☕️ Rafizi, family receive AIDS threat

1. MARKET SUMMARY 📈

2. NUMBERS AT A GLANCE 🔢

Airbnb activity contributed a total of RM9.2 bil to Malaysia’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024, making up 5% of the tourism sector’s overall contribution, according to a study by Oxford Economics that was commissioned by Airbnb. The report also estimated that the short-term rentals marketplace helped support 93,600 jobs and contributed RM2.1 bil in total wage income. Domestic travel demand remained a key growth driver, with Malaysians making up 67% of Airbnb guests in 2024. Of the international guests that made up the remainder 33%, more than 80% were from the Asia-Pacific region. Total guest spending also reached RM11 bil, including both accommodation and non-accommodation expenditure.

The US Open has a total pot of USD90 mil (RM380.7 mil) in prize money, which the tournament says is the “largest purse in tennis history”. This means the US Open men’s and women’s singles champions will get USD5 mil (RM21.1 mil) each, a 39% increase from 2024. The total pot also went up 20% from 2024. The US Open’s organisers were also proud to announce that “for the first time ever”, the winners of the men’s doubles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles will get USD1 mil (RM4.23 mil) in prize money per team. In comparison, the Wimbledon’s total prize money for 2025 was GBP53.5 mil (RM306 mil).

South Korean fashion retailer F&F Co has hired Goldman Sachs to advise on an acquisition of golf accessories firm TaylorMade, with the deal rumoured to be worth USD3.5 bil (RM14.8 bil). TaylorMade is being sold by its current owner, Seoul-based private equity firm Centroid Investment Partners, who acquired the firm in 2021. However, F&F, which participated in the acquisition, also has a Right of First Refusal, which they feel was not honoured by Centroid. Centroid has begun a separate sales process, run by JPMorgan and Jefferies. F&F is “fully prepared” to employ legal and contractual measures to hold Centroid accountable for what F&F sees as a “significant breach of contractual consent rights”.
Learn: What is Right of First Refusal?

3. IN MALAYSIA 🇲🇾

Malaysia, are you okay?

• When taunting Rafizi is not enough, they threaten his wife and child
  Following the attack on his 12-year-old son, former Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli’s wife received threatening messages that read - ‘Diam! Andai teruskan, AIDS!’ (Shut up! If you continue, AIDS!). Rafizi said in a press conference that he suspected that the individuals behind the attack thought that by attacking his family, it would pressure him to lay low in the political world. His son will have to undergo routine blood tests over the next six months to rule out any long-term effects from the unknown substance that was injected into his body.

• Spy turned drug dealer
  Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief commissioner Azam Baki revealed that an army officer who was arrested for suspicion of involvement in a smuggling syndicate is also believed to be the mastermind of a drug trafficking operation. Said army officer was among 10 individuals arrested during Op Sohor. The raid, which followed a year-long investigation, led to the seizure of more than RM63,000 in cash, drug packages, weighing and measuring equipment, liquor, and imitation weapons. Harapkan pagar, pagar makan padi.

• Foreign student went stabbity
  Kajang district police chief ACP Naazron Abdul Yusof said that a foreign student hit three motorcycles before hurting six others with two knives at a traffic light junction near a shopping mall in Kajang. Naazron added that the foreign student claimed that she was under a lot of stress due to the treatment she received in her studies and life in general, while living in Malaysia. I almost misread Kajang as Klang; if not, it explains the whole incident. Iykyk. Also, video of the incident here. Thanks, The Star.

• Another child harmed
  A Year 2 pupil at a primary school in Kuala Terengganu sustained a fractured orbital bone and broken nose after allegedly being assaulted by a group of schoolmates. The child’s mother stated that this was not the first time that he had been bullied. In June, he suffered an eye injury after being hit with a rock, but no police report was lodged at the time. All this while the case into the death of Zara Qairina remains unresolved. It is a scary world to bring a child into.

Tok Mat says there is no room for katak in his party
UMNO deputy president Mohamad Hasan announced that several party members will likely face the axe for allegedly joining other parties. He also lambasted other parties that are part of the Unity Government for accepting these kataks. “How can we work together and form a government if we are stealing each other’s members? Umno has never stolen other parties’ members,” he said. The unhappiness emanating from the UMNO camp was triggered when Industry & Trade Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz confirmed that he is now a PKR member, shedding his UMNO past. He is now reportedly a member of PKR’s Ampang division.

Exciting times for the Malaysian economy

• AMD expands its R&D footprint in Malaysia
  AMD senior vice-president of global operations, Keivan Keshvari, announced the opening of the company’s new office and engineering lab in Bayan Lepas, Penang. The new facility will enhance the company’s ability to develop, build and deliver next-generation high-performance, adaptive and artificial intelligence (AI) computing solutions across its portfolio. The 209,000 sq ft facility is designed to support more than 1,200 employees.

• Sime Darby is knocking on doors for funds to build Google data centre
  Sime Darby Property is talking to banks for a RM3 bil loan to fund the building of a data centre that will be leased to Google. The proposed loan will have a tenure of five years and include an optional extension of up to two years. A back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming a five-year loan with a 10% interest rate, means Sime Darby needs to pay upwards of RM800 mil per year. Previously, Google announced in 2024 plans to build the data centre at Sime Darby’s Elmina Business Park near the Malaysian capital as part of a USD2 bil (RM8.4 bil) investment. In 2024, Sime Darby Property reported a full-year revenue of RM4.25 bil, with a profit after tax of RM517.6 mil.

