Phoenix TV star 'fighting for life'

Liu Hai-juo

(CNN) -- Popular Phoenix TV news anchorwoman Liu Hai-juo from Hong Kong is fighting for her life in a British hospital following a train crash last week.

The 33-year-old newsreader, who Chinese language press have touted as a favorite interviewer of Chinese premier Zhu Rongji, had been declared brain dead by doctors.

But her brother-in-law, who has been with Liu and members of her family at the intensive care unit at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, northwest of London, denied the reports and said that doctors are monitoring her condition, which is still critical.

The head of Phoenix in Hong Kong has asked the Chinese Embassy in London to check out her case, according to the network's website.

A basketball player with a business degree from California's Berkeley University, Liu read for the television's financial news program.

MORE STORIES • Witnesses describe crash horror  • UK fatal rail crash inquiry begins

Phoenix reaches 44,852,000 households in about 25 countries, according to a survey done by Survey Research Group Frank Small & Associated Ltd.

Two of Liu's friends, 32-year-old Wu Chia-ching from cable television network TVBS and 29-year-old Lin Chia-hsin, a former reporter at China Television Company, were killed in the derailment at Potters Bar, north of London, that left seven people dead.

Six people are still in a critical condition while 90 are injured.

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported that Liu and Wu had traveled to Britain to visit Lin, who had just completed a master's degree.

A broken track switch has been blamed on causing the accident that derailed the train as it traveled at 160 kilometers per hour (100 miles per hour).

Suspicions of track vandalism are being probed.

Former BBC head killed

That particular part of the track had been given a visual check as recently as Thursday -- the day before the accident -- John Armitt, Chief Executive of Railtrack, which has responsibility for the track, told a press conference on Saturday.

Railtrack is carrying out checks on similar points across the network, but no reports of further defects have been made, and it said the checks could be carried out without speed restrictions being imposed.

The King's Cross to King's Lynn train had passed over the set of points at 100 mph shortly before it hit a bridge, raining debris on to cars on the road below and causing the final carriage to hit the platform.

Also among the dead was Austen Kark, the former head of the British Broadcasting Corporation's World Service, who was aged 75.

His wife Nina, who is in hospital with a broken collarbone and ankle, is the award-winning novelist who wrote under the name Nina Bawden. Her most famous book 'Carrie's War,' published 1975, was a children's novel about World War II and won the Phoenix Award 20 years later.