Scientists have used a tiny plastic “obstacle course” to test how much sperm would struggle to navigate during sex in the weightlessness of space. Some particularly resilient sperm still made it through the course, suggesting that conceiving children in space will still be possible, according to research published on Thursday. However, a bigger problem could be that the development of embryos after fertilisation was harmed by a lack of gravity, the Australian team of researchers found. With...

Hong Kong police have charged another 10 people in connection with the HK$1.6 billion (US$205.8 million) JPEX cryptocurrency scandal – the city’s largest alleged financial fraud in recent years. Four men and six women were charged on Thursday after investigations identified abnormal transactions in suspicious accounts linked to the case, police said. The suspects, aged between 26 and 47, will appear in Eastern Court on Friday charged with money laundering and conspiracy to launder money. The...

Donald Trump’s planned visit to China in May may offer some clues about the preferred US road map for ending the war with Iran, according to Chinese analysts, who said that if the conflict dragged on, it could play into Beijing’s hands. The US president delayed the visit, initially scheduled to start at the end of this month, to focus on the conflict, but said on Wednesday that he would visit Beijing on May 14 and 15. China has yet to confirm the dates and on Thursday foreign ministry spokesman...

A man brandishing a knife stabbed a woman in a Pokemon store in downtown Tokyo before turning the knife on himself, leaving both dead, Japanese police said on Thursday. Officers rushed to the scene in a popular shopping centre after receiving an emergency call reporting a rampage by a knife-wielding man. Police said the woman, who was stabbed in the neck, was in her 20s and believed to be an employee at the Pokemon store on the second floor of the Sunshine City building, which houses shops and...

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said on Thursday it was reintroducing testing for gender to determine eligibility to compete in the female category, preventing transgender women from competing. The screening will mean Olympic women’s sports at the 2028 Los Angeles Games will be limited to biological females, which would also rule out those with differences in sexual development (DSD) from competing. The IOC is abandoning rules it brought in in 2021 which allowed individual federations...

At least two bid-rigging syndicates could be linked to the HK$336 million (US$43 million) renovation bid for a housing estate destroyed in Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades, a lawyer for the competition watchdog has said at the fourth session of an evidential hearing. Lester Lee Hiu-leung, the Competition Commission’s executive director for legal services, also said on Thursday that the watchdog had not ruled out applying to the Competition Tribunal for damages from Will Power Architects...

Britain’s decision to block a £1.5 billion (US$2 billion) plan by Chinese clean energy giant Mingyang to build the UK’s largest wind turbine factory in Scotland highlights the mounting challenges of doing business with China in an era of deepening global mistrust, analysts said. The move was likely the result of direct pressure from Washington, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The US-Israeli war in Iran and the subsequent energy crisis had raised hopes for the project to be...