Thousands of off-road motorcycles are being recalled over a braking defect that could cause serious injury or death from a crash, according to federal regulators.

KTM North America Inc., of Amherst, Ohio, is recalling about 21,040 GASGAS and Husqvarna off-road motorcycles in the U.S., the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Thursday. 

Another 4,140 were sold in Canada, according to the commission.

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Thousands of off-road motorcycles are being recalled over a braking defect. (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission)

The recall affects certain 2021 through 2024 GASGAS and Husqvarna off-road motorcycle models.

“The rear brake caliper can crack or break, reducing the brake system’s effectiveness, posing a risk of serious injury or death due to crash hazard,” the commission said in its notice.

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The recall affects 2021 through 2024 off-road motorcycles. (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission)

The GASGAS off-road motorcycles are red with the white GASGAS logo on both sides of the shrouds, while the Husqvarna motorcycles are white, blue and yellow with the Husqvarna logo on both sides of the shrouds.

The motorcycles were sold at GASGAS and Husqvarna authorized dealers from September 2020 to June 2023 for between $7,300 and $13,000.

The motorcycles were sold at GASGAS and Husqvarna authorized dealers from September 2020 to June 2023 for between $7,300 and $13,000. (Getty Images / Getty Images)

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Consumers are urged to stop riding the recalled motorcycles immediately and contact an authorized GASGAS or Husqvarna Motorcycle dealer to schedule a free repair at the dealership.

No injuries have been reported thus far in connection with the recalled motorcycles.

Dozens of people have accused TUI River Cruises of operating vessels with faulty facilities including persistently broken air conditioning, after they spent thousands of pounds on holidays.

Earlier this year passengers on the Skyla, a ship operated by TUI, contacted BBC Your Voice to say they had been stranded in Budapest during a heatwave with little to no air conditioning.

Following that report more people got in touch to say they faced similar problems on both the Skyla and its sister vessel, the Isla. They criticised TUI’s customer service and said the refunds offered were inadequate.

TUI apologised to customers where trips “fell short of the standards we aim to deliver”.

A spokesperson for TUI, said: “We understand the disappointment and frustration caused to affected customers.”

Passengers described stifling conditions as well as problems with plumbing after paying thousands of pounds for European cruises, including on the Danube River.

Andy Peach and his wife booked a seven-day trip on the Skyla in June, travelling through Budapest, Vienna and Linz.

It turned out to be “the worst TUI holiday we’ve ever been on”, he said.

Instead of air conditioning, Peach said there were “big blowers” on board, expelling hot air.

“One was in the middle of the corridor, blocking the exit,” he said. “It didn’t seem to cool the place down.”

Temperatures onboard climbed as the holiday went on leaving him “exhausted”, he said. By the end of the week, Peach said the air conditioning in cabins had broken too.

On the second-to-last day passengers were transferred to hotels, which Peach said were “really basic”.

He and his wife had paid nearly £4,000 for the holiday but they were offered only £300 as a refund and given 72-hours to accept it.

He said: “TUI know there’s problems on these boats, but continue to sell them to people as a full luxury cruise.”

Pizza Hut is temporarily dropping “Pizza” from its name as the restaurant chain leans into football season while its parent company moves ahead with a multibillion-dollar sale of the iconic brand.

The chain said this week that it will go by “Hut” for the next 25 weeks, coinciding with the 2026 NFL season.

“You can just call us HUT for the next 25 weeks,” Pizza Hut wrote in a social media post announcing the temporary rebrand.

The company showed off the change at a restaurant in Plano, Texas, where a banner featuring a football covered the word “Pizza” on the location’s exterior sign. Pizza Hut, which is headquartered in Plano, also changed its social media profile images to a logo without the word “Pizza.”

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The football-themed marketing push comes at a pivotal time for Pizza Hut, as parent company Yum! Brands moves ahead with plans to sell the iconic restaurant chain.

FOX Business reported in June that Yum! was in exclusive talks with private equity firm LongRange Capital over a potential sale of Pizza Hut. At the time, no agreement had been reached, and LongRange was among several firms that had explored acquiring the chain.

