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Sheikh Jassim is still waiting to hear whether his fifth and final offer for Manchester United has been successful, according to sources close to the Qatari. Recent reports within Qatar had indicated that the Sheikh’s bid – which is for 100 per cent of the club – had seen off the bid from Ineos founder Sir Jim Ratcliffe. However, the Sheikh Jassim camp described those reports as pure speculation and say they remain in a ‘holding pattern’. They expect the next step will be for the United board to meet and consider both bids. United have been approached for comment. Sheikh Jassim’s fifth bid was made last week, but at the same time it was made clear to the Glazer family – who own the club – and to the Raine merchant banking group which is overseeing the sale that he would not engage with the process beyond last Friday. The Qataris are eager to get the deal done with the summer transfer window about to kick into gear. Sheikh Jassim’s bid is understood to be a fully cash deal for 100 per cent of the club, and that all United’s debts would be cleared. Sources close to the Sheikh’s bid say that separate, additional funding would be made available for player recruitment, infrastructure and other investment needs. The Glazers first announced their intention to consider a sale of the club in November last year, with the first bids from Ratcliffe and Sheikh Jassim tabled in February. There have been reports that Ratcliffe’s offer is for 60 per cent of the club, with Avram and Joel Glazer retaining a combined 20 per cent stake, but sources close to Ratcliffe have not confirmed this. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live

Ukraine's forces have pushed back Russian troops in areas of the country's south and east as Kyiv pushes on with its counteroffensive – with President Volodymyr Zelensky also claiming that his country has developed a new long-range weapon. The pronouncement by Mr Zelensky that the unnamed weapon reached a target of more than 400 miles (700 kilometres) away comes a day after a wave of drone strikes across six regions in Russian. Those strikes included an assault that caused a huge fire at a military air base in Pskov in northern Russia, damaging several giant military transport planes on the tarmac. That air base is roughly 400 miles from the Ukrainian border. Whether Mr Zelensky's remarks are part of the information war with Russia over Moscow's 18-month invasion – he did not give details on the new weapon other than the fact it was produced by Ukraine's Ministry of Strategic Industries but gave no other details – it is certainly the clearest suggestion that Kyiv was behind the attack. Ukraine has upped the number of drones attacks on Russian territory in recent weeks, but rarely officially claims them. Western allies of Kyiv are wary of such attacks, although Mr Zelensky has repeatedly said that his nation has the right to hit military targets. Russia reported overnight drone attacks in its Bryansk region on Thursday and said it had shot down a missile fired on occupied Crimea. On the ground in Ukraine, Kyiv's troops have secured some new “successes” in the south and east. Ukraine's foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba has said this week that recent gains on the southern front could enable open the door to the recapture of the annexed Crimean peninsula. He told critics of the pace of its three-month-old counteroffensive to "shut up" – the sharpest signal yet of Kyiv's frustration suggestions from some Western officials, quoted in US media reports, that Kyiv's troops are moving too slowly. "Criticising the slow pace of (the) counteroffensive equals ... spitting into the face of (the) Ukrainian soldier who sacrifices his life every day, moving forward and liberating one kilometre of Ukrainian soil after another," Mr Kuleba said. "I would recommend all critics to shut up, come to Ukraine and try to liberate one square centimetre by themselves," he said at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Spain. After months of fighting their way through heavy minefields, Ukraine's forces have finally reached the main Russian defensive lines in the Zaporizhzhia region, where Robotyne is located, in recent days. If troops can find a way past anti-tank defences and other Russian traps, a further advance there would provide the first test of Russia's deeper defences, which Ukraine hopes will be more vulnerable and less heavily mined than the areas its troops have traversed so far. Elsewhere, the Foreign Office confirmed the death of a British man whose family said he was fighting in Ukraine. Samuel Newey, 22, was "killed in action" on Wednesday in eastern Ukraine, his brother, Daniel Newey, said in a social media post. Meanwhile, BAE Systems said it had established a local entity in Ukraine and signed deals with the Ukrainian government to help ramp up the supply of weapons, equipment and training to the country. Britain is a key defence supplier for Ukraine and BAE, as the UK's biggest defence contractor, has manufactured a significant amount of the hardware provided to Kyiv. The new agreements will facilitate BAE's future support by helping it better understand Ukraine's capability requirements, and they will also allow the company to work directly with Ukrainian partners with a plan to produce 105mm Light Guns there. Reuters contributed to this report Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary Putin orders Wagner fighters to sign oath of allegiance after Prigozhin death What could a GOP presidency mean for Ukraine? The first debate gave us the answer Minister warns against jumping to conclusions over Wagner chief’s reported death

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

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