Friday, June 22, 2007

In the news (Mingpao)

An essay competition jointly organized by the Hong Kong Public Libraries and Children's Literary Society attracted more than 3,000 entries. The junior high category received 400 essays. Shortly before the winners were to be announced, the panel of judges received a tip off that the winning essay was copied from a published work. This led the judges to cross-check all other shortlisted essays, and found that 3 out of the 10 essays judged to be award-worthy were in fact, acts of plagiarism.

Yes yes. Way to go, kids.

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A 72 year old woman was charged by Food, Environment and Hygiene officials for illegal hawking, alledgedly taking up an area of 0.8 x 1.2 sq meters on a sidewalk with her wares. This woman lives with her 28 year old unemployed daughter in a 300 sq ft apartment in Shamshuipo. Neither of them receive any public assistance (apart from the 700 "fruit money" all elderlies are entitled to), and live on selling cardboard boxes and soda cans they pick off the streets. She used to have a metal trolley to wheel her finds around, but that has been stolen, so she now only uses her hands.


She had previously been charged twice for illegal hawking (both of which she confessed to, and paid the fines), but on this occasion she insisted that she was only checking out some stuff a friend has given to her, with no intention of selling them. A policeman came on the scene when a mild scuffle broke out between the old woman and the FEH staff. She denied the charges.

Yes yes. Way to go, Asia's world city.

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