Hong Kong  - Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index crashed back through the 13,000 barrier Tuesday as growing gloom over economic prospects forced prices down by almost 4 per cent.

The blue-chip index shed 510.48 points, or 3.79 per cent, to end the day at 12,945.4, the first time it has slipped below 13,000 since early February. Turnover was 41.7 billion Hong Kong dollars (5.3 billion US dollars).

Hong Kong  - Hong Kong's population reached 7 million for the first time after a surge in the city's notoriously low birth rate, officials said Tuesday.

The former British colony's population grew by 0.8 per cent in 2008 to reach 7,009,900 partly due to the highest number of births in 25 years, according to Hong Kong's Census and Statistics Department.

However, only 45,000 of the city's almost 80,000 births in 2008 were to native Hong Kong women, with many of the remainder born to mainland Chinese women who cross the border to give birth.

Hong Kong  - China Tuesday defended the right of Robert Mugabe to own a Hong Kong home after the Zimbabwean leader reportedly paid 5 million US dollars for a villa in the former British colony.

"Hong Kong is a free port, and even Falun Gong practitioners can buy a property there, am I right?" a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Beijing told Tuesday's South China Morning Post.

Hong Kong - A video of a middle-aged passenger throwing herself to the floor in a hysterical fit when she misses her flight has been watched by nearly 500,000 people Monday after being posted online.

The three-minute video - which appears to have been surreptitiously shot with a mobile phone by a member of the airline ground staff
- became an internet sensation after being posted on the video-sharing website You Tube last week.

It shows a Chinese woman going ballistic after arriving at her departure gate at Hong Kong International Airport for a Cathay Pacific flight to San Francisco only to find the plane is about to leave and her baggage has been offloaded.

Taipei - Hong Kong and Macau, which have served as the transit points for China-bound Taiwan passengers for six decades, will lose that role when Taiwan launches regular air links with China in June, a Taiwan newspaper reported Monday.

Taiwan and China are expected to discuss regular flights in March and implement them in June, according to the Economic Daily News.

Hong Kong - More than 10,000 Indonesian women working as live-in maids in Hong Kong are being illegally underpaid, with some receiving just half the legal salary, according to a survey Monday.

The survey of foreign domestic helpers found that 12 per cent of Indonesian maids in the city of 6.9 million are paid less than the government-set minimum wage of 460 US dollars a month.