☕️ Two Malaysian tourists set on fire in Bangkok

1. MARKET SUMMARY 📈

2. NUMBERS AT A GLANCE 🔢

To start the week, here’s a reminder to exercise. A major study published in The Lancet Public Health reported that walking 7,000 steps a day can be enough to boost brainpower and help protect against a range of different diseases, such as cancer, dementia, and heart disease. Doctors hope these findings, along with the more realistic target compared to the benchmark of 10,000, would encourage more people to track their steps to improve their health. Apparently, the original 10,000-step benchmark came from a 1960s marketing campaign in Japan, when a brand of pedometer called the manpo-kei or “10,000-step meter” was launched.

Malaysian authorities blocked a staggering total of 2.1 bil suspicious calls and unsolicited SMS messages between 2022 and August 2025, according to Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil, who shared that the number was achieved through the collaboration between the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) with telecommunications service providers. The MCMC, with the aid of social media providers, also took down 112,734 fraudulent contents and blocked seven deceptive websites. Side-note, the dissemination of false content with fraudulent intent is now a punishable offence, with fines of up to RM500,000, imprisonment of up to two years, or both.

The federal government allocated RM50 mil this year to help maintain and upgrade non-Islamic places of worship (RIBI - Rumah Ibadat Bukan Islam) nationwide, in a bid to support religious harmony and improve worship facilities. According to Housing and Local Government Minister Nga Kor Ming, RM2.7 mil had been approved for 15 RIBI organisations in Sabah as of July 7, with other applications still under review. In 2024, the ministry approved RM4.8 mil for 35 RIBI maintenance and upgrading works. The allocation for 2024 was also RM50 mil.

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3. IN MALAYSIA 🇲🇾

Two Malaysian tourists set on fire in Bangkok
A 30-year-old Thai male, Varakorn Pubthaisong, allegedly poured thinner on two Malaysians who were sitting on the steps of Big C Shopping Centre in downtown Bangkok, where he subsequently chased the two Malaysians, identified as Ong Yik Leong, 26 and Gan Xiao Zhen, 27, and eventually set the duo on fire. Watch incident here (warning - graphic). Both victims suffered second-degree burns across multiple parts of their bodies and were reportedly in critical but stable condition. Doctors advised against transferring the victims back to Malaysia as burn wounds are pressure-sensitive and must be allowed to dry first. The Thai police have arrested the suspect. Thailand's Tourism and Sports Ministry Assistant Permanent Secretary, Seksun Ngawsuwan, said that the Thai Government will allocate a specific sum to assist with the victims’ medical expenses. He added that both victims were expected to require about a month of treatment in Thailand to ensure their wounds healed properly and without infection.

So, how would this affect Thailand’s tourism industry? The short answer is not good. Plus earlier shooting incidents, even more no good. At the moment, Malaysia is the second-largest source market for the Thailand tourism sector, with 2.66 mil visitors coming from Boleh-land for the first seven months of the year. Thailand’s tourism industry already suffered a 6% drop in foreign tourist arrivals in the first seven months of 2025, compared to the same period last year. Additionally, the ongoing Thailand-Cambodia border conflict is costing the Land of Smiles USD92.6 mil per month. Compounded by the latest attack on the Malaysian couple, the Thai tourism sector better be expecting the worst.

Malaysia - People Come, People Go

Australia has designated Eastern Sabah as a high-risk area
Parts of eastern Sabah, between Terusan to Tawau, have been revised down to the yellow category (high alert), from the previous orange category (reconsider travel). As part of Australia’s travel advisory, there are four different categories: Green Category (exercise normal safety precautions), Yellow Category (exercise a high degree of caution), Orange Category (reconsider travel) and Red Category (do not travel). So, good news right for Sabah? However, Australians are still being advised to get professional security advice and obey all local government’s curfews. Currently, there is a dusk-to-dawn movement control order (previously called a curfew) in the Eastern Sabah Security Zone (Esszone) areas of Lahad Datu, Kunak, Semporna, Sandakan, Kinabatangan and Beluran.

