Shark Nannies: The Ultimate Baby-Sitters

Just off Kri Island in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, meter-long dotted sharks glide underwater – a sight conservationists say was vanishingly rare until recently. 

The Indo-Pacific leopard shark – also known as the zebra shark – has historically inhabited reefs along Indo-West Pacific Ocean, the Red Sea, East Africa, Japan, and Australia. But years of habitat destruction and overfishing have reduced the population by 50-79% over the past three generations (around 57 to 72 years), and they are classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). While their historic decline was driven by the shark fin trade, overfishing pressures persist through accidental bycatch and trade in its exotic leather. 

In Raja Ampat, less than a decade ago they had all but disappeared. The IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group estimated that left alone, the archipelago’s population could take between 100 and 200 years to recover naturally. 

Now, a global group called ReShark say they are attempting to “restore balance to the ocean” with what they describe as the world’s first shark rewilding program. The initiative, known as the Stegostoma tigrinum Augmentation and Recovery (StAR) project, after the shark’s scientific name, sees leopard sharks bred in aquariums around the world, before the offspring are released into protected waters in Indonesia and Thailand. 

“Back in 2019, in Raja Ampat, we estimated that there were about 20 individual adult sharks remaining”, says Mark Erdmann (left), executive director of ReShark. 

“Most conservation activities for sharks usually revolve around either setting up marine protected areas or doing fisheries management. In our case, our niche is we’re doing active recovery”. 

The idea first emerged during a visit Erdmann made to Singapore’s SEA Aquarium in 2015. The staff showed him tanks crowded with baby leopard sharks they had successfully bred in captivity. 

“They said, ‘we actually have a problem, we’re producing too many pups, and we don’t know what to do with them’”, Erdmann recalls. 

That encounter sparked an eight-year effort involving governments, aquariums, nonprofits, academics, local communities and conservation scientists who worked together to release captive pups into Indonesian waters. 

Like many sharks, the Indo-Pacific leopard sharks are harmless to humans. But unlike most sharks, they reproduce by laying eggs. In fact, they’re the largest of the egg-laying sharks, a trait that makes them well suited for this rewilding effort. 

“About 43% of sharks are egg layers”, says David Ebert (right), program director at the Pacific Shark Research Center, San Jose State University, who is not connected with ReShark. “With live bearing, you have a whole different set of issues to deal with. So, this is probably a good species to potentially start with”. 

His global efforts to spot elusive sharks have seen Ebert become known online as the “Lost Shark Guy”. In his opinion, the leopard shark has another advantage, “the cute factor”, which can help the public get on board with conservation initiatives. 

ReShark, supported by Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative, have partnered with nearly 60 aquariums worldwide. Of those, about a dozen across the United States, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore are actively breeding sharks for the program, according to Erdmann. 

Viable eggs from global aquariums are transported to ReShark’s two nurseries in Raja Ampat and Phuket, Thailand. There, specially trained aquarium managers – nicknamed “shark nannies” – monitor the eggs, care for the pups and prepare them for life in the wild. Once the sharks grow to a meter long and can forage food for themselves, they are tagged and released into protected waters. 

The nickname may sound playful, but the work is highly technical. Shark nannies undergo months of training in animal husbandry, often supported by large public aquariums. An internship program hires residents rather than international volunteers, to involve local communities. 

“It’s super important that the people in Raja Ampat and the people in Phuket are supportive of this program, and that we don’t fall back to the way it was 10 or 15 years ago when these sharks were being caught and killed”, says Erdmann. 

Some shark experts remain cautious about the program’s long-term effectiveness. 

Ebert, who has spent more than four decades studying sharks and rays around the world, describes the program as innovative but still largely experimental. 

“It’s kind of a neat science project,” he says. “But how’s it going to impact the (shark) population? That’s the big question”. 

Among his concerns is whether the released sharks will survive long enough to reproduce in the wild. Since leopard sharks are believed to take between five to 12 years to reach maturity, the earliest ReShark will find out if its first released pups are breeding is 2028.

UK Higher Ed: Prestige at a Discount

The competition is heating up and getting fiercer as UK higher education desperately fights to hold onto crashing foreign student enrollment. 

At least 22 universities are offering guaranteed tuition-fee discounts of up to £8,000 for overseas students. This shift is driven by a 17 percent drop in postgraduate enrollment in the two years leading to March 2026, stricter visa rules, and a 2024 ban on family members accompanying students. 

The reduced net fee at these varsities is likely to fuel concerns about the education sector's approach to recruiting overseas students, on whose fees it already depends.

