☕️ Tofu seller pledges RM10,000 for Najib

1. MARKET SUMMARY 📈

2. NUMBERS AT A GLANCE 🔢

USD2 bil (RM8.15 bil) – Global investment firm KKR has delivered that amount in private equity profit-sharing to more than 40,000 employees across 15 companies it has exited (~USD50k average per pax). The 15 were part of 91 firms that KKR has programmes with, and the profit-sharing is part of the investment firm’s Shared Success initiative to share its profits with workers at its portfolio companies. When KKR sold Integrated Specialty Coverages in Sept 2025, employees there saw between three and 30 months of salary as a cash bonus, with nearly 400 employees receiving between a minimum of USD10,000 and a maximum of more than USD413,000. Learn more about KKR’s Shared Success initiative here.

22 years – The embryo that brought a daughter and renewed hope into the lives of Cristina Rapti-Tzelepi, now 54, and her husband, was frozen for that many years. This has been noted as an unusually long time for a frozen fertilised egg to be used to produce a pregnancy. The couple were also in a race against time, as Greek authorities had an age limit of 54 for women who wanted to complete an in vitro fertilisation procedure. The couple had lost their 21-year-old son to a road crash last October. Notably, this is not the longest-frozen embryo that has developed into a full pregnancy. That record goes to a couple in Ohio, who welcomed a baby boy using an embryo that was frozen for more than 30 years.

26 – That’s the number of times local mathematics teacher Zulkifli Md Pungut, 58, has taken the SPM examination, and he uses his first-hand knowledge of the pressure students face to refine his teaching approach. Zulkifli, who is also the principal of Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Simpang Renggam in Johor, has been taking the exam since 2011. He said this allowed him to assess the difficulty of the papers and changes in the exam format while experiencing the challenges faced by students, such as the time pressure, mental fatigue, and anxiety experienced by candidates. In response, he has reshaped his teaching approach to include helping students develop time-management skills, strategies for answering questions under pressure, and ways to manage their emotions. Zulkifli also said that one of the most notable changes in the modern SPM was the greater emphasis on Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS), with questions no longer focused solely on routine calculations or memorisation.

3. IN MALAYSIA 🇲🇾

Cash in, cash out
Tofu seller pledges RM10,000 for Najib: Sunnycoco founder Sunny Seow has pledged RM10,000 towards former Prime Minister Najib Razak’s RM50 mil fine, describing it as repayment for help he says he received 14 years ago. Seow said that while he was serving a sentence in Manjung in 2012, he asked a local penghulu to submit an appeal to the Home Ministry for an early release so he could care for his elderly parents. During Najib’s visit to the area that year, the appeal was submitted and Seow later received approval to end his detention early and return home.

Seow said the decision gave him a chance to start again. After his release, he rebuilt his life by starting a small tofu pudding business, which later became the Sunnycoco brand. He said Najib’s current effort to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest reminded him of his own situation years ago and prompted him to offer financial help. Seow estimates that he earns about RM1 in profit from each bowl of tofu pudding, meaning his RM10,000 pledge represents the profit from around 10,000 bowls. He stressed that the contribution was a personal gesture rather than a political statement and said he was not asking others to follow his example. According to Seow, the pledge is simply his way of repaying what he sees as a debt of gratitude for the help he received in 2012.
Read: Najib’s house arrest explained: 10 questions about pardons, prison powers and what happens next

Rosmah ordered to deposit RM67.5 mil: Rosmah Mansor has lost her bid to delay a RM67.5 mil payment linked to 43 pieces of jewellery that went missing after a 2018 police raid. The Court of Appeal ruled that she must deposit the money into a stakeholder account while she continues appealing an earlier High Court decision in favour of Lebanese jeweller Global Royalty Trading SAL. The dispute began with 44 pieces of jewellery that Global Royalty had consigned to Rosmah. Only one was eventually recovered and returned. The High Court later found Rosmah liable for the remaining 43 pieces and ordered her to pay RM67,461,027.37.

Rosmah maintains that the jewellery had been in the authorities’ possession after the raid and argues that the police or government should be responsible if the items were lost. Her lawyers also said her assets were tied to a separate 1MDB-linked case, but the Court of Appeal found that this did not justify fully suspending the payment. Her lawyers said they would continue to challenge any attempt to enforce the order. Rosmah’s main appeal over the jewellery case is scheduled for Mar 25, 2027. Now, hypothetically, if she have the RM67 mil - pay for husband’s fund or for her jewelleries?

