☕️ Kelate's govt brilliant idea - turning annual floods into tourism product

1. MARKET SUMMARY 📈 — Year To Date Edition

As we head into the last month of the year, here are the performances of the markets and assets year-to-date.

2. NUMBERS AT A GLANCE 🔢

79% of Malaysian professionals anticipate changes to their roles due to AI integration, with 28% expecting significant transformations, according to the Decoding Global Talent Report 2024: GenAI Edition. This underscores the importance for graduates to be AI literate to meet job market demands in the coming decade. Stakeholders emphasise that more than 75% of employers currently prioritise candidates with AI proficiency. Concerns are particularly pronounced in fields like digitalization, AI, and public service, where rapid technological advancements are reshaping job functions.
View: Decoding Global Talent 2024

728,000 is the estimated net migration to the UK in the year to June 2024, marking a 20% decrease from the previous year’s record of 906,000, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The data shows that 1.2 mil people arrived in the UK, while 414,000 left. The net migration figure for the previous year, to June 2023, has been revised to 906,000, making it the highest on record. Additionally, there was a 19% drop in student visas in the year to September 2024, following changes in visa rules that restrict most students from bringing dependents, except those studying at the PhD level.

AUD49.5 mil (RM142.98 mil) is the potential maximum fine that tech giants like Meta and TikTok could face if they fail to enforce Australia’s new law banning children under 16 from using social media. The ban, which follows a highly debated process, will begin with a trial phase in January 2025 and be fully implemented within a year. Despite opposition from privacy advocates and some child rights groups, 77% of the Australian population supports the law, setting a global benchmark for regulating social media use among minors amid growing concerns over its mental health impacts.

3. IN MALAYSIA 🇲🇾

Bah Besar in the Northern States
As of yesterday morning, the number of flood victims has skyrocketed to 37,189 people, involving 11,385 families across six states in Malaysia. Kelantan is the worst-hit state, with about 82% of victims accounted for coming from the east coast state. The Golok River, which is the natural border between Malaysia and Thailand in Kelantan, has swelled to 11.62 meters, its highest level since 1997. Unfortunately, this bah besar has claimed two lives that died from electrocution, prompting the power company to shut off electricity at 17 substations to prevent further fatalities.

Despite the situation in Kelantan being worse compared to the 2014 major floods, the Kelantan State Government is in a state of denial as the Deputy State Secretary (Management) Ab Pattah Hasbullah stated that the flood situation is still under control and there is no need to declare an emergency. Ab Pattah added that this year’s annual flood is unlikely to be a sequel to the 2014 major floods. The state of denial is so bad, up to a point that the Kelantan State Government is even ‘welcoming’ the floods and intends to turn them into a tourism product. What the actual f Kelantan? This a blatant ignorant attitude from the leaders that basically gave up on governing the state. Flood is not a tourism product, it is a natural disaster that kills lives.

@501awani

Pengerusi Jawatankuasa Pelancongan, Kebudayaan, Kesenian dan Warisan Negeri, Datuk Kamarudin Md Noor berkata, usaha itu akan dibuat memand... See more

Sanusi wants more money from Penang
Kedah Menteri Besar Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor demanded that the Penang State Government increase the annual ‘lease payment’ for the Penang Island and Seberang Perai from RM10 mil to RM100 mil per annum. Sanusi added that the state will be publishing a report backing the increase in annual ‘lease payment’ to Kedah. Sanusi has reiterated that Penang has always been a part of Kedah and he has every intention to reclaim Penang back. Sanusi said that the fact that the annual lease payment exists supports that Penang originally belonged to Kedah.

In responding to the matter, Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow told Sanusi to prove his claim on Penang in a court of law. Chow also pointed out that under the Federal Constitution, Penang is a sovereign entity. Penang was formerly part of the Malay Sultanate of Kedah until the arrival of the British. After Captain Francis Light established the first trading post in Penang in 1786, Penang eventually became part of the Straits settlement in the year 1826 and later was recognised as a state in the year 1957 under the Federal Constitution. Federal Constitution is the highest law in the land, is Sanusi a delulu?

Insurance naik lagi ke?
Yesterday, we wrote on the news that premiums on medical insurance are slated to increase by 40% - 70% in 2025. The news angered the public, further exacerbated that private hospitals such as KPJ Healthcare Berhad, recorded their highest-ever revenue in the third quarter ending 30 September, surpassing the RM1 bil mark for the first time. Basically, insurance providers win, private hospitals win and the consumers suffer. However, according to BNM, they have already a solution, which is the “controversial” co-payment scheme. As of September, BNM has made it a requirement for all insurers and takaful operators to introduce a co-payment option for medical insurance and takaful products to help reduce high premiums. BNM said that the co-payment option can lower the premiums by 19% to 68%. However, according to a survey by Business Times on a takaful product, the co-payment option is only 5% cheaper than the normal takaful product, plus the insured that opt for the co-payment need to fork out 10% of the medical bill for the next medical incident. In the end, consumers still lose.

Talking about insurance, Transport Minister Anthony Loke told the media that his ministry is mulling over the need to mandate insurance coverage for car passengers. This is because recently, in the Chen Boon Kwee v Berjaya Sompo Insurance Bhd case, the Court of Appeal decided in favour of the former, which determined that passengers travelling in a vehicle for work purposes can claim compensation from the vehicle's insurers for injuries sustained in an accident.

Anyways, here’s a breakdown of Prudential Malaysia’s financials for 2023. Profit up. 

Shorts

1. Maxis Bhd and Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd billionaire founder T Ananda Krishnan passed away today at the age of 86. He is survived by his son, Ven Ajahn Siripanyo. However, he is unlikely to inherit his late father’s USD5 bil wealth as Ven Ajahn Siripanyo chose to renounce worldly riches at the age of 18, to become a monk. Apparently, money is not everything for everyone.