The University of Nottingham, which set out plans to trim more than 600 jobs, offers an immediate £3,000 scholarship for 2026 taught master’s courses with no application needed, replacing merit awards. 

Meanwhile, the University of Aberdeen, where 100 jobs could be cut as part of a £10m savings plan, introduced an £8,000 scholarship directly deducted from the tuition bill. 

Furthermore, the University of Kent are offering a pre-approved £5,000 discount for master's degree entrants from 14 specific countries – including China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, and Vietnam – requiring no separate application process. 

The University of Leeds are also providing a hassle-free £5,000 regional scholarship reduction directly to eligible international undergraduate students, such as applicants from Kenya. 

Zeenat Fayaz, founder of The Brand Education, which advises universities on branding, said this “pricing war” could backfire by sparking competition between institutions on the basis of a degree’s cost rather than their own strengths. 

“Higher-tariff universities are not only offering scholarships, but they’re also reducing their grade requirements to allow students in... It’s a race to the bottom”.

More World Leaders Flock to Beijing

On February 02, I blogged that in January, world leaders had flocked to China. In fact, five of them. 

The visits to China – China Daily refers to them as the "China travel rush" – have not stopped. 

In February, two leaders descended upon the Middle Kingdom (Zhōngguó, 中国). They were Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi (1st-7th) and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (25th-26th). [Note that the month was relatively quiet owing to the Spring Festival break].   

And in March, Chinese President Xi Jinping's diplomatic schedule was focused domestically during this month. He and other senior officials were engaged in the annual "Two Sessions" political meetings, which are the annual plenary sessions of the National People's Congress and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. 

The following month, distinguished travelers who journeyed to China included: Thailand’s Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn (April 04-11); Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (April 11-15); Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi (April 12-14); To Lam, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam and President of Vietnam (April 14-17); and Mozambican President Daniel Chapo (April 16-22).

And in May, Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon was in China, completing a four-day state visit to Beijing from 11th to 14th. 

Of course, the US didn't want to be left out. And so, its president invited himself to China. He was there from May 13 to 15, and incredibly, he was well-behaved.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was there as well for a two-day state visit, running from May 19 to May 20. And more than 40 documents and cooperation agreements were signed between China and Russia.

Then, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif travelled to China for a four-day official trip from May 23 to 26.

And Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić too from May 24-28. 

This isn't just about China being "open". 

As global uncertainty deepens, the world is gravitating toward a country that, weathering its own storms, continues to project a clear sense of purpose and progress.

The high-profile visits to Beijing by world leaders underscore China's leverage and centrality in shaping a multipolar world order. And Xi Jinping is at the centre of it all.

China's real power comes through Xi championing initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Global Development Initiative, and the Global Security Initiative – in fact, the country offers an alternative model for economic growth and state relations without political conditionality.

Asia’s Biggest Food Staple is Under Threat

Harvest-ready rice fields are lying idle and farmers are deciding whether to skip planting for the coming season, as spiking fuel and fertiliser costs from the war in the Middle East hit one of the world’s biggest rice-growing regions. 

Across Southeast Asia, tens of millions of smallholders are struggling to find affordable crop nutrients as well as the diesel needed to run tractors, irrigation pumps and rice planters. In Thailand, some farmers are leaving the crop in the ground as it is too expensive to harvest. 

The scarcity of supplies underscores how the six-week war in Iran has upended global trade and raised concerns around food shortages. As well as driving oil prices higher, the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz – which remains largely blocked despite a temporary ceasefire – has choked a vital route for fertiliser and fuel deliveries, with Asia particularly affected. 

“There’s a lot of panicked farmers”, said Patrick Davenport, a director and co-founder of BRM Agro, an integrated rice farmer and miller in Cambodia, where roughly three-quarters of the population lives in rural areas. “Most are involved in agriculture – and they are all hurting”, he said. 

Rice is a staple for more than half of the world’s population, as well as a livelihood for rural communities across a region where agriculture still accounts for a large share of economic activity. Farmers struggling with input costs that have doubled or even tripled are also finding themselves squeezed by persistently low prices, at least for now. 

Weighed down by ample inventories, benchmark prices for Thai white rice 5% broken fell to a decade-low in late October and have recovered only a little since then, spending most of last month below $400 (RM1,586) a ton. 

“Margins are super tight, and that means they will plant less”, said Máximo Torero, the chief economist of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, noting that a further 20- to 30-day closure of Hormuz would affect the availability of food as soon as the second half of the year. The input shortages can only be resolved if vessels can begin moving through the strait again. “I don’t see any other solution”, he said. 

