OpenAI has signed deals with fintech startups, tech giants and even Disney, but it's breaking new ground by announcing a world's first partnership with the country of Malta. In a post on its website, OpenAI said that it would provide ChatGPT Plus for one year to every Maltese resident or citizen. Malta is the first country to launch a partnership of this scale because we refuse to let our citizens stay behind in the digital age, Silvio Schembri, Malta's minister for Economy, Enterprise and Strategic Projects, said in a statement. We are putting our people at the very forefront of global change. For the approximately 574,250 residents living in Malta, they'll have to complete a course developed by the University of Malta before launching the ChatGPT Plus subscription, which costs $20 a month in the US.

Plus: An unauthorized group has reportedly accessed Anthropic's Mythos. What actually matters in AI right now? It's getting harder to tell amid the constant launches, hype, and warnings. To cut through the noise, reporters and editors have distilled years of analysis into a new essential guide: the 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now . The list builds on our annual 10 Breakthrough Technologies, but takes a wider view of the ideas, topics, and research shaping AI, spotlighting the trends and breakthroughs shaping the world. We'll be unpacking one item from the list each day here in The Download, explaining what it means and why it matters.

Decision-makers rely on weather forecasts to plant crops, manage wildfires, allocate water and energy, and prepare for weather extremes. Today, such forecasts enjoy unprecedented accuracy out to two weeks thanks to steady advances in physics-based dynamical models and data-driven artificial intelligence (AI) models. However, model skill drops precipitously at subseasonal timescales (2 - 6 weeks ahead), due to compounding errors and persistent biases. To counter this degradation, we introduce probabilistic bias correction (PBC), a machine learning framework that substantially reduces systematic error by learning to correct historical probabilistic forecasts. When applied to the leading dynamical and AI models from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), PBC doubles the subseasonal skill of the AI Forecasting System and improves the skill of the operationally-debiased dynamical model for 91% of pressure, 92% of temperature, and 98% of precipitation targets. We designed PBC for operational deployment, and, in ECMWF's 2025 real-time forecasting competition, its global forecasts placed first for all weather variables and lead times, outperforming the dynamical models from six operational forecasting centers, an international dynamical multi-model ensemble, ECMWF's AI Forecasting System, and the forecasting systems of 34 teams worldwide. These probabilistic skill gains translate into more accurate prediction of extreme events and have the potential to improve agricultural planning, energy management, and disaster preparedness in vulnerable communities.

We study mean estimation of a random vector $X$ in a distributed parameter-server-worker setup. Worker $i$ observes samples of $a_i^\top X$, where $a_i^\top$ is the $i$th row of a known sensing matrix $A$. The key challenges are adversarial measurements and asynchrony: a fixed subset of workers may transmit corrupted measurements, and workers are activated asynchronously--only one is active at any time. In our previous work, we proposed a two-timescale $\ell_1$-minimization algorithm and established asymptotic recovery under a null-space-property-like condition on $A$. In this work, we establish tight non-asymptotic convergence rates under the same null-space-property-like condition. We also identify relaxed conditions on $A$ under which exact recovery may fail but recovery of a projected component of $\mathbb{E}[X]$ remains possible. Overall, our results provide a unified finite-time characterization of robustness, identifiability, and statistical efficiency in distributed linear estimation with adversarial workers, with implications for network tomography and related distributed sensing problems.

Online health communities (OHCs) are vital for fostering peer support and improving health outcomes. Support groups within these platforms can provide more personalized and cohesive peer support, yet traditional support group formation methods face challenges related to scalability, static categorization, and insufficient personalization. To overcome these limitations, we propose two novel machine learning models for automated support group formation: the Group specific Dirichlet Multinomial Regression (gDMR) and the Group specific Structured Topic Model (gSTM). These models integrate user generated textual content, demographic profiles, and interaction data represented through node embeddings derived from user networks to systematically automate personalized, semantically coherent support group formation. We evaluate the models on a large scale dataset from MedHelp, comprising over 2 million user posts. Both models substantially outperform baseline methods including LDA, DMR, and STM in predictive accuracy (held out log likelihood), semantic coherence (UMass metric), and internal group consistency. The gDMR model yields group covariates that facilitate practical implementation by leveraging relational patterns from network structures and demographic data. In contrast, gSTM emphasizes sparsity constraints to generate more distinct and thematically specific groups. Qualitative analysis further validates the alignment between model generated groups and manually coded themes, showing the practical relevance of the models in informing groups that address diverse health concerns such as chronic illness management, diagnostic uncertainty, and mental health. By reducing reliance on manual curation, these frameworks provide scalable solutions that enhance peer interactions within OHCs, with implications for patient engagement, community resilience, and health outcomes.

