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Man who attempted to murder his three children jailed for eight years
Source: The Satndard/On.cc
A man was jailed for eight years today for trying to kill his three young children by burning charcoal at their home in Tsuen Wan.
Cheung Chu-kong, 37, who ran a small logistics business, had earlier admitted three counts of attempted murder, RTHK reports. The High Court had heard that one night in March last year, Cheung bought two bags of charcoal and started to burn them after he had put his daughter and two sons to bed. He intended to kill himself as well as the children, who were aged between two and six at the time. But they all survived and weren't injured.
In mitigation, Cheung's lawyer said his client's circumstances had got the better of him and he was in despair. He said Cheung was a very good father, whose daughter had written to him while he was in custody to say how much she missed him.
In sentencing, Justice Maggie Poon said while she believed Cheung to be a caring father, no parents have the right to decide whether their children should live or die, and his attempt to murder the children was premeditated.
Butcher in court charged with dismembering ex-wife’s aunt and putting limbs in plastic bags and suitcase
Source: SCMP/Appledaily/Coconuts UK
A “master meat cutter” butchered his ex-wife’s aunt before disposing of the body parts in plastic bags and a suitcase that have never been found, a Hong Kong court heard on Thursday. Ngan Wing-chau, 51, a butcher by trade, then attempted to pin the blame for Chan Sau-wa’s murder on an imaginary friend, “Ah Hoi”, when police began to question him, prosecutors said. “[Ngan] was described as a master meat cutter,” prosecutor Michael Arthur told the jury in his opening remarks. “He is someone with a good deal of experience in the matter.”
Ngan, who worked at a meat shop in Shek Kip Mei, pleaded not guilty to murdering the 62-year-old, who was his mother-in-law’s sister. He also denied one count of preventing her lawful burial. The prosecutor said Ngan murdered Chan in his home at the Iskra Building, on Cheung Sha Wan Road, on May 1, 2016. While there were no eyewitnesses, and Chan’s remains have never been found, Arthur said closed-circuit television footage at the residence captured a great deal, including Ngan bringing a suitcase home the day before the woman disappeared.
On May 1, Chan was recorded on camera entering the building at 7.48pm, about 30 minutes after Ngan had arrived home. “She was never seen after that,” Arthur said. Two hours later, CCTV footage showed him leaving the building with a suitcase and a black plastic rubbish bag, the prosecutor said. The defendant returned home and made four more trips, with the last at 2.32am, when he was also seen carrying a hammer. Each time he left carrying plastic bags and had the suitcase with him until the fourth journey, the jury was told. Arthur said Ngan used the containers to get rid of Chan’s body, and anything else that might be used in evidence against him. He said Ngan was arrested by police and held for questioning after Chan’s son reported her missing. It was during this, Arthur said, that Ngan tried to pin the blame on his friend, Ah Hoi.
The butcher initially told police that on the night in question he was out playing mahjong, and only learned Chan was missing when her son called him. However, Ngan revealed he had borrowed HK$20,000 (US$2,550) from his ex-wife’s aunt, though he said he had paid that back. Arthur said the defendant went on to give an even more “fantastic account”, claiming his friend Ah Hoi had stabbed Chan in his flat and that he had witnessed it. He helped dispose of Chan’s bloodstained clothes, but played no part in the actual murder, he claimed. Ngan said that when he returned home from the task, the flat had been cleaned up, while Ah Hoi was nowhere to be seen. He told police that Ah Hoi, whose full name he did not know, sneaked in and out of Hong Kong and trafficked organs in mainland China. The man, he said, was a relative of another man called Chan Ming, who helped him rent his flat. But Arthur dismissed this account of the incident. “What the defendant was saying … might have been a description of the actual murder of the deceased, but with this qualification – the killer was not Ah Hoi. The killer was the defendant himself,” the prosecutor said. Chan Ming was an alias Ngan had been using, Arthur added. He said of all the lies Ngan had told, the biggest concerned Ah Hoi. “It was a complete fabrication to shift the blame of the murder, which he committed, to this imaginary person,” Arthur said. Traces of Chan’s blood had been found near a sofa in Ngan’s house, he added.
The victim’s son, Chan Ho-man, said he last saw his mother the day before she went missing. On the day she disappeared, he said she called and asked him to prepare dinner. But she never came home. The case continues before Mr Justice Patrick Li Hon-leung.
8 people taken to hospital after minibus drives into double decker in Sha Tin
Source: Coconuts UK/Sing Tao Daily
Eight people were taken to hospital this morning after a green-topped minibus crashed into a double decker bus at Sha Tin this morning.
Among the injured was a 71-year-old minibus driver surnamed Lam. He was taken to hospital along with seven other people — six women and one man, aged 25 to 70 — who sustained minor injuries, and were passengers on the 82X Kowloon Motor Bus (KMB). Lam, and the 58-year-old double decker driver surnamed Chan had no alcohol in their system at the time of the crash.
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Speaking to Headline Daily, the minibus driver, surnamed Lam, said that he wasn’t driving that fast, but
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Speak Cantonese loud and proud – there is no need for it to play second fiddle to Mandarin
I was at a school talk recently and was asked by a student whether I thought Cantonese was a dialect or language. My answer was a simple one: it does not actually matter whether Cantonese has status as a language or a dialect. I elaborated my point with an unusual – but hopefully apt – analogy. If one owns a priceless antique but leaves it to collect dust in the corner rather than display it proudly, then what purpose does it serve?
At the end of the day, Cantonese serves an all-important function, and every day it is spoken it continues to evolve and develop; this is good news for Cantonese, as it means that it will continue to remain relevant and will certainly not fade into obscurity.
