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It was a detour that saved his life. Malaysian Low Hock Meng, a 71-year-old veteran trekker, had set off on his own in Nepal. He wanted to explore the Tamang trail, Langtang Valley and Gosaikunda. Along his journey, he made the decision to visit the Nagathali viewpoint for a glimpse of Tibet on August 25. Low then made his way down towards Thuman en route to Lingling in Nepal’s Bagmati province on August 26. That is when he realised that something was seriously wrong. When he looked at Syapru...

The raucous demonstrations by opposition groups on Monday followed days of an effective lockdown and mass detentions of young protesters by security forces.

Mainland Chinese investors bought more Hong Kong stocks than they sold for a fourth consecutive month in September, with purchases accelerating despite persistent headwinds from elevated US Treasury yields and oil prices. Onshore traders poured a net HK$60.8 billion (US$7.7 billion) into Hong Kong’s stocks via the Stock Connect programme last month, up from HK$10.4 billion in August, according to financial data provider Wind. Net buying reached HK$134.1 billion in the third quarter. Mainland...

For Singaporean civil servant Clare*, finding a suitable lifelong partner has been an uphill battle. Swiping on dating apps soon became a chore after multiple unsuccessful first dates, so when the government launched its own platform, the 32-year-old was all for it. “It’s like: ‘Why not?’, and I think it does have a few screening procedures so it might save you some trouble like having to deal with impersonators or people who do not match with their advertised profiles,” she said. Singapore...

Ripe mangosteen and rambutan hang unpicked from trees in eastern Thailand, where a shortage of migrant workers is forcing growers to decide which crops are valuable enough to harvest and which will be left to rot. For Jomsak Putirattana, who also grows durian in Chanthaburi province, the departure of his five Cambodian workers after a border dispute disrupted crossings has intensified competition for labour. Daily wages have more than doubled in some cases, from about 350 baht to 400 baht (US$10...

China Mobile, one of the country’s state-backed telecoms giants, has tripled the capacity of its largest intelligent computing hub in northern Inner Mongolia, amid Beijing’s push to boost digital infrastructure to power the country’s artificial intelligence ambitions. The expansion of its data centre in Hohhot was recently completed, with total processing capacity increased to 20,100 petaflops, according to a report by Inner Mongolia Daily on Monday. That was triple its previous capacity of...

Investor Ben Lindsay relocated from Sydney to Singapore in March, with wife and dog in tow – his sights set on growing venture capital firm Investible from an Australian outfit into an Asia-Pacific one. Lindsay is among a growing number of investors, businessmen and tech founders from down under who are setting up bases and relocating to Singapore, Dubai and San Francisco to expand their company’s reach. For example, Australian billionaire Adrian Portelli, founder of savings and rewards platform...

Last month, Japan’s internal affairs ministry released its yearly data ahead of Respect for the Aged Day. People aged 65 and over now make up a record 29.6 per cent of the population. But the figure I keep coming back to was this: 9.43 million Japanese workers were 65 or older last year, about 13.8 per cent of everyone with a job. Members of Japan’s older population are not simply retired. A large part are still at work and some of those people are the ones businesses depend on. The Asia-Pacific...

Consumers across the continent increasingly want to buy low-cost Chinese vehicles. Policymakers are seeking to slow them down.

European nations that condemn the Taliban government for its human rights record are seeking its help to deport refugees back to Afghanistan.

Both sides are feeding an AI investment bubble – and Shenzhen is the place to talk about it.

US start-up OpenAI’s latest advances in artificial intelligence may be a tipping point that leads to a breakthrough for the robotics industry as soon as next year, according to the founder of Chinese giant Unitree Robotics. Wang Xingxing, also the CEO of the Hangzhou-based company, said on Monday that OpenAI’s recently released GPT-6 model prompted expectations that a breakthrough could happen “within one or two years”. “It’s possible that, say, a GPT-7 model released next year could directly...