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Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai Chee-ying was denied bail on December 3, 2020, on a charge of fraud related to the lease of a building that houses the tabloid-style Apple Daily newspaper he founded. Lai and two senior executives of his company Next Digital, were charged on suspicion of defrauding a government-owned …
A video of three Paris police officers beating up a black man has caused public anger in France. The footage published by Loopsider, a French digital news outlet, shows music producer Michel Zecler attacked by the officers for about five minutes on November 21, 2020.
A South Korean court has sentenced the leader of an online sexual blackmail ring to 40 years in prison. The court found 25-year-old Cho Ju-bin guilty of running online chat rooms on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, where at least 10,000 users paid up to US$1,200 to see sexual content featuring young girls. At l…
Researchers in Singapore have developed a smart mask with sensors that can detect a wearer’s vital signs, including blood oxygen saturation, blood pressure, heart rate and skin temperature. The data can be used to watch for potential illnesses, including Covid-19. Researchers at Nanyang Technological University and …
The second international Cybathlon has been held despite the Covid-19 pandemic, with paraplegic athletes from around the world taking part in over 50 teams from about 20 countries. The event on November 14, 2020 was conducted remotely in six categories, including obstacle courses and bike races. Cybathon is schedule…
Sony’s PlayStation 5 finally went on sale in Hong Kong on November 19, 2020. Gamers who pre-ordered a console were able to pick it up, but those who weren't able to pre-order will have to wait until Sony gets stock for walk-in sales, or pay twice the price to get a console on the resale market at local game stores.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted its 20-month flight ban on Boeing’s 737 MAX plan on November 18, 2020. The aircraft model was grounded in March 2019 after it was involved in two fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. The disasters within five months of each other in late 2018 and early 2019 kil…
China’s government has praised a UK diplomat who recently dived into a river in Chongqing to save a drowning student. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian said the woman was saved by an “act of bravery” on the part of 61-year-old Stephen Ellison, Britain’s consul general in the southwestern city. The spoke…
The Hong Kong government has launched a new app for tracing contacts among people in an effort to prevent a fourth wave of Covid-19 infections in the city. The app called LeaveHomeSafe enables users to record the date and time they visited public venues. The software is part of government efforts to help people keep…
Sony’s PlayStation 5 officially went on sale on November 12, 2020 in six markets including Japan, Australia and North America, with launches elsewhere on November 19. As the launch date for China has yet to be announced, Chinese scalpers were taking orders with the price up to four times the retail price.
A project that aims to restore lost coral beds in local Hong Kong waters has found that hexagonal clay tiles made using 3D printing technology provide a suitable habitat for the species to grow and repopulate. Under a project launched in 2016, scientists from the University of Hong Kong placed tiles designed to look…
French artist Patrick Tresset has created a media art installation which features five robots that can sketch a portrait in 30 minutes. Tresset, who is also a painter, programmed the robots to draw spontaneously and use different styles. The artist said he designed the robots to explore human relationships with tech…
The Hong Kong government has announced that a mobile app will be launched on November 16, 2020, to encourage citizens to log their movements and places they have visited. During a press conference on November 11, 2020, city officials also said Hong Kong will lift requirements for 14-day quarantines on Hong Kong resi…
China’s live-stream retail market is projected to grow to be worth 961 billion yuan (US$145 billion) in 2020, up from 433.9 billion yuan the previous year, according to iiMedia Research. The increase has been linked to a surge in online activity during the coronavirus pandemic. But Chinese retailers are eager to exp…
Britain's National Health Services is doing trial flights with drones in hopes of improving the efficiency of transporting samples from patients who need to be tested for Covid-19 infections. The drones developed by tech company Apian help minimise human contact with potentially infectious material as they avoid bus…
China has started a census to collect information about the nation’s estimated 1.4 billion population, including data such as the identity number, gender, marital status, education and profession of each individual. The survey officially starting on November 1, 2020, is China’s seventh national census since the firs…
The International Space Station on November 2, 2020, marked 20 years of continuous human habitation on board the lab that has been in low Earth orbit since 1998. The first crew, which included US astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko, lifted off from Kazakhstan on October 31, 2000,…
Digital financial services giant Ant Group is set to pull off the world’s biggest initial public offering, or IPO. Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, the co-founder and former executive chairman of Alibaba which owns the Post, controls Ant Group through ownership of over half of its shares. Ant operates China’s massive e-…
US electric carmaker Tesla said on October 26, 2020, that it will start exporting its made-in-China Model 3 electric sedans to Europe for the first time. The first batch of 7,000 cars was expected to arrive at the Belgian port of Zeebrugge by sea by the end of November. The vehicles will be sold in more than 10 Euro…
The new iPhone 12 Pro has impressive camera technology that is designed for photographers, but it comes at a premium price which costs as much as a professional camera. The Post invited a pro photographer to test the iPhone 12 Pro for shooting portraits and cityscapes in Hong Kong.
