FREELANDER Showcases AI and Digital Technology to International Guests

CJ Olive Young has expanded its Olive Better wellness retail platform to five locations, adding branches tailored to office workers and tourists as it seeks to make wellness products part of consumers’ everyday routines. The expansion comes nine months after the first store opened in Seoul’s Gwanghwamun area in January. The company added stores at Starfield Coex Mall in southern Seoul and in Seongsu in eastern Seoul both last month, adapting product selections and experiences to each neighborhood’s customers. The Coex store focuses on “office wellness,” targeting workers seeking convenient ways to maintain healthy habits during busy schedules. Healthy snacks and protein products occupy the front of the store, helping shoppers quickly find items suited to their needs. A Daily Routine Bar offers products for individual purchase, allowing customers to try wellness items during commutes or lunch breaks. The Seongsu store, which opened Friday, is the chain’s largest and emphasizes experiences for trend-conscious shoppers and foreign tourists. It includes Better Bar, a food and beve

A miniature keyboard presented by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to Samsung Group executives is drawing attention, as the device is designed not for conventional typing but specifically for vibe coding using OpenAI's Codex. The gift is being seen as a glimpse into what Altman described to the executives as OpenAI's vision for the future of computer interaction. According to OpenAI and Samsung, Altman visited a Samsung Group training center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, Saturday and engaged in a fireside chat with more than 50 presidents of Samsung Electronics and other affiliates. During the event, Altman presented the Samsung executives with Codex Micro keyboards, designed to be used with Codex. Altman said the keyboard reflects the idea that people may no longer need a full keyboard in a world where they can interact with computers through voice commands and artificial intelligence (AI), adding that the device could also help users work with Codex more quickly. The Codex Micro Keyboard is a miniature keyboard released as the first hardware product under the OpenAI brand. Developed in collaborati

KB Kookmin Bank has secured the lead arranger role in a 12.6 trillion won ($9.45 billion) project to build artificial intelligence (AI) computing infrastructure in Korea, the lender said Sunday. Led by Brookfield, one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers, the project involves acquiring major high-performance computing equipment, including graphics processing units (GPUs), and supplying the infrastructure to Naver Cloud. The deal marks the largest syndicated loan arrangement in Korea’s history. Such loans allow multiple financial institutions to jointly finance a large-scale project. It is also the country’s first GPU financing deal — a departure from conventional project financing, which has typically centered on assets like real estate or power plants. Rather than relying on immediate returns, the structure uses anticipated long-term revenue from supplying AI computing capacity to support the project's substantial upfront investment needs. Of the 12.6 trillion won in total costs, roughly 10.7 trillion won will be raised through loans. As lead arranger, KB Kookmin Ba

HD Hyundai Robotics is working with Palantir Technologies to integrate artificial intelligence (AI), simulation and human engineers’ expertise into robot programming, aiming to cut programming costs by more than half. According to HD Hyundai Robotics on Sunday, Ahn Sung-hwan, the company's chief technology officer and vice president, outlined the collaboration during a keynote address at Palantir’s recent Sovereignty Bootcamp in New York. He presented his company’s strategy for applying physical AI and its vision for the technology. The collaboration focused on changing how human engineers can solve problems on factory floors. Under the two companies’ collaboration, AI agents analyze existing robot programs and propose improvements. The engineers can then refine what the AI comes up with using their practical experiences. Traditionally, skilled engineers have had to observe robots on-site and repeatedly adjust work sequences, movement paths and speeds. This reliance on individual experience has made the process difficult to standardize. HD Hyundai Robotics said the two companies

The Hong Kong Bar Association has warned that a proposed phased redevelopment of the High Court, which could span more than a decade, is “not workable” and risks deterring legal practitioners from joining the bench. The association, the professional body for barristers, urged the government to consider faster alternatives, such as repurposing the existing District Court building. In an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post on Sunday, association chairman Jose-Antonio Maurellet SC...

US first lady Melania Trump is unlikely to travel to China with the president for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen this month. “First lady Melania Trump is not scheduled to attend the events in person,” her office said in response to a query about her travel plans. President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit the Philippines for this year’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit before travelling to the November 18-19 Apec event, where he will meet his Chinese...

In the third of a four-part Health Matters wellness series on frontier medicine in Hong Kong, Fiona Sun examines how a local start-up is testing a gene-editing therapy that could tackle a group of inherited eye diseases at their genetic source and what it will take to turn it into a treatment patients can access. For 15 years, Professor Zheng Zongli has worked to make gene-editing therapies safe enough to treat diseases with limited treatment options. His path has taken him from a PhD in medical...

L.A. voters will decide between Mayor Karen Bass and challenger Nithya Raman, with the city's future direction on the line. As the contentious race nears the finish, the candidates are in a dead heat.

For decades, China has supplied African militaries with small arms and land-based equipment such as armoured vehicles, trucks and artillery. Now, it is selling them more specialised weapons, including armed drones and electronic warfare systems. Analysts noted that China’s African arms sales were shifting qualitatively to air-defence systems, armed drones and electronic warfare gear once dominated by Russia and the West. In April, four vehicles identified by defence analysis group Janes as...

And should return to the fold.

Hong Kong sweltered through its warmest October on record, as an extremely strong El Nino, a weak northeast monsoon and a persistent anticyclone aloft over southern China combined to drive temperatures to unprecedented levels, the weather forecaster has said. The Observatory forecaster said on Sunday that the mean maximum temperature for October was 30.5 degrees Celsius (86.9 Fahrenheit), the mean temperature 27.6 degrees and the mean minimum 25.8 degrees – all the highest for any October since...

The 2026 Global Governance Forum in Xiongan, Hebei province, wrapped up on October 25. Against a backdrop of acute strains on multilateralism and a widening global governance deficit, the forum galvanised a shared sense of urgency across the international community for reform and solidarity. More than a century ago, Karl Marx noted that, “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” That insight strikes at the very heart of today’s global...