The search for the seven remaining Taiwanese businessmen missing off the coast of Madagascar since last Friday will continue until the family and the Malagasy government call it off, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday, adding the two bodies that were discovered on Monday night have already been sent to the capital Antananarivo.
MOFA Spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said it would be up to the local government and the families of the deceased to decide whether the bodies should undergo autopsies to determine the cause of death.
Antananarivo has reportedly dispatched several military aircraft and vessels to help with the massive search for the seven missing men. The daily rescue mission starts from sun-up until sundown, Chen said.
Chen, however, refused to divulge the cost of the daily search, saying it is up to the families and the Malagasy government to decide when to call off the search effort.
Chen said two representatives from the families and one MOFA official are in St. Marie, an island off the east coast of Madagascar from which the eight Taiwanese businessmen and one Chinese businessman left on their fishing ground inspection last week prior to their disappearance.
Two Malagasy crew members that were reportedly on the same vessels have been rescued, but the search mission commandant has barred the MOFA official from questioning the two workers, saying Taiwanese officials have no legal right to interrogate a Malagasy national.
Chen said the commandant, however, had agreed to go to the hotel where the family representatives were staying to answer questions.
The businessmen have been missing since last Friday.
So far, only the bodies of one Taiwanese businessman, Liu Shou-chih (劉守智), and Chinese businessman Li Bo (李波) have been found.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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