SINGAPORE, Feb. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Digital travel platform Agoda has unveiled the top destinations in Asia for the upcoming Lunar New Year, based on accommodation search data. Tokyo (Japan), retains its top position, followed by Bangkok (Thailand), and Taipei (Taiwan) making to the top three for the first time.

The data, comparing searches from December 2025, with the same period in 2024 for check-ins during the Lunar New Year. Osaka (Japan), ranked at fourth place, and Seoul (South Korea) secured the fifth spot while Fukuoka (Japan) held sixth position.

Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) debuted the list at seventh rank, and Sapporo (Japan) slipped one spot to eighth. Singapore and Hong Kong also remain popular, rounding out the list of top ten destinations.

This year marks the Year of the Horse, symbolizing energy, movement, and adventure. Travelers are inspired to explore new horizons and embrace the spirit of the Horse, seeking vibrant experiences and dynamic destinations. The Lunar New Year, marking new beginnings and Spring’s arrival, is a prime time for reuniting with loved ones and embracing renewal. It’s an opportunity for self-discovery, whether rediscovering familiar places or venturing abroad.

Andrew Smith, Senior Vice President, Supply at Agoda, shared, “The Lunar New Year is all about adventure and discovery, especially in the Year of the Horse. It’s exciting to see travelers embracing both traditional favorites and new experiences during one of Asia’s top travel moments. Whether it’s the bustling streets of Tokyo or the urban energy of Singapore, Agoda is here to help travelers find amazing deals and create unforgettable holiday stories.”

Embracing the adventurous spirit, travelers planning their Lunar New Year getaways can explore Agoda’s extensive offerings, including over 6 million holiday properties, more than 130,000 flight routes, and over 300,000 activities. Running from 14 to 28 February, Agoda’s Mega Sale will offer up to 60% off on hotel bookings, with special flash sales of up to 70% on 17 February and exclusive deals on flights and activities. Agoda VIP members will receive early access to deals from 10 to 13 February. The latest deals are available on the Agoda app or at agoda.com/deals.

SÃO PAULO, Feb. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Treeal, a Brazilian fintech company specializing in innovative payment solutions for businesses, today announced the partnership with Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of leading global technology company Tencent, to introduce the advanced PalmAI Service to the Brazilian market. Designed to outperform traditional biometric methods, including fingerprint and facial recognition, the new system offers a secure, contactless, and highly accurate alternative for payment processing and access control.

Across several Asian markets, Tencent Cloud’s PalmAI Service is also already driving efficiency and elevating user experience in diverse scenarios. For example, in Tencent’s own buildings, the biometric readers are ubiquitous at every entrance, allowing employees and visitors to have instant access with no identification failures. The solution has also been tested in a variety of practical environments — including high-traffic transit locations (such as subway stations and bus stops), retail self-checkout experiences, private events, and other real-life access and identity verification scenarios.

Globally, the system supports more than 50 million active users conducting over two billion transactions annually. Treeal’s implementation delivers industry-leading performance, allowing user identification in less than 300ms, with a false acceptance rate of less than 0.0000001% (1 in 1 billion operations) and a false rejection rate of 0.01%.

“Biometric systems like this aren’t just about security—they redefine the user experience by making it faster, simpler, and more intuitive,” says João Santos, CEO of Treeal. “Brazilians are known for embracing innovation early, and we believe palm-based biometrics could become mainstream within the next five years.”

Commenting on the partnership, Eric Li, Director of AI Global Commercialization at Tencent Cloud, said, “We’re excited to see our PalmAI Service makes its way to Brazil through Treeal. This is a market known for its innovation appetite, and we believe this technology will play a key role in shaping the future of secure, frictionless transactions—not just in payments, but across smart access and urban mobility.”

Tencent Cloud’s PalmAI Service brings unmatched AI-based precision

The palm scanner can identify the unique vein patterns beneath the skin—appearing as dark lines—which remain distinct even between identical twins. It reads the lines, contours, creases, and skin textures such as pigmentation and calluses, which are unique to each person, to ensure unmatched precision.  Each scan is completed within milliseconds and requires neither a card nor a smartphone. All data is tokenized and encrypted, with no actual images of users ever stored.

