Philippine Foreign Secretary Blas Ople died yesterday after suffering a heart attack during a flight from Tokyo to Bangkok that made an emergency landing at CKS International Airport.
Ople, 76, began having breathing difficulties during the Japan Asia Airways (JAA) flight late Saturday night.
The JAA crew attempted to resuscitate Ople while the plane diverted to Taiwan for an emergency landing, according to Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesman Richard Shih (
Ople was in Japan for a regional summit with Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo last week. His plane diverted to Taiwan after diplomats in Manila called their Taipei counterparts for help, Shih said.
Medical staff at CKS Airport said yesterday morning that doctors at the airport boarded the plane around 11pm Saturday and found Ople showing no signs of life.
They rushed him to Minsheng Hospital near the airport in Taoyuan County. The hospital pronounced Ople dead on arrival, but said he was given emergency treatment nonetheless.
Ople's family arrived in Taipei at 8:40am yesterday.
Wu Hsin-hsing (吳新興), Taiwan's representative in Manila, sent his condolences to Ople's family, saying his passing away was a major loss for the government and people of the Philippines.
Employees at the Philippines' Department of Foreign Affairs wept as Philippine Foreign Undersecretary Frank Ebdalin announced Ople's death yesterday.
"Ople had breathing difficulties and then lost consciousness," Ebdalin said.
Despite a bout with pneumonia and a bad cough in recent months, Ople attended international conferences, often in a wheel chair.
"The nation mourns the death of a great Filipino," Arroyo said. "We were awed by the vision and indomitable wit of Secretary Blas Ople. He was an architect of Philippine foreign policy in the finest tradition of enlightened and pragmatic diplomacy."
Ople was labor minister under former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos, who was ousted in 1986 by a popular uprising. He began serving as an opposition party senator in 1992 and was Senate president briefly in mid-1999.
A Chinese aircraft carrier group entered Japan’s economic waters over the weekend, before exiting to conduct drills involving fighter jets, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said yesterday. The Liaoning aircraft carrier, two missile destroyers and one fast combat supply ship sailed about 300km southwest of Japan’s easternmost island of Minamitori on Saturday, a ministry statement said. It was the first time a Chinese aircraft carrier had entered that part of Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), a ministry spokesman said. “We think the Chinese military is trying to improve its operational capability and ability to conduct operations in distant areas,” the spokesman said. China’s growing
Nine retired generals from Taiwan, Japan and the US have been invited to participate in a tabletop exercise hosted by the Taipei School of Economics and Political Science Foundation tomorrow and Wednesday that simulates a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2030, the foundation said yesterday. The five retired Taiwanese generals would include retired admiral Lee Hsi-min (李喜明), joined by retired US Navy admiral Michael Mullen and former chief of staff of the Japan Self-Defense Forces general Shigeru Iwasaki, it said. The simulation aims to offer strategic insights into regional security and peace in the Taiwan Strait, it added. Foundation chair Huang Huang-hsiung
PUBLIC WARNING: The two students had been tricked into going to Hong Kong for a ‘high-paying’ job, which sent them to a scam center in Cambodia Police warned the public not to trust job advertisements touting high pay abroad following the return of two college students over the weekend who had been trafficked and forced to work at a cyberscam center in Cambodia. The two victims, surnamed Lee (李), 18, and Lin (林), 19, were interviewed by police after landing in Taiwan on Saturday. Taichung’s Chingshui Police Precinct said in a statement yesterday that the two students are good friends, and Lin had suspended her studies after seeing the ad promising good pay to work in Hong Kong. Lee’s grandfather on Thursday reported to police that Lee had sent
A Chinese ship ran aground in stormy weather in shallow waters off a Philippines-controlled island in the disputed South China Sea, prompting Filipino forces to go on alert, Philippine military officials said yesterday. When Philippine forces assessed that the Chinese fishing vessel appeared to have run aground in the shallows east of Thitu Island (Jhongye Island, 中業島) on Saturday due to bad weather, Philippine military and coast guard personnel deployed to provide help, but later saw that the ship had been extricated, Philippine navy regional spokesperson Ellaine Rose Collado said. No other details were immediately available, including if there were injuries among
RSS