While Speech Large Language Models (Speech-LLMs) show strong performance in many applications, their robustness is critically under-tested, especially to speech disfluency. Existing evaluations often rely on idealized inputs, overlooking common disfluencies, particularly those associated with conditions like Parkinson's disease. This work investigates whether current Speech-LLMs can maintain performance when interacting with users who have speech impairments. To facilitate this inquiry, we introduce VocalBench-DF, a framework for the systematic evaluation of disfluency across a multi-dimensional taxonomy. Our evaluation of 22 mainstream Speech-LLMs reveals substantial performance degradation, indicating that their real-world readiness is limited. Further analysis identifies phoneme-level processing and long-context modeling as primary bottlenecks responsible for these failures. Strengthening recognition and reasoning capability from components and pipelines can substantially improve robustness. These findings highlight the urgent need for new methods to improve disfluency handling and build truly inclusive Speech-LLMs

Urban embodied AI agents, ranging from delivery robots to quadrupeds, are increasingly populating our cities, navigating chaotic streets to provide last-mile connectivity. Training such agents requires diverse, high-fidelity urban environments to scale, yet existing human-crafted or procedurally generated simulation scenes either lack scalability or fail to capture real-world complexity. We introduce UrbanVerse, a data-driven real-to-sim system that converts crowd-sourced city-tour videos into physics-aware, interactive simulation scenes. UrbanVerse consists of: (i) UrbanVerse-100K, a repository of 100k+ annotated urban 3D assets with semantic and physical attributes, and (ii) UrbanVerse-Gen, an automatic pipeline that extracts scene layouts from video and instantiates metric-scale 3D simulations using retrieved assets. Running in IsaacSim, UrbanVerse offers 160 high-quality constructed scenes from 24 countries, along with a curated benchmark of 10 artist-designed test scenes. Experiments show that UrbanVerse scenes preserve real-world semantics and layouts, achieving human-evaluated realism comparable to manually crafted scenes. In urban navigation, policies trained in UrbanVerse exhibit scaling power laws and strong generalization, improving success by +6.3% in simulation and +30.1% in zero-shot sim-to-real transfer comparing to prior methods, accomplishing a 300 m real-world mission with only two interventions.

China will soon have a new Five Year Plan. Here's how they have changed the world so far China's top leaders are gathering in Beijing this week to decide on the country's key goals and aspirations for the rest of the decade. Every year or so, the country's highest political body, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, convenes for a week of meetings, also known as a Plenum. What it decides at this one will eventually form the basis of China's next Five Year Plan - the blueprint that the world's second largest economy will follow between 2026 and 2030. The full plan won't come until next year, but officials are likely to hint at its contents on Wednesday and have previously given more details within a week of that.

There is an eerie emptiness at the seat of US economic power. The US Treasury is in shutdown like much of the federal government. Most staff are furloughed as the world's finance ministers and bankers jet in for the International Monetary Fund annual meetings a few blocks away, their delayed flights handled by a small number of unpaid air traffic controllers. There is, however, one clear message the Trump administration is notably keen to get out, not so much for its domestic audience but for the bewildered world outside. And they delivered it in the middle of last week to a small number of people ushered into the Treasury and what is said to be the finest room in Washington DC, the ornate and marbled Cash Room, which hosted the inaugural reception for post-civil war president, Ulysses Grant.

Game Theory Afghan Women's Team: The Fight to Play For the first time since the Taliban regained power in 2021, Afghanistan's women's football team will compete in an official tournament, albeit under a different name. U-20 World Cup Who would you play for?

