Coast guard personnel on Sunday arrested a Chinese man who drove a motorboat into a harbor at the mouth of a river leading into Taipei, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday.
The suspicious vessel was monitored after being spotted at about 11am on Sunday, 6 nautical miles (11km) off the coast of Tamsui District (淡水), the CGA said.
After entering the Tamsui River, which leads to downtown Taipei, the boat collided with other vessels at a ferry terminal, the CGA said.
Photo courtesy of the Coast Guard Administration via CNA
The CGA’s Third Patrol Command dispatched officers to apprehend the man and seized his Chinese-registered boat, a source said, asking not to be named.
The man was arrested on suspicion of contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) and the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法), the CGA said, adding that he was transferred to the Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office for questioning.
The man is a 60-year-old surnamed Ruan (阮), who said he wanted to defect to the Republic of China, sources said.
Photo couresy of the Coast Guard Administration via CNA
He said left the Port of Ningde in China’s Fujian Province on Saturday morning, but no food or drink was found on the boat and Ruan did not appear to have a tan, the sources said.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not answer calls seeking comment yesterday, which was a holiday in China and Taiwan.
In March, two Taiwanese fishers strayed into Chinese waters near Kinmen County. One was a Taiwanese military officer and remains in detention in China, while the other was released soon afterward.
During the height of the Cold War, people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait would, on occasion, cross to the other side seeking to defect, but such events are now rare.
Additional reporting by CNA
Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan would issue a decision at 8pm on whether to cancel work and school tomorrow due to forecasted heavy rain, Keelung Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said today. Hsieh told reporters that absent some pressing reason, the four northern cities would announce the decision jointly at 8pm. Keelung is expected to receive between 300mm and 490mm of rain in the period from 2pm today through 2pm tomorrow, Central Weather Administration data showed. Keelung City Government regulations stipulate that school and work can be canceled if rain totals in mountainous or low-elevation areas are forecast to exceed 350mm in
EVA Airways president Sun Chia-ming (孫嘉明) and other senior executives yesterday bowed in apology over the death of a flight attendant, saying the company has begun improving its health-reporting, review and work coordination mechanisms. “We promise to handle this matter with the utmost responsibility to ensure safer and healthier working conditions for all EVA Air employees,” Sun said. The flight attendant, a woman surnamed Sun (孫), died on Friday last week of undisclosed causes shortly after returning from a work assignment in Milan, Italy, the airline said. Chinese-language media reported that the woman fell ill working on a Taipei-to-Milan flight on Sept. 22
COUNTERMEASURE: Taiwan was to implement controls for 47 tech products bound for South Africa after the latter downgraded and renamed Taipei’s ‘de facto’ offices The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still reviewing a new agreement proposed by the South African government last month to regulate the status of reciprocal representative offices, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. Asked about the latest developments in a year-long controversy over Taiwan’s de facto representative office in South Africa, Lin during a legislative session said that the ministry was consulting with legal experts on the proposed new agreement. While the new proposal offers Taiwan greater flexibility, the ministry does not find it acceptable, Lin said without elaborating. The ministry is still open to resuming retaliatory measures against South
1.4nm WAFERS: While TSMC is gearing up to expand its overseas production, it would also continue to invest in Taiwan, company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has applied for permission to construct a new plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區), which it would use for the production of new high-speed wafers, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council, which supervises three major science parks in Taiwan, confirmed that the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau had received an application on Friday from TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to commence work on the new A14 fab. A14 technology, a 1.4 nanometer (nm) process, is designed to drive artificial intelligence transformation by enabling faster computing and greater power
RSS