week 4--TransAsia Airways plane crash, Penghu

Taiwan: 48 dead in TransAsia Airways plane crash

Forty-eight people are dead and 10 injured after their plane crashed while trying to land at a Taiwanese airport on Wednesday evening, hours after typhoon Matmo battered the region.

The transport minister Yeh Kuang-shih said TransAsia Airways flight GE222 had been attempting an emergency landing, which the airline said was necessary because of bad weather. The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said conditions on Penghu, an island between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, had been suitable for incoming flights.

The crash left wreckage tangled in the remains of a badly damaged building. The flight had taken off from Kaohsiung, in the south of Taiwan, bound for Penghu's Magong airport.

Two people aboard the plane were French citizens and the rest Taiwanese, said the transport minister, Yeh Kuang-shih. The plane had been carrying 58 passengers and crew.

The Taiwanese president, Ma Ying-jeou, said via a spokesman that it was "a very sad day in the history of Taiwanese aviation".

Jean Shen, director general of the CAA, said Magong air traffic controllers had lost contact with the flight during its go-around, when it was around 300 feet above the ground. She added that two flights had arrived safely just before GE222.

Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA) reported that the pilot had been asked to wait until 7.06pm before being allowed to make his first attempt at landing. It is not clear what caused the delay or why his initial attempt failed.

The twin engine turboprop ATR-72 was due to take off at 4pm and arrive at Magong at 4.35pm, but did not leave Kaohsiung until 5.45pm, according to CNA. It was another hour and 20 minutes before it made its initial landing attempt.

The country's Aviation Safety Council called an emergency meeting to look into the cause of the accident. Its head, Wang Hsing-chung, told CNA it was unclear whether bad weather or human error was to blame.

In its statement TransAsia Airways said it was providing assistance to passengers and their families. It had also begun assisting the CAA and ASC investigation.

It added that the plane had been in use for 13 years. It was in the hands of pilot Lee Yi-liang, who had 22 years of experience and almost 23,000 flying hours on his record, and co-pilot Chiang Kuan-hsing, who had two and a half years of flying experience and just under 2,400 hours. The flight had 54 passengers and four crew on board.

According to the Flightradar24 website TransAsia Airways had cancelled almost all of its flights on Wednesday, presumably because of the bad weather.

The defence department dispatched 200 troops to the scene to assist, Taiwan's Now News reported.

Kaohsiung municipal government told Now News it had been in touch with TransAsia and requested the detailed list of passengers and crew members. A team from the CAA, aviation experts and relatives of the victims are due to fly to Magong on Thursday.

Taiwan's weather agency said typhoon Matmo had brought gusts of up to 67mph (108km/h) as it blew through on Wednesday, knocking out power to more than 30,000 homes, before moving towards south-east China. Forecasters had warned heavy rains would continue into the evening.

On the mainland, Fujian province officials said they had evacuated 300,000 people, but the typhoon weakened to a tropical storm as it reached the area.

In 2000, 83 of the 179 on board a Singapore Airlines flight died when it attempted to take off from the wrong runway at Taipei's Chiang Kai-shek international airport as a typhoon approached.

In 1998, a China Airlines jet a China Airlines jet from Bali failed in a first attempt to land at Taipei because of rain and fog, then stalled during the go-round and crashed into houses. All 196 on board and seven people on the ground died.

In 2002 all 225 people on board a China Airlines flight died when it crashed en route from Taipei to Hong Kong in good weather. The wreckage was found 45km off Penghu and investigators said the plane had broken up in mid-air.

Structure of the Lead：

   WHO-passenger on the plane

   When-Wednesday evening

   What-48 people are died and 10 injured after plane crash

   Why-typhoon Matmo battered the region

   How-Not given

KeyWords:

   battered-重創的

   attempt-企圖

   wreckage-殘骸

   aviation-航空

   pilot-飛行員

   turboprop-渦輪螺旋槳飛機

   presumably-想必

   

   

week 3-Vietnam, anti-China protest, riot

At least 21 dead in Vietnam anti-China protests over oil rig

At least 21 people were killed and nearly 100 injured in Vietnam on Thursday during violent protests against China in one of the deadliest confrontations between the two neighbours since 1979.

