Three brothers were caught illegally chopping down incense trees on a mountain in Sha Tau Kok, Hong Kong. In the court trial, they claimed to need the tree as a medicine ingredient for their mother, but the judge refused to believe them. Each of them was jailed for two years.

The brothers were stealing a kind of tree named Aquilaria sinensis, which can be used to make an expensive ingredient for traditional Chinese medicine. But the judge found that 12.8 kilograms of wood far exceed the amount needed to treat one patient.

(Ming Pao)