https://www.scmp.com/rss/323898/feed Per Liljas has been writing about Africa, Latin America and the United States, but for most of the past decade he has been covering South and Southeast Asia. Between 2013 and 2016 he loved calling Hong Kong home, while working mainly for Time Magazine. Now in Auckland, he keeps travelling back. For stories, of course, but also for the buzz, for friends, and all the delicious food that sets this part of the world apart from everywhere else. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com At the peak of the Kala Patthar landmark, 5,500 metres above sea level in eastern Nepal, Jacob Cresswell, a team leader working for the United Nations Stop TB programme, lifts several layers of clothing to place a freezing laptop against his bare stomach. Twenty minutes later, and with the help of a power bank, the computer is repowered and the expedition’s world record attempt for the highest deployment of artificial intelligence is back on track, which is being reviewed by Guinness World... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3274840/x-ray-tests-nepal-powered-ai-hailed-key-global-tb-eradication?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3274840/x-ray-tests-nepal-powered-ai-hailed-key-global-tb-eradication?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Aug 2024 10:00:16 +0000 In a small, windowless room in a slum in the southern Philippine city of Cagayan de Oro, 26-year-old Delmar sits bent over a computer screen. He is placing coloured lines on an image of a road. Purple marks the left edge of the road, orange the first lane after that, and so on. Adjusting the lines, he bumps the computer mouse into a cigarette butt and sends it dancing over the mouse pad. Once Delmar is done, he presses an arrow on the screen and another image appears. Number 100 out of 179.... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3247902/how-ai-development-fostered-digital-sweatshop-and-why-it-matters-technologys-future?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3247902/how-ai-development-fostered-digital-sweatshop-and-why-it-matters-technologys-future?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 12 Jan 2024 23:15:17 +0000 Phnom Kampong Trach, a karst mountain in southern Cambodia’s Kampot province, close to the border with Vietnam, towers over rice paddies and pepper plantations like a slumbering dragon. Local people have a long and intimate relationship with the massive limestone outcrop and its numerous caves. This is where they collect guano – bat droppings – to fertilise their crops. This is where their spirits live. And in times of war, this is where they have taken shelter from bombs and destruction. To... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2153922/asian-demand-cement-destroys-stunning-cliffs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2153922/asian-demand-cement-destroys-stunning-cliffs?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 06 Jul 2018 00:15:30 +0000 A motor boat comes to a stop outside a fenced stretch of shore­line on Manus, a tropical island some 250km north of New Guinea, and part of the country of Papua New Guinea (PNG). The fence marks the perimeter of a PNG naval base containing a refugee camp that is no longer in use. Behrouz Boochani calls it a prison, and it was his enforced home for almost three years, from August 2013 to April 2016, when PNG’s Supreme Court ruled that Australia’s detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island was... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2143663/human-cost-australias-offshore-detention-centres?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2143663/human-cost-australias-offshore-detention-centres?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 29 Apr 2018 01:30:15 +0000 Loudspeakers blare luk thung music over the 100 or so stilt houses that line the dusty road, signalling the start to a wed­ding celebration. The sleepy hamlet of Asing Saneh lies in the Nong district of Savannakhet province, in central Laos, not far from the border with Vietnam. The area suffered intense bombing during the Vietnam war and today ranks among the poorest in Laos. Festivities are welcome here, a place where the line between new life and death has often been a fine one. Khemtay... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2110177/midwife-crisis-laos-slashes-maternal-mortality?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2110177/midwife-crisis-laos-slashes-maternal-mortality?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 07 Sep 2017 23:46:58 +0000 It’s early spring, and the splendour peach and guava blossoms bestow on the plantations and orchards in this part of northern Thailand is still a few weeks away. But some would see beauty already, in a huddle of chest-high plants draped with thin, white garden cloth for protection. For here – in the middle of a field in a valley outside the city of Chiang Mai – grow the first cannabis plants cultivated openly in the country for many years. In the 1980s, Thailand was a leading exporter of the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2097464/could-thailand-which-gave-world-bong-legalise?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2097464/could-thailand-which-gave-world-bong-legalise?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 11 Jun 2017 00:15:18 +0000 Dusk settles over Eita, a neighbourhood on Tarawa, Kiribati's main atoll, as inhabitants lift their potted plants from the ground to safety. They place them on tables, benches, any elevated platform they can find. Waves crash with increasing ferocity against the thrown-together seawall. On the other side of Eita, the tide continues to swell and sandbags begin to collapse. Runnels meander in from all directions, pushing rubbish ahead of them, as water rises by the inch around huts. A man just... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1880135/ready-bail-kiribati-struggles-keep-its-population-afloat?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1880135/ready-bail-kiribati-struggles-keep-its-population-afloat?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 21 Nov 2015 15:30:45 +0000