A man was rushed to hospital on Saturday evening after the lower part of his right leg was severed by a boat propeller while he was scuba diving near Siao Liouciou (小琉球).
Rescue personnel said the limb has not been found and it might have sunk to the seabed.
The 44-year-old from Taoyuan, surnamed Chiu (邱), joined 15 divers who set out for waters near the island’s Black Dwarf Cave (烏鬼洞) at about 2pm, guided by captain Hsu Shen-mou (許申謀) and diving instructor Chen Ching-hsun (陳慶順).
The boat, Baby 66, departed from Shan Fu Harbor (杉福) and sailed south toward waters just off the coast from Black Dwarf Cave where the group hoped to see sea turtles and other marine life.
Hsu started the boat’s engine at about 5:30pm in preparation to return to shore, believing everyone was on board.
Chiu was reportedly near the back of the boat at the time and was caught in the propeller.
The other divers searched the vicinity, but could not find Chiu’s lower leg, and gave up their search to rush Chiu to hospital.
Staff at Antai Tian-Sheng Memorial Hospital in Pingtung County’s Donggang Township (東港) said that they treated the wound, as the leg could not be found.
Authorities said they are treating the incident as an act of negligence by the business leading to bodily harm, adding that an investigation is under way.
During initial questioning Hsu said he started the boat’s engine because the waves were strong and were pushing the boat dangerously close to coral nearby.
Police said they are waiting to take a statement from Chiu to better understand the circumstances at the time of the accident.
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
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,
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