Compiled by BENJAMIN LEE and C. ARUNO
TWO underaged brothers have been saved by Social Welfare Department (JKM) officers from being exploited in Banda Hilir, Melaka, reported Sinar Harian.
The siblings, aged 13 and 15, are believed to have been coerced by their mother to sing along the sidewalk of a shopping mall there from 8.30pm to 3am every day.
They earned up to RM10,000 a month from public donations.Melaka JKM director Zulkifli Hanifah said initial investigations found that the money earned by the brothers, who are still schooling, was used by their mother for the past four years while she was receiving JKM monthly assistance.
“We will take the two brothers to the JKM office and see if they can be placed in a welfare home or supervised under the Child Act 2001.“If deemed necessary, we will place them in a suitable welfare home so that they can live a normal life,” he told reporters after holding an operation to assist beggars in the area.
He said six others had also been rescued in the operation, including a minor who is believed to have been exploited, to beg for donations using a mascot costume.
> Actress Fasha Sandha has denied rumours of being pregnant, saying that her recent bout of vomiting was caused by food poisoning, reported Kosmo!.Fasha, or her full name Nur Fasha Sandha Hassan, 40, said she suffered severe food poisoning after eating at roadside stalls.
“Just a moment of pain and vomiting, not pregnant in case anyone wants to know. I ate the wrong food or drink bought by the roadside,” she wrote in an Instagram post on Jan 6.
She said she had mostly recovered from the ordeal and would be more careful about buying food from roadside stalls in the future.
Last month, Fasha said she was planning to undergo an in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedure. She was hoping to get a baby boy with her husband Aidil Aziz whom she married in 2019.
> The mother of veteran local singer Azian Mazwan Sapuan passed away yesterday, Berita Harian reported.
Azian said her mother, Maznah Mohamed, 71, had been suffering from various health complications for a long time before she was eventually hospitalised last week.
“She was discharged from hospital two days ago and at first, her condition seemed stable. However, her health deteriorated again and her oxygen level dropped.
“She then passed away while we were all at her side,” said the 49-year old.
She added that her mother would be buried at a cemetery in a village near Batu Buruk in Kuala Terengganu.
The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.
