The skipper of the Kaohsiung-based fishing boat Shuen Man No. 168, which has been impounded in Brisbane since Thursday over suspected poaching, reportedly said yesterday that the vessel unwittingly trespassed into Australia's economic zone.
In a telephone conversation with a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official based in Brisbane, Hsu Yun-liang (
Liao Lieh-ming (廖烈明), a department chief with Taiwan's representative office in Brisbane, who talked to Hsu by telephone yesterday morning, said that Hsu denied that his ship was poaching in Australia's territorial waters.
"It was an accidental incident," Liao quoted Hsu as saying, adding that none of the 15 crew members aboard the Shuen Man No. 168 sustained any injuries.
Liao said the crew members would be flown to a detention center in Darwin after they finish health checks. It is uncertain how long the crew -- including a second Taiwanese officer, nine Indonesians and four Chinese -- will be detained as investigations proceed.
Liao said that the foreign ministry was in contact with the crew and that it told them all necessary assistance would be provided.
Media reports said that Australian customs authorities intercepted the Shuen Man near the country's east coast on Thursday after suspecting it of illegal fishing.
The vessel was boarded by Australian customs officials 258 nautical miles (478km) north of Lord Howe Island and 65 nautical miles inside Australia's exclusive economic zone, the reports said.
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:
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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