Compiled by TARRANCE TAN, C. ARUNO and R. ARAVINTHAN

       CHINESE athlete Gong Lijiao (pic), who recently became the first shot-putter from that country to have won gold in the Tokyo Olympics, said the song Courage by Malaysian singer Fish Leong gave her the strength to pursue her dreams, reported China Press.

       After the news was published, Leong, who is originally from Negri Sembilan, uploaded an acapella rendition of her song on social media while inviting Gong, 32, to sing it with her.

       “I hope I will get a chance to sing Courage with you,” Leong wrote.

       It was reported earlier that Gong achieved a personal best of 20.58m in the women’s shot-put event, winning the gold in the process.

       Not only did she become the first Chinese athlete to be crowned the Olympic champion in any field event, she also made history by becoming the first Asian to win an Olympic gold medal in the women’s shot-put.

       > Just two days after his arrest on suspicion of rape, Canadian-Chinese pop star Kris Wu’s social media presence was deleted, reported Sin Chew Daily.

       The 30-year-old’s Weibo account, which had a 51-million-strong following as at Aug 1, was taken down for “violations against Weibo’s community guidelines”, while streaming platforms including Douyin (China’s equivalent of TikTok), Douban and QQ Music, removed his music.

       It was earlier reported that 19-year-old student Du Meizhu accused Wu of date-raping her when she was 17, drawing widespread condemnation of the singer on Chinese social media and leading to luxury brands torpedoing deals with him.

       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.