Hong Kong  - Police in Hong Kong on Monday were investigating a 12-year-old schoolboy who posted naked pictures of himself online and offered himself as a gigolo for women as old as 45.

The boy gave himself the nickname Little Leung and offered sexual services to "females between the ages of 10 and 45" on an adult friendship forum, the Hong Kong Standard reported.

Hong Kong  - Police in Hong Kong were Sunday investigating whether a serial killer is behind the murders of three prostitutes in three weeks.

The latest victim was a 38-year-old Thai prostitute was found murdered in the flat where she worked in the city's Kowloon district on Saturday night.

The killing followed the murders of two other prostitutes who were found suffocated in apartments in other areas of the city on January 10 and 11.

Hong Kong - Hong Kong is spending millions of US dollars hosting the 2009 East Asian Games but more than one in three people in the city knows nothing about the event, a survey found Friday.

Thirty-five per cent of people interviewed had no idea their city was host for the games in December - and when informed of the event, the same percentage expressed a complete lack of interest.

Hong Kong - A chef in a Hong Kong noodle bar was facing a jail term Friday after admitting attacking a woman with a meat cleaver when she complained about his food.

Cheng Chi-wai, 50, hit the 47-year-old woman on the head with the meat cleaver after she grumbled about the meal she was served in the noodle bar in the city's Wan Chai district.

He ran into the kitchen and emerged with two meat cleavers after she made a "rude remark" about his food, a court heard, and only stopped his attack when fellow diners restrained him.

Hong Kong  - Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index began the Chinese Year of the Ox in bullish fashion Thursday with a 4.6-per-cent jump.

The blue-chip index shot up by more than 7 per cent at the opening of the first day of trading after the holiday before it fell back. It closed back above 13,000 at 13,154.43.

Turnover was a relatively low 39.1 billion Hong Kong dollars (5.04 billion US dollars.)

Hong Kong  - Less than one in 10 Hong Kong workers expects a pay rise in 2009 as the global economic slump takes its toll on the former British colony, a survey found Thursday.

Only 7 per cent of workers surveyed said they expected to get a raise compared to 36 per cent in the same survey in 2008 when the city's economy was buoyant.

Twenty-eight per cent of respondents to the survey conducted by a pro-democracy organization said they expected to see their pay cut in 2009, compared to just 5 per cent in 2008.