Teen murder case grounds of judgement is out
The 15-year-old boy acquitted over the Bandar Utama school killing had been showing signs of very early-onset schizophrenia since he was nine, according to the High Court’s grounds of judgment. Judge Adlin Abdul Majid said the illness progressed untreated for about five years, despite counselling, concerns raised by the school and changes in the teenager’s behaviour. Signs included withdrawal, delusional thinking, refusing to remove his mask and chronic lateness linked to fear and hallucinated voices. However, these were treated as behavioural or disciplinary problems rather than symptoms of a mental illness requiring psychiatric assessment.

By the time of the killing on Oct 14, 2025, the court found that the teenager’s schizophrenia had become severe enough to affect his understanding of reality. Evidence showed that he believed he was in a fictional parallel world and saw the victim as a non-player character rather than a person. He also believed that killing her would transfer her attributes to him and did not understand his actions would end her life. The court found that he was acting under delusions and auditory hallucinations and was incapable of understanding the nature of his act or knowing that it was wrong. The High Court acquitted and discharged him on Sept 14 on grounds of insanity under Section 84 of the Penal Code. He was ordered to be placed at Hospital Bahagia Ulu Kinta for a period subject to the Sultan of Selangor’s approval.

Shorts

1. Penang Bridge rolls out JustGO
   Motorists on Penang Bridge can now pay tolls through JustGO, which uses automatic number plate recognition to identify vehicles and charge the linked payment card. Registered users can use any available toll lane on the bridge, while JustGO is currently limited to designated RFID lanes at Bandar Cassia. Penang residents who register for the service can also receive a 20% toll discount. Users must register their account and vehicle in the JustGO app (get it here) before linking a payment card, with full journey records available in the app.

   Review of the app - in Mandarin but with subtitles:

2. BIGBANG adds second KL show
   BIGBANG has added a second Kuala Lumpur concert after tickets for its Jan 9, 2027 show sold out in just 25 minutes and 31 seconds. The extra show will take place at TM Stadium Nasional on Jan 10, giving Malaysian VIPs another chance to catch G-Dragon, Taeyang and Daesung together for the first time in more than a decade. VIP Membership pre-sale begins on Sept 24, while general sales open on Sept 29 via Fantopia. Tickets range from RM498 to RM1,598. The concerts are part of BIGBANG’s 20th-anniversary 2026–2027 World Tour.

4. AROUND THE WORLD 🌎

Trump sends mixed signals to Iran
One minute, he was threatening to annihilate Iran, and then another minute, he was having a ‘very good’ three-hour meeting with Iranian envoys (a Qatari mediator helped both sides to talk during the session). That was the mixed message US President Donald Trump delivered around his address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. Then, he went on to call for all nations to ‘enforce the complete economic isolation of Iran’.

But is this yet another TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out)? He draws an extreme line, then retreats behind it to get what he wants or completely forgets about it? Iran seems not to have taken the bait and stuck to its stance that the US needs to honour the preconditions that both countries agreed to work on in June. Iran’s military described Trump’s threat as ‘a sign of strategic desperation’.

Now, it’s a matter of who has more to lose. On Trump’s side, his approval rating has dropped to a low of 32%, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. What Trump had described as a short-term conflict is now becoming a longer one. And Americans are paying for it at the gas pumps. On Iran’s side, economic damage and citizens’ hardship are in danger of coming to a tipping point.

ShinyHunters said it hacked the FBI and stole data
“ShinyHunters” sounds like the name of a hardcore raid guild in World of Warcraft. But its reputation has certainly turned shinier, as it said that it hacked the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and stole data on a huge number of current and former FBI employees. The group targeted the FBI as the agency detailed ShinyHunters’ methods and advised its targets not to pay ransoms back in May 2026.

Here’s the thing. The FBI said that there were ‘claims regarding unauthorised activity affecting FBIjobs.gov and it's currently investigating’ but has not confirmed the hack. Meanwhile, ShinyHunters has posted ‘samples’ of the data that it stole, which Reuters managed to partially match against credit bureau records and previously breached data preserved by dark-web intelligence firm District 4 Labs.