From monitoring vital signs to filtering air and even translating speech into other languages, developers across Asia have upgraded face masks into something more than just a protection from coronavirus.
A team of scientists in India have developed a quick and inexpensive paper test for the coronavirus. Each test will cost about US$6.80. Similar to a home pregnancy test, the Feluda test for Covid-19 provides results within an hour. The new test uses gene-editing technology called CRISPR and is set to roll out before…
A company that has made robotic animals for roles in Hollywood blockbusters including Free Willy, Deep Blue Sea and The Abyss is now hoping to apply its technology to the real-life task of transforming marine parks. In September 2020, Edge Innovations showcased a convincing robotic dolphin as a possible alternative …
China sees Shenzhen as one of the nation’s most important cities because “it's been the most successful since China’s reopening process”, according to Lau Siu Kai, vice-president of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies. He spoke with the South China Morning Post after Chinese President Xi Jinping s…
Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed to turn Shenzhen into an international trade and talent hub as he marked the 40th anniversary of the city becoming China’s first special economic zone. The Chinese leader also called for Shenzhen to take the lead in the Greater Bay Area, which aims to link Hong Kong, Macau and 9 ot…
Pakistan has blocked the popular social media app TikTok which is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said on October 9, 2020, that it was receiving complaints against “immoral and indecent” content on the video-sharing platform. India has already blocked TikTok, which fac…
The hi-tech string instrument featuring a fretboard fitted with LED lights and companion app promises to get even people who are new to the instrument moving their fingers enough to make music within just a few minutes. South China Morning Post reporter Celia Chen tried out the “smart ukulele” called Populele, devel…
Chinese search engine giant Baidu has become a leader in automated driving technology research. The company has been conducting automated driving tests in multiple locations across China, and opened robotaxi services in several cities. Baidu is now speeding up work to deploy its automated driving technology around t…
Students from the Future University Hakodate in northern Japan have helped to develop a full face mask that displays the wearer's face as an anime-style avatar. The mask, named “Digital Kamen e2-MaskZ”, is equipped with photo reflective sensors that can detect and recreate facial expressions on screen. The project i…
A business school student in Japan has invented an armband that delivers audio imitating a sports commentator or cheerleaders during his arm-wrestling matches. Takahashi Koki said he wanted to breathe new life into what he considered “quiet and sober” sporting events by strapping on some advanced technology.
Chinese hi-tech companies such as TikTok will continue to expand around the world, but their focus will increasingly be on countries that are not in the West, according to Dev Lewis of Hong Kong-based Digital Asia Hub. The fellow at the non-profit internet and society research think tank also said Chinese tech firms…
A school for bodyguards in China’s northern municipality of Tianjin is now training students in cybersecurity along with the usual skills in combat, weapons use and high-speed driving. The school’s founder said digital defences against hackers is now an essential skill for bodyguards in China, where security personn…
A hospital in India has deployed a robot to connect Covid-19 patients with their loved ones. A tablet is installed to robot Mitra’s chest so that the patients can speak to their families and friends through video calls. It is also equipped with facial recognition technology in its eyes, which enables it to recall pe…
Just ahead of US President Trump’s deadline for a deal to head off a ban of video-sharing app TikTok on national security grounds, American computer technology corporation Oracle has reached a deal to become the Chinese company’s “trusted technology partner”. The agreement was confirmed by Oracle on September 14, 20…
Managers of a technology company in Jiangsu province were seen throwing new staff’s cards onto the floor. The employees were made to bend over to pick them up from the ground.
