Sun, Feb 26, 2023 page3

• Taiwan News Quick Take

  • Staff writer, with CNA
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  MARINE AFFAIRS

  Fishing boat missing

  The Fisheries Agency on Friday said that a Kaohsiung-registered fishing vessel was missing in the Indian Ocean. The Lien Sheng Fa (聯昇發), registered in Kaohsiung as CT4-2896 with radio call sign BJ4896, sailed from Port Louis in Mauritius on Oct. 7 last year, the agency said in a statement. The 98-tonne ship measures 29.7m and has a crew of one Taiwanese and 15 Indonesians, it said. Family members of the ship’s crew on Thursday updated the agency on the vessel’s operations, but by noon the same day it received notice from the same people that they had lost contact with the ship, the agency said. The last update from the ship’s Vessel Monitoring System was at noon on Sunday last week, it said. In addition to seeking the assistance of seven other Taiwanese vessels operating in the region to look for the ship, the agency said it has contacted nearby nations to assist in the search.

  COVID-19

  Case total tops 10 million

  Taiwan yesterday reported 13,526 new cases of COVID-19, which pushed the total number of those infected by the disease since the start of the pandemic to more than 10 million, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said. Among the new cases reported yesterday, 13,281 were contracted domestically, a 10.2 percent drop from the same day a week earlier, CECC data showed. Taiwan also reported 53 new deaths from the disease, bringing the total number of confirmed COVID-19 fatalities in the country to 17,818. The nation has recorded 10,012,276 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began in early 2020. The CECC is no longer providing daily information on the age distribution, health status and vaccination records of those who die, nor is it releasing daily infection numbers from each administrative region.

  MILITARY

  Balloon detected in north

  The military on Friday detected a balloon in the nation’s north, the air force said in a statement, without indicating whether the balloon came from China. The object was determined to be a weather balloon, but an air force aircraft was still diverted mid-mission to observe the balloon until it left Taiwan’s airspace, the statement said. The military also informed the Civil Aeronautics Administration of the balloon to ensure it posed no risk to civilian aircraft, it said. This is not the first time Taiwan’s military has detected a weather balloon believed to have come from China. On Feb. 16, the army’s Dongyin Area Command, which is responsible for guarding Lienchiang County’s Dongyin Island (東引), said that soldiers found the wreckage of a suspected weather balloon believed to have originated in China.

  TOURISM

  Visitors to Japan spike

  The number of travelers entering Japan from Taiwan last month spiked to almost 260,000 following the removal of COVID-19 border restrictions by both countries late last year, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said on Thursday. The number of visitors was up from a year earlier and the same month in 2019, Taiwan-Japan Relations Association Secretary-General Chou Shyue-yow (周學佑) said. The 259,300 outbound tourists to Japan last month was up 67 percent from the number in January 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chou said, citing statistics from the Japan National Tourism Organization. After the pandemic began, travel among Taiwanese to Japan all but vanished and in January last year totaled just 492, Chou said.
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