Will Apple’s health tracker whoop Whoop Inc’s smartwatch?
Apple sees the potential of health and fitness as its next engine of growth. It is already developing several prototypes that compete with Whoop Inc’s smartwatches and Oura, the smart-ring maker. Specifically, Apple is developing a screenless health and fitness tracker that has a thin fabric band with a sensor-equipped computing module. It won’t have a screen, so it will not look like the Apple Watch. Even though Apple is still a top seller of smartwatches, Whoop and Oura are growing quickly.

Apple wants to stay ahead of the curve and rather than simply ‘copying’ features from its rivals, it also wants to introduce more AI features into its products. Recently, it introduced a watch that can record audio throughout the day and use AI to generate summaries of the wearer’s conversations and activities. However, Apple’s AI initiatives have not been great so far. At this stage, the health and fitness prototype is still that — a prototype. Apple hasn’t decided whether to release it, and even if it does, the timeline will probably be in 2028. And in today’s technology cycle, that might be too late.

Singapore market moves
Grab at a three-year low as execs buy shares
In 2021, Grab listed on the Nasdaq to raise USD4.5 bil (RM18.36 bil) at a market capitalisation of nearly USD40 bil. Today, it’s only worth USD13 bil, and the share price fell to a three-year low of USD2.74 on Sept 18. So, Grab’s top executives have recently bought more than USD30 mil of company shares this week. Grab CEO Anthony Tan bought more than USD30 mil while President Alex Hungate bought USD867,000.
The recent share price decline can be attributed to Grab’s plans to acquire Atome, a buy-now-pay-later company, which valued Atome at USD2.5 bil. Anthony Tan said, ‘I ⁠have ​put my money where my ​mouth is... I believe in our strategy and our direction.’. Now, time will tell whether Grab will gain.

Softbank-backed Carro could be listing in Singapore
Carro, a used-car marketplace (aka Carsome’s fierce competitor), is considering offering shares on Singapore Exchange’s Global Listing Board. It could potentially be the first company that uses the new dual-listing mechanism that allows it to list both in Singapore and the Nasdaq market in the US. Carro has filed confidentially for an IPO in the US and also submitted paperwork for a Singapore listing as well.

The company could raise as much as USD500 mil (RM2.04 bil) and says that the dual listing will depend on investor demand. Carro needs to prepare only one set of documents for both listings, and both debuts will be aligned. However, the company needs to be at least SGD2 bil (RM6.39 bil) in market value. This might make sense for Carro, as it is headquartered in Singapore with operations across Asia, but it might find that liquidity may be greater in the US markets.

Shorts

1. China’s Yu Zidi takes third gold in Asian Games
   She’s 13 years old and has just grabbed her third gold in the Asian Games. Yu Zidi is a Chinese swimmer who has recently become the nation’s latest sensation. She is now the champion of the 200m butterfly, 200m individual medley, and 400m individual medley. Not only that, she has also set the Asian Games record times for all three events this time around. Eyes are now all on her as the Los Angeles Olympics are just two years away. However, in China, she has gone viral for a different reason. Her struggle with interviews is a hit on social media platforms. Unfortunately, we can’t find one on those platforms, but here’s one where she said interviews were the hardest part of her job.

2. Super El Niño to cause 451,000 deaths?
   The University of Chicago’s Climate Impact Lab has a dire warning for Super El Niño. It projects that it could potentially cause 451,000 deaths around the world. Nigeria tops the list as the most vulnerable with 31,400, followed by Indonesia (19,300) and Sudan (17,600). Meanwhile, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia could see an additional 19,400 deaths. The lab describes this as a ‘postcard from the future’ as they project that the number of extremely hot days is likely to rise by 44% compared to normal years. And the number of excess deaths could be even higher if El Niño extends further into 2027.

5. FOR YOUR EYES 📺

Zoo Day

1. New cat species discovered in over 100 years in South America. Read more here.

2. Edinburgh Zoo released NSFW photos of 2 capybaras.

3. Gorilla getting medical checkup at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

4. Air badak/rhino drink - a cooling water, considered a Chinese medicine. What’s inside it and how it helps?