Palm recognition addresses many shortcomings associated with fingerprint and facial recognition systems, including vulnerability to spoofing, reduced accuracy with certain demographics, environmental constraints, and hygiene concerns. While fingerprint scanners can be fooled by 3D-printed silicone replicas and facial recognition may struggle with poor lighting, occlusions, or distinguishing between similar-looking individuals (such as twins), PalmAI Service offers a more robust and reliable solution.

As biometric technologies continue to evolve, Treeal aims to position Brazil at the forefront of secure, frictionless transactions—ushering in a new era of intelligent identity verification.

About Treeal
Treeal is a company specializing in business, payment, and sales solutions, created to serve companies that need efficiency, security, and high performance in every transaction. Since 2020, Treeal has been transforming the way money circulates within companies, with a robust, reliable, and scalable technological infrastructure, prepared for large volumes without sacrificing stability. With high-performance APIs and robust operation, Treeal guarantees agile and secure processing, generating a real competitive advantage for its clients. Today, it handles more than 200 million transactions per month, serving segments that demand high performance and zero tolerance for failures.

More than just a “payment method,” Treeal designs complete solutions so that companies can sell more, receive payments more efficiently, and have total control of their financial flow, with agility, intelligence, and confidence to grow. Learn more: https://treeal.com/.

About Tencent Cloud:
Tencent Cloud, one of the world’s leading cloud companies, is committed to creating innovative solutions to resolve real-world issues and enabling digital transformation for smart industries. Through our extensive global infrastructure, Tencent Cloud provides businesses across the globe with stable and secure industry-leading cloud products and services, leveraging technological advancements such as cloud computing, Big Data analytics, AI, IoT, and network security. It is our constant mission to meet the needs of industries across the board, including the fields of gaming, media and entertainment, finance, healthcare, property, retail, travel, and transportation. 

China Masters AI at Scale, Japan Leads in Reliability, Driving Regional Innovation

SINGAPORE, Feb. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in products and solutions across Asia-Pacific, as engineers advance adoption while addressing operational and design challenges. This is according to Avnet’s fifth annual Avnet Insights survey, which tracks global trends in AI integration across industries.

Globally, 77% of engineers reported improving market conditions for their design products and solutions. Across APAC, adoption is accelerating, with China leading in large-scale deployment and Japan emphasizing reliability and long product lifecycles. These regional strengths and shifting priorities are collectively fueling the next wave of Asia-Pacific’s technological evolution.

“While the survey focuses on major global design hubs, the findings serve as a critical framework for Southeast Asian markets,” said Tan Aik Hoon, Regional President for Avnet South Asia, Korea and Avnet United. “As ASEAN grows as a global manufacturing powerhouse, the ‘commercial-first’ AI strategies highlighted in the report offer a clear path forward for engineers in Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam looking to maintain competitive speeds.”

Download the 2026 Avnet Insights: The Reality of Artificial Intelligence whitepaper here.

How is AI Adoption Advancing Across APAC?
More than half of engineers globally (56%) said they are shipping products with AI incorporated, a 33% increase from the previous year. In China, adoption exceeds the global average, with engineers embedding AI across industries including automotive, industrial automation, and smart manufacturing. Japan and other APAC markets are advancing steadily, prioritizing practical applications that enhance efficiency, reliability, and sustainability.

Top AI applications across the region mirror global trends: process automation (42%), predictive maintenance (28%), and fault/anomaly detection (28%) remain the most adopted functionalities. Engineers are also increasingly combining Edge AI and machine learning (ML), with 64% globally prioritizing both equally, reflecting the growing importance of multi-modal AI.

“We see a clear shift from AI experimentation to industrial-scale deployment across the ASEAN manufacturing corridor,” added Tan. “Regional engineers face a growing complexity tax—balancing rapid time-to-market with specialized data requirements. Avnet’s role is to help partners overcome these barriers and move from concept to revenue faster.”

Navigating Challenges to Drive Broadening Impact
As AI’s influence expands, APAC engineers continue to balance technical challenges with evolving skill requirements. Data quality (46%) and continuous maintenance (54%) remain the most cited obstacles, while regional teams are investing in talent development—particularly in model optimization (17%) and data analysis (16%)—to convert complexity into competitive advantage.

“The report confirms that AI has entered its most critical phase: at-scale implementation,” concluded Tan. “In a market where production speed drives optimism, Avnet helps bridge the regional resource gap by providing the technical expertise and ecosystem support our partners need to lead—not just participate—in Asia-Pacific’s technological evolution.”

