A possible meeting next week between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump offers a chance to reset ties following a year of strained relations over tariffs, Pakistan, and now, the Iran war. US forces this week attacked three Indian-crewed vessels in the Gulf of Oman region, killing at least three sailors and prompting protests from New Delhi. Modi and Trump would likely want to contain the latest tensions and avoid derailing efforts to get relations back on track...

Hong Kong has been hit by more heavy showers and thunderstorms as a trough of low pressure moved over the Pearl River Estuary. The downpours prompted the Hong Kong Observatory to issue an amber rainstorm warning – the lowest in a three-tier system – at 5am on Saturday, before cancelling it at 8.45am. More than 30mm of rainfall was recorded in many areas during the morning. Tsuen Wan was among the worst hit, recording 70mm of rain – a level comparable to the threshold for a top-tier black...

Hong Kong has been hit by more heavy showers and thunderstorms as a trough of low pressure moved over the Pearl River Estuary. The downpours prompted the Hong Kong Observatory to issue an amber rainstorm warning – the lowest in a three-tier system – at 5am on Saturday, before cancelling it at 8.45am. More than 30mm of rainfall was recorded in many areas during the morning. Tsuen Wan was among the worst hit, recording 70mm of rain – a level comparable to the threshold for a top-tier black...

Hong Kong’s Development Bureau will test whether heavy-duty drones, weighing nearly 150kg (330.6lbs) each, can carry essential items across up to six sites over the next 12 months, the South China Morning Post has learned. In response to queries from the SCMP, the bureau revealed it was partnering with two companies to test whether the devices could carry heavy materials such as cement and manhole covers for construction work. Other potential applications include clearing drains and cleaning...

By Emily Wang Beijing cleaner Lin Meiqiong found her work a little easier the day she was paired with an unlikely new colleague — a tall, wheeled robot with AI-powered tidying skills. An X Square Robot carrying a bottle to a rubbish bin as a housekeeper cleans the floor at a customer’s home in Beijing on May 21, 2026. Photo: Wang Zhao/AFP. The 56-year-old and her white-and-silver partner, fitted with cameras and two mechanical claws, are part of a new human-robot cleaning service offered by Chinese household help platform 58.com. It’s a baby step towards a future espoused by tech evangelists in which robots increasingly take over manual labour from humans — though at the moment, such services are largely a data-gathering exercise for companies and a novelty for curious customers. “It’s definitely different,” Lin told AFP in between cleaning the kitchen and wiping down windows. “I used to have to do everything myself,” she said. “It’s reduced the workload a bit.” The cleaning service, a collaboration between 58.com and Chinese robotics company X Square, costs 149 yuan (US$22) for three hours and is available in Beijing and tech hub Shenzhen. Helped into the apartment by an X Square engineer, the AI-operated Quanta X1 Pro robot uses its cameras to identify areas it could spruce up. As Lin scrubbed the floor on her knees, it picked up rubbish and folded clothes strewn across a sofa. Grasping a pair of dark grey trousers, it raised its upper body to stretch the fabric taut, before laying it flat and arranging it into neat halves. The process took several minutes and resembled a child learning to fold clothes for the first time. Future iterations of the robot will respond to voice commands and even be able to chat, said the engineer, Hu Bowen. ‘Better than a lab’ Around 200 households have booked the service since it was rolled out in March. Tan Pei, who works in advertising and booked the robot to clean her Beijing flat, said she had chosen the service because she was interested to “see what it could do”. An X Square robot tidies up a flat. Photo: X Square Robot Overseas Markets, via YouTube. “Even though it’s not that perfect, there are still parts of it that surprised me,” such as folding a pair of trousers “quite well”, she said. China’s robots have wowed audiences with fluid dancing and set-piece martial arts displays onstage, but their application and performance in real-life settings remains limited. For companies like X Square, the logic of launching an imperfect service lies in data collection for so-called embodied artificial intelligence. Unlike large language models trained on vast quantities of internet content, robots lack comparable real-world datasets. “We don’t have a robot internet yet,” Christoforos Mavrogiannis from the University of Michigan told AFP. “It is much more informative to put the robot out there and study what happens than staying forever in the lab.” X Square engineer Hu said he sends his robots to work in a “completely unfamiliar environment”. “That is very challenging, but this unfamiliar data is also very helpful for the robot’s growth.” As investment into embodied AI booms, similar trials in China include robots directing traffic in cities like Hangzhou or working on factory floors. On the domestic help front, firm GigaAI also plans to deploy 100 humanoid robots into households in central Wuhan this autumn for free home-service trials. Investors have poured more than 57.7 billion yuan (US$8.5 billion) into China’s embodied AI industry so far this year, already soaring past the total for last year as a whole, according to business database ITjuzi. ‘Very elementary stage’ But a myriad of hurdles stand in the way of widespread deployment. Engineers train humanoid robots to do household tasks at the X Square Robot facilities in Shenzhen, southern China’s Guangdong province, on May 22, 2026. Photo: Hector Retamal/AFP. As the Quanta X1 Pro’s clothes folding demonstrated, robots still can’t match human dexterity. “Even though many companies are working on building better hands and building autonomy for hands, we don’t have that yet,” the University of Michigan’s Mavrogiannis said. There are multiple regulatory issues even once the physical capability is there. Privacy will become a big issue, as robots would have access to huge amounts of personal data. “We don’t know where that data is going, where it’s located… who is looking at that information,” said Valeria Alessandra Macalupu Chira from Queensland University of Technology. The safety of clients and their homes is another unresolved issue. “I think we are still at a very elementary stage,” said Yang Jianfei from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. Robots currently require supervision by humans who can activate emergency stop functions, he noted, and there are not yet recognised industry-wide safety standards. Experts agree broad adoption seems a long way off. Asked whether she thought robots would revolutionise her industry, cleaner Lin did not seem too concerned. “Compared with people, it’s obviously still not quite there,” she said. “After all, it’s a robot.”

