Compiled by MARTIN CARVALHO, C.ARUNO and R.ARAVINTAN
IT was a heart-breaking end for a man who was driving a hearse to a funeral. He had collapsed and died while transporting a corpse in South Korea’s Gyeonggi province on Sunday morning, China Press reported.
The hearse was found stopped right in front of the entrance of the Yangji Tunnel on the Yeongdong Expressway.
Police arrived at the scene 10 minutes later and found a man in his 50s slumped in the driver’s seat. They broke the window to help the man and performed CPR before sending him to the hospital.
Unfortunately, doctors failed to revive him.
Police believe that the man had lost consciousness mid-journey.
> The daily also reported that millennials in China are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) “lovers” for emotional support to avoid the heartache of being in a real-life relationship.
Nuonuo (not her real name) admitted to having an AI boyfriend with whom she discusses her worries and work troubles daily. She even secretly chats with her “boyfriend” during work and claims they “go out” on dates and spend birthdays together.
“We never argue. We don’t have to spend money. Yet, there is a sense of companionship,” she said.
Millions of mainland Chinese have downloaded apps offering AI companionship such as Maoxiang and Xingye. In just one year, Maoxiang’s user base has more than doubled to over 2.2 million users.
However, experts said that an over-reliance on AI for companionship would only widen the social rift between people.
This, they said, would exacerbate the falling birthrate in China, which dropped to just 1.18 births per woman in 2022.
About 90% of these app users were women, which meant the chances of men being in a relationship have fallen further.
(The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.)
