The local shipping agent for the Iranian container ship Sarvin yesterday handed over a check for NT$1.5 million (US$51,150) to the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) to cover a fine for the illegal discharge of waste fuel off the coast of Kaohsiung in October last year.
One of the EU’s Sentinel-1 satellites captured images of a ship at 5:52am on Oct. 9 that seemed to be discharging waste fuel off the coast of Kaohsiung, EPA officials said yesterday, adding that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was asked to help interpret the image.
The NOAA has been helping monitor marine traffic around Taiwan since 2013, when it signed the Establishing Satellite-Based Marine Oil Monitoring Collaborative Activity agreement with National Central University’s Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ Harbor and Marine Technology Center also helped identify the ship through its automatic identification system.
Judging from the satellite image, the ship discharged about 5 tonnes of waste oil for at least two or three hours, leaving a pollution track that was almost 60km long, Department of Water Quality Protection Deputy Director-General Liu Jui-hsiang (劉瑞祥) said.
Despite the scope of the pollution, it did not require much clean-up work, as the pollutants had been carried away by fast-moving currents and evaporated, a one-week monitoring mission determined, Liu said.
The EPA decided to fine the ship’s owner NT$1.5 million for contravening Article 29 of the Marine Pollution Control Act (海洋污染防治法), but officials spent months trying to track down the owner, he said.
After learning the ship would arrive at the Port of Kaohsiung yesterday morning, the EPA called a meeting with Coast Guard Administration and ministry officials to organize an inspection visit once the ship was moored, he said.
The Taiwanese agent for the ship handed over the check at a meeting in Kaohsiung with EPA and other officials, Liu added.
The ship’s corporate executives must also attend an eight-hour session on protecting the environment, the EPA said.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS