HSBC freezes church’s bank accounts

At least three HSBC accounts linked to a Hong Kong church that had offered humanitarian support on the front lines of the city’s prodemocracy movement last year have been frozen. The suspension of the church’s assets is the second politically sensitive move by the British bank in a week, after Ted Hui, an exiled Hong Kong politician and a high-profile figure during the protests, lost access to his savings after he fled to the UK via Denmark. The Good Neighbour North District Church – a registered charity – revealed its predicament in a Facebook post yesterday, announcing that its account and the personal accounts of Pastor Roy Chan and his wife, had been blocked without notice or justification. ‘‘This is no doubt an act of political retaliation,’’ the church claimed.

A nurse rolled up 90-year-old Margaret Keenan’s sleeve and administered a shot watched round the world – the first jab in the UK’s Covid-19 vaccination programme – kicking off an unprecedented global effort to try to end a pandemic that has killed 1.5 million people. Keenan was at the front of the line at University Hospital Coventry on Tuesday, local time, to receive the vaccine that was approved by British regulators last week. The UK is the first Western country to deliver a broadly tested and independently reviewed vaccine to the general public. The Covid-19 shot was developed by US drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.