Key takeaways from Minnesota special elections held amid immigration backlash

Democrats easily won two special elections for state House seats in Minnesota, the first contests held in the state following growing opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Voters in St. Paul and some of the city’s eastern suburbs elected Democrats Meg Lugar-Nicolai and Shelley Buck for House Districts 64A and 47A, respectively. Although both……

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One year after DeepSeek, Chinese AI firms from Alibaba to Moonshot race to release new models

BEIJING — Chinese companies are accelerating the rollout of new artificial intelligence models as competition with U.S.-based rivals OpenAI, Anthropic and Google intensifies. Just over a year ago, China-made DeepSeek rocked global markets with the release of an AI chatbot that undercut OpenAI’s ChatGPT on usage fees and production costs, raising questions about the efficacy…

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Asia markets mixed after S&P 500 hits record, South Korea pushes fresh highs

Melbourne, Australia Kieran Stone | Moment | Getty Images Asia-Pacific markets were mixed Wednesday, breaking ranks with Wall Street after the S&P 500 closed at a record high. The broad market index gained 0.41% to finish at 6,978.60, supported by gains in Apple and Microsoft. Asian markets mostly extended Tuesday’s gains, with Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 reversed gains and…

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