Singapore was shrouded in haze on Tuesday, with smoke from wildfires in neighbouring Indonesia raising island-wide pollution to levels that pose a health risk. All five regions of the city state recorded unhealthy air quality levels, the first time that has happened since September 2019, according to the National Environment Agency. Singapore’s air currently ranks among the 10 most polluted cities in the world, according to IQAir data, with the capitals of Malaysia and Indonesia also among the...

When Keir Starmer recently argued that Britain must rebuild its hard power, much of the discussion focused on defence spending. That is understandable. After years of underinvestment, Britain faces difficult choices about military capability at a time of growing geopolitical instability. But money is only part of the challenge. Britain’s more fundamental foreign policy problem […] The post The geopolitics of scarcity: Why middle powers must learn to prioritise appeared first on e27.

OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra on September 3, and the number marketers should actually care about isn’t a reasoning score — it’s a stopwatch. In OpenAI’s own computer-use simulation, Astra finishes a task in roughly 40 minutes against about 75 minutes for its predecessor, GPT-5.6 Sol — nearly half the time for the same job. It […] The post GPT-6 Astra cuts AI task time nearly in half. It still can’t fix your audience data appeared first on e27.

After learning that a woman regularly hosted high-stakes poker games at her home in Singapore’s affluent Bukit Timah area, two men plotted to rob the house, recruiting a group of people from Malaysia and conducting surveillance before carrying out the plan. Prosecutors said seven men entered the King Albert Park good class bungalow in the early hours of April 18, 2024, in a “lightning heist”, some of them armed with machetes and baseball bats. They tied up the people inside and stole about S$4.9...

Every AI lab telling you software is about to write itself runs its company on Slack. These are the people closest to the frontier. They say agents will soon build anything you can describe. And yet they haven’t replaced their own chat app. Or their CRM. Or their payroll. If “just build it yourself” made […] The post The SaaSpocalypse will be selective appeared first on e27.

Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio’s impeachment trial entered a politically explosive new phase on Monday as prosecutors turned to allegations of unexplained wealth in proceedings that could end her term and bar her from a possible presidential run in 2028. The Senate hearing opened its 24th day with congressmen serving as House prosecutors beginning to tackle the third of four impeachment charges against Duterte-Carpio, whose legal troubles have intensified alongside her...

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of the education conversation. For schools, teachers, students, and education technology companies, generative AI offers obvious possibilities: faster feedback, personalised explanations, automated administrative work, and new ways to create learning materials. But the most important question for edutech companies may not be what AI can do. It may be […] The post What Southeast Asia’s edutech startups can learn from AI’s limits in education appeared first on e27.

AI is automating tasks that used to take hours for humans to do. It’s pushing some costs down and it’s making some teams more productive. Don’t make the mistake, however, of thinking that using AI to do things more productively is enough to ensure your business has a competitive edge and succeeds. If you strip […] The post How to use AI to win (Hint: It has nothing to do with being more productive) appeared first on e27.

For many Southeast Asian merchants, selling overseas has never been a question of demand alone. A small brand in Vietnam, Indonesia or Thailand may find buyers on Amazon, eBay, Shopify or social platforms, but the harder problem begins after checkout: paperwork, duties, customs clearance, tracking gaps and freight rates designed for companies shipping far larger […] The post Amilo acquires SG Link to widen cross-border shipping for SEA sellers appeared first on e27.

Singapore’s Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing is set to visit China from Tuesday to Thursday at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart Dong Jun and will speak at the Beijing Xiangshan Forum for the second consecutive year. His visit comes as defence analysts tell This Week in Asia that ties with Beijing are important for the city state’s balancing strategy with Washington. Singapore and the United States are close strategic partners with deep defence cooperation. Singapore’s defence ministry...