A coast guard ship is shepherding a Taiwanese fishing boat on its voyage home, officials said yesterday, after the boat's captain allegedly survived being pushed overboard by his Indonesian crew.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said the captain of the Pingtung-based fishing boat, Chen Wen-chen (陳文鎮), survived in the water for more than 24 hours by holding onto a buoy on one of the boat's fishing nets.
SURPRISE DISCOVERY
The CGA said eight Indonesian crewmen, who had been hired by Chen after he sailed the boat alone from Taiwan, discovered that he was still alive when they pulled the net in to check on the catch.
The coast guard quoted Chen as saying the crewmen decided to let him live because none of them were able to pilot the boat.
SOS
The CGA said it received a wire from the crew last Friday saying the boat was in danger because Chen was missing and no one else could pilot the boat.
As the CGA prepared to launch a rescue operation, it was reported that Chen had been found alive and that he was operating the boat, despite being weakened by his ordeal.
The boat was more than 600 nautical miles (1,111km) away from Taiwan, in waters to the east of the Philippines, when the crew asked for help last Friday.
RENDEZVOUS
CGA spokesman Teng Wen-ming (鄧文明) told reporters that a coast guard vessel met up with the fishing boat yesterday morning, and that it was guarding the boat and Chen on the voyage home.
Teng said the Indonesian crewmen are being brought to Taiwan.
"The reason why the Indonesian crewmen pushed Chen into the water will be established when they are in Taiwan," he said.
He said the boat was expected to arrive in Taiwan tomorrow.
Chen left Taiwan on July 30 to fish in the South Pacific.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching