IN WAKE OF PROTESTS, TWO OFFICIALS RESIGN IN HONG KONG. Via Hit & Run.

…The resignations of Regina Ip, the secretary of security, and Antony Leung, the financial secretary, represent a very public humiliation for Beijing because the two had the reputation of enjoying particularly close ties to top communist officials.

Mrs. Ip was widely seen as Beijing’s enforcer, sending police and immigration officers to perform sometimes politically controversial raids. Mr. Leung is a former student radical who married Fu Mingxia, China’s Olympic gold medalist in diving, last summer.

After Tung Chee-hwa, the chief executive, Mrs. Ip and Mr. Leung attracted the most vehement criticism at a march on July 1 that drew a half-million people, most of them to protest a stringent internal-security bill that Mrs. Ip had championed.

…Mrs. Ip said this evening that she was resigning for unspecified personal reasons. Mr. Leung, whose resignation came three hours later and seemed to catch the government by surprise, said that he felt that he had completed budgetary and economic stimulus plans that he wanted.

…Mr. Leung is the third-ranking official in the government, after Mr. Tung and Donald Tsang, the chief secretary. …

…Mr. Tung did not announce successors for Mrs. Ip, 52, or Mr. Leung, 51. As minister-level appointments, their successors must be approved first by Beijing. Filling both jobs could be difficult, as talented people with political futures may be leery of joining an unpopular administration.