Hong Kong’s welfare minister has defended what he called the “professional judgement” of medical and social workers following the death of a girl shortly after her mother’s. Bouquets were laid at Taikoo Shing on June 11, 2026, where a mother and a girl fell to their deaths hours apart one day earlier. Photo: Supplied. Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun spoke to reporters on Thursday following a double tragedy involving a 12-year-old girl and her 48-year-old mother, who both fell to their deaths within hours of each other on Wednesday in Taikoo Shing. “The daughter went to the hospital accompanied by her family” after her mother’s death, Sun said in Cantonese. “At the hospital, doctors, nurses and social workers met with her, and they had to make a judgement. I understand that they decided [the girl] could go home.” 💡If you are in need of support, please call: The Samaritans 2896 0000 (24-hour, multilingual), Suicide Prevention Centre 2382 0000 or the gov’t mental health hotline on 18111. The Hong Kong Society of Counselling and Psychology provides a WhatsApp hotline in English and Chinese: 6218 1084. See also: HKFP’s mental health services guide. Sun said it was understandable that there were concerns about whether it was suitable to allow the girl to return home. The daughter was accompanied by family members when she was assessed at the hospital and returned home, Sun added. “I believe the doctors, nurses and social workers had made the decision [to let her go home] at that time based on their professional judgement.” He said he refrained from commenting further as the police were investigating the double tragedy. The mother, a social worker with the Social Welfare Department, was found dead on the podium of their residential block around 9.24am after she reportedly had an argument with her daughter about “educational issues,” according to local media. At 7.21pm, roughly 10 hours later, police were notified of the fall of the daughter at the same address. The girl was certified dead at the scene. Bouquets were laid at Taikoo Shing on June 11, 2026, where a mother and a girl fell to their deaths hours apart one day earlier. Photo: Supplied. Sun urged people to give the family space and respect their privacy at the moment of tragedy, saying that authorities sought to provide immediate support to the father and other family members. Edward To, director of social welfare, said at the same press conference that government social workers had visited the father following the incident. Bouquets were seen at the scene at Taikoo Shing following the tragedy, as residents paid tribute to the mother and daughter.

China to legislate on preschool education

China to legislate on preschool education

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