A newly-built whale-watching boat ordered by a Suao-based travel and shipping company reportedly sank off the coast from Suao early yesterday morning after four crew members were rescued.
According to one of the rescued quartet, the Taiwan captain surnamed Kuo (
The crew sounded a Mayday at around 2:40am to the Keelung Fishermen's Radio. At around 5am, after rescue boat PP 3017 of the Coastal Patrol Administration approached the endangered ship, the crew decided to forsake the newly built vessel and were taken aboard the patrol boat, Kuo said.
Two members of the quartet, Japanese shipbuilding engineers Shiro Doi and Peruo Pake, are now in Suao waiting for help from the Interchange Association, the de facto Japanese embassy in Taiwan in the absence of formal relations, to return to Japan.
According to Kuo, the passenger ship departed Shikoku Feb. 3 in gloomy weather. It sought shelter at Koniya Port of the Amami Islands to the north of Okinawa on the night of Feb. 4 because conditions on the sea were too rough.
Two days later, the ship headed out to sea and again encountered bad weather when approaching Taiwan. The ship sent out the Mayday signal early yesterday morning when it was about 33 nautical miles away from Keelung, Kuo said.
The newly built ship was supposed to be christened New Gueishan No. 2 (
Undaunted by the loss, estimated to be more than NT$20 million, the owner of the company which has already been operating with asimilar ship decided to order another.
Taiwan’s Lee Chia-hao (李佳豪) on Sunday won a silver medal at the All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham, England, a career best. Lee, 25, took silver in the final of the men’s singles against world No. 1 Shi Yuqi (石宇奇) of China, who won 21-17, 21-19 in a tough match that lasted 51 minutes. After the match, the Taiwanese player, who ranks No. 22 in the world, said it felt unreal to be challenging an opponent of Shi’s caliber. “I had to be in peak form, and constantly switch my rhythm and tactics in order to score points effectively,” he said. Lee got
EMBRACING TAIWAN: US lawmakers have introduced an act aiming to replace the use of ‘Chinese Taipei’ with ‘Taiwan’ across all Washington’s federal agencies A group of US House of Representatives lawmakers has introduced legislation to replace the term “Chinese Taipei” with “Taiwan” across all federal agencies. US Representative Byron Donalds announced the introduction of the “America supports Taiwan act,” which would mandate federal agencies adopt “Taiwan” in place of “Chinese Taipei,” a news release on his page on the US House of Representatives’ Web site said. US representatives Mike Collins, Barry Moore and Tom Tiffany are cosponsors of the legislation, US political newspaper The Hill reported yesterday. “The legislation is a push to normalize the position of Taiwan as an autonomous country, although the official US
CHANGE OF TONE: G7 foreign ministers dropped past reassurances that there is no change in the position of the G7 members on Taiwan, including ‘one China’ policies G7 foreign ministers on Friday took a tough stance on China, stepping up their language on Taiwan and omitting some conciliatory references from past statements, including to “one China” policies. A statement by ministers meeting in Canada mirrored last month’s Japan-US statement in condemning “coercion” toward Taiwan. Compared with a G7 foreign ministers’ statement in November last year, the statement added members’ concerns over China’s nuclear buildup, although it omitted references to their concerns about Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. Also missing were references stressing the desire for “constructive and stable relations with China” and
Foreign ministers of leading Western democracies sought to show a united front in Canada yesterday after seven weeks of rising tensions between US allies and US President Donald Trump over his upending of foreign policy on Ukraine and imposing of tariffs. The G7 ministers from the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US, along with the EU, convened in the remote tourist town of La Malbaie, nestled in the Quebec hills, for two days of meetings that in the past have broadly been consensual on the issues they face. Top of the agenda for Washington’s partners would be getting a
RSS