Hong Kong

A dinner date Romeo who took lonely Hong Kong women for expensive meals and fled before the bills arrived was on Tuesday beginning a two month jail sentence. Chow Wai-yip took the women for lavish dinners, then asked to use their cellphones to make a business call and fled shortly before the bill was due to arrive.

Doctors have removed a leech from the nose of a 55-year-old Hong Kong woman after she swam and washed her face in a stream, a medical journal reported. The woman went to her doctor complaining of nose bleeds and an occasional sensation that something was blocking her left nostril.

A British barrister who admitted being ”drunk as a monkey” during a Hong Kong court case last year has been let off on a charge of assaulting a policeman, a news report said on Wednesday. Roderick Murray (46) was arrested for assault following a disturbance in a supermarket near his home last October when he allegedly pushed groceries and two bottles of wine to the floor.

Hong Kong’s acting Chief Executive, Donald Tsang, said on Tuesday he is prepared to face a legal challenge over the decision to let the territory’s new leader serve only a two-year term. Tsang said the government is determined to see a new leader installed on July 10 following chief executive Tung Chee-hwa’s early resignation last week.

A dinner date Romeo wooed lonely Hong Kong women over the internet, then took them for expensive meals and fled, leaving them to pay the bills, a news report said Friday. The sly charmer took them out for lavish dinners, then asked to use their mobile phones to make a business call and fled shortly before the bill was due to arrive, The South China Morning Post reported.

An upscale Hong Kong grocery store is being prosecuted after a customer allegedly discovered 575 beetles in a jar of cereal he bought, officials and media reports said on Saturday. The customer, lawyer Philip Dykes, said the breakfast cereal was ”too organic for my liking”, according to the South China Morning Post.

A four-year-old boy escaped unscathed after falling from a fifth floor window in central China and landing in a lorry full of cushions, a news report said on Tuesday. The youngster crawled out of a window at his home in Jiaozuo, Henan province, and hit awnings as he plummetted towards the ground.

Naturists looking to bare all for the first time on Asia’s shores were buoyed on Wednesday after local councillors gave the thumbs up to plans to open a nude beach in a remote area of Hong Kong. The Body Arts Association, a Hong Kong nudist group, handed a proposal on Tuesday to the local government asking for permission to hire a deserted beach in Sai Kung.

An errant husband who agreed to give his wife (R72) for every hour he stayed out past midnight has been ordered by a court to pay her hundreds of dollars, a news report said on Thursday. The couple in Chongqing, central China, struck the agreement to give her peace of mind after she caught him cheating.

The expanding girths of Hong Kong people are causing experts serious concern. Now it seems their pets too are piling on the pounds at an alarming rate as they feast on ever-richer tidbits. Hong Kong’s first ever weight-loss programme for obese cats and dogs has been launched by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to tackle the problem.

People in Hong Kong and Malaysia are the world’s biggest consumers of fast food with six in 10 people eating fast food at least once a week, according to a survey on Thursday. Sixty-one percent of Hong Kong adults and 59% of Malaysians go to a fast-food restaurant once a week or more, compared with just 35% of Americans and 11% of Europeans.

The Hong Kong customs office on Tuesday kicked up a stink over what it called a ”fart bomb toy”, describing it as unsafe. The small silver metallic bag, showing a cheeky boy with his trousers down emitting a cloud that reads ”boom”, contains a powdered sulphur compound and a small plastic bag of diluted acid.

Twin brothers aged 10 have been arrested by police after holding up shops and terrorising residents on a Hong Kong public housing estate, a news report said on Monday. The boys were arrested on Sunday after they started a fire by piling up newspapers and magazines and setting them alight in a playground.

The only McDonald’s with a licence to serve beer in Hong Kong is closing down because the sailors who patronise it are getting fewer in number, a news report said on Sunday. The harbour-side restaurant at Hong Kong’s Fleet Arcade had a special licence to serve beer because its customers included many thirsty, newly arrived sailors.

Half of all e-mails received in Hong Kong are spam and nearly all of it comes from outside the territory, according to a government survey released on Monday. Only five per cent of the unsolicited e-mails come from Hong Kong, while 40% come from Asia and the remainder come mostly from the United States, the study found.

Up to 100 million people could die within weeks if a bird flu pandemic broke out, a senior World Health Organisation (WHO) official warned on Monday as he urged nations to make urgent preparations to mitigate its spread. A global outbreak is almost certain and even widescale vaccination programmes would not be enough to halt its advance, the WHO director for the Western Pacific, Shigeru Omi, said.