In Cambodia, some growers are reluctant to proceed this month without a guaranteed return, said Davenport, whose company works with about 2,000 farmers. Around a tenth have said they won’t plant unless they can secure a fixed price for the new crop. 

In the Philippines, the world’s top rice importer and also a major producer, paddy-rice output could fall by at least 10% this year, according to Raul Montemayor, the national manager for the Federation of Free Farmers Cooperatives Inc. That could amount to about two million tons of lost rice given projected national output of 20.3 million tons. 

“That’s a very big possibility, and the reduction will be felt during the next harvest season in September or October”, said Montemayor. 

The shortage of inputs couldn’t have come at a worse time for rice farmers in Southeast Asia, many of whom grow two or more crops a year and are currently straddling the seasons. Harvesting of dry-season fields is in progress, while planting is beginning for the main wet-season paddy crops in Thailand and the Philippines. 

“That’s when all these fuel costs start mattering a lot. Fertiliser costs will matter a lot. Availability will matter a lot”, said Alisher Mirzabaev, a senior scientist for policy analysis and climate change at the International Rice Research Institute. “On the food-security side, we are buffered by the existing stocks – but we should not get complacent”. 

Elsewhere in Asia, the main plantings in India – a major grower – remain a couple of months away, while China has been more insulated from the energy and fertiliser shocks. 

But in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, where rice is grown three times a year, farmers are barely breaking even as they collect the main paddy crop. With production costs surging, some growers are considering scaling back to just two crops, said Pham Van Nhut, a 63-year-old farmer in the southern province of Vinh Long. 

Some farmers in Thailand, meanwhile, have chosen not to harvest the rice crop that’s ready now or are delaying collection, leading to a decline in quality. The dry-season crop in March-April could fall by around 19% from the same year-earlier period, according to a March 31 report by the Bangkok-based Kasikorn Research Center. 

Planting for this year’s main crop in Thailand is due to start in weeks, and while it is unlikely that growers will halt production entirely, output will be limited by how much fertilisers can be procured, said Pramote Charoensilp, the president of the Thai Agriculturist Association, which represents tens of thousands of farmers across much of the country. 

With the disruptions set to last, farmers are seeking creative ways to reduce their dependence on imported fertilisers and fuel. Some are switching from rice to corn, which needs less water from diesel-fed irrigation machines. BRM, the company in Cambodia, is accelerating plans to scale up bio-organic fertiliser production and seeking suppliers of electric tractors and solar-powered water pumps to reduce fuel use. 

But options are limited for many others who depend on rice for their livelihoods, leaving them little alternative but to continue planting – even if that means absorbing losses. 

“We have no choice”, said Ruel Bantugan, a rice farmer in the Philippines’ Bataan province. “We just need to gamble and plant again, rather than leave the land idle”.

Ancestral Spirits Help Save a Crocodile Species

When village conservation teams find a Siamese crocodile nest in the Xe Champhone wetlands of central Laos, they move fast, collecting eggs within 24 hours before poachers, predators or floods can reach them. 

But before they touch the eggs, there’s a ritual, and offerings are made to the spirits. With the spirits appeased, villagers carry the eggs to hatch in the village, where the baby crocs’ chances of hatching are nearly five times higher than in the wild. 

Oudomxay Thongsavath, program manager at Wildlife Conservation Society and a native of the region, has been involved with the program since its start. He told Mongabay that locals make an offering and explain to the spirits, “We collect the egg, we incubate it in the village, and we return your children back to your area… Please take care of them. Make sure they are safe in the future when they go back to their habitat”. 

Of the world’s 27 crocodilian species, the Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis) is among just four classified as critically endangered. Fewer than 1,000 are thought to survive on the planet. 

Locals say that to harm a Siamese crocodile is to risk illness, misfortune or death. Not because the crocodiles are particularly dangerous (as crocodiles go), but because these scaly beings are the living embodiment of their ancestors. That spiritual connection to crocodiles, upheld for generations in a landscape stripped of most large wildlife, may be the single most important reason this species still exists here. A decade-long conservation program built on the cultural bedrock of that belief is restoring a globally significant population of this critically endangered crocodile species to central Laos. 

The heart of the conservation initiative is its head-starting program, in which village conservation teams are paid what WCS calls a “modest stipend” to collect wild eggs, hatch them in village facilities, and raise the young crocs past their most vulnerable stage before releasing them back into the wetlands. 

