Hong Kong - Nearly one in five young people in Hong Kong is out of work as the city's jobless rate is driven higher by the economic crisis, according to official figures released Tuesday.

Eighteen per cent of the working population aged 15 to 19 were unemployed in the first quarter of 2009 compared to just 10.8 per cent in the same period in 2008, government statistics showed.

Hong Kong - Israeli diplomats in China have raised concerns over a national business awards contest with a logo that looks similar to the Nazi SS insignia, a news report said Monday.

Billboard posters for the China Top Brand awards scheme have appeared in Hong Kong with an logo that looks similar to the lightning-strike style insignia used by the German SS, a powerful paramilitary organization, responsible for many of the Nazi's worst crimes.

Hong Kong  - The wife of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has been granted diplomatic immunity over an alleged attack on a newspaper photographer in Hong Kong, officials said Sunday.

The city's Department of Justice decided 43-year-old Grace Mugabe is entitled to immunity despite a police investigation that concluded there was enough evidence to prosecute her over the January 15 incident.

Hong Kong  - A motorcyclist was injured Saturday in a collision with a monkey on a road in Hong Kong in which the monkey was killed, police said.

The motorcyclist, who told officers the monkey ran out into the road in front of him in the city's rural Tai Po district, was treated for minor injuries in hospital, a police spokesman said.

Hong Kong is home to a booming population of more than 2,000 grey macaque monkeys that live mostly in countryside areas near the former British colony's border with China.

Hong Kong - More than 1,600 Hong Kong companies filed for bankruptcy in February, the highest monthly figure since 2004, the government announced Friday.

The figure is more than double the number that filed for bankruptcy in January and highlights the growing impact of the global recession on the wealthy city of 7 million.