Cantonese has been around for 2,000 years and it is spoken by at least 60 million people in overseas Chinese communities. It is versatile, colourful, and ever evolving, and it is also fun, characterful, and very often cheeky and sarcastic. Like the youngest child in a family, it does not follow the rules, and that is why it is so delightful and unpredictable. That is the beauty of Cantonese that makes people – even non-Chinese – love it so much and want to do their utmost to preserve it.
It is certainly not a problem to promote Mandarin in schools, but it does not have to be done at the expense of Cantonese. In fact, the more languages or dialects are spoken in a community, the better it is for diversity and development.
We should support and promote linguistic diversity because learning languages helps broaden our personal or even world perspectives. And speaking different dialects also affects how people of the same ethnic background think and behave. An individual’s point of view or behaviour can be influenced by the different varieties of a language or dialects they speak. For example, a Chinese who speaks Cantonese will think quite differently from one who speaks Shanghainese.
In the early 20th century, linguistic relativism – most commonly known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – was a fashionable theory stating that an individual’s world view and cognitive ability is influenced by the language he or she speaks. Although this theory has fallen in and out of fashion over the years and has been continually disproved, there has been some interesting research into linguistic relativity in Chinese, and some – albeit limited – research into the significance of Cantonese.
In 2000, a linguist at the University of Maryland named Minglang Zhou published an article exploring the metalinguistic effects experienced by Cantonese speakers. He found that people who spoke fragmented Cantonese in Guangzhou – thanks to the economic boom experienced in the region over 40 years – tended to adopt some Cantonese-specific cultural practices.For example, the auspicious practice of displaying potted orange trees and serving oranges in celebration of a newly opened business is particular to Cantonese speakers, as the words gam and gat, meaning mandarin orange and auspicious respectively, sound very similar. Therefore, when these southern mainland businesses refer to said orange trees, they do so with a Cantonese accent rather than in Mandarin.
This may seem insignificant, but the point is that Cantonese is far more influential than people give it credit for. Furthermore, there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence from the city’s own pool of bilingual speakers who claim they feel like a different person when they code-switch between Cantonese and English.This phenomenon of possessing different “souls” has been observed in many multilingual individuals, and Cantonese is no exception.Multilingualism builds bridges, connects people, and leads to an inclusive society. It is the same with dialects. All languages and dialects should be equally respected and valued.
Linguists and psychologists have long been saying that speaking two or more languages is a great asset to the cognitive process. There is no need to fixate on making Mandarin superior to Cantonese. In fact, Cantonese and other dialects within the Chinese language are, essentially, a means of communication. Having access to multiple Chinese dialects adds to the variety of the Chinese language, and can even strike a responsive chord with non-Chinese people.For example, the common Cantonese expression “ai yah” is a case in point. I featured this insanely versatile and colourful Cantonese slang in my weekly video tutorial for the Post and it went viral. The phrase can represent a wide range of emotions encompassing surprise, anger, disappointment, disgust, or even sympathy.People from different age groups and ethnic backgrounds responded to this phrase because it serves the fundamental purpose of communication: it communicates and it elaborates. So remember everyone, make sure to speak Cantonese loudly and proudly.
Two elderly victims injured by wild boar at Hong Kong public housing estate
Source: SCMP/Appledaily
Two elderly people were sent to hospital after being bitten by a wild boar at a public housing estate in Hong Kong on Wednesday.
A 65-year-old woman, who works as a security guard at Fu Shan Estate, was attacked shortly before 7am as she was on her way to the public toilet off Fung Shing Street in the Diamond Hill area. Police said she was bitten on the left elbow and right leg. “It was as big as a human being. I was rammed and fell to the floor,” the victim said, adding that the animal had tusks. The pig also ran about 100 metres to attack a 75-year-old man who was doing his morning exercises at a basketball court nearby.
Wong Tai Sin district councillor Wu Chi-wai, who witnessed the incident, said the victim raised his walking stick as the animal ran towards him. “The elderly man was rammed by the wild pig and fell to the floor before being bitten,” Wu said, adding that the animal ran off when he approached and was last seen running up a hill at Fung Shing Street. The male victim was treated at United Christian Hospital in Kwun Tong, while the security guard was taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Yau Ma Tei.
A police spokeswoman said officers searched the area but were not able to find the pig. n July, the University of Hong Kong issued a warning to students and staff to watch out for wild boars following two attacks by the animals near the campus.
Over the past five years, there have been nine cases in which people were injured by wild pigs, according to the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department. In most of the incidents, the animals were provoked or chased.
The latest attack happened less than 24 hours after three wild pigs measuring between 80cm and 100cm were spotted wandering around Causeway Bay at about 1pm on Tuesday. The trio were later caught after being shot with a tranquilliser gun on Cloud View Road, North Point. They were released back into the wild on Tuesday evening. Wild pigs were also spotted in the same neighbourhood on Monday, though it was unclear whether they were the same animals caught on Tuesday. Three were seen outside Fly Dragon Terrace on Tin Hau Temple Road, also in Causeway Bay, at about 7am, but they made off before police arrived.
Sightings of a single boar were reported near Belilios Public House on the same street at 12.20pm and 6.20pm on Monday. The creatures, which can weigh up to 200kg, are common in Hong Kong, especially in the countryside. But they are secretive and wary of human contact, and can become aggressive if provoked or threatened.
In 2013 the AFCD received 294 complaints about wild pigs across the city. Two years later that number jumped to 518, and there were 738 reports last year. The first half of this year saw 380 reports. The department said removing food sources was the most effective way to keep boars away from residential areas and public facilities. It warned against attempts to feed them. The department launched the pilot scheme for a “capture, contraception, relocation and release programme” at the end of last year.