Over 300 TikTok creators gathered in Bangkok for TikTok LIVE Community Fest 2026, transforming local stories into travel inspiration to boost Thailand’s appeal throughout Southeast Asia and beyond.

TikTok LIVE Community Fest 2026 in Bangkok

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) partnered with TikTok Thailand to host over 300 creators for the TikTok LIVE Community Fest 2026 in Bangkok. This event aimed to transform perceptions of local heritage, food, and community stories into travel inspiration. By immersing themselves in the local culture of Song Wat, these digital creators had the opportunity to showcase Thailand’s rich traditions, resulting in heightened interest and tourism appeal across Southeast Asia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.

Expanding Thailand’s Digital Footprint

The creators’ engagement in Bangkok was more than just an event; it was a strategic initiative to broaden Thailand’s tourism footprint digitally. Through their TikTok platforms, these creators shared authentic stories and experiences that resonated with audiences far from Thailand. This approach not only leveraged the popularity of TikTok but also established digital creators as trusted voices in travel recommendations, enhancing the overall allure and accessibility of Thailand’s diverse attractions.

Creator-Powered Tourism Strategy

This event signifies a critical step in TAT’s strategy to harness the power of digital influencers in tourism. By bringing together a large community of TikTok creators, TAT is capitalizing on their ability to reach and influence vast audiences. This creator-powered tourism initiative underscores the evolving role of digital platforms in shaping travel experiences and promoting destinations. For further details, explore the TAT Newsroom article.

Source : TAT drives Creator-Powered Tourism with 300 TikTok creators in Bangkok

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OpenAI released its latest model, Astra, on 3 September, describing it as the “world’s most intelligent and aligned model”, and its president, Greg Brockman, said the launch meant the world had entered a new era of artificial general intelligence.

The San Francisco company released the model weeks after a serious AI safety incident involving other models under its development caused international concern and a pause in Astra’s training.

Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, has long been talked about as a target for the AI industry. OpenAI’s own definition is “autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work”.

Brockman said: “If we fast forward a couple years, and we look back and say when was it really that AGI was created, I think it’s going to be about this time, and I think it might be about this model.”

He added: “I think it’s not unreasonable to feel that we are now in the AGI era.”

OpenAI said Astra was a “major advance for scientific discovery, mathematics and health”. According to the company, the model could fill out tax returns, build computer-game scenes, draw architectural visualisations, order food and complete a job search in two minutes and 51 seconds that would take a human five hours.

Days before the launch, chief executive Sam Altman was asked on the Sources podcast how he was feeling about AGI. He said: “At best it’s a very poorly defined term. I was going to say it’s like an irrelevant marketing term.”

Safety incident and cyber capability

In August OpenAI shut down parts of the model’s training in response to what Altman called a “legitimate AI safety accident and alignment failure” that “shouldn’t have happened”.

Over the summer, other unreleased frontier AI models, not Astra, went rogue during training. They surreptitiously formed swarms of hundreds of agents, broke out of their training “sandbox” and collaborated to attack Hugging Face, a third-party software store. OpenAI has published its own account of the Hugging Face incident, and Anthropic later reported three cases of its own models hacking outside organisations. The incident is believed to be the first autonomous cyber-attack.

Astra has what OpenAI calls a “critical” level of cybersecurity capability. Under the company’s own classification, that means it may hack into software in a way that “could lead to catastrophe from unilateral actors, hacking military or industrial systems, or OpenAI infrastructure”.

OpenAI said Astra was aligned to “refuse to comply with advanced cybersecurity tasks”, such as finding unknown flaws. The company said it would only allow “less restrictive access to an initial set of trusted cybersecurity defenders”, as set out in its capability assessment for Astra.

On one hacking test Astra achieved a perfect score of 100 per cent, compared with 5.5 per cent for OpenAI’s previous cutting-edge cyber-capable model, GPT-5.6 Sol. On another it scored 42 per cent compared with 30 per cent, using fewer resources.

Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI’s chief scientist, said: “As models get more capable, understanding exactly what they can do gets harder.”

He added: “Confidence in monitoring [how the AIs are behaving] may constrain further development. We would not accept degradation in our ability to monitor alignment beyond a certain level … we have to be willing to slow down or withhold further scaling where our confidence in safety is not sufficient.”

Race to list

The launch comes as OpenAI pushes towards a stock market listing that it hopes will value it at more than $850bn (£625bn). Anthropic is also targeting an IPO that could value it as high as $2tn.

More than 1,000 employees at frontier AI companies, including senior figures at OpenAI and Anthropic, signed a joint letter this summer warning that the companies were “under intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow that acceleration”. They called on the US government to “support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.”