2. PM Anwar Ibrahim told the Parliament that due to the fact that this country is not one of the signatories of the Rome Statute, Malaysia is unable to directly participate in South Africa’s application to initiate proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Rome Statute is the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and provides no statute of limitations for four core international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression.

4. AROUND THE WORLD 🌎

“Shocking nonsense” from France - Netanyahu immune to ICC arrest warrant, right’s groups saying he is not
France had released its formal view regarding Netanyahu’s ICC arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Gaza, saying that it believes that the PM had had immunity to actions by the ICC, given Israel has not signed up to the court statutes. It came after the announcement of the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah brokered by the US and France on Wednesday.

Despite initially saying it would adhere to the ICC statutes, France's foreign ministry fine-tuned their standing in a second statement on Nov 22 amid concerns that Israel could damage efforts for a ceasefire in Lebanon. Rights groups suggested France had tempered its response to maintain a working relationship with Netanyahu and his government.

European media director at Human Rights Watch said on X that “no one gets immunity from an ICC warrant because they are in office”, referring to the Article 27 of the Rome Statute:

Russia attacks Ukraine’s energy sector
The war between Russia and Ukraine gets uglier by the day. Ukraine has said that the Russians targeted their power infrastructure, in a FB post by its Energy Minister yesterday, after a countrywide air raid alert was declared due to incoming missiles. Why does this matter even more now? Winter is here.

Explosions were heard in the Ukrainian cities of Odesa, Kropyvnytskyi, Kharkiv, Rivne and Lutsk on Thursday morning and reports of power outages in Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Donetsk regions were made by national power grid operator Ukrenergo. Meanwhile, the temperature across the country dropped to about 0 degrees Celsius.

Senior UN official Rosemary DiCarlo has denounced the rise in civilian casualties in the nearly three-year conflict between Ukraine and Russia, noting that Moscow’s targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure may make this winter the “harshest since the start of the war”. Russia has repeatedly attacked Ukraine’s energy generation capacity since its full-scale invasion in February 2022, prompting repeated emergency power shutdowns and nationwide rolling blackouts.

Colombia-led international joint operation made global record and uncovered new Australia drug trafficking route
An unprecedented joint operation led by Colombia with authorities from 62 other countries has seized 225 tonnes of cocaine within a span of 6 weeks, a world record for any single anti-narcotics operation. Named Operation Orion, the operation which successfully pooled resources and shared intelligence among nations, halted 6 semi-submersible vessels stuffed with cocaine and confiscated 1,400 tonnes of drugs in total, including more than 1,000 tonnes of marijuana. More than 400 people were arrested, as well as the interception of illegal shipments of weapons and migrant trafficking.

The cocaine interception marks a significant dent in the Latin America cartel, with the anti-narcotics unit saying that it will prevent thousands of deaths from overdose and take away USD8.5bil from reaching the cartels. The operation also discovered semi-submersibles aka “narco-submarines”, which exposed a new route used to ship huge amounts of drugs to Australia. One of them was bound for Australia before it was intercepted with 5 tonnes of white powder on board 1,250 miles (2,000km) southwest of Clipperton Island, a tiny uninhabited French coral reef in the Pacific.

Isn’t it spectacular what humans can achieve when nations cooperate instead of fighting against each other?

Shorts

1. Private prisons, detention centres thrive from Trump’s push to deport migrants

   Trump’s incoming administration had promised to deport millions of illegal immigrants in the US, and the private companies offering immigration-related services such as border control, detention facilities and surveillance tech are rejoicing for the potentially lucrative opportunities. Companies like GEO Group which runs the country’s largest private prison had seen a rise in the company stock price, surging by nearly 73% in the weeks since the election (market cap of USD4.13 bil). CoreCivic, a provider of detention services, saw its stock price increase by more than 50% during the same period. The stock price for Palantir, a tech firm that works with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), increased by more than 44%. Way to go, capitalism.

2. AI Grandma Daisy’s guide to fighting scammers

   It’s payback time! Scambaiting, the act of playing along and “wasting scammer time” once a person realised that it's a scammer calling, has become a popular move but can become time-consuming. UK company Virgin Media O2 has come up with a solution: an AI grandma named Daisy who is designed to ramble on the phone, waste scammers’ time and to keep them away from real people. The company decided to create Daisy after discovering that 71% of Britons want to retaliate against scammers, but have no time to do so. They partnered with popular scambaiter Jim Browning, who has a subscriber of 4.3 mil on YouTube (view here), to train the chatbot with the skill of being a “clueless victim”. Fahmi, learn something from here.

3. Your cuppa is getting more expensive - arabica beans hit highest in 50 years

   The world’s Arabica coffee price has hit its highest in nearly half a century, as the benchmarks climbed above USD3.20 per lb (pound) on Wednesday. Farmers in Brazil, whom industry sources mentioned are running out of cash, grow almost half the world's Arabica and have sold up to 70% of the current crop with no rush to sell forward next year's crop and betting on even higher prices. March arabica coffee futures on the ICE exchange, which is used to set physical coffee prices around the world, rose 4.6% to USD3.2305 per lb, having hit their highest since 1977 earlier at USD3.2615.

5. FOR YOUR EYES 📺

1. MINIMAL - the world’s first and only Micheline star ice cream shop.

2. Bruno Mars’s video after putting up 15 shows in Brazil. He makes epic videos - watch the previous one on Japan and Don Don Donki.

brunomars

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Before we sign out for the weekend, carry out this social test: play this song out loud and see the heads that turn. IYKYK. If you don’t know, reply to this email and ask us. This is probably the most popular modern beat that the majority have heard but don’t know the name to it.