Author: admin

HARBIN, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) — Heilongjiang Province, a major grain producer in northeast China, saw its 22nd bumper harvest with a record-breaking grain output reaching 82 million tonnes this year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Friday.

After surpassing 80 million tonnes in total grain production in 2024, Heilongjiang has once again topped the record this year, marking its 16th straight year as the top grain-producing region in China, according to the provincial agriculture and rural affairs department.

To ensure consecutive high yields, the province has applied over 176,000 high-performance seeding machines and continued to promote scientific farming methods, including soil testing formula fertilization technology, dense planting techniques and integrated water and fertilizer irrigation projects.

China has achieved another year of bumper grain harvest in 2025, with total output hitting a record high of 714.88 million tonnes, an increase of 1.2 percent year on year, according to the NBS.  ■

OpenAI on Thursday launched its GPT-5.2 artificial intelligence model, after CEO Sam Altman reportedly issued an internal “code red” in early December pausing non‑core projects and redirecting teams to accelerate development in response to Google’s Gemini 3.

GPT-5.2 comes with improvements in general intelligence, coding and long-context understanding, the company said in a statement.

The new model is expected to bring even more economic value for users, as it is better at creating spreadsheets, building presentations and handling complex multi-step projects, OpenAI said.

Alphabet’s Google launched the latest version of its Gemini in November, highlighting Gemini 3’s lead position on several popular industry leaderboards that measure AI model performance.

“Gemini 3 has had less of an impact on our metrics than we feared,” Altman said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday, alongside Disney’s CEO Bob Iger.

Google did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Disney said on Thursday it is investing $1 billion in OpenAI and will let the startup use characters from Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel franchises in its Sora AI video generator.

Microsoft-backed OpenAI said that it currently has no plans to drop GPT‑5.1, GPT‑5, or GPT‑4.1 from its application programming interface.

GPT-5.2 Instant, Thinking, and Pro will begin rolling out in ChatGPT on Thursday, beginning with paid plans.