Yum! later announced that LongRange agreed to acquire Pizza Hut’s operations outside mainland China for approximately $1.5 billion, while Yum China Holdings agreed to purchase the chain’s mainland China operations in a separate $1.2 billion deal.

The transactions value the operations at a combined $2.7 billion, with Yum! expecting approximately $2.3 billion in net proceeds.

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The football-themed marketing push comes at a pivotal time for Pizza Hut. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images / Getty Images)

“Under LongRange and Yum China, Pizza Hut will be well positioned for future growth with ownership that brings deep expertise in the restaurant industry,” Yum! CEO Chris Turner said.

“Pizza Hut was built by the passion and dedication of our team members, employees and franchisees, and we’re excited for the next chapter.”

The sale follows a prolonged period of pressure on Pizza Hut’s U.S. business. FOX Business reported in June, citing Reuters, that Pizza Hut generated about 12% of Yum!’s revenue in 2025 and had posted declining U.S. comparable sales for 10 consecutive quarters.

Yum! had been evaluating strategic alternatives for Pizza Hut, including a potential sale, as the chain worked to reverse its sales slump.

Pizza Hut says it will go by “Hut” for the next 25 weeks, coinciding with the 2026 NFL season.

LongRange emerged as a potential buyer after Apollo Global Management and Sycamore Partners were also reported to have explored bids for Pizza Hut.

Yum! said earlier this month that the sale remained on track to close in August.

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The “Hut” branding, however, isn’t permanent. After its 25-week football promotion ends, Pizza Hut is expected to return to the name consumers have known for decades.

FOX Business’ Bradford Betz contributed to this report.

Nearly six months after US President Donald Trump vowed a swift victory over Iran, the conflict appears to be at a standstill, with prospects of a military victory or negotiated settlement growing dimmer.

To break the deadlock, Trump has vowed an “economic D-Day” under which any country that does business with Iran would face “tremendous” economic consequences.

Iran, however, has long faced sanctions and has so far shown a willingness to endure pain and a capacity to adapt to immense economic and military pressure as the conflict drags on.

The key question for the US then becomes, will further sanctions work where other strategies have failed?

The exact mechanics of the new US economic pressure campaign remain unclear, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promising to reveal them in a news conference on 24 August.

But in an interview with CNBC, Bessent made clear that the US is willing to take action against any country – friend or foe – that it believes is extending a lifeline to Iran.

“You are either with us or against us,” he said. “If you insist on doing business with [Iran], either transferring money, buying their oil or doing seaborne sea transfers, then the US treasury and the US government… will put its full might and force toward enforcing against you.”

Vice-President JD Vance has described the sanctions as a “new phase” of the conflict in which economic pressure is the “most effective” tool available to the US.

“They’re going to try to apply economic pressure to us, but what has been true over the last couple of weeks is that they felt a lot more pressure than we have,” Vance said on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show.

“We’re going to keep that going because we think that’s the best way to ultimately achieve the final objective,” he added.

Iran has faced significant US sanctions since nearly the beginning of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

The economic pressure campaign intensified after the first Trump administration withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a 2015 pact between world powers and Iran to curb its nuclear programme.

And in the current conflict, the US government has already announced Operation Economic Fury, a two-pronged US economic campaign combining US treasury-co-ordinated sanctions against regime financial flows and a naval blockade against Iranian ports.

Imran Bayoumi, a geostrategy expert with the Atlantic Council in Washington DC and former policy adviser to the defence department, told the BBC the latest announcement was likely the result of mounting frustration that other options have not delivered the results Trump wants.

“This is really a recognition that the US is almost stuck in this war,” he said. “It’s another try at economic pressure.”

“This is just another tool that the US is using,” Bayoumi added. “We’ve not seen a clear strategy laid out by the administration with either military or economic tools. The question of what the US is trying to achieve is still unanswered.”

Michael Parker, an eight-year veteran of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and expert on economic sanctions, said the new strategy will likely represent an effort to “expand the economic blast radius” of sanctions by targeting third countries that still deal with Iran, but have economies that depend on the US dollar.

