Malaysia: Time to explore and enjoy
Malaysia has so much to offer, whether you're visiting on a business trip or attending a conference. Beyond your professional agenda, you'll find plenty to explore and enjoy. From its diverse and delicious cuisine to world-class shopping, your itinerary is bound to be full. Just be sure to carve out some time to relax and unwind before heading home.
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Al Jazeera
8 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Why are ice cream prices soaring this summer?
Staying cool just got a little more expensive this summer. The price of coconut oil, a key ingredient in ice cream, has soared in 2025. Looking ahead, further price gains are likely as demand continues to outpace supply. At the end of May, the wholesale price for Philippine coconut oil delivered in Rotterdam, an industry benchmark, reached $2,800 a tonne, roughly twice as much as the year before. Adverse weather in Indonesia and the Philippines, which together account for three-quarters of global coconut oil supplies, has negatively affected production. Ice cream prices, in turn, have risen. According to an analysis by RIFT, a British business consultancy, United Kingdom supermarket ice lollies and cones shot up by 7.6 percent in May. Due to its high melting point, coconut oil keeps industrially made ice cream solid for longer at room temperature. Crucially for food companies, it does so without affecting ice cream's flavour and texture. The global ice cream industry, worth $81bn in 2024, is now paying close attention to the market dynamics affecting coconut prices. Coconuts are found in the tropics, where they benefit from lots of rain and sunshine. But the El Nino weather pattern, which produces warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures across the Pacific, led to drier weather across Southeast Asia, particularly from June last year to October. During that period, coconut farms suffered from extreme heat and droughts. Because coconuts take a year to grow, last year's weather pattern has meant that palm trees have yielded less fruit than normal in 2025, reducing supply. The United States Department of Agriculture expects that unfavourable weather conditions will see global coconut oil production fall to 3.6 million tonnes in 2024-2025, down 5 to 10 percent from the previous season. Output is also likely to stay low in the 2025-2026 season, according to analysts. In October, the Philippine government mandated blending larger amounts of coco methyl ester, a fatty derivative of coconut oil, with diesel to produce biodiesel. Until recently, the impact of the coconut-for-diesel policy was limited. A blending target of 1 percent was introduced in 2007 and then 2 percent from 2009. But that changed last year, when Manila hiked the target to 3 percent. The government announced a further jump to 4 percent by late 2025 and 5 percent by the end of 2026. A 1-percentage-point increase requires an extra 900 million coconuts for the biofuels market, raising demand and prices. Last year, Philippine Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said: 'Implementing the higher biofuels blend is a win-win solution as we promote economic growth, uphold environmental stewardship and strive for cleaner energy utilisation.' If the Philippine government carries out its plan, it will use 4.5 billion coconuts to generate the 500 million litres of coco methyl ester necessary to meet the biodiesel target by 2026. That would amount to nearly one-third of the country's annual crop of 15 billion coconuts. For context, the US diverts about 40 percent of its annual corn crop into its bioethanol, a fuel made primarily from fermented cornstarch designed to lower greenhouse gas emissions. In an effort to maintain profit margins and contain costs, increasing numbers of chocolate makers have started reformulating products with cocoa substitutes. One of those is coconut oil. In December, the US ICE cocoa futures contract surged to a record $12,931 per tonne, up a staggering 177 percent from the same period the year before. Since then, prices have come down but continue to remain elevated. The high price of cocoa – currently trending about $10,000 per tonne – continues to be supported by crop shortages and resilient consumer demand for cocoa-based products, especially chocolate. Coconut oil is an established alternative for cocoa butter, particularly in vegan or dairy-free chocolate recipes. And even at its elevated price, coconut oil is still cheaper than cocoa. 'I expect many confectionery and chocolate makers to substitute cocoa for coconut oil in the near term,' Felipe Pohlmann Gonzaga, a Switzerland-based commodity trader, told Al Jazeera. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram have become another source of demand. In recent years, coconuts have been extolled by celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Kourtney Kardashian for their nutritional benefits. Wellness Mama, a popular healthcare website, lists 101 uses for coconuts, including as a treatment for insomnia, heartburn, cuts, acne, haemorrhoids, mosquito bites and sunburn. In the makeup and beauty market, coconut oil is seen as a natural and environmentally friendly alternative to palm oil. Here too, industrial consumption is rising. While the health benefits of coconut oil continue to be questioned, this niche source of demand is rising. And although they wouldn't have a big impact on their own, health-conscious buyers are entering an already tight market, lifting prices. Despite coconut oil's growing popularity, expanding production is a difficult task. 'Unlike with other crops, coconut farmers can't simply add acres in response to higher prices,' Pohlmann Gonzaga says. 'It takes at least a year for the trees to reach maturity and production. Deforestation concerns and environmental laws also make expansion difficult,' he added. Like palm fruit, coconuts grow on trees in tropical areas where forests would have to be removed to plant more trees. 'The European Union deforestation regulation, for instance, inhibits the destruction of biodiverse forests in order to import monoculture crops,' Pohlmann Gonzaga said. He also pointed out that 'we're moving from El Nino to La Nina, which tends to bring more flooding in Southeast Asia. So planting, harvests and logistics will be impacted.' With demand for coconuts likely to remain firm and supplies constrained, he added that he does not expect the prices to come down anytime soon. 'We can expect ice cream prices to be high this summer and stay high next year,' he said. 'For ice cream lovers out there, it may be time to start looking at fruit-based sorbet substitutes.'
