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...

Generative AI has made video creation remarkably fast. A scene that once required a camera crew, actors, locations and hours of post-production can now begin with a prompt and an idea. But after working with AI-generated cinematic videos, I have learned that generating a video quickly and producing a video that is actually usable are […] The post AI can generate a video in minutes. Making it usable is the hard part appeared first on e27.

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...