Hong Kong - A jilted Chinese mistress was beginning an eight-year jail term Saturday for setting fire to her ex-lover's apartment after sealing its doors.

Waitress Wan Xiuyang, 35, used metal sealant to jam the hinges and gate of her former boyfriend's apartment before pouring petrol on the floor to set it alight at 4 am in January 2008.

Her ex-boyfriend, cross-border lorry driver Cheung Kit-shun, was no longer living in the flat but his mother and brother had to be rescued by firefighters, a court heard Friday.

Hong Kong  - Hong Kong's former head of civil engineering has been arrested over an alleged multi-million US dollar corruption case involving government highway contracts, a news report said Saturday.

Twenty people have been arrested for alleged corruption in the tendering of highway contracts in the former British colony, according to the city's Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Among those arrested, according to Saturday's South China Morning Post, is retired director of civil engineering Tsao Tak-kiang.

Hong Kong - One form of fatal strokes is more likely to affect people in winter than the summer, a team of Hong Kong medical experts said Friday.

Neurologists found a far higher incidence of strokes caused by aneurismal subarachnoid haemorrhage, a rupture that leads to blood filling the space surrounding the brain, in winter when temperatures are lower and atmospheric pressure higher.

Hong Kong  - A Hong Kong primary school teacher has been sacked for putting secret spy cameras in a room where girls changed for dance classes, a news report said Friday.

Choi Hing-yiu, 32, used the pinhole cameras to film nine girls at the school in Hong Kong's Mongkok district last September, the South China Morning Post reported.

A 10-minute videotape showing the girls changing their clothes in the classroom was handed to police after a dance teacher and students found the cameras. Choi was arrested.

Hong Kong - Financial corruption in Hong Kong has rocketed in the first three months of 2009 as the city's economy has deteriorated, officials said Friday.

Corruption cases in the financial and insurance sectors surged 46 per cent in the first quarter, contributing to a
23-per-cent overall rise in corruption.

There were 811 cases reported to the city's Independent Commission Against Corruption between January and March, compared to 659 cases in the same period in 2008.

Hong Kong - Hong Kong pop singer Kelvin Kwan plans to leave the entertainment industry for "a considerable period of time," he said Thursday, nearly six weeks after being arrested in Japan for alleged possession of marijuana.

Kwan, 25, who was later released without charge, said he felt shame and regret as a result of the incident.

He also apologized for what he had done although he did not elaborate.