“Thus far, the US has largely used the threat of these secondary sanctions against foreign financial institutions to encourage compliance with sanctions policy,” he said.

“But this is a lever that is sort of unexplored insofar as targeting anything touching the US dollar that is also touching Iran,” Parker added.

As an example, Parker pointed to foreign financial institutions that help Iran evade sanctions, or directs money towards Iranian coffers.

How Iran would respond to these moves remains unclear, but sanctions experts say that Iran has so far proved adept at using irregular channels to circumvent sanctions – such as “shadow” vessels transporting oil or new commercial fronts unlisted by US sanctions.

“You keep seeing new names popping up, because Iran is adapting really quickly,” said Mohammed Hammouda, an export control and sanctions manager at the London Stock Exchange. “Whatever sanctions one does, they find a new road [around it].”

These Iranian counter-moves, he added, often leave those charged with enforcing compliance playing a game of catch-up.

“Sanctions are all on paper, but the hard work is behind the scenes,” Hammouda added. “There are teams worldwide trying to impose sanctions and identify those parties involved, which is why Iran has to try to adapt.”

How effective these sanctions are will largely be determined by how the countries that are ultimately targeted – which could include US allies like Turkey and Iraq, as well as China – react.

“Some of this is out of Iran’s hands,” Parker said. “Iran’s ability to evade or avoid sanctions is, in large part, contingent on other countries and financial institution’s willingness to give them [Iran] access to the formal banking system.”

Parker believes that the sanctions are “only as powerful” as the willingness of targeted countries to comply with American foreign policy objectives, or face potentially painful sanctions on trade involving the US dollar.

Some experts question whether that willingness currently exists.

“I can’t really see China agreeing to that, for example,” Bayoumi said. “These states have all been able to navigate their own interests with the Trump administration.”

“The underlying point is that this is just another tool,” he added. “But the broader question of strategy remains. Absent that, I’m not sure this is going to change anything long term.”

International sales no longer belong only to large companies with overseas offices and dedicated regional teams. Smaller manufacturers, exporters, e-commerce businesses and professional services firms can now speak directly with prospects across multiple markets, often using the same messaging apps their customers already use every day.

WhatsApp is one of those channels, but using it for business becomes harder as enquiry volumes increase. Conversations become scattered across different sales representatives, follow-ups are easy to miss and managers have limited visibility into who is speaking to which customer. A WhatsApp CRM adds more structure by connecting conversations with customer records, ownership, follow-up activity and team workflows.

For growing businesses, that shift matters. WhatsApp can remain a convenient communication channel while becoming part of a more organised sales process.

WhatsApp Often Becomes a Sales Channel Before Businesses Plan for It

Many companies do not deliberately decide to build a WhatsApp sales operation.

It simply happens.

An overseas buyer asks for a catalogue and wants to continue the conversation on WhatsApp. A distributor sends a message after meeting the company at a trade show. A prospect asks for a quotation. A salesperson follows up after an enquiry from the website.

Over time, more customer communication moves into WhatsApp because it is fast and familiar.

The problem is that the process often grows without any structure around it.

One salesperson has customer conversations on one account. Another salesperson uses a different account. Important information may remain inside chat histories, spreadsheets or personal notes.

This can work when there are only a few enquiries.

It becomes much more difficult when the business has multiple representatives, hundreds of leads and customers spread across several countries.

The Real Problem Is Not Messaging, It Is Follow-Up

Most sales opportunities are not won in the first conversation.

A buyer may ask for information today, request pricing next week and need another follow-up a month later.

B2B sales cycles can be even longer.

A manufacturer might speak with a potential distributor several times before sending samples. A procurement team may need internal approval before responding to a quotation. An overseas customer may disappear for several weeks before returning with a revised requirement.

WhatsApp makes these conversations easy to start.

It does not automatically create a reliable follow-up process.

Without a CRM structure, salespeople may depend on memory, starred messages, spreadsheets or personal reminders.