The 2026 Avnet Insights survey conducted online was fielded to 1,200 engineers from the Americas, EMEA, Asia and Japan, from October 21 through November 5, 2025.

Download the full 2026 Avnet Insights: The Reality of Artificial Intelligence whitepaper here.

About Avnet
As a leading global technology distributor and solutions provider, Avnet has served customers’ evolving needs for more than a century. Through regional and specialized businesses around the world, we support customers and suppliers at every stage of the product lifecycle. We help companies adapt to change and accelerate the design and supply stages of product development. With a unique viewpoint from the center of the technology supply chain, Avnet is a trusted partner that solves complex design and supply chain issues so customers can realize revenue faster. Learn more about Avnet at www.avnet.com.

CONTACT: Seraphina Wee, seraphina.wee@avnet.com 

SINGAPORE, Feb. 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel Singapore has been awarded the ASEAN MICE Venue Award 2026 in the Meeting Room Category, a prestigious regional recognition under the ASEAN MICE Venue Standard (AMVS). The award celebrates venues that meet the highest benchmarks for business meetings across Southeast Asia and was officially presented at the ASEAN Tourism Standards Awards Ceremony during the ASEAN Tourism Forum (ATF) on 30 January 2026 in Cebu, Philippines.

In 2026, only 41 establishments across all ten ASEAN Member States attained this distinction after undergoing rigorous on-site audits evaluating structural quality, soundproofing, amenities, safety standards and service excellence. Grand Copthorne Waterfront is one of only two hotels in Singapore to receive the award, and one of just three Singapore representatives overall, highlighting its leadership in the regional MICE sector and reinforcing Singapore’s standing as a premier MICE destination.

The ASEAN MICE Venue Award – Meeting Room category honours venues that meet rigorous standards in facilities, service, safety and accessibility. This recognition reflects the hotel’s commitment to quality and seamless meeting experiences.

Commenting on the achievement, Andrew Tan, General Manager of Grand Copthorne Waterfront, said: “This ASEAN MICE Venue Award is a strong affirmation of our team’s dedication to delivering exceptional meeting experiences. It reflects the high standards we uphold across our facilities, service and operations, and reinforces our commitment to continuously innovate and elevate the experience for our clients and partners.”

Benedict Ng, Vice President, Operations, Southeast Asia and North America, added:
“Being recognised under the ASEAN MICE Venue Standard places Grand Copthorne Waterfront among the region’s most trusted and capable MICE venues. This achievement highlights the strength of our operational excellence and our continued investment in people, infrastructure and technology to support world-class business events.”

The accolade follows the hotel’s $40 million refurbishment completed at the end of 2023, which significantly enhanced its MICE capabilities. Featuring 6,200 square metres of meetings and events space, including naturally lit meeting rooms and three pillarless ballrooms spanning 1,385 square metres; the hotel is well equipped to support hybrid, in-person and virtual events. Overlooking the Singapore River, its venues offer a distinctive setting paired with state-of-the-art technology and world-class audio-visual facilities, reinforcing its role in elevating regional MICE standards and strengthening Singapore’s position as a leading international MICE hub.

Contact:

Claire Chan, Assistant Director of Marketing Communications
Claire.Chan@millenniumhotels.com 

Kok Nee Tsu, Assistant Manager of Marketing Communications
neetsu.kok@millenniumhotels.com 

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Feb. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — With labor in short supply and spray windows growing shorter, many U.S. farmers face increasing pressure to finish critical fieldwork on time. At this year’s Spray Drone End User Conference, XAG introduced the new P150 Max Agricultural Drone to help address that challenge.

Designed for high-efficiency operation under tight schedules, the P150 Max prioritizes productivity, reliability, and versatility across multiple field tasks to turn workforce constraints into a solvable problem.

Performance Built on Field-Proven Reliability

The XAG P150 Max handles autonomous spraying, spreading, field mapping, and on-farm logistics using swappable task systems that can be changed out in minutes. With a maximum payload of 176 pounds and a flight speed of up to 44.7 mph, it’s designed to cover more ground and minimize stops for refills.

Under typical conditions, the P150 Max achieves average spraying productivity of 50–60 acres per hour, with peak performance reaching 70–80 acres per hour—among the highest efficiency ratings currently available in the agricultural drone market. Additionally, the unique swarm control capability allows a single operator to manage two drones simultaneously, effectively doubling productivity when the situation demands it.

