What the local media says
Zhou Bo, deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office under the State Council, is believed to have called on Hong Kong secretly a few days ago while on an official visit to Macau. He met some businessmen, in particular supporters of former chief secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen, and asked for their comments on Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying's policies. Zhou asked them to "tell the truth". Beijing is believed to be reassessing Leung's performance in the light of a series of political blunders in his first three months as chief executive.
Serious mistakes have been found in the latest residential land reserve map released by the government. The map lists the residences of the three senior principal officials - the chief secretary, financial secretary and secretary for justice - and at least four public housing estates as vacant residential plots. It shows the city has 391.5 hectares of vacant land for residential use, but experts say the actual total area is only 150 hectares.
A couple have accused Precious Blood Hospital (Caritas) in Sham Shui Po of sending in doctors late to save their baby girl, who died just six hours after birth in June. The parents said the girl had difficulty breathing and her heart stopped beating less than an hour after birth, but no doctor turned up until more than an hour later. They also said the doctor who eventually came failed to transfer their child to a public hospital for emergency care. The parents said they had demanded an explanation many times from the Catholic-run private hospital, which said it had nothing to do with the death.
Tuen Mun is to build a seven-storey public columbarium to ease a serious shortage of burial facilities, according to a government proposal. The site in Tsang Tsui covers 30,000 square metres and will offer up to 110,000 urn niches when completed in 2017. District councillors said the access road should be widened to cope with an expected increase in traffic during the Ching Ming and Chung Yeung festivals.
Many households have complained that their LG-brand television sets switch on and off automatically every two to three seconds when they are watching high-definition channels. They said the problem surfaced after TVB and ATV changed the code numbers of their digital channels a few days ago. LG and the broadcasters conducted joint tests, but could not locate the cause. LG said it was flying in engineers from South Korea. Broadway and other electrical appliance shops have stopped selling LG televisions.
The factory chief and delivery workers of Hong Kong Ice & Cold Storage, a main ice manufacturer in the city and a subsidiary of listed company Polytec Asset, allegedly overcharged restaurants for the ice sold to them. The suspects are said to have doubled the company price of about HK$4 per bag, pocketing HK$3.6 million in six months. Polytec management has alerted the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
