Compiled by MARTIN CARVALHO, C. ARUNO and R. ARAVINTHAN
A WEEK-LONG operation to find a missing 13-year-old in China’s Anhui province was called off after she was safely located – calmly playing mobile games in her grandmother’s empty home.
The girl’s mother said she had confiscated her daughter’s phone after a teacher complained that the teenager often fell asleep in class.
Suspecting she had been staying up late gaming, the mother took away the device.
Upset, the girl ran away from home on Oct 18, taking her phone and a power bank with her, China Press reported.
Her parents and local rescue teams in Fuyang city embarked on a search, combing nearby hills and the countryside while reviewing bus stop surveillance footage but to no avail.
After a week without any leads, the family began to fear the worst. It was then that a relative suggested checking the grandmother’s unoccupied old house.
When the parents arrived, they found their daughter safe, and engrossed in her mobile games.
The girl has since returned to school, and her mother has installed parental controls to limit her screen time.
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.