Despite the influx of new investments, Malaysia is likely to miss its 2Q2025 GDP growth target of 4.5%, mainly due to Trump. Ambank Group Chief Economist Firdaos Rosli said Ambank’s initial projections for the 2Q GDP growth were initially in line with advance estimates of 4.5% but this has been lowered to 4.3%, considering the latest developments.

4. AROUND THE WORLD 🌎

Ahead of the US-Russian summit
Trump is meeting Putin today in Anchorage, Alaska, a US state that is geographically close to the Russian nation and once been sold over to the US. Alaskans are abuzz anticipating the high-profile meeting, hoping that it won’t disrupt their daily lives. Some satirically joked that they hope the US won’t sell them back. LOL.

On Wednesday, Trump warned of “very severe consequences” if Russian President Vladimir Putin refuses to end the war in Ukraine following the meeting in Alaska. The comment came after a virtual meeting with European leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who pressed the US president on the need to ensure that any peace deal does not sideline Kyiv. Trump had threatened tougher sanctions against Moscow in the past, but has not followed through. He also did not elaborate on what the consequences might be this time around.

In a joint statement issued after the virtual meeting, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and French President Emmanuel Macron said that Russia should face tougher sanctions if it fails to agree to a ceasefire, and that Kyiv must also be given “robust and credible security guarantees”. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy warned that Putin was “bluffing” about pursuing peace and he expects that the Trump-Putin summit would focus on an “immediate ceasefire”. Trump said that he would seek a three-way meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin immediately after his Alaska summit with the Russian leader.

Yesterday, Zelenskyy met Starmer in London, in a strong show of support on the eve of the Alaska summit, from which Kyiv and its European allies have been excluded. With such high stakes, all sides were pushing hard in the hours before today’s meeting.

The lengths the US go to prevent AI tech into China
Sources reported that the US authorities have secretly placed location tracking devices in targeted shipments of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips as a way to detect the chips being diverted to destinations which are under US export restrictions, such as China. People involved in the AI server supply chain said that they were aware of the use of trackers in shipments of servers from manufacturers such as Dell and Super Micro, which include chips from Nvidia and AMD. The US, which dominates the global AI chip supply chain, has sought to limit exports of chips and other technology to China since 2022 to restrain its military modernisation. People involved in diverting export-controlled chip and server shipments to China said they were aware of the devices, and some said they regularly took care to inspect diverted shipments of AI chip servers for the trackers due to the risks of the devices being embedded.

“Lost love” after ChatGPT upgrade
The release of GPT-5 last week was messy, but for some it became a relationship problem. Besides technical issues, some users also reported that they have lost their “loved ones” as they were apparently in a relationship with the AI. To them, GPT-5 appeared to be so cold and unemotive in comparison that they found their companion unrecognisable. In the wake of the GPT-5 fallout, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that the company would restore access to earlier models such as GPT-4o for paid users and also address bugs in GPT-5. The company did not respond directly to questions about the backlash and users developing feelings for its chatbot, but shared several of Altman’s and OpenAI’s blog and social media posts related to GPT-5 and the healthy use of AI models. OpenAI and Altman are concerned about these relationships, in which they did a joint study in March with MIT Media Lab that concluded that heavy use of ChatGPT for emotional support and companionship “correlated with higher loneliness, dependence, and problematic use, and lower socialisation”. Experts say that research on the long-term effects of AI relationships remains limited due to the fast pace of AI development and inability for research to keep up, with some doctors now treating patients presenting with something called “AI psychosis”. Here’s the OpenAI-MIT Media Lab study.

Shorts:

1. Israel shows no urgency in letting aid into Gaza
   Despite the July 27 announcement by Israel that it will let more humanitarian aid into Gaza, most of the aid shipments bound for the enclave are languishing in warehouses and roadsides at the Rafah border. A report by Reuters discovered that shipments are delayed due to many obstacles, ranging from rejections of shipments for minor packing and paperwork issues to heavy scrutiny over possible dual military use for a range of goods, along with short working hours at the Israeli border crossing. Meanwhile, the atrocities and famine continue in Gaza.

2. Baby Shark safe and sound
   After a long six-year battle for copyright, South Korea’s Supreme Court has rejected US composer Jonathan Wright's allegation that the producers at Pinkfong plagiarised his work. Wright recorded a version of the tune in 2011 based on a children's folk song. Pinkfong's version was released in 2016. Wright then said he owned the copyright to the interpretation, but Pinkfong argued that its version was an arrangement of the same folk song, which is in the public domain. Baby Shark became the most-viewed YouTube video of all time in November 2020, at the height of the pandemic, after raking up 7 bil views. Just over a year later, it became the first YouTube video to reach 10 bil views. The baby shark song before Pinkfong’s:

5. FOR YOUR EYES 📺

1. Weekend’s here - learn how to cook a steak proper.

2. The business of tumeric.

A fun trick to read your partner’s mind. Happy weekend folks!

andy.and.michelle

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