A gang of 30 to 40 hungry monkeys surrounded a group of frightened passengers when they stepped off a bus at a rural Hong Kong bus stop. Panicked passengers dialled police for help when the monkeys, believed to be scavenging for food, rushed towards them at bus stop near the territory’s Lion Rock Country Park on Wednesday.

A mouse that stowed away on a Chinese passenger jet in Singapore ended up costing the airline 000, a news report said on Monday. The mouse sneaked on board the China Eastern Airlines jet while it was preparing to fly from Singapore to Shanghai, according to the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily.

A Hong Kong cricket match has been cancelled because of fears that one of its stars with a knack for hitting sixes will pose a danger to traffic on nearby roads, a media report said on Sunday. The move came after 24-year-old Hussain Butt, a Pakistani playing for Hong Kong University in a league match on Saturday, hit 36 sixes.

Hong Kong is jailing poor people for petty crimes such as littering because they cannot afford new spot fines for anti-social behaviour, a media report said on Monday, quoting a concerned judiciary worker. Police can impose spot fines of 1 500 Hong Kong dollars on anyone caught spitting, littering or fouling a public place.

Rebel Hong Kong lawmaker ”Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung hailed a victory for ”common sense” on Friday after he won his battle to wear T-shirts to the territory’s legislative council meetings. Leung, known for his trademark waist-length hair and Che Guevara T-shirt, said the decision is a sign that the ”old empire” is gone.

An 11-year-old boy in central China took his mother to court for breaking a promise to buy him a computer if he did well at school, a news report said on Monday. The woman had told her son she would buy him a computer if he scored average marks of more than 94% for his school work, the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily reported.

Brothels in Hong Kong are turning customers into unwitting porn movie stars by filming their antics on secret cameras, a news report said on Thursday. Sophisticated pinhole surveillance cameras have been found in raids on brothels in the city’s Mongkok red-light district, the South China Morning Post reported.

A Hong Kong police officer has had 28 minutes of pay docked from his salary after he was caught visiting a prostitute while on duty, a news report said on Thursday. Sergeant Wing Sing-tak (34) was also demoted after being spotted going into a brothel in his uniform for 28 minutes while he was on patrol in the city’s red-light district.

A Hong Kong company was on Monday struggling to keep pace with demand for a belching, wolf-whistling robot expected to be one of the bestselling toys worldwide this Christmas. Shops across the United Kingdom and United States have sold out of the hi-tech Robosapien, which also breaks wind and snores.

A Hong Kong teenager dressed in a black lace dress and high-heel boots was caught taking snaps of women in a public toilet, a press report said on Thursday. The 17-year-old was also wearing a long-haired wig when he was cornered in a toilet of a karaoke bar after a woman discovered he was using his cellphone to take pictures of her.

Officials in central China have refused a father permission to name his son ”@”, a news report said on Tuesday. The father from Zhengzhou, Henan province, wanted to name his son after the computer keyboard character used in every email address, arguing that the symbol was now in common usage.

A Hong Kong golf club said on Sunday it may be forced to shut down temporarily its two 18-hole courses because of an invasion of wild boars. A marauding band of about 20 boars, some of them weighing up to 180kg, are digging up the fairways on the two public courses on Kau Sai Chau island, east of Hong Kong.

They are to the Chinese what hot-cross buns are to Christians at Easter, but mooncakes, the salty-sweet confection eaten for centuries during the Mid-Autumn Festival, are getting a modern makeover. Traditional golden-brown mooncakes are made of heavy, sticky lotus-seed paste and contain whole egg-yolks in the middle.

A pair of elderly lovers leapt to their deaths hand in hand in southern China after their children refused to let them marry, a news report said on Thursday. The couple, both aged 61, jumped holding hands from the seventh floor home they shared in Guangzhou in China’s Guangdong province, according to the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily.

Bald men who feel self-conscious about their looks can now take comfort in a survey indicating that their hair loss can mean they will earn a healthier income. The survey published in Hong Kong on Wednesday found that the more money a man earns, the more likely he is to be losing his hair.

An investigation began on Tuesday into a freak tornado that struck Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok International airport, overturning a delivery vehicle on the airport’s cargo apron. The mini-twister struck 2km south of the control tower on Monday afternoon, injuring the van driver and spilling fuel over a large area.