A news portal recently caused a stir after allegedly claiming that Malaysia’s very first angkasawan, Datuk Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor chalked up more than RM1 million in income through a series of talks to corporate companies.

According to the source, a total of 150 companies which invited Muszaphar for talk were billed RM8,000 per hour, and this summed up to a total earnings of RM1.2 million.

Muszaphar and family has denied the allegation. According to him, he has only given talks to 200 schools and less than 10 companies nationwide.

Dr Sheikh Muszaphar is presently under contract with the government, together with angkasawan-in-waiting, Dr Faiz Khaleed until the end of this year. During this contractual period, both have obligation to participate in promotional talks and activites organized by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) across the country.

Under the agreement, both cannot participate in any commercial activities that profit themselves and other certain parties. Sheikh Muszaphar, however is paid a monthly allowance of RM5,000 and a car to use for traveling purposes. He recently completed and launched a book initiated by his late brother, Sheikh Mustapha, Reaching The Stars, but all proceeds will go to the brother’s children.

In addition, the orthopaedic surgeon also co-owns a restaurant based in Bangsar, called Rebung, with a popular celebrity chef, Chef Ismail.

Citigroup, one of the largest financial services companies in the world, is bracing for another round of staff layoff as the company is struggling to get back to their feet from financial downturn.

The company last week was reported to have made the move in notifying more than 9,000 unfortunate employees who will be laid off as their jobs are being made redundant.

The staff were said to come from a number of different fields including investment banking, sales and trading, and prime brokerage.

This year, up to this month, more than 20,000 people working in various divisions of Citigroup have lost their job. The 9,000 odd numbers represent a cut of 2.6 percent of the overall size of Citigroup’s manpower.

Apart from laying off people, rumour has it that the company is ready to renegotiate its agreement with the customers and should this happen, the likelihood is high that customers will see an increase in interest in their new terms of lending and loans.

The New York based Citigroup is comprised of more than 10 major divisions, but the most prominent one is arguably its retail banking operating under the Citibank name. For many years, Citibank was ranked as the largest and most profitable bank in the world until it was hit with the subprime mortgage crisis recently.

Earlier in 2008, Citibank was replaced by ICBC Bank from China as the new world’s largest bank. Citibank slumped from first to seventh. It also lost its place as America’s largest bank and was disposed off by rival Bank of America.

It is learnt that at the moment, there is only one licensed job agency in Sabah.

However, Malaysia’s Human Resource Minister, Datuk Dr. S Subramaniam was surprised with a finding that numerous jobs have been advertised by a large number of illegal job agencies in the local newspapers.

Many of the jobs offer the opportunities for local Sabahans to travel and work in Singapore, with promise of high salary and a turnaround in fortune. A large portion of them would eventually land in disappointment.

A crackdown is underway to locate these job agencies, with legal actions in the taking.

To date, thousands of Sabahans have been cheated by unscrupulous job agencies, with more than 2,000 cases reported to the Human Resource Ministry. The most common complaints were salary payment, which is lower than advertised, and late salary. As of today, two illegal job agencies have been identified and the ministry is making its move to bring forward the agencies to justice.