Tickets sold out within two to three hours of going on sale on Thursday for the restart of Express Rail Link on Sunday. Services on the high-speed rail are restarting after a three-year pandemic-driven hiatus and the government has capped ticket sales at 10,000 per-day. A rail union chief expressed concern about the reopening of the link, saying staff at the MTR Corporation was overstretched, which could undermine service quality. Damon Pang reports:

Lawmaker Gary Zhang says he hopes the 5,000 ticket daily limit on high-speed rail trips out of Hong Kong will be increased ahead of Lunar New Year, just over a week away. He says he does not understand why such a quota has been set and why it is only about a fifth of the carrying capacity of the trains. Zhang told Hailey Yip that he believed the MTR team was both equipped and prepared to handle the holiday rush:

Former railway chief, Michael Tien, also says the cap of 10,000 train tickets a-day for the express rail is too low to meet demand. The Roundtable lawmaker told Hailey Yip that he also thought there should be more than the currently planned six trains a-day to the new high-speed station in the centre of Guangzhou:

A tourism professor says the resumption of express rail services to the mainland will have a positive impact on tourist numbers here. But Haiyan Song, the associate dean of Polytechnic University's School of Hotel and Tourism Management, told Ben Tse that it will take time for inbound tourism to reach pre-pandemic times, due to different destinations competing for mainland visitors:

The Travel Industry Council says Hong Kong travel companies will only be able to put on a limited number of overseas tours until airlines increase flights. This comes as travel agents report increased interest in such trips, as Ada Au reports:

Fanny Yeung, an executive director of the Travel Industry Council, says outbound flight capacity could take more than a year to resume to pre-pandemic levels. This means a long journey for the tourism sector to return to normal. She also told Ada Au that a labour shortage was hampering growth:

The World Health Organisation has warned that Spring Festival travel on the mainland, when people return to their home towns for the Lunar New Year, could inflame the Covid pandemic there. People on the mainland also appear to be worried about spreading Covid to elderly relatives if they return home for the holidays. Aaron Tam reports:

An investigation by the MTR Corporation into a partial train derailment last year has found that serious corrosion at the mounting bolts and nuts of a metal barrier caused it to dislodge. Several doors were ripped off a carriage as the train pulled into Yau Ma Tei Station in November, disrupting train services on the Tsuen Wan Line that day. Frank Yung reports:

A children's rights group has suggested that parents should more actively participate with their children during playtime. The Boys and Girls Clubs Association made the suggestion after it found that local parents scored the lowest in what they called 'language stimulation', adding that the physical environment for children could also be improved. More than 250 families participated in the study in which researchers assessed their homes. The association's Anna hui explains what they mean by 'language stimulation':

Arrest warrants have been issued for two candidates of the 2020 Legco election. The pair - who are no longer in Hong Kong - are accused of submitting fraudulent election expenses. Violet Wong reports:

The DAB party is proposing the government distribute consumption vouchers of no less than $5,000 as part of its wish-list for next month's budget. The party's vice-chairman, Holden Chow, said tourists should also get vouchers of $1,000. He told Vicky Wong that this would boost tourism and encourage more spending in the economy:

The composer known as "the Father of New Music in Hong Kong", Doming Lam, has died at the age of 96. A statement issued by his family says he passed away on Wednesday. As Natale Ching reports, he was one of the founders of Hong Kong's largest orchestra and worked extensively in radio and television, including on a series of programmes for RTHK's Radio 4:

Patients with emergencies, such as heart attacks and strokes, in England had to wait more than 90 minutes on average for an ambulance at the end of 2022. There was a sharp deterioration in emergency response times in December - nearly twice as bad as November. It comes as Britain is facing more strikes by workers demanding higher pay after meetings between ministers and trade unions this week failed to end a wave of stoppages across sectors from healthcare to transport. RTHK's UK correspondent, Gavin Grey, spoke to Vicky Wong: