Lai See | Beware the golf ball racket at the Philippines airport

Sympathetic though we may be to the Philippines in the face of the Hong Kong government's absurd and surely racist attitude to the country, the Philippines can be its tourism industry's own worst enemy. A reader writes to say he had entered the country a few days earlier with a bag of golf balls in his hand luggage but found that when he was leaving, the few remaining balls could not be taken on board and had to be surrendered. Remonstrations finally produced a list of banned hand-carry items, and the official pointed to "golf clubs". No sign of balls. Further remonstrations that balls were not clubs yielded … nothing. Attempts to lodge a formal complaint, helped by a very supportive Cathay staff, proved fruitless in the time available. Clearly the security staff have found a way to supplement their incomes: second-hand golf balls.
 

We see that Hong Kong singer and actress JuJu Chan, together with friends and celebrity artists, is presenting a letter to MTR headquarters today requesting women-only coaches on trains. This follows her experience of being groped as she alighted at Admiralty station last week.

A statement put out by her management company said she was making the public request to the MTR because she wanted to build awareness about sexual harassment and to provide a safer environment for women. It noted that train companies in countries such as Japan and Indonesia had introduced women-only coaches "for preventing perverts from indulging themselves".

While we are fully supportive of her efforts to draw attention to sexual harassment, we are astonished that a star like Chan should actually take the MTR. This must be a Hong Kong first.
 

Netizens and authors on the mainland have been congratulating Mo Yan for becoming the country's first Nobel literature laureate. But the Nobel Prizes have exercised the mainland's internet censors somewhat. The blog Fei Chang Dao shows that on Baidu and Sina Weibo, searches for "Nobel Peace Prize" and "Liu Xiaobo" - the winner of the prize in 2010, much to the fury of our leaders - were blocked. However, searches for "Nobel Literature Prize" and "Mo Yan" were untouched. Baidu forums on the peace prize were blocked, but literature prize forums were not.