Hong Kong - Wealthy Hong Kong businessmen are switching from expensive private golf clubs to public courses to keep their handicaps up during the downturn, a news report said Monday.

The number of people using the city's public golf course on Kau Sai Chau island shot up by 48 per cent in October compared to the same month in 2007, the South China Morning Post reported.

Hong Kong  - Half of Hong Kong businesses expect the city's recession to drag on for at least two years, according to a survey Saturday.

Ninety per cent of businessmen and businesswomen said they believed the recession would last through 2009 while half said they expected it to continue through 2010 and beyond.

Andrew Brandler, chairman of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce which conducted the survey among its members, called on the government to help businesses in the city survive the downturn.

Hong Kong - A 22-year-old Chinese gigolo who tried to blackmail his wealthy married Hong Kong lover with a video of them having sex began serving a two-year jail sentence Saturday.

Peng Jun threatened to expose the affair using a secretly filmed video unless the 50-year-old woman gave him 1 million Hong Kong dollars (129,000 US dollars).

Peng, from China's poverty-stricken Hunan province, met the woman in 2007 at a nightclub in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese border city where Hong Kongers regularly go for entertainment and affairs.

Hong Kong  - A 46-year-old hiker was recovering in hospital Saturday after falling 20 metres into a Hong Kong reservoir while running away from a monkey trying to steal her food.

The woman was hiking with friends on Friday when a large adult monkey tried to snatch a bag of nuts she was carrying, according to a spokesman for the emergency services team who rescued her.

She ran away and tumbled down a steep bank before ending up in the reservoir. The woman was taken to hospital with injuries to her head, arms and legs.

Hong Kong - Wealthy people might be wearing long faces but poor people appear to be happier as the world economy goes into meltdown, a Hong Kong survey found Friday.

In what may be a case of schadenfreude - delighting in the misfortune of others - researchers found that while the middle-classes get maudlin in a downturn, the spirits of the poor prosper.

Using a so-called happiness index, they recorded a 4.8 per cent increase in happiness last month compared to October 2007 among Hong Kong people earning less than 1,100 US dollars a month.

By contrast, people higher up the earnings scale with pay of around 3,000 US dollars a month were 3 per cent less happy than last year, however, the team from Lingnan University in Hong Kong found.

Hong Kong - Hong Kong shares staged an impressive rebound to close nearly 3 per cent higher Friday after falling by 3 per cent in the first half hour of business.

At one stage, the Hang Seng Index had jumped by nearly 1,000 points from its morning low to post a 4.5 per cent gain before tailing off slightly in afternoon trading.

The blue-chip index ended the day up 360.64 points or 2.93 per cent to end another turbulent week at 12,659.20 points. Turnover was a weak 50.4 billion Hong Kong dollars (6.5 billion US dollars).