HONG KONG – A top Hong Kong hurdler Thursday (Nov 30) accused her former coach of sexually assaulting her when she was a schoolgirl, the first high-profile woman in the socially conservative city to tell of abuse as part of the #MeToo movement.

The #MeToo campaign exposing sexual misconduct spread rapidly in October after multiple allegations against Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and has since shaken artistic, media and political circles globally.

In an open letter posted on Facebook on her 23rd birthday, Lui Lai Yiu did not name the man who abused her, calling him “coach Y”.

She recalled how, as a young teenager, she had thought nothing of it when he offered her a massage at his home to relax her muscles.

After starting with her jeans on, he eventually removed them and her underwear and touched her private parts, she said.

“In my mind he was a coach I respected,” wrote Lui.

“I had never thought he would do despicable things to his students.”

Pui Ching Middle School, which Lui attended, said in a Facebook statement Thursday that after Lui told them three weeks ago of her intention to publicise the incident they had immediately stopped working with the accused coach.

Lui is a promising athlete who took the gold in the 60-metre women’s hurdles at the Asian Indoor Games in September.

She said she was inspired to speak out by American Olympic gold-winning gymnast McKayla Maroney, one of a number of women who accused former USA Gymnastic team doctor Lawrence Nassar of abusing them.

Nassar, 54, has pleaded guilty to multiple counts of criminal sexual conduct.

Lui shared Thursday’s post with a photo of her holding a sign that read “#METOO” with her initials “LLY” and her eyes cropped out of the shot.

Having only confided to a close friend for the first time two years ago about the incident, Lui said she wanted to speak up on her birthday as a gift to herself, as well as to raise awareness about child sex abuse and to encourage other victims.

“To speak the truth is a form of liberation, to turn myself from victim to survivor,” she wrote.

“It was not my fault, nor my parents’, nor my school’s. It was the perpetrator’s fault,” she said.

Messages of support followed her post, in which she called for the #MeToo movement to keep going.

Rights group and crisis centre The Association Concerning Sexual Violence Against Women urged the public to use the hashtag #MeTooHK this month in a bid to increase the movement’s resonance in the city, where incidents of sexual assault and harassment often provoke little outrage or response.

Lui said on Facebook that while she had not heard of other cases of sexual abuse in Hong Kong’s sporting world, she believed there must have been incidents, and encouraged survivors to seek help.

“In Chinese culture, sex-related topics have always been seen as embarrassing, shameful or not to be publicly discussed,” said Lui.

A woman who suffered from a rare disease called muscular dystrophy died after getting a tooth extraction at a dental clinic in Gwangju Wednesday, Yonhap News Agency reported.

The 34-year-old woman went into temporary shock and showed difficulty in breathing after the procedure and was taken to the emergency room of a general hospital. She died two hours later.

At the time of her death, she weighed only 28 kilograms due to the disease and poor dental conditions, police said.

Muscular dystrophy, a hereditary disease, is known for causing progressive loss of strength and breakdown of skeletal muscles over time.

A family member of the woman requested an autopsy to figure out the cause of death.

The biggest supermoon of this year is set to brighten up Seoul sky around midnight on Sunday, a state-run maritime research agency said Wednesday.

According to Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, the best time to see the astronomical event is 0:47 a.m. on Monday, when the moon will appear at its largest for skygazers in Seoul. The supermoon phenomenon will be observed at different times across the earth.

The upcoming lunar show will mark the fourth occasion and the largest scale this year, following the past showings in April, May and June.

A supermoon is a full moon or a new moon that coincides with the closest distance that the Moon reaches to Earth in its orbit. The distance between the Moon and the Earth around midnight on Sunday will be at 357,623 kilometers.

A 23-year-old Japanese woman had recently been taken into custody after her boyfriend reported her to the police for stealing his anime collectibles.

The woman had been living with her 49-year-old boyfriend, Twitter user @wkkazuya. She had moved in with him after quitting her job and needed to vacate the company dormitory she had been living in.

It so happens that @wkkazuya owned a large collection of physical media for anime, such as limited edition Blu-ray and DVD boxes for certain series. He proudly displayed his collection on an easily accessible book case, reported SoraNews24.

Eventually, @wkkazuya started to notice gaps in his collection. Thinking there was no one else who had access, he contacted the police on Nov. 24.

His girlfriend initially denied the theft and blamed an acquaintance for the disappearances, said the report. She later admitted to steeling the items which amounted to about 90,000 yen (S$1,080).

The items were sold to a local branch of Geo, a store which buys used anime goods. She said she stole them because she didn’t have any money.

Later, @wkkazuya shared photos of his dented collection and of his experience through tweets.

The items his girlfriend sold had been recovered by the police and have since been held as evidence. Unfortunately for @wkkazuya, the once pristine collectible limited edition boxes had been opened.

It has not been clarified whether it was the girlfriend, the store personnel or the police who opened the items. With that, the value of the items in the collectors’ market may have already suffered.

KARANGASEM, Indonesia – Airlines laid on extra flights to Bali on Thursday to allow some of the thousands of passengers stranded by the eruption of Mount Agung to fly out, as a switch in wind direction sent volcanic ash away from the holiday island’s airport.

Agung was partially shrouded by cloud on Thursday with parts of Bali lashed by monsoon rain, but according to officials there were persistent tremors from the crater.

“Mount Agung continues to erupt, ejecting volcanic ash up to 2,000 metres (6,500 ft) in height,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, said via Twitter. Earlier in the week, Agung had ejected showers of rocks up to four km (two miles), he said. The reopening on Wednesday afternoon of Bali’s airport, which is about 60 km (37 miles) away from Mount Agung, followed a downgrade in an aviation warning to one level below the most serious, with the arrival of more favourable winds.

While Bali’s airport was open again after a more than two-day closure, the airport on neighbouring Lombok island was closed on Thursday due to ash from Agung, air traffic control provider AirNav said.

Bali airport’s call centre said three flights had left on Thursday morning, while nine had arrived. It’s website showed dozens of flights scheduled to fly to Singapore, Seoul, Perth and other cities.

Two Chinese state-owned airlines on Wednesday night sent flights to fetch more than 2,700 Chinese tourists from Bali, Xinhua news agency said.

China Southern Airlines sent two planes from Guangzhou and Shenzhen, while China Eastern Airlines flew in four from Beijing and Shanghai, it said.

In January-September, Bali received 4.5 million foreign tourist arrivals, nearly half of the 10.5 million arrivals in Indonesia.

Chinese have overtaken Australians to become the top visitors to Bali, representing around a quarter of arrivals.

Previously, stranded passengers in Bali had been advised to take a long bus ride and then a ferry hop to Java island and onto airports such as Surabaya.

Asked about the economic impact of the eruption, Indonesia’s Tourism Minister Arif Yahya has estimated that since the volcano warning level was first raised in September the loss in revenue could be more than US

$650 million.

Agung looms over eastern Bali to a height of just over 3,000 meters (9,800 feet). Its last major eruption in 1963 killed more than 1,000 people and razed several villages.

Authorities are urging people living up to 10 km (6 miles) from the volcano to move to emergency centres, but some are reluctant to leave homes and livestock.

The disaster mitigation agency said on Wednesday about 43,000 people had moved to shelters, but many were thought to be staying put as up to 100,000 people are estimated to be living in the danger zone.

“We cannot predict whether it (a major eruption) will be bigger than 1963, but … according to our evaluation the potential for a full-scale eruption is still high,” Devy Kamil Syahbana, an official at Indonesia’s centre for volcanology and geological disaster mitigation centre, told Reuters.