Beijing cancels sentence for elderly women

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Two elderly women have won a reprieve from a sentence to one year in labor camps handed down after they sought permission for a protest during this month's Beijing Olympics, a rights group said.

Human Rights in China said a Beijing municipal committee on August 29 rescinded its decision to sentence Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, to a year of "re-education through labor," less than two weeks after the decision was delivered.

The two had applied for permits to demonstrate in officially designated "protest zones" during the Games.

none of the 77 applications by citizens to protest legally in the designated Beijing parks had been approved

Human Rights in China has said 24 protesters -- critics of the Communist Party and their family members -- were detained or put under watch before the Olympics