel charging in to head Rice’s corner into the back of the net. Our second-half goalscorers ❤️ pic.twitter.com/aFCIMffFaK — Arsenal (@Arsenal) November 26, 2024 To rub salt in the wound, the Brazilian defender mimicked Gyokeres’ hands-over-his-face goal celebration. That may have wound Sporting up as they came out after the interval meaning business, and they pulled one back after Raya tipped Hidemasa Morita’s shot behind, with Goncalo Inacio netting at the near post from the corner. Former Tottenham winger Marcus Edwards fired over, as did Gyokeres, with Arsenal temporarily on the back foot. But when Martin Odegaard’s darting run into the area was halted by Ousmane Diomande’s foul, Saka tucked away the penalty. Substitute Trossard added the fifth with eight minutes remaining, heading in the rebound after Mikel Merino’s shot was saved, and Gyokeres’ miserable night was summed up when his late shot crashed back off the post.