More than 6,000 Malaysians said sayonara to Malaysian citizenship in 1H2025 - Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail stated that as of June 30 this year, 6,060 Malaysians had renounced their citizenship to one specific country. So, where did these former Malaysians pledge their new allegiance to? Unsurprisingly, the answer is Singapore. From 2015 to June 2025, over 98,000 Malaysians renounced their nationality in order to obtain Singapore citizenship. Upgrade or downgrade? We all have our own preference.  
View table: Number of Malaysians who renounced their citizenship for Singapore citizenship 2015 to 2025

Data centre investments - is it a blessing or a curse?
According to an environmental think tank, RimbaWatch, it warned that Malaysia’s new data centres will release annual greenhouse gas equivalent to adding more than two million cars to the country’s roads. Projected to generate nearly 10 mil tonnes of carbon dioxide, data centres in Malaysia's CO2 output will be equivalent to the emissions produced by entire countries such as Papua New Guinea in 2023. The outrageous rise in CO2 output by these data centres is mainly due to the fact that these data centres are energy guzzlers, raising the demand on Malaysia’s primarily fossil fuel-powered grid by 12,920 gigawatt-hours per year.

Not only power, but data centres also need a lot of water for cooling purposes. Johor is struggling to keep up with the demand of the water-hungry data centres, to the point that the state is considering the use of alternative water sources, including wastewater. Previously, Johor state exco member Lee Ting Han said that some data centres are working together with Indah Water Konsortium (IWK) and Johor Special Water (JSW), to use ‘poop water’ to cool their data centres. Additionally, Johor state housing and local government committee chairman, Mohd Jafni Md Shukor, said that the Bridge Data Centre, located within the Johor Baru City Council’s area, is in the process of using 20 mil litres of alternative water per day.

Shorts

1. Contract doctor system to be abolished soon?
   Health Minister Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad hinted that Putrajaya may do away with the contract doctor system. Initially, the contract doctor system was an interim solution introduced in 2016; however, after almost a decade, it is still alive and well (sort of?). Despite successfully controlling the glut of medical graduates at that time, the system has contributed to issues such as a shortage of manpower, brain drain and a lack of job security for medical graduates (and Singapore hunting for them right at our doorstep). But what is the alternative to the contract doctor system? At the moment, it is unclear.

2. Tengku Zafrul is officially a PKR member 
   Trade & Industry Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz is now a PKR party member, after jumping ship from UMNO. With this new update, the rumour mill is intensifying with the probability that Tengku Zafrul will be named as a candidate for a state or parliamentary seat in GE16. But, Ampang PKR Chief, Syed Ahmad, or better known as Altimet, downplayed the rumour and stated that such talk is expected in politics.

3. Zara’s body exhumed
   A computed tomography (CT) scan was performed on the body of 13-year-old Zara Qairina Mahathir following the exhumation of her grave. The CT scan result was not released yet, but lawyer Hamid Ismail, representing Zara Qairina’s mother, said that the police are cooperating well with them and he is confident justice will be served for Zara.

4. AROUND THE WORLD 🌎

Quite on the tariff front, busy on the war front

The world is furious at Netanyahu’s latest Gaza plan - except America
Israel’s security cabinet has approved Netanyahu’s plan for Gaza - a new ground offensive aimed at taking complete control of Gaza’s largest city which then triggered a global outrage. This would mean sending ground troops into the few areas of the territory that have not been totally destroyed, making up about 25% of the Gaza Strip. It would force approximately 1 mil Palestinians in Gaza City and surrounding areas into evacuation zones in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, adding more pain to a population that is already exhausted and starving. Even Germany, Israel’s second-biggest arms supplier and strongest backer in Europe, on Friday suspended the delivery of weaponry that could be used in Gaza after the decision. Foreign ministers from the UK, Germany, Italy, Australia and New Zealand said in a joint statement on Saturday that the plans to control Gaza City will make an already perilous situation worse. Russia also condemned the Israeli plan.

Following the decision, in Israel, tens of thousands took to the streets in Tel Aviv on Saturday to call for an end to the war in Gaza and demand the safe release of the hostages from Oct 7, 2023. A relative of a slain hostage said that “if you invade parts of Gaza and the hostages are murdered, we will pursue you in the town squares, in election campaigns and at every time and place”. No words came out from America though, Trump said that it was “pretty much up to Israel”.

