A senior Japanese politician is advocating for increasing his country’s deterrence ability to ensure peace in the region, and called for that message to be clearly conveyed globally — particularly in China

Meituan’s 30% slide this year shows that troubles are deepening for the Chinese food-delivery firm as it faces

Adam Webster’s own goal condemned Roberto De Zerbi to his worst league run with Brighton as Sheffield United escaped the bottom of the table with a 1-1 draw against 10-man Albion. Simon Adingra had put the Seagulls ahead with a brilliant solo run but Mahmoud Dahoud’s red card saw momentum shift before Webster slid into his own goal. Brighton, who beat European giants Ajax on Thursday, are now winless in the Premier League in six matches, the longest boss De Zerbi has gone without a victory since arriving on the south coast last year. The Blades almost took an unlikely second-minute lead when Gustavo Hamer intercepted Jan Paul van Hecke’s pass across his own box but his header travelled narrowly wide. Four minutes later, Dahoud’s through ball released Ansu Fati who excitingly beat two defenders but his shot lacked power and was easily stopped by Wes Foderingham. The warning was not heeded as two minutes later Adingra picked up the ball 35 yards from goal on the left touchline. He shrugged off two tackles and played a one-two with Facundo Buonanotte before slotting past Foderingham. It was the Ivorian’s fourth goal of the season and the 28th straight league game the Seagulls have scored – the Blades winless in the last 20 Premier League matches they had shipped first. Brighton manager De Zerbi, who had given a call to action to supporters before the match, celebrated by jumping into the crowd in delight. Fati – making his first league start since arriving on loan from Barcelona – again found a gap down the middle to expose but his toe-poke was simple for Foderingham to deal with, before Buonanotte and Billy Gilmour went close. United showed a threat at the end of the first half but George Baldock’s lashed shot was the closest they came to scoring. Joao Pedro shot over almost immediately after coming on at the break, Van Hecke nodded a corner into the ground and over, Kaoru Mitoma’s raid to the byline saw his near-post shot blocked and Dahoud’s effort from range was battered behind. But in the 69th minute, the character of the game changed when Dahoud was dismissed for stamping on Ben Osborn’s Achilles. Referee John Brooks has now given four red cards this season, more than any of his colleague – not that there was any controversy with this decision. Four minutes later and United were level. Jayden Bogle smashed a ball across the face of goal and Webster put through his own goal, with Cameron Archer waiting behind for a tap-in. All of Brighton’s last 16 matches have seen both teams scoring – equalling Everton’s Premier League record – with the 12 since the start of the campaign last achieved in the top flight by Liverpool in the 1966-67 season. Bogle dragged an effort narrowly wide and Luke Thomas blazed over but the Blades could not find a second late winner in a row to follow their stoppage-time success against Wolves. Read More Britain remain at elite level of BJK Cup with victory over under-strength Sweden Aston Villa equal club-record home winning run by sweeping aside Fulham Tomas Soucek heads winner as West Ham come from behind in five-goal thriller Philippe Clement wants longer recovery after European games as Rangers beat Livi Katie Boulter puts Great Britain a win away from BJK Cup progress England will take it slow with Jofra Archer after latest setback – Rob Key

ChatGPT has a new upgrade that lets the viral artificial intelligence tool “see, hear, and speak”, according to OpenAI. The update for OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chatbot will allow users to have voice conversations with the AI chatbot and interact with it using images as well, the firm said in a blog post on Monday. “ChatGPT can now see, hear, and speak,” the firm also said in a post on X/Twitter. The features will be rolled out “over the next two weeks” and enable users to “use voice to engage in a back-and-forth conversation” with the AI assistant. With the new features, ChatGPT can be used to “request a bedtime story for your family, or settle a dinner table debate,” according to the company, bringing it closer to the services offered by Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri AI assistants. Providing an example of how the feature works, OpenAI shared a demo in which a user asks ChatGPT to come up with a story about “the super-duper sunflower hedgehog named Larry”. The chatbot replies to the query with a human-like voice and also responds to questions such as “What was his house like?” and “Who is his best friend?” OpenAI said the voice capability is powered by a new text-to-speech model that generates human-like audio from just text and a few seconds of sample speech, the company said. “We collaborated with professional voice actors to create each of the voices. We also use Whisper, our open-source speech recognition system, to transcribe your spoken words into text,” the company said. The AI firm believes the new voice technology is capable of crafting realistic-sounding synthetic voices from just a few seconds of real speech, and could opens doors to many creative applications. However, the company also cautioned that the new capabilities may also present new risks “such as the potential for malicious actors to impersonate public figures or commit fraud”. Another major update to the AI chatbot allows users to upload an image and ask ChatGPT about it. “Troubleshoot why your grill won’t start, explore the contents of your fridge to plan a meal, or analyze a complex graph for work-related data,” OpenAI explained. This new feature, according to the company, also lets users focus on a specific part of the image using a drawing tool in the ChatGPT mobile app. This kind of multimodal recognition by the chatbot has been forecast for a while, and its new understanding of images is powered by multimodal GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. These models can apply their language reasoning skills to a range of images, including photographs, screenshots and documents. OpenAI said the new features will roll out within the next two weeks in the app for paying subscribers of ChatGPT’s Plus and Enterprise services. “We’re excited to roll out these capabilities to other groups of users, including developers, soon after,” the AI firm said. Read More Spotify makes AI voice clones of podcasters and uses them to speak other languages Meta plans to develop chatbot with ‘sassy robot’ persona for young users, report says ChatGPT can now generate images and create illustrated books Meta plans to develop ‘sassy robot’ chatbot for young users, report says Fossil fuels ‘becoming obsolete’ as solar panel prices plummet New discovery is ‘holy grail’ breakthrough in search for aliens, scientist say

'We’re in development on three others, including five and including the television series,' confirmed Drake

By Yoruk Bahceli and Dhara Ranasinghe LONDON Investors on Wednesday ramped up bets on the Bank of England

This contribution comes as the region grapples with the devastating war in Gaza, which began on Saturday, October 7, and continues to inflict immense suffering

A fan was ejected from a U.S. Open tennis match early Tuesday morning after German player Alexander Zverev complained the man used language from Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime

GOP Sen. Mitt Romney thinks a government shutdown is "very likely," citing the House for his pessimism.

Chicago White Sox management on Monday refuted claims by former reliever Keynan Middleton that the downtrodden team had a culture with “no rules,” allowing a rookie reliever to regularly fall asleep during games and other players to miss meetings and practices

The Philadelphia district attorney says one of five people believed to have been killed in the city July 3 appears to have been fatally shot almost two full days before the mass shooting reported last week

Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system enjoys a near-mythical status among Israelis