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Al Jazeera
Photos: Myanmar's traditional sport endangered by war and rattan shortage
Mastering control of the ever rising and falling rattan chinlone ball instils patience, a veteran of Myanmar's traditional sport says. 'Once you get into playing the game, you forget everything,' 74-year-old Win Tint says. 'You concentrate only on your touch, and you concentrate only on your style.' Chinlone, Myanmar's national game, traces its roots back centuries. Described as a fusion of sport and art, it is often accompanied by music and typically sees men and women playing in distinct ways. Teams of men form a circle, passing the ball among themselves using stylised movements of their feet, knees and heads in a game of 'keepy-uppy' with a scoring system that remains inscrutable to outsiders. Women, meanwhile, play solo in a fashion reminiscent of circus acts – kicking the ball tens of thousands of times per session while walking tightropes, spinning umbrellas and balancing on chairs placed atop beer bottles. Participation has declined in recent years with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by the 2021 military coup and subsequent civil conflict. Poverty is on the rise, and artisans face mounting challenges in sourcing materials to craft the balls. Variants of the hands-free sport, colloquially known as caneball, are played widely across Southeast Asia. In Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, participants use their feet and heads to send the ball over a net in the volleyball-style game 'sepak takraw'. In Laos, it is known as 'kataw' while Filipinos play 'sipa', meaning kick. In China, it is common to see people kicking weighted shuttlecocks in parks. Myanmar's version is believed to date back 1,500 years. Evidence for its longevity is seen in a French archaeologist's discovery of a replica silver chinlone ball at a pagoda built during the Pyu era, which stretched from 200 BC to 900 AD. Originally, the sport was played as a casual pastime, a form of exercise and for royal amusement. In 1953, however, the game was codified with formal rules and a scoring system, part of efforts to define Myanmar's national culture after independence from Britain. 'No one else will preserve Myanmar's traditional heritage unless the Myanmar people do it,' player Min Naing, 42, says. Despite ongoing conflict, players continue to congregate beneath motorway flyovers, around street lamps dimmed by wartime blackouts and on purpose-made chinlone courts – often open-sided metal sheds with concrete floors. 'I worry about this sport disappearing,' master chinlone ball maker Pe Thein says while labouring in a sweltering workshop in Hinthada, 110km (68 miles) northwest of Yangon. 'That's the reason we are passing it on through our handiwork.' Seated cross-legged, men shave cane into strips, curve them with a hand crank and deftly weave them into melon-sized balls with pentagonal holes before boiling them in vats of water to enhance their durability. 'We check our chinlone's quality as if we're checking diamonds or gemstones,' the 64-year-old Pe Thein says. 'As we respect the chinlone, it respects us back.' Each ball takes about two hours to produce and brings business-owner Maung Kaw $2.40. But supplies of the premium rattan he seeks from Rakhine state in western Myanmar are becoming scarce. Fierce fighting between military forces and opposition groups that now control nearly all of the state has made supplies precarious. Farmers are too frightened to venture into the jungle battlegrounds to cut cane, Maung Kaw says, which jeopardises his livelihood.
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Al Jazeera
Vietnam scraps two-child policy to combat falling birthrate
Vietnam has scrapped its longstanding two-child policy as it aims to reverse its declining birthrate and ease the pressure from an ageing society. All restrictions were removed this week, and couples will be free to have as many children as they choose, according to Vietnamese media. Minister of Health Dao Hong Lan said that a future shrinking population 'threatens Vietnam's sustainable economic and social development, as well as its national security and defence in the long term,' the Hanoi Times reported. Between 1999 and 2022, Vietnam's birthrate was about 2.1 children per woman, the replacement rate needed to keep the population from shrinking, but the rate has started to fall, the news outlet said. In 2024, the country's birthrate reached a record low of 1.91 children per woman. Regional neighbours like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong all have declining birthrates, but their economies are more advanced than Vietnam's. Vietnam's working-age population is expected to peak around 2040, according to the World Bank, and it aims to avoid the trap of 'getting old before it gets rich'. The country's communist government introduced the two-child policy in 1988 to ensure it had adequate resources as it transitioned from a planned to a market economy. At the time, Vietnam was also still overcoming the effects of decades of war. Vietnam's two-child policy was most strictly enforced with members of Vietnam's Communist Party, according to the Associated Press, but families everywhere could lose out on government subsidies and assistance if they had a third or fourth child. As well as a declining birthrate, Vietnam is also facing significant imbalances across different regions and social groups, the Ministry of Health said. The declining birthrate is most pronounced in urban areas such as Ho Chi Minh and the capital Hanoi, where the cost of living is highest. But there are also significant disparities in gender. Last year, Vietnam's sex ratio at birth was 111 boys to every 100 girls. The disparity between male and female births is most pronounced in North Vietnam's Red River Delta and the Northern Midlands and Mountains, according to the World Bank, and lowest in the Central Highlands and Mekong River Delta. Vietnam prohibits doctors from telling parents the sex of their children to curb sex-selective abortions, but the practice continues, with doctors communicating via coded words, according to Vietnamese media. Left unchecked, the General Statistics Office warned there could be a 'surplus of 1.5 million men aged 15-49 by 2039, rising to 2.5 million by 2059'. In a bid to reverse this trend, the Health Ministry separately proposed tripling the fine for 'foetal gender selection' to about $3,800.