Trump finally gets to meet Putin
Trump has announced that he will be meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin on Aug 15 in Alaska to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. He also said that all parties are close to a ceasefire deal that could resolve the conflict but with a caveat - Ukraine might be required to surrender significant territory to the Russians. Representatives from the Kremlin said that they look forward to engaging in the discussions “actively and energetically”. Putin claims four Ukrainian regions — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which he annexed in 2014.
Fun fact: Russia sold Alaska to the US for USD7.2 mil (about USD129 mil today) in 1862

Following the announcement, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy issued a video on social media demanding his country take part in negotiations, and that any decisions without Ukraine would be decisions against peace. Ukraine is ready for “real decisions” that could bring a “dignified peace” but stressed there could be no violation of the constitution on territorial issues, adding that "Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupiers." Zelenskiy has reportedly continued to seek support from the European leaders, who also has been long opposing any agreement that involves ceding occupied territory to the Russians.

OpenAI GPT-5: The Launch, and The Blunder
Thursday marked the day OpenAI launched the new GPT-5 artificial intelligence model which continues to power the popular ChatGPT chatbot, and will be available to all 700 million ChatGPT users. It came at a critical time for the AI industry, as developers like Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft - which backs OpenAI - have dramatically increased capital expenditures to pay for AI data centers, nourishing investor hopes for great returns. These four companies expect to spend nearly USD400 bil (RM1.69 tril) this fiscal year in total. OpenAi said GPT-5 excels in writing, health-related queries, and finance, and asking GPT-5 feels like asking a legitimate expert, according to CEO Sam Altman. GPT-5 also acts as a router, meaning if a user asks GPT-5 a particularly hard problem, it will use a test-time compute : a method where the AI model spend more time compute power "thinking" about each question, allowing it to solve challenging tasks such as math or complex operations that demand advanced reasoning and decision-making.

The Blunder: However, during an Ask Me Anything (AMA) Reddit session with Altman on Friday, multiple people complained GPT-5 wasn’t working as well for them as GPT-4 did. Altman said the reason GPT-5 seemed “dumber” was the router wasn’t working properly when it was rolled out Thursday. Altman reassured users that the GPT-5 will function better as the technical problem has been addressed, but still a lot of people on AMA lobbied so hard to bring GPT-4 back, at least for Plus subscribers. There was also a bit of a screw-up in the presentation slides charts, in which it became a joke of how incompetent GPT-5 was.

Shorts

1. Salah criticises UEFA tribute to ‘Palestinian Pele’

   Egyptian Liverpool player Mohamed Salah has criticised the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) for the football’s governing body's failure to reference the circumstances surrounding the killing of Suleiman al-Obeid, known as the “Palestinian Pele”. Al-Obeid was killed by an Israeli attack on civilians waiting for humanitarian aid in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday. Football Palestine mentioned that UEFA has been in “complete silence” of football and players bodies since the start of the war on Gaza. Al-Obeid is not the first Palestinian footballer to perish in this genocide - over 400 footballers has been killed since the start of Israel’s attack on Gaza.

2. Another Nobel Peace Prize nomination for Trump

   Cambodia has nominated the US President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, a move that came not long after Trump sharply reduced tariffs for Cambodia from 49% to 19%. In the letter, PM Hun Manet mentioned that Trump’s “extraordinary statesmanship” has helped broker an immediate and unconditional ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand, and that the nomination is “in recognition of his historic contributions in advancing world peace”. The ceasefire happened with mediation from PM Anwar in Malaysia, in which Trump swooped in to break the deadlock in efforts by threatening to halt tariff talks.
   Fun fact: Malaysia had its first and only Nobel Prize winner back in 2023 

5. FOR YOUR EYES 📺

Monday, about food.

1. Soft power through promoting local food abroad. Malaysia, apa macam?
   Learn: What is Soft Power?

2. BTS at the legendary nasi lemak shop, Village Park. The owner is still very much hands-on, even after 20 years.

3. Influencer and entrepreneur Khairul Amin launches his third product, expanding his FMCG empire.

khairulaming

4M followers

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