Compiled by FAZLEENA AZIZ, C. ARUNO and R. ARAVINTHAN

       DEPUTY Education Minister Datuk Dr Mah Hang Soon has urged Chinese Studies undergraduates to concurrently enrol in teacher training to address the shortage of Chinese language teachers in the country, Sin Chew Daily reported.

       As at December 2021, there were 172 vacancies.

       He said he had contacted the persons in charge of Chinese Studies at several local universities to encourage their students to enrol in teacher training.

       Undergraduates who have completed the teacher training course, which lasts between nine months and a year and a half, are qualified to teach at secondary schools, he said.

       If they were to do it concurrently with their undergraduate studies, they would qualify by the time they graduate and could serve as Chinese language teachers immediately, he said.

       > A taxi driver in China’s Henan province was seen bowing to his vehicle, which was about to be scrapped, for the years it had served him faithfully, Sin Chew Daily reported.

       The touching gesture was seen in a video, which showed him kowtowing with his head touching the ground three times to “thank” the tool of his trade, which was then hooked on to a tow truck.

       According to the taxi driver, the car had served him for seven years and they had spent 800,000km together on the road.

       He said that he was grateful to the vehicle which had helped him keep his family fed all these years.

       The man’s gesture earned him much praise online, with many admiring the respect he had for his car.

       “I cried watching this. This vehicle not only helped him raise his family, it kept him and his passengers safe all these years. I can understand his feelings,” one Internet user wrote.

       > Veteran Hong Kong actress Maria Cordero recently got her second booster vaccine, China Press reported.

       The 68-year-old uploaded a photo of herself getting the shot on her Facebook profile on April 14 with a simple caption: “My fourth shot.”

       Many fans responded by praising her for being a good role model and wished her good health.

       She did not seem to have suffered any side effects as two days later on April 16, she appeared in a Facebook livestream of her cooking show.

       Cordero, who is fondly known as Fat Mama, has her own cooking show called Maria’s Kitchen.

       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.