Nonrigid registration is conventionally divided into point set registration, which aligns sparse geometries, and image registration, which aligns continuous intensity fields on regular grids. However, this dichotomy creates a critical bottleneck for emerging scientific data, such as spatial transcriptomics, where high-dimensional vector-valued functions, e.g., gene expression, are defined on irregular, sparse manifolds. Consequently, researchers currently face a forced choice: either sacrifice single-cell resolution via voxelization to utilize image-based tools, or ignore the critical functional signal to utilize geometric tools. To resolve this dilemma, we propose Domain Elastic Transform (DET), a grid-free probabilistic framework that unifies geometric and functional alignment. By treating data as functions on irregular domains, DET registers high-dimensional signals directly without binning. We formulate the problem within a rigorous Bayesian framework, modeling domain deformation as an elastic motion guided by a joint spatial-functional likelihood. The method is fully unsupervised and scalable, utilizing feature-sensitive downsampling to handle massive atlases. We demonstrate that DET achieves 92\% topological preservation on MERFISH data where state-of-the-art optimal transport methods struggle ($<$5\%), and successfully registers whole-embryo Stereo-seq atlases across developmental stages -- a task involving massive scale and complex nonrigid growth. The implementation of DET is available on {https://github.com/ohirose/bcpd} (since Mar, 2025).

Poodle crossbreeds have grown overwhelmingly popular, sparking controversy in dog parks and kennel clubs alike. The features of doodles such as Peaches (above), a goldendoodle, have become the canine equivalent of Instagram face. Meet the Breeds, the American Kennel Club's annual showcase of purebred dogs, took place over two eye-wateringly cold days in early February at the Javits Center, in Manhattan. About a hundred and fifty of the two hundred and five varieties recognized as official breeds by the A.K.C., the long-standing authority in the U.S. dog world, were in attendance for the public to ogle, fondle, and coo "So cute!" to, including the basset fauve de Bretagne, a hunting hound from France that's one of three newly recognized breeds recently allowed into the purebred pantheon. Some of the dogs had competed in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show earlier in the week, and past champions had their ribbons on display. In spite of the frigid weather, pavilions hosting the more popular breeds--the pug, the Doberman pinscher, the Great Dane, the St. Bernard--were packed. Lesser-known varieties, such as the saluki, the Löwchen, and the Lapponian herder, drew sparser crowds. There were exhibition spaces for each breed, and on the back walls were three adjectives supposedly describing that particular type of dog's temperament. There is, in fact, no evidence that temperament is consistent within a breed, but the idea is deeply rooted in dogdom. I stopped to caress the velvety ear leather of a pharaoh hound ("Friendly, Smart, Noble"), a sprinting breed once used to hunt rabbits in Malta; accept kisses from a Portuguese water dog, bred to assist with retrieving tackle ("Affectionate, Adventurous, Athletic"); and have my photograph taken with a Leonberger, a German breed from the town of Leonberg, in southwest Germany ("Friendly, Gentle, Playful"). No one was supposed to be openly selling dogs, but, if you asked, the breeders would share their information. Excluding what are known as companion dogs, like the Leonberger, most of the animals at the show were designed for a purpose that is no longer required of them. In Great Britain, foxhounds are legally barred from chasing foxes. Consider the fate of the otterhound, an ancient variety with a noble heritage which was once used in the U.K. to hunt river otters, which were prized for their thick fur and disliked by wealthy landowners because they ate fish in their stocked ponds.

Secret of the booming Florida county desired by families that's seeing influx of residents Conniving couple whose greedy'pervert' plot'drove innocent disabled man to suicide' given stunningly short sentences I've FINALLY found something that works on my rosacea: This new anti-ageing treatment beloved of celebrities really is a game-changer Insufferable blowhard Stephen Colbert is being taken out like the trash... and thank God! What he's done is so diabolical: MAUREEN CALLAHAN Mass cancellations as Southwest Airlines pulls out of two of America's biggest airports Extramarital sex with witches, cursed bloodlines and possessed politicians: DC's chief exorcist reveals the potent stench of evil among America's elite We were the picture-perfect family of faith. The evil of sex was drilled into me... then finally I gave in to every depraved urge Trump says he's not ready to make a deal with Iran despite them asking for a ceasefire: 'The terms aren't good enough yet!' JFK Jr's mortifying night of phone sex... day Sarah Jessica Parker ditched her underwear to seduce him in public... and the girlfriend he REALLY wanted to marry: All the women before Carolyn Kim Jong Un is joined by his heir-apparent teenage daughter for'invasion rehearsal' drills Obama Center asks for 100 unpaid volunteers despite hiring the former president's'close friend' as CEO on $740K Insane moment NYC cab plows into pedestrians... and the miracle that saved them from death Angelina Jolie and George Clooney lead stars who have fled the US for France as Paris is dubbed'Frollywood' Harry Styles kisses male SNL star in wild opening monologue as he confronts woke'queerbaiting' claims head on Truth about'super secretive' Michael B. Jordan's love life... and real reason he is perpetually single: Years of private'heartache' and'loneliness' laid bare America's most expensive ZIP codes revealed - and the surprising state that dominates the list I looked like a monster after a car accident burned off my face... but a pioneering face transplant gave me my life back. Immature men are to blame for Britain's'missing babies', report warns - because they delay responsibilities until later in life Britain's'missing babies' can be blamed on immature men who are delaying responsibilities until later in life, according to a report. Research from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) think tank predicts around 600,000 young women may miss out on motherhood partly because men don't feel ready for children until they get older. In the report, called Baby Bust, the organisation says there are a range of reasons for falling birth rates including the cost of childcare, wanting to move into a larger house, prioritising a career or not finding the right partner.

