South Korea's coastguard has applied for court permission to arrest the captains of the vessels that collided early this month, causing the country's worst oil spill, an official said yesterday.
Human error was probably to blame for the accident, when a crane mounted on a Samsung-owned barge punched holes in a Hong Kong-registered tanker, spilling more than 10,500 tonnes of crude oil that washed up on west coast beaches and blackened a nature reserve, local media said.
"We sought arrest warrants for the four captains yesterday [Thursday]," a Taean Coastguard official said.
The four are the captain of the Hebei Spirit tanker, the captains of two tugboats towing the barge and the person responsible for the sea-bound crane.
A maritime official said yesterday that the country planned to bring forward a ban on visits by single-hulled tankers.
Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries deputy director Lee Ki-sang said South Korea originally planned to phase out visits by those vessels by 2015, but it is now considering advancing the deadline by up to five years.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
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