Yes – but it was a BIG fingertip

If Hong Kong law enforcement agencies were a small plumbing/electrician business, their motto would be ‘no job too small’. From HKFP…

A Hong Kong man has pleaded guilty to one count of criminal damage after being accused of vandalising election posters, saying that he had only torn off a piece of a poster the size of his fingertip.

…On November 19, he allegedly damaged two official government posters that bore a slogan calling on residents to cast their ballots in the “patriots only” Legislative Council (LegCo) elections.

A police officer discovered the damaged posters on November 22 on a footbridge in Mong Kok, The Witness reported. Mo was identified as the suspect after surveillance footage showed him in the act three days earlier.

He was accused of damaging the two posters without lawful excuse, with the intention to damage the property or acting recklessly as to whether it might be damaged.

The court heard on Tuesday that Mo admitted under police caution that he only damaged the posters “for fun,” while the defence argued that Mo had only torn off a piece from one of the posters about the size of a fingertip, while no text on the poster was damaged.

These were not candidates’ banners – just two of the zillions of government ones featuring kiddy-cartoon character ballot boxes in an attempt to get people to vote. The cops went through ‘surveillance footage’?

Also from HKFP…

A 16-year-old boy has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for conspiring to commit secession by “actively participating” in a Taiwan-based group that advocates Hong Kong independence.

…He had earlier pleaded guilty in October to the charge in relation to his involvement in the Hong Kong Democratic Independence Union, which was declared a “prohibited organisation” by local authorities earlier this month.

…The court did not accept the teenager’s autism as a factor to reduce his sentence. He was given a one-third discount for his guilty plea and an additional two-month discount for his young age.

He was eventually jailed for 42 months.

Is the Hong Kong DIU a real organization or (as some might think the acronym suggests) a joke? Can a 16-year-old meaningfully threaten national security? Is this sentence a good use of taxpayers’ money?

On the subject of his neurodivergence – RTHK reports that Chinese U is launching a ‘pioneering technology’ that tests for autism in children…

Developed in collaboration with the CUHK spin-off MicroSigX Biotech Diagnostic, the world’s first “AI-Powered Multikingdom Microbial Biomarkers Technology” aims to enable earlier intervention and support for at-risk families.

…Siew Ng, associate dean of research at CU Medicine and Croucher Professor of Medical Sciences, said that there has been no simple diagnostic tool for ASD until now.

She said the new technology offers a non-invasive method using a stool test, with results available within two to three weeks.

Is this the moment Hong Kong gets to be a bio-tech hub-zone? Maybe, or maybe not. This is happening just as scientists are starting to express doubts whether there is in fact a link between the microbiome and autism – an area of research that…

…risks feeding into “pseudoscientific remedies and snake oil,” says Heini Natri, a biomedical researcher at the Translational Genomics Research Institute…

Why has the government cancelled the New Year fireworks? Maybe out of respect for the Tai Po fire victims (though why not say so?). Perhaps because a large gathering might turn into foreign-backed black-clad sedition (can’t rule it out). Or to save money (unlikely). Or to ward off an influx of tourists (we would be so lucky). Could it be the police are too overstretched to provide crowd control? Or things are just too awful.