On March 19, the conservation team released 56 juvenile Siamese crocodiles back to the Xe Champhone wetlands. The program has released 294 individuals since 2013. Another 191 are being reared for future release. 

“This species is very strong for the culture in the area,” Oudomxay said. “They believe it protects the wetland and protects the community. If you do bad behavior in the wetland or speak not nicely, something can happen to that person. Can get sick. In big cases, can die”. 

“The people there still believe and they take this very seriously”, said Steve Platt, associate conservation herpetologist with WCS, who has helped lead the project since 2011. “That’s why those crocodiles are still there”.

It’s very hard to count crocodiles in the wild, but nest surveys from 2022 to 2024 suggest between 60 and 225 individuals inhabit the area, making this likely the largest remaining wild population in mainland Southeast Asia, according to a special report by the Crocodile Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority. 

Once widespread across mainland Southeast Asia, the Siamese crocodile was driven to the brink of extinction by illegal hunting for its skin and meat, government extermination campaigns, habitat loss, and mass collection for commercial farms. Now, the species occurs in very small populations in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Indonesia.

From mid-May through early August, village conservation teams, each comprising five to 20 local recruits, search for crocodile eggs. They examine microsites used by nesting females in years past and search for other suitable nesting habitats. Many nests are also found by team members engaged in their day-to-day lives while fishing, harvesting snails, or cultivating rice fields. 

Drones, deployed since 2022, have made nest surveys much more effective. “We can see the whole landscape and identify if the grass starts to dry or if a mound has been made,” Oudomxay said. “The drone is very good because it doesn’t disturb the crocodile, the sound is not very loud, so we can identify the mother and the nest clearly”. 

Clutch sizes average around 27 eggs, and the village teams often leave a small number of eggs, up to five, in the nest mound to “avoid offending the attending female crocodile”, according to the report. In 2025, the teams collected half of each clutch from a total of seven nests.

Once they locate the eggs, workers alert the main office, which quickly sends out research techs. At the site, they mark each viable egg and pack them in Styrofoam boxes with sand and nest material, and transport them to incubation facilities in the villages of Tan Soum and Dongyanong. The eggs incubate in ambient conditions for about 75 days. An estimated 53% of collected eggs hatch — a much higher rate than the 13% in the wild, where flooding and predators are the main causes of eggs failing to hatch. 

In 2025, the teams collected eggs from nine nests, incubated 114 viable eggs, and hatched 61. After hatching, the juvenile crocs grow in village pens for roughly 30 months, where they’re hand-fed fish, eels, frogs, and crushed golden apple snails. Once they reach about 75 centimeters (2.5 feet) in length, big enough to avoid most predators, they’re ready for release into the water. Here, they stay in submerged acclimation pens to adjust to their surroundings and have a safe retreat as they explore their new home. Gradually, over the course of weeks, they disperse to live out their lives in the wetlands. 

Releasing the young crocodiles back into the wetland is a significant event for the community. They hold a ceremony attended by government officials and members of neighboring communities, during which Buddhist monks bless the small reptiles as they enter the water. 

This year, on March 19th, 56 crocodiles were moved into bamboo-and-netting acclimation pens and gradually released. Another 191 await release, once they are big enough. 

“[The ceremony] focuses government attention on this, and they realize the significance of what they’re doing”, Platt said. “For the communities that house the facilities, it lets them see that the work they’re doing is important”.

Parallel efforts, led by a mix of NGOs and government agencies, are also seeing promising results in Cambodia and Thailand. In 2025, conservationists released 10 captive-bred Siamese crocodiles into Cambodia’s Virachey National Park. And 15 crocodiles were released in Khao Ang Rue Nai Wildlife Sanctuary in eastern Thailand. 

“Reintroduction efforts in Vietnam and Thailand are greatly restricted by habitat availability, and the ability to establish large populations is also restricted”, Charlie Manolis, co-chair of the IUCN’s Crocodile Specialist Group, who isn’t involved with the Laos project, told Mongabay. “In Cambodia and Laos, where habitat is still available, these countries are thus very important in a regional context for conservation of the species”. 

In Laos, one of the program’s most significant milestones, Platt said, came in 2022. A female crocodile, hatched from an egg collected in 2013, head-started and released in 2015, was found defending her own nest. It was the first confirmed breeding by a known-age, captive-reared Siamese crocodile there. She returned to the same nesting site in 2024 and again in 2025. 

