Mainland authorities will, for the first time, be recruiting people in Hong Kong for its manned space programme. The announcement comes as Beijing begins its search for up to 14 new astronauts for its space missions. Joanne Wong reports:

The CEO of the General Chamber of Commerce says Hong Kong will not achieve a full economic recovery until quarantine-free travel with the mainland resumes. George Leung also called for a change in government policy in attracting overseas talent. Vanessa Cheng reports:

A tourism professor says he expects a rapid rebound in visitors here if Hong Kong can drop its pandemic restrictions before Christmas. Professor Haiyan Song from the Polytechnic University's School of Hotel and Tourism Management welcomed the recent scrapping of hotel quarantine, which has been replaced with three days of medical surveillance. But he says the surveillance, as well as the requirements for PCR tests, still add risk to travellers' plans and may deter them. He also told Janice Wong that reports that authorities were planning to giveaway 500,000 plane tickets to encourage people to visit the SAR was a good starting point:

The financial secretary says the latest instalment of spending vouchers has offered a short-term economic boost to Hong Kong. But as Kelly Yu reports, Paul Chan believes challenges remain for the local economy:

The Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun says more manpower is needed at residential childcare centres, after a series of child-abuse allegations came to light. He says the government is following up on those cases, as Kelly Yu reports:

Third Side legislator Tik Chi-yuen, who represents the social welfare sector, has urged the government to beef up measures to tackle child abuse. He told Kelly Yu that more should be done to find out the crux of the problem:

The head of the Civil Service College has stressed the need for government staff to achieve common goals and meet society's demands. Oscar Kwok also says some staff do not have a good enough understanding of China, as Joanne Wong reports:

The government is being urged to increase its quota for non-elderly singleton applicants for public housing and to include them in its performance target. The call was made by the NGO, the Society for Community Organisation, which says a poor home environment affected people's work as well as their mental health. Joanne Wong reports:

Wall Street has closed out a miserable September with a loss of more than nine percent, the worst monthly decline since the pandemic broke out in March 2020. Tough rhetoric continues to be heard from Federal Reserve officials about raising interest rates, especially as the Fed's preferred measure of inflation last week showed it was worse than economists expected. It has likely snuffed out hopes on Wall Street for a pivot towards easier rates as the economy slows. RTHK's US economics correspondent, Barry Wood, in Washington, gave Samantha Butler a breakdown of the latest data on inflation and consumer sentiment in the US: