Two Vietnamese fishermen are being held by their crewmates on suspicion of killing their Taiwanese skipper during a mutiny, the Fisheries Agency said yesterday.
“The Fisheries Administration has received reports of the suspected murder of Chen Wen-feng [陳文風] aboard the long-line fishing boat Hung Chieh Wei 18 while it was operating in waters about 185km from Mauritius’ Port Louis on Thursday,” an official with the Fisheries Agency said.
He said that the two alleged murderers were overpowered and brought under control by fellow crewmen.
The official said that the 99-tonne Kaohsiung-based fishing boat headed for the Indian Ocean last February, with 14 crew members aboard. Chen was the only Taiwanese national and the remaining members were from China, Vietnam and Indonesia.
In addition to monitoring of the ship’s position, the Fisheries Administration directed its staff members stationed in Mauritius, a small island country east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, to help arrange to tow the ship to Port Louis, the official said.
“We’ll also ask the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to study the feasibility of bringing the two suspected murderers back to Taiwan for an investigation,” the official said.
Mauritius does not have an extradition treaty with Taiwan, but a Fisheries Agency official said it would likely agree to send the suspects to Taiwan because the alleged mutiny happened in international waters.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY AFP
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,