“We’ve gone full circle. Which is great!” Platt said. “It took 10 years for that to happen. But when you work with long-lived animals, you don’t expect immediate results”.

Foreign Tourists Mistake Thai Funeral for Food Court

While looking for a place to sit and have refreshments, a group of foreign tourists in southern Thailand accidentally walked into a tented funeral area near a night market, mistaking it for a food court.

After being informed that the venue was hosting a funeral rather than serving food, the tourists appeared surprised and apologized before asking if they could remain there, Thai news outlet Thairath Online reported. 

The hosts agreed and went on to offer the tourists food and drinks, including Thai iced tea and traditional pastries, Singapore-based Channel News Asia reported. 

A video of the incident, which took place in Khanom District in Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, has since circulated widely online. It was first posted on Facebook on January 31 by Charantorn Chareomkiad, a family member of the deceased. 

In the clip, two Western men are seen sitting at a table arranged for funeral guests while a Thai woman serves them drinking water. 

Charantorn, who recorded the scene, can be heard joking in the background: "Let's ask them, do they think this is a buffet?" He then laughs as relatives continue serving food to the unsuspecting visitors. 

In Thailand, families of the deceased traditionally provide food and drinks to mourners and other attendees at funeral ceremonies as a way of expressing gratitude to guests and making merit on behalf of the deceased, Thai news site Thaiger reported. 

A similar misunderstanding occurred the following day when three siblings from the Netherlands entered the same funeral venue and attempted to order drinks and frozen cocktails, Thairath Online reported. They had mistaken the venue for an eatery after seeing people seated at tables. The visitors were surprised upon learning it was a funeral, but the hosts once again welcomed them and served them five plates and bowls of food, including curry. 

In another Facebook video of the second group of tourists posted on February 02, Charantorn wrote in the caption: "Foreigners came again, haha. This is a funeral! They asked whether it was a restaurant. Anyway, we served them food. They were surprised and happy".

Donald Trump’s 75-country US Visa Suspension Challenged

A group of United States citizens and immigrant rights bodies have launched a lawsuit seeking to challenge the sweeping suspension of immigrant visa processing for 75 countries by the administration of President Donald Trump.

The lawsuit, filed on Monday, argues that the Trump administration has relied on a false narrative to justify the visa processing suspension, one of the most substantial restrictions on legal immigration in the country’s history. 

The lawsuit charges that the policy “constitutes an unlawful nationality-based ban on legal immigration and a new set of discriminatory, unlawful public charge rules that strips families and working people of the process guaranteed by law”, according to a case overview by the National Immigration Law Center, which are among the groups supporting the legal challenge. 

The sprawling 106-page complaint further alleges that the administration relies “on an unsupported and demonstrably false claim that nationals of the covered countries migrate to the United States to improperly rely on cash welfare and are likely to become ‘public charges'”. 

The State Department has described the action, announced in mid-January, as a “pause” on immigrant visa processing on “countries whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates”. 

The department have not revealed the criteria it used to determine which countries were added to the list, which comes amid a wider effort to constrict legal immigration pathways into the US and to deport undocumented citizens from the country. 

According to a January 14 state department cable obtained by the Guardian, the sweeping list cuts across every major region of the world, spanning countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and eastern Europe. 

Amongst the affected countries include Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, Colombia, Cuba, Dominica, Egypt, Ethiopia, Fiji, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Mali, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Syria, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uruguay, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

Mixue Expands Footprint in US

A second Chinese beverage brand – the first was Luckin Coffee – expands its footprint in the United States.  

Mixue, known for serving ice cream, pure tea, fruit tea, milk tea, and freshly brewed coffee, opened its first store in Los Angeles, California on December 19. 

“Mixue is actively advancing its global strategy. Given the substantial market potential in the United States, the first store serves as a starting point”, the company said in a statement. 

Located at 6922 Hollywood Blvd Suite 107, menu pricing lists the brand’s signature ice cream at $1.19, iced lemonade at $1.99, lattes at $2.99, and bubble tea starting at $3.99, with most items priced between $1.19 and $4.99. 

Mixue has expanded internationally over several years since opening its first overseas store in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2018. There are approximately 45,000 stores across mainland China and 4,700 stores across 13 other countries, including Australia, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Its parent company, MIXUE Group, were included this year in Time magazine’s list of the “100 Most Influential Companies in the World", where they were the only restaurant chain recognized. 

“(They're) the biggest fast food chain you’ve likely never heard of – at least, if you live in the Western hemisphere", Time wrote. 

