TheChek News Flow

Chinese-made device can command the movements of bees, making them ideal to help search for survivors in earthquake ruins, scientists say

Worker bees carry nectar sacks weighing 80 per cent of their body mass. When airborne, they tuck their hind legs like landing gear to cut wind drag.

And they can fly 5km (3 miles) with no need for rest, an example of how nature’s genius shames human machinery.

Until now.

At Beijing Institute of Technology, Professor Zhao Jieliang’s team has built the world’s lightest insect brain controller. At 74 milligrams, it is lighter than a sack of nectar.

Strapped to the bee’s back, the device pierces its brain with three needles. It creates illusions with electronic pulses to command flight: turn left, turn right, advance, retreat.

Nine out of 10 times, the bee obeyed.

The cyborg bee could serve as military scouts or search for survivors in the ruins of an earthquake, according to a peer-reviewed paper published on June 11, in the Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering.

“Insect-based robots inherit the superior mobility, camouflage capabilities and environmental adaptability of their biological hosts,” wrote Zhao and his colleagues.

“Compared to synthetic alternatives, they demonstrate enhanced stealth and extended operational endurance, making them invaluable for covert reconnaissance in scenarios such as urban combat, counterterrorism and narcotics interdiction, as well as critical disaster relief operations,” they added.

Before this, the lightest cyborg controller came from Singapore and was triple the weight. It could command beetles and roaches but they crawled at relatively slow speeds in short ranges and fatigued quickly.

Zhao’s team printed circuits on polymer film. While flexible and as thin as insect wings, it hosts numerous chips including an infrared remote.

Tests were done in nine pulse settings. The researchers studied bee wings and cockroach turns. They mapped signals to motion, made bees bank and made roaches trace long straight paths with little deviation.

But some flaws remain.

Bees need wired power and roaches tire after 10 zaps. One signal stirs different moves in different bugs, according to the researchers.

A long-lasting battery weighs 600mg – far too heavy for a bee. Their legs and bellies also refuse commands.

“In future research, precision and repeatability of insect behaviour control will be enhanced by optimising stimulation signals and control techniques,” wrote Zhao’s team.

“Concurrently expanding functional modules of the control backpack will improve environmental perception capabilities of insect-based robots, advancing their deployment in complex operational settings such as reconnaissance and detection missions,” they added.

Nations have engaged in an intense race on cyborg tech. The US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) used to take the lead, with Japan trailing closely. But now China is smashing records in this field, thanks to ample government funding and a booming electronics industry.

June’s U.K. Home Buyer Demand Turns Positive for the First Time Since December

The result indicated stabilization, rather than a strong recovery

U.K. house buyer demand in June turned positive for the first time since December 2024, but challenges remain for both buyers and sellers, according to a report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

According to the report, the net balance for new buyer enquiries rose 3% in the month, an improvement from May’s minus 22%. Still, this indicates a period of stabilization rather than a strong recovery, RICS says.

Moreover, the national net balance for agreed sales improved significantly from previous months to minus 3%, representing a significant improvement from the minus 25% and minus 28% reported in earlier surveys. Nonetheless, sales momentum is expected to remain subdued in the near term despite this positive trend, the association’s survey said.

And although near-term expectations for sales volumes have turned marginally positive, with a net balance of plus 6%, a sharp contrast to May’s minus 2%, respondents foresee a broadly flat sales volumes landscape over the next 12 month, with a net balance of plus 5%.

House prices in the U.K. continue to follow a flat to marginally negative trend, with price activity seeing a deep regional variation. The South East, East Anglia and London have seen a more pronounced fall in prices, with Northern Ireland, the North West, Scotland and the East Midlands seeing clear growth.

“Encouragingly, near-term sales expectations have begun to edge higher, pointing to a modest shift in sentiment. That said, confidence in the market remains somewhat delicate, with economic uncertainty at both the domestic and global level still seen as a potential headwind,” RICS said.

Novel investment firm that trades off its reporters’ scoops raises fresh capital and plans move into litigation

Hunterbrook Global has been valued at $100mn after a recent fundraising, as the novel US newsroom-cum-hedge fund revealed to investors that it planned to move into litigation.

The new capital, raised by the parent company that oversees the hedge fund Hunterbrook Capital and the news outlet Hunterbrook Media, has come from investors, including the Ford Foundation and venture capital firm Floating Point, according to a person familiar with the fundraise.

Hunterbrook was launched in 2023 by investor Nathaniel Brooks Horwitz and writer Sam Koppelman, creating a newsroom that would gather exclusive information and a hedge fund that would trade off it.

The recent fundraise doubled Hunterbrook’s valuation from its 2023 seed round and is separate from the $100mn raised last year for the investment fund run by Hunterbrook Capital.

The new funds will be invested in building its newsroom further, according to a person close to the situation. Hunterbrook declined to comment.

Hunterbrook also revealed to investors in a letter that it planned to further exploit its news gathering by launching a litigation business that would partner with law firms on cases enabled by the newsroom’s reporting. The business is being led by led by media lawyer and litigator Joe Slaughter.

The fund, which started trading in April 2024, gets exclusive early access to the newsroom’s potentially market-moving stories, enabling it to trade on the scoops. Meanwhile, profits made from the fund are ploughed back into the newsroom to continue to build its expertise.

Hunterbrook initially envisaged that it would short stocks in instances where its newsroom exposed scandals, but this approach has been sidelined in an “irascible bull market”, according to the investor letter.

The letter also details how Hunterbrook is generating a sizeable portion of its returns by taking long positions in businesses its journalists have investigated and found to be sound.

Hunterbrook’s fund generated a 31 per cent return in the second quarter of 2025 and a 16 per cent return year to date.

“This won’t be the norm, though we’ll always aspire to it. But it also wasn’t a normal quarter to achieve these results, either,” the letter says. “The fund navigated the crash in April, the violent recovery into May, its unlikely continuation to new all-time highs in June, and kaleidoscopic skirmishes with misinformation along the way.”

The fund is closed to new investors but existing partners, including Horwitz and Koppelman, recently added to their holdings, according to the letter.

Hunterbrook’s investments in the period have included Core Scientific, a data centre infrastructure provider that is being acquired by CoreWeave for $9bn, as well as Evolv Technologies, Carpenter Technology and Rocket Companies.

The letter also pointed to one “untradable scoop”: on Saturday June 21, when markets were closed, Hunterbrook Media broke the news that B-2 stealth bombers had launched from an Air Force base in Missouri, indicating the US would imminently join Israel’s bombardment of Iran.