■ Hong Kong
Truck driver freed
A truck driver who killed 21 people by shunting a double-decker bus over the edge of a 30m highway bridge was freed from jail yesterday after serving just seven months. Li Chau-wing, 53, was convicted of dangerous driving causing death following the accident in July 2003. A trial last July heard how Li veered sharply from the middle lane of the highway and shunted into a double-decker bus. The bus, which was full of commuters on their way to work, teetered briefly on the edge of a highway bridge before plunging nose first down a 30m ravine. Li was jailed for 18 months. However, an appeals court yesterday overturned his conviction and substituted it with a lesser charge of careless driving.
■ Hong Kong
Disney sued over death
Disney is being sued by a Singaporean woman who claims her dying mother was made to wait nearly three hours for an ambulance at the Hong Kong theme park, a news report said yesterday. Nge Yoi Chan, 82, fell ill at the new Hong Kong theme park in its first month of opening last September. She was pronounced dead upon arrival at hospital. Her daughter Joanna Boey told the South China Morning Post that Disney did not offer first aid when she fell ill and made her wait half an hour for a bus to the Disney hotel. Hotel staff allegedly refused to make an emergency call on her behalf and an ambulance was turned away at the front entrance and told to go to the back to protect Disney's image, Boey claims. "[Disney] staff are so well trained in protecting Disney's reputation but not in protecting human lives," she said. A Disney spokeswoman told the daily an internal investigation found staff had "handled the case in the most appropriate manner."
■ Japan
Taro Aso backs down
Foreign Minister Taro Aso yesterday backed away from an earlier claim that China lured a consular official with a female spy, saying he offered the account only as a possible scenario. Aso said over the weekend that a consular official who committed suicide in Shanghai was blackmailed by Chinese intelligence agents who set him up with a woman to obtain classified information. "I was just offering it as an example. It did not have any meaning beyond that," Aso said in a committee meeting in the lower house of parliament yesterday. The aftermath from the suicide has further inflamed tensions between the two nations.
■ New Zealand
PM criticizes cartoon
Prime Minister Helen Clark said yesterday that as a woman, she found a television cartoon offensive in its depiction of a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding. A television network said it would show the controversial "Bloody Mary" episode of the South Park cartoon series, which depicts the statue menstruating, despite a call for a boycott from Roman Catholic bishops that was read on Sunday at Masses throughout New Zealand. "I'm not a religious person myself, but I think it is important to show religious faiths respect and tolerance towards each other," Clark said when questioned about the controversy.
■ Japan
US beef report `insufficient'
Farm Minister Shoichi Nakagawa told Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that a US report on how banned parts got into a shipment of US veal to Japan was "insufficient", Kyodo news agency reported yesterday. The US Agriculture Department on Friday published a report on what went wrong with the shipment, which had prompted Japan to suspend US beef imports on Jan. 20 -- just a month after it ended a two-year-ban on US beef imposed over mad cow disease fears. "I reported that, for the Japanese side, the contents were insufficient," Kyodo quoted Nakagawa as telling reporters after meeting Koizumi.
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