ON THIS DAY
ON THIS day 25 years ago: FOUR newspaper editors pleaded guilty to summonses of unlawfully publishing excessive details of a Supreme Court divorce case, in the first prosecution of its kind in Hong Kong.
The defendants were the editors of the Hong Kong Standard, Ching Po Daily, Kung Sheung Daily News and Chinese Evening News.
The defendants admitted to having published in January 1969 details of the divorce case which were in excess of what was permitted by the Judicial Proceedings Ordinance.
The 1955 ordinance aimed to protect public morals by regulating the publication of reports of judicial proceedings.
The director of public prosecution told the court the law was intended to put a stop to the thrusting of sordid details of malicious cases upon the public.
Solicitors for the four editors expressed the defendants' regrets to the court, saying the publication was due to carelessness and ignorance.
One solicitor said Chinese editors found it difficult to define the law and to decide what could be published as there had been no such prosecution before.
THE Government revised its plans for the new railway terminus at Hunghom, dropping a proposed residential area with schools over the terminus.
The Public Works Department's new development proposals called instead for the construction of a Colony Postal Sorting Office, an indoor stadium, a bus terminus, future passenger ferry piers, and a multi-storey car park in addition to the railway station building.
The director of public works said the Hunghom reclamation area would be the hub of Hong Kong's communication systems and a focal point for buses, ferries, railways, the cross-harbour tunnel, and possibly the underground railway.
TEXT ''Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: that wisdom preserves the life of its possessor.'' Ecclesiastes 6:12