That creates predictable problems:

• promising leads are forgotten;
• several employees contact the same buyer;
• there is no clear customer owner;
• managers cannot see which enquiries are still active;
• follow-ups depend too heavily on individual habits;
• customer context becomes difficult to transfer between employees.

A CRM helps turn the conversation into a process rather than leaving it as another unread message in an inbox.

International Sales Add Another Layer of Complexity

Domestic sales teams may already struggle with fragmented conversations.

International teams have additional challenges.

Different Time Zones

A customer in Europe may send a message while a salesperson in Asia is offline.

If the team relies completely on manual responses, leads can wait hours before receiving even a basic acknowledgement.

Automated replies and scheduled follow-ups can help maintain communication outside normal working hours while leaving important conversations for a salesperson to continue later.

Different Languages

A salesperson may be experienced at selling a product but less confident communicating in the buyer’s language.

Copying every message into a separate translation tool adds friction and increases the possibility of losing context.

Real-time translation inside the sales workflow can make everyday conversations easier, particularly when teams handle enquiries from several markets.

It does not eliminate the need to review sensitive or highly technical wording, but it can make routine communication much faster.

Multiple WhatsApp Accounts

International teams frequently operate more than one WhatsApp account.

There may be separate numbers for different countries, sales representatives, brands or departments.

Without central management, employees spend time switching accounts and customer information remains fragmented.

A multi-account CRM approach can give managers and team members a clearer view of conversations and ownership without forcing every customer relationship into an isolated inbox.

Customer Information Should Belong to the Business

There is another issue that growing businesses sometimes discover too late.

Customer relationships often become closely tied to individual salespeople.

A representative may have months or even years of WhatsApp conversations with buyers. They know previous quotations, product preferences, objections and follow-up history.

When that employee changes roles or leaves the company, transferring the relationship can be difficult.

The new account owner may receive a phone number and customer name but little context about what happened before.

Centralising customer records and conversation history reduces that dependency on individuals.

For management, this is not only about efficiency.

It is also about protecting a business asset.

Customer relationships developed through company time, marketing and sales activity should remain accessible to the organisation even when employees change.

AI Is Most Useful When It Removes Repetitive Sales Work

AI is becoming part of many CRM systems, but its value depends on what it actually removes from the salesperson’s workload.

The strongest use cases are usually repetitive tasks.

A salesperson may answer the same questions about product availability, shipping, minimum order quantities or company information dozens of times.

They may also spend time:

• writing similar follow-up messages;
• checking which leads need another response;
• translating routine conversations;
• searching previous chats for customer context;
• answering basic questions outside working hours.

AI-assisted replies, knowledge-based chatbots and automated follow-up can reduce some of this work.

The objective should not be to remove salespeople from the conversation.

It should be to let them spend more time on the conversations where judgement, negotiation and relationship building actually matter.

Better Visibility Helps Sales Managers Too

WhatsApp can feel highly productive from the salesperson’s perspective while remaining almost invisible to management.

A manager may know that the team is busy but still struggle to answer basic questions:

Which leads are active?

Who owns each customer?

Which prospects are waiting for a quotation?

How many enquiries have not been followed up?

What happens when a salesperson goes on leave?

Which customer conversations are generating progress?

Once WhatsApp activity is connected to customer records, assignments and follow-up information, managers have a clearer view of the sales process.

This does not mean monitoring every message.

It means having enough visibility to manage workload, identify missed opportunities and ensure customers are not forgotten.

The CRM Should Match How the Business Actually Sells

A company does not necessarily need to replace its entire technology stack simply because WhatsApp has become important.

The right approach depends on how sales already work.

For some businesses, WhatsApp is only one of several communication channels connected to a larger CRM.

For others, particularly exporters and international B2B teams, WhatsApp is where most customer conversations actually happen.

In that situation, using a WhatsApp CRM for international sales such as WADesk can make more sense than building a complicated process around separate messaging, translation, lead tracking and follow-up tools.

