Hong Kong’s national security police have arrested the owner of an independent bookstore and another person on suspicion of selling seditious publications and receiving funds from foreign political organisations, in a case that underscores mounting pressure on the city’s publishing sector.

Officers from the National Security Department detained a 33-year-old woman and a 32-year-old man during an operation in the working-class district of Sham Shui Po on Wednesday, according to a government statement. Multiple news reports identified the shop as Hunter Bookstore and the owner as Leticia Wong Man-huen, a former district councillor and one-time political reporter for local newspaper Sing Tao Daily. Police did not name the suspects in their official statement.

Authorities alleged the pair displayed items with seditious intent and sold publications that incited hatred against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, the judiciary, and law enforcement agencies. Police said they seized a batch of books, documents and other materials deemed “seditious” from the shop and related premises. Wong is also suspected of breaching Hong Kong’s Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance, with police accusing her of receiving multiple remittances funded by foreign political organisations. Among the publications reportedly taken by officers was a copy of “The Troublemaker,” a biography of jailed media figure Jimmy Lai.

The arrests come ahead of politically sensitive dates: the July 1 anniversary of Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to Chinese rule, and days before the sixth anniversary of the Beijing-imposed national security law, enacted in 2020 following large-scale anti-government protests. That law, together with colonial-era sedition provisions, has increasingly been used in cases involving media, civil society and publishing. Press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists urged authorities to release Wong and criticised what it described as an expanding application of national security legislation to the city’s book and magazine trade.

Taiwanese prosecutors have intensified an investigation into alleged large-scale budget inflation at state-owned CPC Corp.’s third liquefied natural gas receiving terminal, launching a fourth round of coordinated searches targeting construction contractor Royal Chang Construction Co. and related parties. The Taipei District Prosecutors Office ordered investigators from the Agency Against Corruption and the Investigation Bureau to fan out across 27 locations, summoning 14 people for questioning in connection with the Guantang LNG terminal’s offshore breakwater works.

The probe centers on claims that the budget for the Guantang terminal’s "outer extension" breakwater project was repeatedly marked up in a short period. According to an anonymous complaint backed by a key audio recording cited in multiple reports, the original estimate of about NT$94 billion ($2.9 billion) rose through at least four rounds of increases to a final contract value of NT$253 billion. The recording is said to suggest that the price escalation was driven from the CPC side, with a specified construction firm ultimately winning the contract under a "most advantageous tender" mechanism.

Prosecutors began looking into the case last year after receiving the anonymous submission. To secure documents and electronic records, they carried out three search operations between December and early January that covered CPC, engineering consultant CECI Engineering Consultants’ Taiwan unit, and residences and offices of individuals linked to the project, seizing materials from a total of 11 sites and bringing in former CECI chairman Shih Yi-fang and others for questioning. All those questioned in those rounds, as well as the 14 individuals brought in following the latest searches, were released after questioning as the investigation continues.

The scale and pace of the inquiry has drawn political scrutiny. Opposition lawmaker Lo Chih-chiang has criticized what he describes as slow progress in moving from initial complaints, which he says date back to 2022, to raids on the winning contractor, questioning why the latest search of Royal Chang came months after earlier actions against CPC and consultants. Lo has also highlighted CPC’s high leverage and reliance on state-backed financing as reasons for closer oversight of major capital spending. The Ministry of Economic Affairs said it had already conducted an administrative probe at the request of the Legislative Yuan and forwarded its findings to prosecutors in January, while CPC has pledged to keep cooperating with judicial authorities in an effort to clarify the facts.