Conniving couple whose greedy'pervert' plot'drove innocent disabled man to suicide' given stunningly short sentences Obama Center asks for 100 unpaid volunteers despite hiring the former president's'close friend' as CEO on $740K Harry Styles shares gay kiss with SNL star in wild opening monologue as he addresses'queerbaiting' claims Housing nightmare in America's'best state to buy a home' as banks suddenly seize thousands of properties Insufferable blowhard Stephen Colbert is being taken out like the trash... and thank God! What he's done is so diabolical: MAUREEN CALLAHAN JFK Jr's mortifying night of phone sex... day Sarah Jessica Parker ditched her underwear to seduce him in public... and the girlfriend he REALLY wanted to marry: All the women before Carolyn Mass cancellations as Southwest Airlines pulls out of two of America's biggest airports Truth about'super secretive' Michael B. Jordan's love life... and real reason he is perpetually single: Years of private'heartache' and'loneliness' laid bare Beloved young dad and inspiring female'Air Force superstar' among US heroes killed in Iran mission crash as all six are named Insane moment NYC cab plows into pedestrians... and the miracle that saved them from death Caitlin Clark goes viral for bizarre behavior after Team USA's win over Italy: 'What are you doing? We fled Trump to chase the REAL American dream in the most idyllic European hotspot... here's why we're coming back to a red state I looked like a monster after a car accident burned off my face... but a pioneering face transplant gave me my life back. Furious flower farm owner blasts'feral' customers after they trampled tulips to get perfect photos Harry and Meghan hit back at new book claims she was accused by Camilla of'brainwashing' him - dismissing accusations as'deranged conspiracy' Extramarital sex with witches, cursed bloodlines and possessed politicians: DC's chief exorcist reveals the potent stench of evil among America's elite Iran's deadly drone arsenal is a'wake-up call for America': Expert warns US defenses may be unprepared for swarm attacks Iran's foreign minister admits Islamic Republic is receiving military support from Russia and China Hollywood costume designer names VILE A-Listers including pervert James Bond star, slob female sitcom icon... and details the hilarious evil of Shannen Doherty Scampi and chips could soon be off the menu! Woke scientists call for Brits to ditch the seaside staple - amid fears it carries a'hidden climate cost' Woke scientists are calling for Brits to take scampi and chips off the menu, amid fears that the seaside staple carries a'hidden climate cost'. Scampi is a traditional chip shop treat made from the breaded and fried tails of Norway lobsters, also known as langoustines.

Conniving couple whose greedy'pervert' plot'drove innocent disabled man to suicide' given stunningly short sentences Obama Center asks for 100 unpaid volunteers despite hiring the former president's'close friend' as CEO on $740K Harry Styles shares gay kiss with SNL star in wild opening monologue as he addresses'queerbaiting' claims Housing nightmare in America's'best state to buy a home' as banks suddenly seize thousands of properties Insufferable blowhard Stephen Colbert is being taken out like the trash... and thank God! What he's done is so diabolical: MAUREEN CALLAHAN JFK Jr's mortifying night of phone sex... day Sarah Jessica Parker ditched her underwear to seduce him in public... and the girlfriend he REALLY wanted to marry: All the women before Carolyn Mass cancellations as Southwest Airlines pulls out of two of America's biggest airports Truth about'super secretive' Michael B. Jordan's love life... and real reason he is perpetually single: Years of private'heartache' and'loneliness' laid bare Beloved young dad and inspiring female'Air Force superstar' among US heroes killed in Iran mission crash as all six are named Insane moment NYC cab plows into pedestrians... and the miracle that saved them from death Caitlin Clark goes viral for bizarre behavior after Team USA's win over Italy: 'What are you doing? We fled Trump to chase the REAL American dream in the most idyllic European hotspot... here's why we're coming back to a red state I looked like a monster after a car accident burned off my face... but a pioneering face transplant gave me my life back. Furious flower farm owner blasts'feral' customers after they trampled tulips to get perfect photos Harry and Meghan hit back at new book claims she was accused by Camilla of'brainwashing' him - dismissing accusations as'deranged conspiracy' Extramarital sex with witches, cursed bloodlines and possessed politicians: DC's chief exorcist reveals the potent stench of evil among America's elite Iran's deadly drone arsenal is a'wake-up call for America': Expert warns US defenses may be unprepared for swarm attacks Iran's foreign minister admits Islamic Republic is receiving military support from Russia and China Hollywood costume designer names VILE A-Listers including pervert James Bond star, slob female sitcom icon... and details the hilarious evil of Shannen Doherty Scientists reveal exactly where you're going WRONG on your dating profile - and the simple changes you can make to bag a date Are you struggling to find love online? Scientists have revealed where you're probably going wrong. A new study has uncovered nine different types of profile photos that singletons tend to use - and what they convey about you to fellow daters.