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Passengers on Cathay Pacific Flight CX252, one of the last flights to arrive from London before the temporary prohibition of arrivals from the United Kingdom gradually disembarked at Hong Kong International Airport at 11.58am today. A Flight CX252 passenger, a student who just finished the coronavirus test and did not want to be named, called on the Hong Kong government to provide assistance to other students studying in the UK. "The government has not taken into account the feelings of we students," he said. "The sudden policy has prevented many of my friends coming back. They have been stranded in the UK for a year." The Hong Kong government announced Monday that there would be a "circuit breaker" policy for flights originating in the United Kingdom. Beginning July 1 all civilian aircraft from the UK will be prohibited from landing in Hong Kong. Additionally, passengers who have stayed in the UK for more than two hours will also be prohibited from boarding civilian aircraft bound for Hong Kong. Recently, the Delta variant, a more dangerous strain of the coronavirus, has caused a new wave of infections in the UK. About 95% of the sequencing cases in the UK from June 7 to 21 are due to the new variant. At the same time, infections of L452R, which is also a variant strain of the coronavirus, have been detected in more than 130 people arriving from the UK, which may worsen the epidemic situation in Hong Kong, said the government. This latest "circuit breaker" policy implemented by the Hong Kong government has affected some students currently studying in the UK who planned to return to Hong Kong. Eva CAI is a Hong Kong student attending summer school in the UK. She originally planned to return to Hong Kong on Aug. 8. …

  As Hong Kong nears the one-year mark for mandatory face masks in public areas, the city’s already overstretched landfills are coping with more than 3 billion disposable masks, said Don Cheng, from local charity Greeners Action.   “This is a very heavy burden on our environment, our landfills and on the whole waste management system,” Mr. Cheng said in a phone interview.   Between 10 tonnes and 15 tonnes of masks are sent to Hong Kong landfills every day, Secretary for the Environment, Wong Kam-sing, said in a press release in May last year.    Mr. Cheng said that the waste problem in Hong Kong was already serious before the pandemic. “We dispose of over 11,000 tonnes of solid waste every day, and 21% of it is plastic,” he said.   Most single-use face masks are made of plastics such as polypropylene, which is recommended for preventing the spread of COVID-19 but may also contain cancer-causing toxins.   “These masks also contain other kinds of materials and metals. It is quite difficult to separate them,” said Mr. Cheng, adding that this makes them unsuitable for recycling.   “Quite a number of these face masks litter our natural environment, for example on hiking trails, at the beach and in the ocean,” he said.    Disposable face masks may take as long as 450 years to break down, according to Hong-Kong-based marine conservation organization OceansAsia.   Discarded masks are hazards for wild animals with environmental groups around the world reporting animals injured or killed after being caught in the straps.   Most Hongkongers use seven to 10 single-use masks a week, according to a survey last year by Greeners Action. That’s 4 million to 6 million face masks a day, said Mr. Wong.   Toni Lo, a local primary school teacher, …

Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Law Chi-kwong said in a Legislative Council meeting today that the government is looking into allowing mainlanders to work as domestic workers in Hong Kong.   Mr Law was responding to a question from legislative councillor, Paul Tse. Mr Tse pointed out that the COVID-19 epidemic has resulted in a drastic drop in the number of foreign domestic workers coming to Hong Kong from Southeast Asia. “Job-hopping” by helpers in the city also contributed to the shortage, Mr Tse said.   He also questioned whether the government will consider foreign domestic helpers to acquire permanent residency if they remain in Hong Kong for seven years.    But the government said it has no plan to make such changes.   The Hong Kong Employment Industry Association expressed reservations on allowing mainlanders to work as domestic helpers. The Association's chairwoman, Wendy Lau Lai-sze pointed out that it may be difficult to identify mainlanders who might be working in Hong Kong illegally.   She added that it is easy for mainlanders to take root in Hong Kong because they might have relatives here and end up staying here.   Teresa Liu Tsui-lan, managing director of Technic Employment Service Centre pointed out that salaries for workers from the mainland are generally higher than for most foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong.   “They  charge between RMB5,000 and  6,000 for completing one task only,” she said, “Hong Kong cannot offer that much.”   According to the Labour Department, the minimum wage for foreign domestic workers is $4,630 per month.    Shadow Hui, a local resident, has been employing foreign domestic helpers for over 20 years.   “It is quite difficult to hire overseas helpers right now,” she said. “ So If she (mainland domestic workers) works well and makes me confident in …

Ninety-eight seafood restaurants have been displaying or selling horseshoe crabs as a means of attracting customers, even though most people do not eat it, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.   Lydia Pang, WWF’s Oceans Conservation Project Manager, said most of those restaurants were in Sai Kung, Lei Yue Mun and Tuen Mun, and seven of them were selling the crabs.   Horseshoe crabs have been on the earth for millions of years. Although they are popularly called crabs, they are not crustaceans as crabs are, and belong to a different order of arthropods.   Among four species of horseshoe crabs in the world, the Chinese horseshoe crab, which is an endangered species, and the mangrove horseshoe crab can be found in Hong Kong’s coastal waters.    However, according to the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, the local population of horseshoe crabs has been decreasing since the 1980s.   Today, they can only be found in some beaches in Deep Bay and Lantau Island, and have disappeared from Tolo Harbour, where they used to be seen.   WWF has launched a “Stop horseshoe crabs consumption” programme after finding that they have been consumed as food or caught by fishermen as bycatch and their habitat has been destroyed by human activities.   So far, 26 restaurants have joined the programme by promising not to display or sell the animals.    Pang said many seafood restaurants opted to display horseshoe crabs as they wanted to put a novel sea creature outside to attract customers.    She called on the public not to consider horseshoe crabs as seafood and reminded restaurants that the mangrove horseshoe crab was poisonous.   A survey of 1,005 people aged 18 or above commissioned by the WWF has found that only four had eaten or enjoyed …