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A vehicle that can zap energy into a fleet of drones, allowing them to fly indefinitely, is getting closer to becoming a battlefield reality. Scientists in China have demonstrated a wireless power transmission system that uses a ground-based microwave emitter to beam energy to an antenna array mounted on the aircraft’s underside. Importantly, they were able to do this while both the drone and char...
Thousands of people have been displaced after a fire destroyed around 1,000 homes in a coastal village in Malaysia’s Sabah state on Borneo island on Sunday, the fire department said. Authorities were notified of the fire in Sandakan district at around 1.32am, the district’s fire and rescue chief Jimmy Lagung said in a statement. “Strong winds and the close proximity of the houses caused the fir...
Hong Kong should take a more proactive approach to removing barriers hindering the cross-border flow of people, capital, goods and data with neighbouring Shenzhen, analysts have said, as the new leadership of the mainland China tech hub signals a fresh push for deeper integration. The calls for action followed the appointment of Jin Lei, an economist and former official in Sichuan province, as She...
“State-of-the-art” (Sota) artificial intelligence models excel at solving complex Olympiad maths but still struggle with everyday enterprise tasks, according to an executive from a top AI unicorn in the US. David Meyer, senior vice-president of product at US data processing and analysis company Databricks, told the South China Morning Post in a recent interview that the very traits making models s...
A traditional Tibetan Bathing Festival sees men and women of all ages bathing together in natural waters in a joyous tradition during which young people can meet potential romantic partners. Every year in early July of the Tibetan calendar, the festival, or Bathing Week, takes place across Tibet, from urban areas to rural villages. The traditional event, held along the banks of the Lhasa River, ha...
Pro-Russian former president Rumen Radev is set for a runaway victory in Bulgaria’s election and may even secure a parliamentary majority, exit polls showed, potentially ending years of weak coalition governments and altering the European Union member’s foreign policy. An updated exit poll conducted by Sofia-based Alpha Research showed Radev’s Progressive Bulgaria with 44 per cent, far ahead of th...
Bulgaria on Sunday held its eighth legislative election in five years, with ex-president Rumen Radev’s grouping tipped to win on a pledge to fight corruption, after an anti-corruption movement triggered a long political crisis. The EU’s poorest member has been through successive governments since 2021, when anti-corruption rallies ended the conservative administration of long-time leader Boyko Bor...
Bulgaria on Sunday held its eighth legislative election in five years, with ex-president Rumen Radev’s grouping tipped to win on a pledge to fight corruption, after an anti-corruption movement triggered a long political crisis. The European Union’s poorest member has been through successive governments since 2021, when anti-corruption rallies ended the conservative administration of long-time lead...
The economic toll of war is pushing Iran to find a resolution to the hostilities beyond its fragile two-week truce with the US, according to a Middle East-focused think tank leader and businessman who is familiar with the status of the negotiations. However, as the two long-time enemies tried to stare each other down, the Iranian regime believed that their country’s “pain tolerance” was much highe...
Chinese biomedical companies deploying cutting-edge technologies are emerging as serious competitors to Western dominance in the race to treat Parkinson’s disease, in a market that could reach US$16 billion over the next decade. The firms are developing a range of approaches – from autologous cell therapies made from a patient’s own cells and ready-made cell products to gene therapies and non-inva...
Hong Kong police have deployed drones for the first time to combat illegal street gambling operations, arresting eight suspects over the past two weeks. The eight suspects – seven men and a woman, aged between 53 and 76 – were arrested in Chung On Estate, police said on Sunday. Officers seized HK$420 (US$54) in cash and gambling equipment. The arrests followed a joint operation, codenamed JusticeP...
Hong Kong police have used drones for the first time to combat illegal street gambling operations, arresting eight suspects over the past two weeks. The eight suspects – seven men and a woman, aged between 53 and 76 – were arrested in Chung On Estate, police said on Sunday. Some HK$420 (US$54) in cash and gambling equipment were seized. The arrests followed a joint operation, codenamed JusticePeak...
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) powered by large language models presents a significant breakthrough. For the first time, humans are communicating with computers using language instructions. This has enabled the use of AI agents to perform intelligent tasks involving some degree of advanced reasoning and complex logic. Vibe coding – the use of AI for programming and software development by...
About 1,900 families who lived in Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court will return in batches to their fire-ravaged homes from April 20. Nearly five months after the deadly blaze in Tai Po engulfed seven of the estate’s eight buildings, the government arranged for residents to visit the devastated flats to collect their belongings and bid farewell to their homes. The Post looks at how residents should prepa...
Qiu has been scouring Shanghai’s labour agencies for a job for her 58-year-old father – a former mechanic from neighbouring Jiangsu province caught in a frustrating limbo. While he is still years away from the official retirement age for rural migrants, his struggle to find work underscores a paradox in China’s financial hub: even as the city desperately needs more workers to counter a shrinking p...
