‘Painful farewell’: Hongkongers queue for hours to buy final Apple Daily edition

Million copies printed of last issue as journalists at newspaper that was forced to close mourn historical moment'

Across Hong Kong on Thursday morning the queues stretched for hundreds of metres, wrapping around corner after corner. Starting before dawn, crowds in the city of 7.5 million people lined up for hours to buy the final print edition of the Apple Daily newspaper, forced to close by authorities which had accused it of national security offences.

Normally selling 80,000 copies a day, they printed a million. It was in such hot demand that by mid morning Hongkongers were crowdsourcing an online spreadsheet of convenience stores that still had copies for sale.