WADesk brings customer conversations, multiple WhatsApp accounts, lead management, AI assistance, real-time translation and team collaboration into the same workspace. It also supports workflows for identifying potential overseas buyers and managing them through subsequent WhatsApp communication.

The important point is not how many features a platform offers.

It is whether those features remove friction from the way the sales team already works.

When Does a Business Need More Than WhatsApp Business?

Not every company using WhatsApp needs a CRM.

A small business with one account, one salesperson and a manageable number of customer conversations may be perfectly comfortable with WhatsApp Business.

The need for additional structure usually becomes clear through operational symptoms.

For example, the business may be ready for a CRM when:

• several employees are handling WhatsApp enquiries;
• multiple accounts need to be managed;
• leads regularly require several follow-ups;
• managers cannot easily see customer ownership;
• staff are maintaining separate spreadsheets alongside WhatsApp;
• customers communicate in several languages;
• conversation history is difficult to transfer between employees;
• missed or duplicate responses are becoming common.

At that stage, the challenge is no longer simply sending messages.

It is managing customer relationships at scale.

Growing Internationally Without Adding Unnecessary Complexity

Small and medium-sized businesses have a particular challenge when expanding overseas.

They need more process, but they rarely want more administration.

Adding a new system only makes sense if it removes more work than it creates.

That is why WhatsApp CRM is becoming relevant to growing international businesses. It adds structure around a communication channel employees and customers are already using rather than forcing both sides into an entirely new way of working.

The sales team can continue speaking with buyers through WhatsApp.

The difference is what happens behind those conversations.

Leads can have owners. Follow-ups can be tracked. Customer history can remain with the company. Managers can gain visibility. Routine tasks can be automated. Language barriers can become easier to manage.

Final Thoughts

WhatsApp has made international customer communication faster, but faster messaging does not automatically create a better sales process.

As enquiry volumes, team sizes and overseas markets grow, businesses need a clearer way to organise the customer relationships behind those conversations.

A WhatsApp CRM can provide that structure without removing the convenience that made WhatsApp useful in the first place.

For growing exporters, manufacturers and other international businesses, the opportunity is straightforward: keep the conversation simple for the customer, while making the process behind it much easier for the sales team to manage.

The Thai banking system remains resilient with robust levels of capital, loan loss provisions, and liquidity. In the second quarter of 2026, overall loan growth in the banking system (licensed banks and their subsidiaries) grew by 2.0% year-on-year, driven primarily by lending to large corporate in line with increased demand for working capital to absorb the impact of higher energy and raw material costs.

Meanwhile, SMEs and consumer loans continued to contract, reflecting persistently high credit risks. On loan quality, NPL (Stage 3¹) declined to 534.8 billion baht in the second quarter of 2026, mainly reflecting banks’ intensified efforts to manage problem loans. As a result, The NPL ratio remained stable at 2.82%, close to the level observed at the onset of the conflict in the Middle East. Stage 2 loans² declined to 6.78%, partly due to the migration of vulnerable borrowers into NPL status, while some borrowers previously classified as significant increase in credit risk (SICR) showed improved credit quality. At the same time, commercial banks have continued to provide support through pre-emptive debt restructuring, which has helped contain NPL formation. 

In terms of financial performance, net profits of the commercial banking system increased from the same period last year, driven mainly by higher fair value gains on financial instruments and increased securities brokerage fee income. This was complemented by lower provisioning expenses, following relatively substantial provisioning in previous periods, as well as improved operating cost management. These factors helped offset the decline in net interest income following lending rate reductions in line with the policy rate direction and continued borrower assistance.

Going forward, ongoing uncertainty related to the conflict in the Middle East and the uneven recovery of the Thai economy could continue to weigh on borrowers’ debt-servicing capacity, particularly among vulnerable SMEs and households facing income volatility and higher living costs. In this regard, close monitoring of commercial banks’ asset quality remains warranted. Nevertheless, government measures to alleviate debt burdens and continued liquidity support from financial institutions are expected to help cushion the impact on businesses and households.

Source : https://www.bot.or.th/en/news-and-media/news/news-20260818.html