Virginia Chan is a Canadian-born Hong Kong foodie who runs a local food tour business. But when she was forced to suspend operations because of the Covid-19 pandemic, she had to find a new way to stay in business. Her recipe for survival was to take her passion for Hong Kong food into the digital space, with an onli…
Robots are increasingly getting more jobs in Japan, a nation struggling to cope with an ageing, shrinking workforce. The machines have been deployed to help with tasks such as stacking shelves, serving drinks and cleaning toilets. Some, including a shelf-stocking machine called “kangaroo robot”, are even operated re…
India banned another 118 Chinese mobile apps including Tencent Holdings’ popular video game PUBG Mobile and Ant Group’s mobile payment app Alipay on September 2, 2020. Authorities cited national security and data security concerns as reasons for the latest ban.
Japanese engineering company SkyDrive conducted a public demonstration of its SD-03 electric flying car on August 25, 2020. During the first public demonstration of a flying car in Japan, the drone-like aircraft which is about the size of two earthbound passenger vehicles, flew for about four minutes.
The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is Samsung’s most-powerful phone yet, but is it worth the US$1,300 price tag? A large smartphone with a built-in stylus, the device comes with top-notch specs including an immersive 6.9-inch display, and a massive 50x camera zoom capability. The Post got access to one of the phones for 72 ho…
Game Science, a formerly little-known Chinese game developer, has made a splash with the August 20, 2020, release of a trailer to promote their new role-playing game Black Myth: Wukong. Within a week, the trailer had been viewed at least 28 million times globally, topping the trending chart on YouTube’s gaming categ…
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on August 17, 2020, that Canada was playing “the role of an accomplice” to the US in detaining Chinese Tech giant Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou. China has urged Canada to release Meng immediately and said it supports Huawei in the use of legal means to safeguard their ri…
Malaysia lost its last two Sumatran rhinos in 2019 when 25-year-old female Iman and 30-year-old male Tam died six months apart in a nature reserve on Borneo island. The only known surviving Malaysian variant of the world’s smallest rhino species, they left behind no offspring despite years of attempts to get the pai…
Washington’s treatment of TikTok could set a new norm regarding the nationalisation of technology and in turn lead to more decoupling in the sector, according to Nina Palmer, a senior director at the Albright Stonebridge Group’s China Practice. Palmer, who has also lived on the Chinese mainland and served in the US …
Hongkongers came out en masse to buy the local Chinese newspaper Apple Daily the day after its founder, media mogul Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, was arrested under the city’s new national security law. Apple Daily parent company Next Digital’s shares shot up by as much as 344 per cent with a turnover of HK$393 million (US$5…
Hong Kong police force on August 10, 2020, arrested publisher Jimmy Lai and at least six other people. The Apple Daily founder and opposition activist, was arrested for suspected collusion with a foreign country under the national security law the Chinese central government recently enacted in the city. After his ar…
Technology has helped some countries and regions in Asia do a better job containing the spread and coping with the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. From apps to manage quarantines, to robots to spread disinfectant, the hi-tech solutions have a common goal of fighting the deadly effects of Covid-19.
Researchers at the National University of Singapore have developed an AI device that conveys a sense of touch, allowing users to identify objects, textures and even read Braille letters. The device called ACES (Asynchronous Coded Electronic Skin) was created by a research team led by Dr Benjamin Tee from the univers…
China has successfully tested an unmanned aerial vehicle that uses home-grown technology to monitor typhoons. The drone took off from the Boao Airport in Qionghai city in the southern province of Hainan province on August 2, 2020, to observe tropical storm Sinlaku. China says the flight was the nation’s first succes…
China on July 30, 2020, accused Britain of having “poisoned” ties between the two nations. The relationship has soured in the wake of disputes over Beijing’s new national security law for Hong Kong and London’s decision to ban Chinese tech giant Huawei from the 5G network being built in the UK.