The P150 Max isn’t a prototype. Since 2022, XAG’s P Series has logged more than 9.3 million flight hours across the globe, creating one of the most sophisticated agricultural drone systems available. The P150 Max has also been field-tested in New Zealand, Bulgaria, South Africa, and Australia—places where hilly terrain, irregular boundaries, and varied crop structures mirror the challenges found across Missouri, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas.

Designed to Ease Labor Pressure

For liquid applications, the XAG P150 Max with RevoSpray 5 system carries a 21.1-gallon smart tank with dual centrifugal nozzles delivering up to 8.45 GPM. An optional four-nozzle upgrade increases maximum flow to 12.15 GPM for orchards and other commercial crops with dense canopies. Droplet sizes are adjustable from 60 to 500 microns, allowing operators to adapt to different crop protection products and coverage requirements.

For spreading operations, such as fertilizer application, cover crop seeding and biological treatments, the RevoCast 5 System dispenses up to 661 pounds per minute. The vertical broadcast mechanism reduces wind drift, supporting consistent coverage across wide or irregular field areas.

At the core of P150 Max, the SuperX 5 Ultra Intelligent Control System delivers centimeter-level navigation using RTK positioning, while 4D imaging radar detects center pivots, power poles, and overhead lines—the obstacles that show up in every Midwest section. The built-in RealTerra Field Mapping System surveys up to 49.4 acres per flight, with onboard AI identifying field boundaries and obstacles, then generating autonomous flight routes tailored to the terrain.

Missions can be planned and managed through the XAG One App on a smartphone or the SRC 5 Remote Controller, with RTK positioning supported by the XRTK 7 Mobile Station in areas with limited or no network coverage.

To support extended field operations, the Smart SuperCharge Battery can be recharged in as little as seven minutes with two chargers working in parallel and a mist-cooling tower, minimizing downtime during peak workloads.

Now Available in the U.S.

The XAG P150 Max draws from a platform deployed in agricultural operations worldwide. Years of field use across varied crops, climates, and terrain have refined a design built for durability and adaptability—tested globally, ready for U.S. operations.

The drone is now FCC-approved and available for sales through XAG’s authorized dealer network, with local support, training, and parts supply. Deliveries are expected to begin shortly.

Japan’s Largest Creative Festival Returns to Tokyo, March 13–22, 2026

TOKYO, Feb. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Tokyo Creative Salon Executive Committee today announced the upcoming TOKYO CREATIVE SALON 2026 (TCS2026), Japan’s largest creative festival, to be held from Friday, March 13 to Sunday, March 22, 2026.

Entering its seventh year, TCS2026 will take place across nine major areas of Tokyo — Marunouchi, Nihonbashi, Ginza, Akasaka, Roppongi, Shibuya, Harajuku, Shinjuku, and Haneda — and will be free and open to the public.

Since its launch in 2020, TOKYO CREATIVE SALON has evolved into a city-wide creative week originating from Tokyo, bringing together fashion, design, art, craft, and technology during the cherry blossom season. By using the city itself as a stage, the festival has attracted wide attention both domestically and internationally, welcoming over 1.25 million visitors in its most recent edition.

The theme for 2026 is “FUTURE VINTAGE.” TCS2026 explores how memories, culture, and creative expressions accumulated within the city can be reinterpreted through contemporary sensibilities and carried forward into the future. The festival aims to present expressions that will continue to resonate across generations, from Tokyo to the world.

Hiroshi Ohnishi, Chairman of TCS2026, commented:

“Across the world, cities are strengthening their cultural value by bringing creators and communities together. TOKYO CREATIVE SALON is an initiative to showcase Japan’s world-class creativity with Tokyo as the stage. Under the theme ‘FUTURE VINTAGE,’ we seek to connect the city’s accumulated culture and memories to expressions that resonate into the future.”

Satoshi Sugiyama, Executive Director of TCS2026, added:

“Tokyo is a city where layers of creativity have been built up over time through people, places, and diverse cultural influences. With TOKYO CREATIVE SALON, we reinterpret these layers through contemporary perspectives and transform the city itself into a space for creative expression. ‘FUTURE VINTAGE’ reflects our intention to revisit the memories embedded in Tokyo and shape new forms of creativity that will be carried forward into the future.”

Further details regarding individual programs and exhibitions will be announced in the coming weeks.