More on the de-facto referendum - Five lawmakers, including Albert Chan Wai-Yip, Raymond Wong Yuk-man, and Leung Kwok-hung from the League of Social Democrats, together with Tanya Chan Suk-chong and Alan Leong Kah-kit from the Civic Party, have resigned from their posts in order to trigger a by-election, resulting in a de-facto referendum on universal suffrage in 2012. However, due to the influence of the Beijing government, the Liberal Party has decided not to participate in the by-election. Party member Michael Tien Puk-sun, who had previously shown interest in running for the seat, now says the mass resignation is a farce and refuses to participate. The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong conducted a survey of 327 random people, and found that most of them are negative about the de-facto referendum. As of press time, they have not decided if they will participate in the by-election. In other “referendum” news, independent lawmaker Priscilla Leung Mei-fun, commonly recognized as hailing from the pro-Beijing camp, claimed she would submit an amendment bill to seek to repeal the current resignation system under the Legislative Council Ordinance, but then postponed the move until she canvases more opinions.

Swine flu vaccine scare
Six pregnant women have had still-births at some point after receiving the swine flu vaccine. The women, aged 28 to 37, had all been pregnant for less than 24 weeks, and the miscarriages happened between two weeks and a month after the vaccination. The Centre for Health Protection controller, Dr. Thomas Tsang Ho-fai, maintains that the vaccine is not the cause of the miscarriages, and that international experience shows that miscarriages and still-births are not related to the vaccine. Furthermore, miscarriages are very common and occur in one in every five pregnancies. The authority will not call off the inoculations because the chance of a serious case of swine flu developing in infected patients who are pregnant is 10 times higher than for other people.