The Star Online: Metro: Sunday Metro
The Star Online: Metro: Sunday Metro |
- Cargo ship sinks, 12 missing near Hong Kong: officials
- Son of New Zealand's Maori king on burglary charges
- Nets reinforced around S.Korean ferry to stop body drift
| Cargo ship sinks, 12 missing near Hong Kong: officials Posted: 04 May 2014 09:44 PM PDT HONG KONG, May 05, 2014 (AFP) - Twelve crew members from a Chinese cargo ship are missing after it collided with a container vessel and sank just outside Hong Kong waters on Monday, authorities said. The collision happened in the early hours of the morning near Po Toi Island which lies on the edge of Hong Kong's territory, a fire department spokesman told AFP. "Two cargo ships collided and one of them sank," a police spokeswoman told AFP. "Later one male was rescued and was sent to the hospital," she said, adding that rescue operations were underway to find the other crew members. "There are 12 people missing," a fire department spokesman told AFP, adding that they were crew from the cargo ship from mainland China which had collided with a container vessel. The fire department spokesman said the accident happened three miles (nearly five kilometres) south of Po Toi, just outside Hong Kong maritime territory. Hong Kong's waters are notoriously crowded. Hundreds of vessels, from wooden sampans to enormous container ships, ply the shipping routes that criss-cross the territory every day. A collision in October 2012 between a high-speed ferry and a pleasure boat claimed 39 lives in the city's worst maritime disaster for over 40 years. |
| Son of New Zealand's Maori king on burglary charges Posted: 04 May 2014 09:21 PM PDT WELLINGTON, May 05, 2014 (AFP) - The son of New Zealand's Maori king appeared in court on Monday charged with burglary and stealing surfboards in a North Island town, prompting a rare public rebuke from the indigenous figurehead. Korotangi Paki, 18, who is the son of King Tuheitia, pleaded guilty to two charges of burglary and one of theft from a car, relating to offences carried out in Gisborne in March, Radio New Zealand reported. Paki's lawyer had pushed for a ban on media identifying him in the case, but later dropped the application. The teenager was granted bail and will be sentenced in July. Tuheitia was not in court for his son's appearance but told Fairfax Media ahead of the hearing that the boy had gone "off the rails", culminating in the thieving spree with three co-accused after a drinking session.The Maori monarch, who made headlines when he refused to meet Britain's Prince William during last month's royal tour of New Zealand, said his first instinct was to try to shield his son from the consequences of his actions. But he said he decided to publicly rebuke his second-born child instead, forcing him to confront the embarrassment he had caused. "I think Korotangi has learnt his lesson," Tuheitia told Fairfax. "I think he knows what he has put me through now. I know he won't be doing anything else." Tuheitia is descended from the first Maori king Potatau Te Wherowhero, who was appointed in 1858 by various North Island tribes which wanted a single figure to represent them in the way that Britain's Queen Victoria was felt to represent New Zealand's white settlers. The position does not have any constitutional status or legal powers in New Zealand but carries huge symbolic importance for many Maori. The current king worked as a truck driver before his coronation in 2006. He refused to meet Prince William because his office felt the 90 minutes allotted for the face-to-face visit was insufficient, arguing he was "not a carnival act" for visiting dignitaries. |
| Nets reinforced around S.Korean ferry to stop body drift Posted: 04 May 2014 09:18 PM PDT SEOUL, May 05, 2014 (AFP) - South Korean recovery workers strengthened a ring of netting Monday around a submerged ferry, in a bid to prevent corpses drifting out to open sea, as dive teams recovered 11 more bodies, raising the death toll to 259. The latest bodies were found during a pre-dawn operation Monday, but 43 people remain unaccounted for. It has been 19 days since the 6,825-tonne Sewol capsized and sank with 476 people on board - most of them schoolchildren. Recovery workers using fishing boats strengthened a ring of netting around the site off the southern island of Jindo, amid concerns that powerful currents may have pulled some bodies into the open sea."They are putting extra netting near the site to prevent the loss of bodies," maritime ministry spokesman Park Seung-Ki told a morning briefing. The operation followed a meeting in a Jindo harbour Sunday between President Park Geun-Hye and the relatives of passengers still missing. The relatives are insisting that all the bodies should be recovered before efforts begin to raise the sunken ferry. The search has been hampered by fast currents and high waves, while dive teams have been working in challenging and sometimes hazardous conditions. They have to grope their way down guiding ropes to the sunken ship, struggling through narrow passageways and rooms littered with floating debris in silty water. As days go by, personal belongings and other items from the ship have been spotted further and further away, fuelling concerns that some victims of the ferry disaster may never be found. Last week bodies were retrieved up to four kilometres (two miles) away from the recovery site, and bedding materials from the ship were found as far as 30 kilometres away. It is one of South Korea's worst peacetime disasters, made all the more shocking by the loss of so many young lives. Of those on board, 325 were students from the same high school in Ansan city, just south of Seoul. Public anger has focused on the captain and crew members who abandoned the ship, while hundreds were trapped inside. There is also fury at the authorities as more evidence emerges of lax safety standards and possible corruption among state regulators. The captain and 14 of his crew have been arrested. Prosecutors have arrested three officials from the ferry operator - Chonghaejin Marine Co - on charges of having the ferry overloaded well beyond its legal limit. |
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