ONE Championship featherweight champion Niko Carrillo knocked out Chinese newcomer Zhou Jieqiang in the second round during his debut kickboxing bout at ONE Fight Night 46, held on August 15 at Lumpinee Boxing Stadium (Rama Intra) in prime time for American audiences. The co-main event featured 27-year-old Niko Carrillo from Scotland making his first appearance under kickboxing rules in ONE, taking on 26-year-old Chinese newcomer Zhou Jieqiang. Carrillo controlled the bout from the start with aggressive striking before sending Zhou to the canvas with a knockout victory in the second round, marking an impressive debut in kickboxing competition.

Bangkok has been without a zoo since 2018. Its replacement is nearly builtLegacy300 rai of old Rangsit wetland, an hour north of the city, and the first free look lands sooner than you would think. Ask anyone who was in Bangkok before 2018 about Dusit Zoo and you will get a story. The swan boats on the lake. The queue at the hippo pool. That specific smell on a hot afternoon. Then it closed, and the city has been without a zoo ever since. Its replacement is now 92.54% built. Dusit Zoo shut in September 2018 after 80 years and the animals were moved out to zoos around the country. The plan was always to rebuild somewhere with room to breathe. That somewhere turned out to be Khlong 6 in Thanyaburi, Pathum Thani, on 300 rai of old Rangsit floodplain. Three times the size of the place it replaces. And built on an entirely different idea of what a zoo is for. Orangutans on climbing trees behind a glass viewing wall at the new Pathum Thani zoo, in an architect’s render. Image: zoothailand.org Almost nothing has bars The official framing is “Biodiversity Park” rather than zoo, which sounds like the sort of phrase a committee lands on. In this case it actually means something. Enclosures are separated from visitors by dry moats and water channels instead of fencing. The animal gets more ground and more cover. You get a sightline with nothing running through it. The renders show tapirs half-lost in forest, orangutans up real trees, a tiger stretched out by water at roughly your eye level. Whether it feels like that in 2029 is a different question. But the intent is unusually clear. A tiger resting by water in front of a viewing shelter at the new Pathum Thani zoo, in an architect’s render. Image: zoothailand.org Four continents on a floodplain Phase 2 is the ambitious half. Four continental zones: Asia, Africa, Australia and South America. Then waterfront landscaping, public space, utilities and a set of systems the operator is calling Smart Zoo. The architecture leans into the wetland rather than flattening it. A quietly good call, for a site that spent half of every year underwater. Koalas and birds in the Australian zone of the new Pathum Thani zoo, in an architect’s render. Image: zoothailand.org The part you actually want Phase 1 is 92.54% complete. The first public look is a free opening in April 2027. Full opening, all four zones, everything working, is pencilled in for early 2029. So no, not this year. Not next year either. But close enough to start paying attention. Leopards beside a waterfall in a rocky enclosure at the new Pathum Thani zoo, in an architect’s render. Image: zoothailand.org What it cost to get here Cabinet approved 10.97 billion baht across the whole project. Phase 1 broke ground in April 2023 at 5.54 billion baht, and phase 2 accounts for the remaining 4.34 billion. Eleven years will have passed between Dusit closing and the new zoo opening properly. That is a long gap for a country that runs on family travel. It goes some way to explaining why the design brief was allowed to be this big. Genuinely day-trip range Khlong 6 sits about an hour north of central Bangkok, traffic permitting. Out after breakfast, back for dinner, no hotel required. That matters more than it sounds. Most attractions on this scale ask you to commit a weekend to them. This one will not. The swan boats are not coming back. But from 2027, Bangkok gets somewhere to take the kids again. Would you drive out to Rangsit for it, or is an hour already too far? Tell us in the comments. Related news

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Images: zoothailand.org. Sources: Zoological Park Organization of Thailand, Kapook Travel, The Nation The story Bangkok has been without a zoo since 2018. Its replacement is nearly built as seen on Thaiger News.

Suriyan Lek Phetchyingyong, a prominent fighter with ONE Championship, was struck by a white van while jogging for training and sustained injuries on Khlong Prem Road in Samkok district, Pathum Thani province.

The incident occurred on the morning of August 15. Samkok police responded along with rescue volunteers and paramedics from Samkok Hospital to investigate the accident.

Upon arrival at the scene, officers found an injured person in athletic wear (black short-sleeved shirt and white boxer shorts) lying motionless in the grass beside the road. The person was later identified as 29-year-old Suriyan Thiannok, known as Suriyan Lek Phetchyingyong, a renowned Thai fighter currently gaining prominence in ONE Championship. Medical personnel provided initial first aid and transported him to hospital.

