World Digest
Alleged U.S. deserter leaves for Indonesia

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Soga was abducted by spies and taken to the North in 1978, then repatriated to Japan nearly two years ago. She had to return home alone because Jenkins, who allegedly deserted his Army unit in 1965, would face extradition to the United States and a court martial if he were to join her in Japan.

Soga spent nearly a quarter-century in North Korea before leader Kim Jong Il agreed in an unprecedented summit with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi two years ago to allow her and four other kidnap victims to return home.

The reunion was arranged in Jakarta by Japanese and North Korean officials because Indonesia has no extradition treaty with the U.S.

Hong Kong

Medical official resigns over SARS

The head of Hong Kong's hospital authority, Dr. Leong Che-hung, said yesterday he has resigned, becoming the second senior health official in the territory to step down over the handling of the SARS crisis.

Health secretary Dr. Yeoh Eng-kiong announced Wednesday he would leave his post after a legislative report this week said the health authority, which runs all public hospitals in Hong Kong, had failed to put in place a contingency plan for large-scale outbreaks of infectious diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Monday's legislative report said Yeoh paid too little attention when SARS was spreading in mainland China in early 2003 and later issued statements that misled a nervous public about the severity of Hong Kong's outbreak.

SARS infected 1,755 people in Hong Kong and killed 299 of them as health workers and hospital administrators scrambled to understand and contain the disease.

San Francisco
 
Biotech company penalized over illegal exports

Biotechnology company Chiron admitted it illegally exported goods to Cuba, and paid the U.S. government $168,500 in civil penalties, the U.S. Treasury Department reported last month.

The company, based in Emeryville, Calif., voluntarily disclosed to the department that a European subsidiary illegally shipped two vaccines for infants to Cuba between 1999 and 2002.

"It was an inadvertent shipment on our part," Chiron spokesman John Gallagher said. He said Chiron is licensed to ship one type of pediatric vaccine through UNICEF to Cuba but inadvertently shipped two others not approved under the U.S. government's 42-year-old embargo on Cuba.

Also

A Swedish high court ruled yesterday the convicted murderer of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh should be sent to a psychiatric unit rather than face life in jail. The court upheld a lower court's decision in March to convict 26-year-old Mijailo Mijailovic of murder but said there was overwhelming evidence he suffered from a mental disorder.

A subsidiary of energy giant Total reached a deal with labor groups to end the shutdown of its oil and gas production in Nigeria, Africa's largest exporter, a company spokesman said yesterday. Nigeria is the world's seventh-largest oil exporter and the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports.

A 100-year-old British man who slit his ailing wife's throat to keep her from being moved to a nursing home far away was spared jail yesterday after pleading guilty to manslaughter.

Bernard Heginbotham, a retired butcher, was believed to have been the oldest person ever charged with murder in Britain.