The watershed moment Trump changed course on Israel after Netanyahu shattered their once-unbreakable bond: 'We felt betrayed' Kim Kardashian stuns onlookers in horrifying MASKED look at one of Hollywood's biggest galas DAPHNE BARAK: How I delivered the final, fatal blow to Andrew's fast-sinking reputation... and why Palace is right to still be deeply concerned Doctors expose the truth about melatonin... as terrifying side effects soar Gavin Newsom melts down as Pentagon plans to fire artillery shells over California highway during'No Kings' protest Olivia Nuzzi's memoir will reveal juicy text messages with RFK Jr. KENNEDY: Here's the truth of weird drug-fueled orgies in Congress that Tucker Carlson is investigating... it makes me sick to my stomach JANA HOCKING: I've uncovered the ultimate new sex secret and had the best night of my life... no wonder more women are trying it Limp Bizkit bassist Sam Rivers dead at 48 as iconic band pays tribute to'once-in-a-lifetime' talent Insiders reveal dark web of power behind earthquake of'No Kings' protests exploding across America Five safe haven investments if the global economy goes into meltdown (and one under the radar fund to buy RIGHT NOW): As more and more experts warn of a devastating fall in share prices... Inside the King's cold phone call that saw Prince Andrew lose his dukedom and have to cancel Sarah Ferguson's 66th birthday party as Epstein scandal exploded '90s icon looks unrecognizable as she teases her most infamous TV scene in bucket hat during rare outing Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith's daughter Stella, 29, weds her childhood sweetheart in dreamy Spanish wedding as actor toasts the newlyweds Stephen A. Smith makes racially-charged double standard accusation against LeBron James amid feud The Duchess of Scandal... who is now plain old Sarah: Fergie's humiliating downfall as King makes moves to'protect' her daughters Green Bay Packers' game in jeopardy with team stranded at airport less than 24 hours before kickoff Selena Gomez makes FIRST red carpet appearance with husband Benny Blanco since wedding as their'perfect' honeymoon is revealed READ MORE: Is there a God? It's a question that has been asked since the beginning of time: does God really exist? Traditionally, science has been the counterargument for the existence of a divine creator. However, French mathematicians Olivier Bonnassies and Michel-Yves Bollore now say that science'has become God's ally'. In a new book, the duo have distilled insights from 62 Nobel Prize winners and more than 100 leading scientists to pinpoint the scientific discoveries that could prove God is real.

Grand Theft Auto made him a legend. In July this year workers at Build a Rocket Boy, a video game studio in Edinburgh, were called to an all-staff meeting. Their first ever game, a sci-fi adventure called MindsEye, had been released three weeks earlier - and it had been a total disaster. Critics and players called it broken, buggy, and the worst game of 2025. Addressing staff via video link, the company's boss, Leslie Benzies, assured them there was a plan to get things back on track and said the negativity they'd seen was uncalled for.

Since 2004, the number of American adults who've enjoyed a daily cup of joe has increased 37 percent. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Whether you're an early bird or a night owl, coffee is probably part of your daily routine. Since 2004, the number of American adults who've enjoyed a daily cup of java has jumped up 37 percent, the highest level in more than 20 years, according to the National Coffee Association . But coffee is hardly a new invention.

A Tory MP says he has reported a deepfake video depicting him announcing he had joined Reform UK to the police. George Freeman said he remained the Conservative MP for Mid Norfolk and have no intention of joining Reform or any other party, denouncing the video circulating on social media as an AI-generated deepfake. Freeman said he reported the video to the authorities. Norfolk Police and Facebook have been approached for comment. This sort of political disinformation has the potential to seriously distort, disrupt and corrupt our democracy, he added.

Are we living in a golden age of stupidity? S tep into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab in Cambridge, US, and the future feels a little closer. Glass cabinets display prototypes of weird and wonderful creations, from tiny desktop robots to a surrealist sculpture created by an AI model prompted to design a tea set made from body parts. In the lobby, an AI waste-sorting assistant named Oscar can tell you where to put your used coffee cup. Five floors up, research scientist Nataliya Kosmyna has been working on wearable brain-computer interfaces she hopes will one day enable people who cannot speak, due to neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, to communicate using their minds. Kosmyna spends a lot of her time reading and analysing people's brain states.