Hong Kong  - All 21,000 tickets to see three Chinese astronauts who performed the country's first spacewalk were snapped up in a matter of hours in Hong Kong Tuesday.

Thousands of people queued up at 21 distribution outlets across the former British colony to get the free tickets for the appearance by the astronauts at the Hong Kong Stadium on Sunday.

The astronauts are due to fly into Hong Kong on Friday for a four-day visit, after which they will go to the gambling resort of Macau, a one-hour ferry ride from Hong Kong.

The spacewalk by Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng in September generated patriotic fervour that Beijing appears keen to capitalize on.

Hong Kong - A detective constable appeared in a Hong Kong court Tuesday accused of sex attacks on four young women inside one of the city's police stations.

Leung Lai-chung, 29, first appeared in court last week charged with raping a 19-year-old theft victim after she went to the police station to report her stolen purse.

Three other young women later came forward to accuse Leung of indecently assaulting them at the same station in Hong Kong's inner-city Mongkok district.

All the alleged offences took place in a 10-day period between November 14 and 24 before Leung was arrested on the complaint of rape, the court heard.

Hong Kong  - Hong Kong shares plunged by more than 4 per cent Tuesday in early trading following heavy overnight losses on Wall Street, as the US economy officially sank into recession.

The blue-chip Hang Seng Index lost 610.16 points, or 4.32 per cent, in the first 15 minutes of trading, tumbling below the 14,000 mark to 13,498.68.

The fall follows follow five consecutive days of gains on the Hong Kong index, the longest positive run since December 2007. Hong Kong shares have now fallen almost

Hong Kong - Hong Kong stocks rose 1.59 per cent Monday in their fifth straight day of gains, the longest rally for almost a year.

The blue-chip Hang Seng Index climbed by 220.6 points to end the day at 14,108.84 points. Turnover was 43.9 billion Hong Kong dollars (5.66 billion US dollars).

The market was lifted by buoyant property stocks, lifted by reports that a major city property company had sold 300 units in a new development despite a perceived decline in the homes market.

Hong Kong - The Hong Kong government was arranging emergency flights Monday to repatriate hundreds of its citizens stranded in Thailand by protestors who closed Bangkok's two main airports.

A senior government official said three planes would be chartered to a provincial military base near Bangkok because of concerns that the security situation in the Thai capital might deteriorate in the coming days.

Around 800 Hong Kong people have been stranded in Thailand since the airports were occupied by anti-government protesters last week.

Hong Kong's secretary for security Chang King-yiu said the government reversed an earlier decision not to arrange evacuation flights because of fears over possible violence in the coming days.

Hong Kong  - Jobs are being lost at a rate of nearly 1,000 a week in Hong Kong as the global economic slump rocks the wealthy former British colony, a survey claimed Monday.

Nearly 6,000 jobs have been lost in the last six weeks, and another 4,600 job losses have already been announced for the weeks and months ahead, according to the study by the South China Morning Post.

The sector hardest hit by the slump is the financial sector, where 1,780 jobs have been lost already, the newspaper said in a study of job losses across the city of 6.9 million people.

More than 1,300 jobs have been lost in the property and construction sector, while 1,029 jobs have gone in the restaurant industry and 929 in retailing.