Nearby, a white Toyota van was found parked at the roadside with damage to the front left side, including a broken headlight and dented fender. The driver remained at the scene to give a statement to police.

Interviewed fellow boxers training with him recounted the harrowing incident: the three of them were running their regular training routine along the roadside, as Suriyan had a fight scheduled for August 21. Suddenly, the van accelerated and struck Suriyan forcefully from behind, causing his body to be thrown more than 20 meters off the road. The group immediately rushed to help and called police.

Initial physical examination at Samkok Hospital revealed no open wounds or broken bones, but due to head trauma, the athlete was transported to Siam Saint Carlos Hospital for comprehensive evaluation and monitoring. His training partners and gym owner closely followed his condition. Police initially summoned the van driver to Samkok Police Station for further questioning to determine the exact cause and proceed with legal action.

Amid heavy criticism of IF (induction furnace) steel in recent weeks, Amorn Ungsobporn, vice chairman of the Thai Induction Furnace Metal Casting Association, has come forward to address the facts from another angle.

Amorn raises a striking question: why is technology that is legally compliant and meets Thai Industrial Standard specifications being attacked so heavily? Is this really about using regulations to eliminate competitors and allow certain capital groups to monopolize the market?

1. Blaming IF Steel for Building Collapse

Amorn states that attempting to link the building collapse to IF steel is unfair and demoralizing to workers. Thailand's Prime Minister and four leading national institutions (the Department of Public Works and Town & Country Planning, AIT, Chulalongkorn University, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, and the Structural Engineers Association) have concluded clearly that the cause was "defective construction techniques and design" — specifically, reinforcement steel embedment depth at shear walls falling short of legal requirements — and had nothing to do with the steel material itself. The project contractor also issued a statement confirming construction followed approved plans and materials passed all inspection and approval checks. The Structural Engineers Association tested steel samples from the rubble and confirmed they met standards at 95 percent, proving the IF system was not the root cause of the structural failure.

2. Compliance with Standards Yet Discredited

The reality is that the Thai Industrial Standards Institute issued a research report as early as 2015 confirming that IF technology has the capacity to produce steel meeting Thai Industrial Standard specifications. Current law (Thai Industrial Standard 24-2559) explicitly requires IF furnace facilities to have scrap steel sorting systems and steel purification processes such as ladle furnaces or desulfurization and dephosphorization procedures. Operators following the rules completely have reduced sulfur to as low as 0.002 percent.

From a metallurgical engineering perspective, IF furnaces operate at melting temperatures of 1,500–1,700 degrees Celsius, so nitrogen gas does not decompose and steel has higher toughness and earthquake resistance. This differs from electric arc furnaces (EAF), which exceed 3,000 degrees Celsius and risk nitrogen contamination of 80–120 ppm, creating brittle "rock candy fracture" steel.

3. Distorting News About China's IF Ban

Amorn explains that State Council Document No. 6 from 2016 has been distorted. The reality is that the Chinese government aimed to cut excess steel capacity of 100–150 million tons, so it ordered a sweeping shutdown of all "unregulated mills" (ditiao gang) that evaded taxes and failed to meet standards, combined with overall steel industry capacity reduction. For mills that operated correctly to standard but had to close for excess capacity reduction, the Chinese government paid compensation. They did not specifically ban IF technology as claimed to justify trade barriers. Today, advanced IF furnaces paired with ladle furnaces remain widely used in the international market and in China's steel sector.

4. Non-transparent Rules Punishing Law-Abiding Operators

The clearest sign of unfairness and governance concern came on 4 August 2025, when the technical committee (Committee 84) set up to urgently revise standards included multiple representatives from competing industries but had "no representative from the IF furnace association or operators — not even one." Committee 84 voted 7–6 to restrict IF furnaces in steel bar production, with the majority voting to focus on production process rather than furnace type and pointing instead to product specifications.

At 11:30 p.m. on August 14, Nong Kham Police Station in Sri Racha District, Chon Buri Province, received a report of a cargo truck rolling downhill and striking the driver who was unloading at a warehouse in Sura Sak Subdistrict. A white Hino truck with a trailer, registered in Ayutthaya Province, was found crashed against a severely damaged warehouse wall. The body of Pongsak, a 59-year-old driver from Ayutthaya Province, was found at the scene. According to initial investigation, the truck began rolling downhill while the driver was unloading. The driver attempted to run and push the truck to stop it, but was unable to do so. The rolling truck struck him with force before crashing into the warehouse wall. The body has been sent for preliminary autopsy at Laem Chabang Hospital, and police are continuing to investigate the true cause of the accident.