Human rights group Amnesty International says it's concerned about Carrie Lam's refusal to confront Beijing about the detention of Hong Kong booksellers on the mainland. Five people associated with the same bookstore disappeared in 2015 from Hong Kong, the mainland and Thailand. Months later, all were confirmed to be in detention in the mainland. Despite intense speculation that one, Lee Bo, was illegally spirited across the border by mainland law enforcement agents, Mrs Lam told CNN that it "wouldn't be appropriate" to challenge the mainland on what happened. The director of Amnesty International Hong Kong, Mabel Au, says this doesn't augur well for freedom of expression here:

Members of the public are being asked to give their views on whether transsexual or transgender people should be able to legally change their gender. A four-month public consultation launched today also asks whether there should be specific requirements for people to be allowed to be registered as a new gender. For example, if they'll have to have had some form of medical intervention like hormonal treatment, or full sex reassignment surgery. Jim Gould asked the chairperson of the Transgender Resource Center, Joanne Leung, what she thought about the consultation:

North Korea on Friday called itself the “biggest victim” in the death of an American student who was detained for more than a year and died days after being released in a coma. Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency denied that North Korea cruelly treated or tortured Otto Warmbier and accused the United States and South Korea of a smear campaign that insulted what it called its “humanitarian” treatment of him. The comments published by the agency were North Korea's first reaction to Otto Warmbier's death in a US hospital on Monday after it released him for what it called humanitarian reasons. Annemarie Evans asked our correspondent in Seoul, Frank Smith, if he thinks Pyongyang was pressured into responding to the death: