A 2,000 tonne patrol ship built by the nation’s largest private shipbuilder under a consignment contract with the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) was launched from a shipyard in Kaohsiung Harbor yesterday.
The ship, christened the Tainan, is the largest patrol ship the CGA has ordered.
The ship is 98.5m long, 13.2m at its widest and has a draft of 7.6m, with a maximum speed of 24 knots and a cruising range of more than 7,500 nautical miles (13,900km), said the builder, Jong Shyn Shipbuilding Co.
PHOTO: CHANG CHUNG-I, TAIPEI TIMES
Addressing the launch ceremony, CGA Minister Wang Ginn-wang (王進旺) said the Tainan would substantially increase the CGA’s patrol capabilities and strength.
The CGA has ordered other large patrol ships and the next one, to be completed next year, will be christened Xinbei — the name to be given to Taipei County following its upgrade to a municipal city next year.
Jong Shyn Shipbuilding chairman Han Pi-hsiang (韓碧祥) said the company had received a contract from the CGA to build patrol boats for more than a decade, a deal that includes more than 20 ships with deadweights between 50 tonnes and 2,000 tonnes.
The Tainan can weather inclement conditions and accommodate 68 coast guard personnel for high-sea operations for a month, Han said.
It also has a helicopter landing platform on its main deck, he 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:
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