Hong Kong Students March On Chief Executive's Residence

Activists in Hong Kong, angered by what they perceive as little progress in talks on democratic reforms with the government, marched to the home of the territory's chief executive to demand his ouster.

Reuters says: "Others continued to occupy main streets in the Chinese-controlled city, where they have camped for nearly a month in protest against a central government plan that would give Hong Kong people the chance to vote for their own leader in 2017 but tightly restrict the candidates to Beijing loyalists."

About 200 protesters held signs at Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying's home. The BBC reports that many were also angered by Leung's recent remarks arguing that "universal suffrage" in the former British colony would lead to the poorer segments of society gaining control.

As we reported on Tuesday, the government held a televised meeting with student activists in an effort to defuse the crisis, but the results were inconclusive.

According to the South China Morning Post, police had to intervene on Wednesday in Mong Kok, one of three main protest sites, to prevent taxi drivers from tearing down barriers.

"Rubbish bins, fences, wooden pallets and bamboo poles were ripped up by members of the Taxi Drivers and Operators Association and loaded onto the back of a truck with a crane, as angry protesters rushed to stop the destruction at the Dundas Street end of Nathan Road."

The cabbies are angry at the blocked streets that have resulted from the weeks of protests.

The SCMP also reports that Hong Kong's Commerce Secretary Greg So Kam-leung has told the territory's lawmakers that more than 70 government websites have been hacked.

The commerce secretary said hackers identifying themselves as from the group Anonymous "issued a warning to the government and police force on October 2 after tear gas was fired at pro-democracy demonstrators in the city," SCMP says.

"A number of official sites were made inaccessible on October 3 by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. During such attacks, website infrastructure is overwhelmed by a huge number of requests to access the site, ultimately making the site inaccessible.

"The attacks can also slow down website functionality. But So said the cyberattacks had not impacted significantly on the government's online services, and emphasised that security had not been compromised.

"The website of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily has also been the target of sustained cyberattacks in recent weeks, coinciding with a blockade of its offices in Tseung Kwan O by pro-Beijing protesters."