Lea Albritton’s mornings belong to the repair shop. Her afternoons belong to the camera. The 40-year-old from Leyte in the central Philippines has lived in the US state of Georgia since 2019 with her 62-year-old American husband, Timothy, running a recreational vehicle repair shop in the mornings. After lunch, she produces videos about Filipino food, migration advice for couples stuck in the fianc...
The Hong Kong government should use its proposed accountability system prudently to investigate department heads and avoid undermining morale among civil servants, a top adviser to the city’s leader has said. But Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, convenor of the city’s top decision-making Executive Council, stressed on Sunday that the system would serve as a reminder for leaders to actively spot deficiencies...
As the artificial intelligence race moves beyond language models into the physical world, Asia’s manufacturing and supply chain strengths could give it an edge over the US, says Granite Asia’s Jixun Foo. The veteran venture capitalist said the current wave of AI development, sparked by breakthroughs in foundation models over the past two years, had entered a new phase where physical applications –...
Surgeons in southern China have removed an 8cm-long worm from a woman’s brain after she suffered from multiple mystery health problems. The 61-year-old had brain surgery at a hospital in Guangdong province in early April, the Shenzhen Evening News reported. Doctors said the existence of the parasite may have been due to an experience the woman had when she was young. She recalled that when she wa...
Hong Kong is set to announce on Monday a new batch of “strategic enterprises” establishing a presence in the city, including several firms with market capitalisations of up to HK$100 billion (US$12.8 billion), the finance chief has revealed. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said on Sunday that the new partners were in high-growth sectors, including life and health technology, the low-altitude e...
Hong Kong is set to announce on Monday a new batch of “strategic enterprises” establishing a presence in the city, including several firms with market capitalisations of up to HK$100 billion (US$12.8 billion), the finance chief has revealed. Writing in his weekly blog on Sunday, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said the new partners were in high-growth sectors, including life and health technol...
Hong Kong is set to announce on Monday a new batch of “strategic enterprises” establishing a presence in the city, including several firms with market capitalisations of up to HK$100 billion (US$12.8 billion), the finance chief has revealed. Writing in his weekly blog on Sunday, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said the new partners were in high-growth sectors, including life and health technol...
A single father is refusing to accept any more donations from Malaysians following a viral video that appeared to show him having difficulty finding money to pay a mechanic after his motorcycle broke down in Kuala Lumpur. According to Sinar Harian, the man known as Dicky Yau was touched by the concern shown by social media users who had offered to extend financial help to him after seeing the situ...
A single father is refusing to accept any more donations from Malaysians following a viral video that appeared to show him having difficulty finding money to pay a mechanic after his motorcycle broke down in Kuala Lumpur. According to Sinar Harian, the man known as Dicky Yau was touched by the concern shown by social media users who had offered to extend financial help to him after seeing the situ...
Three people in California have been sentenced for insurance fraud in a bizarre scam that involved someone dressed in a bear costume damaging luxury cars. The California Insurance Department said the three used a person in a bear suit to stage fake attacks inside a Rolls-Royce and two Mercedes in 2024, then submitted fraudulent claims seeking nearly US$142,000 in payouts from insurance companies. ...
David Chan* is among the few remaining ship machinery maintenance masters at the Po Chong Wan temporary industrial area in Hong Kong’s Aberdeen. Chan, in his seventies, entered the trade in the 1960s as an apprentice in Ap Lei Chau, an islet off Aberdeen, repairing propellers, gearboxes and other machinery on wooden fishing boats and cargo ships. At the time, the area was one of the city’s four ma...
The flags arrived before BINI did. They were already rippling across the Mojave Tent at Coachella in a sea of blue, red and white when the eight-member group took the stage on a recent Friday afternoon, carried by fans who had travelled across oceans and time zones for a moment that had never been seen before. The 45-minute set that followed made BINI the first P-pop act from the Philippines – and...
During Vice-President Han Zheng’s visit to Nairobi in March, China signed a cash grant for drought relief and recently delivered food aid to Somalia, Togo, Zimbabwe and Zambia – helping 217,057 people in Zambia and providing Zimbabwe with 5,000 tonnes of rice. Du Xiaohui, director general of the foreign ministry’s African affairs department, later affirmed that Beijing would help nations in Africa...
Pope Leo sought to downplay his feud with US President Donald Trump on Saturday, saying reporting about comments he has made so far during his Africa tour “has not been accurate in all its aspects”. Speaking to reporters in English aboard his flight to Angola for the third leg of his ambitious 10-day Africa tour, the first US pope said comments he made two days earlier in Cameroon decrying tha...
Taiwan must urgently overhaul its civil defence and rethink its energy strategy to withstand a potential blockade, experts warned at a tabletop exercise, describing existing preparedness as “too romantic” for a real-world crisis. The two-day 2026 Political, Economic, Military and Societal Tabletop Exercise, held at National Chengchi University in Taipei last week, simulated a 2030 scenario in whic...