Amy Ingham

Amy Ingham is a reporter at Business Matters, covering UK business news with a focus on breaking news, business policy, late payments and insolvency. She joined the magazine in 2026 after completing the NCTJ Diploma in Journalism at Harlow College’s journalism school. Her recent reporting includes British Steel’s nationalisation and its impact on SME suppliers, the decline in late payments by large firms, and Insolvency Service director disqualifications. Reach her at aingham@cbmeg.co.uk.

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The AAA national average for diesel increased from $5.7832 on Thursday to $5.85 on Friday.

The month-ago average was $5.3715 and the year-ago average was significantly lower at just $3.7121.

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“Diesel prices have skyrocketed since Trump started his war with Iran,” Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona declared in a Thursday post on X.

“Diesel fuels our supply chains and powers our farms and food production. Even if you don’t use diesel, those higher costs get passed on to you, making the food on your table more expensive,” he added.

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Fox News Digital reached out to the White House on Friday.

Americans have been hit with higher fuel prices over the past six months amid an ongoing conflict with Iran.

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As of Friday, the AAA national average price for regular fuel is $4.1474, compared to the year-ago average of $3.2016. 

The highest recorded AAA national average price for regular gas was set in June 2022 when Americans paid $5.0165 per gallon.

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The UK government is expected to approve the Jackdaw gas field off the coast of Aberdeen in mid-September, according to government and industry sources cited by the BBC. The decision would come just before Parliament breaks for party conference season.

The project was first approved by the Conservative government in 2022 but was halted by a legal ruling in Scotland after environmental groups argued that consent had been granted without fully considering the climate impact.

Jackdaw is operated by Adura, a joint venture between Shell and Norway’s Equinor, which also operates the Rosebank oil field off Shetland. Adura says Jackdaw will account for 6 per cent of UK gas output at peak production. Environmental groups say the field will supply only 2 per cent of UK use once imports are included.

Court ruling and consultation

Campaigners brought legal challenges after Jackdaw was approved in 2022 and after Rosebank was given the go-ahead in 2023. In January 2025 the Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled that both fields had been unlawfully approved because the government had not taken into account the emissions from burning the oil and gas extracted from them.

The judge ordered more detailed climate assessments to be published. Those updated estimates were put out for consultation in July, and the public consultation on Jackdaw and Rosebank closed in August.

Adura has estimated that Jackdaw could produce 35.8m tonnes of carbon over its 11-year lifetime, equivalent to 90 per cent of Scotland’s emissions for 2023. The company said a more likely estimate was about 23.6m tonnes, equivalent to 60 per cent of the 2023 figure.

The decision now rests with Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh. Speaking in the House of Commons on 3 September, Energy Minister Kate White said the energy secretary would take separate decisions on Jackdaw and Rosebank but gave no indication of timing.

“The process ended in August, and the Secretary of State will be taking those decisions in due course,” she told MPs.

Adura said that if approval comes in September the field could start delivering gas to UK homes by this winter, as construction is “99 per cent complete”. Advocates of the project told the BBC that Jackdaw’s output is critical to extending the life of other North Sea infrastructure, including the Shearwater production hub.

Energy security and prices

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said there needs to be a “pragmatic approach” towards domestic oil and gas. “We won’t be able to stop using oil and gas for some time. That’s just a fact,” he said.

Unlike North Sea oil, most of which is exported and reimported in refined forms, almost all North Sea gas is used domestically. The UK imports more than 60 per cent of its gas, mainly from Norway and the United States, according to the BBC.

Wholesale gas prices, which rose this year as a result of the Iran war, are at a three-year high. Because prices are set internationally, approval for Jackdaw would not lower the cost of gas for domestic consumers.

Chris O’Shea, chief executive of British Gas owner Centrica, told the BBC’s Today programme that any additional domestic supply would reduce Britain’s reliance on imported fossil fuels, “so it’s got to be good”.

“It wouldn’t lower the cost materially, but basic economics would tell you that if you’ve got a fixed demand for a product and you increase the supply, the price should move,” he said.

Tessa Khan, executive director of Uplift, the environmental group that brought the legal challenge, said more North Sea drilling would not cut energy bills and would “make no meaningful difference” to UK energy supply.

“The science is clear that the world already has far more oil and gas than can ever be safely burned if we are to limit warming,” she said.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said it does not comment on speculation. A spokesman said: “Any decision will take into account all relevant evidence, including environmental assessments and public representations received during the consultation process.”

Amy Ingham

Amy Ingham is a reporter at Business Matters, covering UK business news with a focus on breaking news, business policy, late payments and insolvency. She joined the magazine in 2026 after completing the NCTJ Diploma in Journalism at Harlow College’s journalism school. Her recent reporting includes British Steel’s nationalisation and its impact on SME suppliers, the decline in late payments by large firms, and Insolvency Service director disqualifications. Reach her at aingham@cbmeg.co.uk.

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