It was no "new year, new me" for Liverpool yesterday as they played out a dire 0-0 draw with relegation candidates Leeds United to kick off 2026 – with the same problems on show. 

Reds saw 66 percent of possession in a dominant first half, with nine shots on goal to Whites‘ two and 1.55xG, but their clinical edge was again lacking against a deep-sitting side determined to frustrate them.

Nothing consequential happened in the second half either; in fact, the English champs' performance went from bad to worse. Even the desperate introduction of two more attackers in Federico Chiesa and Rio Ngumoha in the 79th and 84th minutes respectively did little to improve the Reds’ run of play.

And sure, there might have been boos at Anfield at full time but a point means Liverpool still sit fourth in the Premier League table.

Flooded Restaurant Attracts Even More Diners

A restaurant in central Thailand was bursting with a stream of customers coming for a unique dining experience: Enjoying a meal while sitting in flood waters, surrounded by live fish they bring into the establishment. 

Since an adjacent river breached its banks 13 days ago, the flooded riverside restaurant has become an internet sensation, drawing customers keen to pose in the lapping brown water or toss fish food to photograph the feeding frenzy. 

Families enjoyed lunch at Pa Jit restaurant in Nakhon Pathom province, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from Bangkok, with enthralled toddlers gawping at the river fish flapping around their thighs. Wait staff in waders gingerly carried bowls of fish soup or chicken noodles from table to table. 

Pa Jit has been a riverside fixture for more than 30 years, said owner Pornkamol Prangprempree. When the restaurant was flooded the first time around four years ago, her heart sank. “I thought there would be no customer for sure”, she said. “But then there was a customer who posted online showing that there were fish. Then a lot of people flocked here to eat”. 

She said floods have boosted her business, with her profits doubling from around 10,000 baht ($309) to around 20,000 baht ($618) per day. 

Pa Jit can expect another few weeks of inundation, as high tides and the tail-end of the monsoon season keep water levels up. Though the flooding has brought an unusual boon to Pa Jit, it has devastated many other areas of Thailand. 

Since late July, twelve people were killed and two went missing due to flooding, according to data from the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation. On Friday, they reported that more than 480,000 people in 13 provinces, particularly in the north and the central, were affected by floods.

BYD's Fleet of Car Carriers

China's BYD completed their massive fleet of eight vessels and reached an annual transport capacity of over 1 million cars. The final car carrier to join the fleet, BYD Jinan, went into operation last week, the company announced on WeChat. 

The Shenzhen-based automaker completed the fleet in under two years. The first vessel, BYD Explorer No. 1, was delivered in January 2024. 

All the car carriers are RoRo ships, meaning they are designed to carry wheeled cargo – the vehicles roll on/roll off themselves without the need for containers. BYD ships have a capacity of 7,200 or 9,000 cars based on the type of vessel. 

Aside from the newly launched Jinan, all seven ships are already supplying the world with BYD products. BYD Hefei is currently unloading cars in Europe before returning to China. BYD Xi’an is expected to arrive in Barcelona, Spain later this week. BYD Shenzhen and Changsha are also on their way from China to Europe.

But BYD are not exporting just China-made cars. BYD Zhengzhou, with a capacity of 7,000 vehicles, brought BYD right-hand drive cars from Thailand to the UK this week and is now en route to unload in Belgium, according to MarineTraffic data. This is the first time BYD have exported cars from their Thailand plant. 

Thailand, unlike China, is not subject to EU countervailing tariffs imposed on Chinese EV makers after the EC concluded its anti-subsidy investigation last October. BYD are subject to an additional 17% tariff on top of the existing 10% tariff.

However, BYD don’t rely only on their Chinese plants for overseas sales. On July 01, BYD began production at their Brazilian plant, with the first Seagull hatchback rolling off the line. The automaker also built their first European car plant in Hungary; however, the Szeged facility is not yet operational, as the company have delayed mass production until 2026. BYD are also building an EV plant in Pakistan, which is scheduled to go into operation in 2026. In Uzbekistan, production already started in June 2024. 

All those plants are knock-down kits (KD), meaning the car is brought in as parts from China and assembled locally. BYD claim they want to achieve a high level of localisation.

BYD reportedly face declining sales in their domestic market, and only their overseas sales prevent a sharper fall. 

In August, the overseas sales grew 157% to 80,813 vehicles YoY, while China sales fell 22% to 284,005 cars for the BYD brand.

