Briefs | HK’s Carrie Lam digging in over extradition

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam is refusing to back down after fugitive Joseph Lau’s legal challenge to a proposed extradition plan on Monday. The plan will allow for the transfer of fugitives to jurisdictions that the city has no agreement with, such as mainland China, Macau or Taiwan. Lau is wanted in Macau after he was sentenced in absentia by a local court in 2014 for his involvement in a land bribery scandal. Earlier, Lam watered down the proposal in response to concerns aired by businesses in the city, removing nine white-collar crimes from a list of 46 extraditable offences.

Macau’s cross-border traffic grows by 3.1 percent

Cross-border vehicle traffic of Macau grew by 3.1 percent year-on-year to 373,500 trips in February, with nearly 20,000 trips crossing the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) said on Monday. In the first two months of 2019, cross-border vehicular traffic rose by 6 percent year-on-year to 830,600 trips. The DSEC information also showed that the total number of licensed motor vehicles was about 239,300 at the end of February, down slightly by 0.4 percent year-on-year. Light motorcycles (25,600) dropped by 10.3 percent whereas light automobiles (108,200) and heavy motorcycles (97,900) rose by 1 percent and 1.2 percent respectively.

Guangzhou eases limitation on scattering ashes

Guangzhou, provincial capital of Guangdong, started to ease the limitation on ashes of the deceased being scattering into the sea as of Monday to allow more people to participate in the activity. The city noted that the service is not only open to local permanent residents but also to the deceased without local household registration who died and were cremated in the city, according to the city’s civil affairs bureau. In 1988, Guangzhou was the first in the country to launch the ceremonial scattering of ashes in the sea. By the end of 2018, the ashes of over 24,000 people in Guangzhou were scattered into the sea.