A computer technician pleaded not guilty in a Hong Kong court yesterday to illegally copying and distributing more than 1,000 photos of a Hong Kong actor having sex with a string of starlets.
Sze Ho-chun (史可雋), an employee of computer shop Elite Multimedia, saw the images on Edison Chen’s (陳冠希) laptop when the Canadian-born singer-actor brought it in for repair work in 2006, prosecutor Hayson Tse told the Kowloon City Magistracy.
Sze then copied the images to a computer server that was connected to the Internet, Tse said.
At the start of his 10-day trial, Sze pleaded not guilty to three counts of obtaining access to a computer with a view to dishonest gain for himself or another.
The prosecution said that Sze saved 1,300 sex photos of Chen and other local celebrities on a compact disc and passed the disc to another of his customers. He also told the customer how to access the images on the Internet.
The 24-year-old Sze allegedly sparked one of the city’s biggest sex scandals when the photos, which Chen has admitted taking himself, were plastered across the Internet for weeks in February last year. The incident caused a storm in the celebrity-obsessed city and sent Chen fleeing to his childhood home of Canada.
On Sunday, Chen braved a death threat to appear in public in Singapore with an entourage of security guards to promote his movie The Sniper.
His appearance came less than a month after a Hong Kong TV station received an anonymous letter sent with a gold bullet, warning Chen to stay away from public events if he valued his life.
Hong Kong triads, apparently angered by the scandal’s damage to the city’s entertainment industry, have allegedly offered a US$110,000 reward for the star’s right hand, local media reported.
An American scientist convicted of lying to US authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen, China, to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain. Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and restoring movement in paralyzed people. It also has potential military applications: Scientists at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting
Indonesian police have arrested 13 people after shocking images of alleged abuse against small children at a daycare center went viral, sparking outrage across the nation, officials said on Monday. Police on Friday last week raided Little Aresha, a daycare center in Yogyakarta on Java island, following a report from a former employee. CCTV footage circulating on social media showed children, most younger than two, lying on the floor wearing only diapers, their hands and feet bound with rags. The police have confirmed that the footage is authentic. Police said they also found 20 children crammed into a room just 3m by 3m. “So
Jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai (黎智英) has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s (DW) freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The German public broadcaster on Thursday said Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on June 23 at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn. Deutsche Welle director-general Barbara Massing praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk.” “With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in
PHILIPPINE COMMITTEE: The head of the committee that made the decision said: ‘If there is nothing to hide, there is no reason to hide, there is no reason to obstruct’ A Philippine congressional committee on Wednesday ruled that there was “probable cause” to impeach Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte after hearing allegations of unexplained wealth, misuse of state funds and threats to have the president assassinated. The unanimous decision of the 53-member committee in the Philippine House of Representatives sends the two impeachment complaints to deliberations and voting by the entire lower chamber, which has more than 300 lawmakers. The complaints centered on Duterte’s alleged illegal use and mishandling of intelligence funds from the vice president’s office, and from her time as education secretary under Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Duterte and the
RSS