BYD plan to achieve 20% of their sales in 2025 from overseas markets, targeting the sale of 1 million vehicles outside China. In 2025 so far, January-September, BYD sold 697,072 vehicles outside their home country.

If you're interested to know:

6 Meals on a 3-Hour Flight

A routine three-hour flight from Chiang Mai, Thailand to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia turned into an unexpected all-you-can-eat buffet experience when one lucky passenger encountered what might be the most enthusiastic flight attendant in aviation history. 

The passenger, identified on Facebook as 靠北奥客, flying Malaysia Airlines flight MH773 on a Boeing 737-800, initially ordered just one meal – “Nasi Bunga Telang with Gulai Ayam” (traditional Kelantanese-style butterfly pea rice with Malay-style chicken curry – figuring he’d only have a small taste since he’d already eaten breakfast at his hotel. 

That’s when things got wonderfully out of hand. After finishing his first dish, the passenger heard the male flight attendant making rounds, asking other passengers if they wanted seconds. Everyone else politely declined. But when asked, our hungry hero said he’d be willing to “try a little more, though I might not finish it all”. 

Big mistake. Or maybe the best mistake ever. 

The flight attendant’s eyes apparently lit up like he’d found his target audience. What followed was a relentless parade of airline cuisine that would make any food lover weep with joy: 

• Meal #2: “Nyonya Asam Pedas Fish” (Malaysian Peranakan-style fish in spicy and tangy gravy) 
• Meal #3: Sambal shrimp coconut rice 
• Meal #4: Wonton Noodle served with honey BBQ chicken, fried shrimp wonton, mixed vegetables and barbecue sauce 
• Meal #5: Indian meal set 
• Meal #6: Baked Eggs with Hollandaise Sauce, accompanied by chicken sausage, potato cutlet, creamed spinach and cherry tomatoes 

Some of these dishes weren’t even supposed to be on this flight. The attendant was apparently serving surplus meals from the previous Kuala Lumpur to Chiang Mai route.

As if six main courses weren’t enough, the enthusiastic crew member also provided: 

• Two small cakes for every passenger 
• Honey lemon tea 
• Half a cup of pulled tea ("teh tarik") 
• Two bread rolls per person initially 
• A final care package of 10 hot bread rolls to take home 

The passenger admitted he was worried about being labelled a “difficult customer”, but the overwhelming Malaysian hospitality left him “stuffed to the brim” and oddly grateful. 

The story, shared on the “靠北奧客” (Complaining About Difficult Customers) Facebook page on September 16, 2025, has gone viral with netizens calling it everything from “eating from takeoff to landing” to “an all-you-can-eat flight experience” and declaring “this trip was totally worth it!” 

The post included photos of the "feast" and even showed the final haul of peanuts and dates collected across four different flight segments:

Donald Trump Really Believes He is Peacemaker-in-Chief

US President Donald Trump really believes he is the “peacemaker-in-chief”, even boasting he has ended six wars since he became president. Of course lah, Trump is playing fast and loose with the truth. As he often does. 

Trump and his administration have claimed to have helped settle the conflicts between Israel and Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Cambodia and Thailand, India and Pakistan, Serbia and Kosovo, and Egypt and Ethiopia. 

Yet the claim to have settled those conflicts is egregiously embellished and in some cases contradicted by continued violence in countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where both its government and Rwanda-backed rebels, M23, failed to sign a final peace accord in Doha, Qatar scheduled for Monday. 

In Iran, the US carried out its own strikes using bunker-buster bombs against military and nuclear facilities before strong-arming Iran to accept a ceasefire in June. The border conflict between Thailand and Cambodia saw a ceasefire reached in July that was mediated by Malaysia. India has denied that Trump played any role in reaching a ceasefire deal with Pakistan to end days of strikes over the disputed Kashmir territory in May. Egypt and Ethiopia have no deal to settle the root of their quarrel – a Nile River dam constructed by Ethiopia that would divert water from Egypt. And Serbia has denied it had any plans to pursue a war with Kosovo, although Trump took credit for preventing one. 

I've no doubt he is seriously eyeing the Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, he covets it!

Mystery Food Boxes Gaining Popularity in Singapore

In Singapore, artisanal bakery chain Baker & Cook’s “surprise bags” have become so popular among their loyal customers that some wait daily to snag one via a mobile app. 

Within the past year, the company has sold more than 17,000 of these bags, which contain unsold pastries that would otherwise be discarded due to their short shelf lives. They go for half the usual price and are curated by the bakery’s staff, who pack the orders based on what is available that day. Customers can then drop by in the evenings to collect their goodies from the outlet they ordered from. 

Baker & Cook’s Singapore head Seah Ern Xu said the biggest boon of this initiative is being able to reduce food waste. 

“Usually, for our croissants or pain au chocolat, these have to be thrown away after a day or two. But in this case, we can give it to a lucky guest, and they get to enjoy our quality bakes”, he told CNA. 

It is among several food businesses in Singapore that have jumped on the mystery box trend, selling surprise bundles of unsold food at a discount to bring in additional income and cut waste. 

An average of 750,000 tonnes of food waste was generated every year over the past five years, making up 11 percent of the country’s total waste. 

These food mystery boxes – mostly sold via mobile apps – are proving to be a hit. Yindii, an app that allows users to purchase surprise bags, has seen around 160,000 sign-ups since it launched in August last year. Users can buy bags at the end of each day, which contain surplus food from eateries sold at between 50 and 80 percent off the usual retail price. 

The app was founded in Thailand in 2020 before launching in Hong Kong about two years ago. Singapore is currently Yindii’s biggest market, said the brand’s country head of partnerships Terry Quek. 

On average, 70 to 80 percent of the surprise bags get snapped up every day. There are about 80 brands and more than 400 stores on the platform currently, including Baker & Cook. 

“We are looking to grow this tremendously because the demand is high, (but) it's also tricky for us, because it's our job to educate members of the public, our merchants and vendors, everybody about how they can recover costs and also prevent food wastage”, Quek added. 

“The problem we are having right now is trying to get a mindset shift on some of the merchants, because some of them are not (open) to such ideas”. 

Another similar platform, Treatsure, allows users to buy a box for S$10 ($8) and fill it up with food from hotel buffets up to an hour before closing time. 

Separately, the firm started their thrill box concept in January this year. They have seen a fivefold increase in demand for them since then, said Treatsure's CEO and co-founder Preston Wong. 

Users are offered a mystery concept where staff at restaurants and retail outlets will select food items for them to bring home. 

Wong said the surprise element can be a big draw for customers. 

“As you know, some other mystery blind boxes offer toys, but for us, we decided to apply it in the food space and give consumers that same surprise”, he added. 

Treatsure currently have 26 hotel partners and 10 food and beverage partners.

A Clash Over Colors

Cambodia's newly rebranded national carrier, Air Cambodia (formerly known as "Cambodia Angkor Air"), have inadvertently sparked a social media firestorm, with online users widely criticising their livery for their uncanny likeness to Thai Airways. 

The argument arose during Friday's launch of the airline's inaugural direct flight from Shenzhen, China, to Siem Reap, Cambodia, even as the airline defended their color choices as symbolic of Cambodian culture and royalty. 

The launch was a significant moment for the nation's tourism sector. A spokesperson for Cambodia's State Secretariat of Civil Aviation (SSCA) confirmed to the Phnom Penh Post that this direct connection is a first for Siem Reap, home to the iconic UNESCO World Heritage site of Angkor Wat, a hugely popular destination for Chinese tourists. Shenzhen, one of China's four largest cities, previously required tourists to transit via Phnom Penh. 

This new route is expected to significantly boost visitor numbers from China's Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau region, injecting new life into the "China-Cambodia Tourism Year 2025". 

However, it's the airline's aesthetics that have truly captured attention. Observers quickly pointed out that the aircraft's visual elements (including cabin crew uniforms, and even the company logo) all feature a distinctive purple hue, strikingly similar to Thai Airways. 

Air Cambodia, 51% owned by the Cambodian government, and the remaining shares held by Chinese state-owned enterprise Henan Airport Investment Group and Vietnam Airlines, explained that their use of dark purple symbolises the combination of blue (representing stability and tranquility) and red (denoting strength and passion). The golden yellow, they add, is the royal colour and a traditional symbol of prosperity in Cambodia. 

Note: Thai Airways, established in 1960, significantly predate Air Cambodia, which were founded in 2009. 

A high-profile Malaysian corruption suspect is allegedly living in China under a Greek name with a forged Australian passport, according to the investigative media outlet Brazen. 

Jho Low, a financier accused of being the mastermind of Malaysia's 1MDB case, is reportedly living in an upscale Shanghai neighbourhood under the alias Constantinos Achilles Veis. The businessman, who has maintained his innocence, previously held citizenship in Cyprus and the Caribbean island country of St Kitts and Nevis – both of which have been revoked. 

The Australian Federal Police and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade are yet to confirm whether they are aware of the case.