Crowds set fire to industrial parks and factories, hunted down Chinese workers and attacked police during the riots, which have spread from the south to the central part of the country following the start of the protests on Tuesday.

The violence has been sparked by the dispute concerning China stationing an oil rig in an area of the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam. The two nations have been fighting out a maritime battle over sovereignty and that battle has now seemingly come ashore.

Early Thursday morning a 1,000-strong mob stormed a giant Taiwanese steel mill in Ha Tinh province, central Vietnam, where they set buildings ablaze and chased out Chinese employees, according to a Taiwanese diplomat, Huang Chih-peng. He said both the head of the provincial government, and his security chief, were at the mill at the time of the riots, but did not "order tough-enough action".

Five Vietnamese workers, and 16 others described as Chinese, were killed during the rioting, a doctor at a hospital in Ha Tinh told Reuters. An additional 90 people were injured in the attack.

"There were about 100 people sent to the hospital last night. Many were Chinese. More are being sent to the hospital this morning," the doctor said.

The attack on the steel mill comes just two days after other mobs burned and looted scores of foreign-owned factories in south Vietnam, believing they were Chinese-run, though many were actually Taiwanese or South Korean.

No deaths were reported in those initial attacks, and the Vietnamese government has since tried to crack down on protesters. More than 600 have been arrested since Tuesday.

The protests have sparked an exodus of Chinese nationals, many of whom have fled to neighbouring countries or further.

More than 600 are believed to have gone to Cambodia, while scores gathered at Ho Chi Minh airport and bought one-way tickets to Malaysia,Taiwan, Singapore and China.

On Thursday, China's embassy in Vietnam urged the police to take "effective measures" to protect Chinese citizens' safety and legal rights. China's tourism administration urged Vietnam-bound tourists to carefully consider their plans, while Taiwan's ministry of foreign affairs was printing thousands of stickers saying "I am from Taiwan" in Vietnamese and English and distributing them to local Taiwanese business owners, to help them avoid the wrath of anti-China mobs.

Anti-Chinese sentiment, while never far below the surface in Vietnam, has hit a formidable peak since Beijing's deployment of the oil rig in disputed waters in the South China Sea on 1 May.

In an attempt to assert sovereignty Vietnam quickly sent a flotilla of ships to the area; these became involved in skirmishes with 80 Chinese boats sent to protect the oil rig. China accused the Vietnamese ships of ramming its vessels after the Chinese fleet deployed water cannon against the Vietnamese. On Wednesday China reportedly sent two amphibious ships equipped with anti-air missiles as further defence.

The Vietnamese government has issued stark warnings to the Chinese that this "aggression", which had to date been met with Vietnamese diplomacy, would turn ugly if it continued.

Vietnam would "make no concession to China's wrongful acts", Major General Nguyen Quang Dam, the coast guard commander, told local media. He said: "Their violent acts have posed serious threats to the lives of Vietnamese members of law enforcement."

An article in the English-language daily Vietnam News was just as blunt: "The Vietnamese people are angry. The nation is angry. We are telling the world that we are angry. We have every right to be angry. "

"Over thousands of years we have shown we never cease fighting aggressors. We are proud of our freedom-fighting forefathers, and resistance is in our blood. We are a small country, but we are not weak. We will stand as one, united in the cause of protecting our motherland's integrity."

China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, urged Vietnam "not to attempt to further complicate and aggravate the current maritime friction", according to the state-run Global Times newspaper.

The paper said that Wang told Indonesia's foreign affairs minister, Marty Natalegawa: "China's position on safeguarding its legitimate sovereign rights and interests is firm and clear and will not change." .

On Thursday night China's top military leader blamed the Obama administration's new focus on Asia for various disputes in the East and South China seas, saying "some neighbouring countries" are using it as an opportunity to provoke problems.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, People's Liberation Army's chief of the general staff Gen Fang Fenghui also warned that the US must be objective about tensions between China and Vietnam or risk harming relations between Washington and Beijing. He defended China's deployment of an oil rig in the South China Sea and said Beijing has no intention of abandoning the drilling despite the protests it has spawned in Vietnam.

While China and Vietnam have considerable political and economic ties,anti-Chinese sentiment in Vietnam goes back more than 1,000 years to when it was a Chinese colony.

The quest for sovereignty and self-rule has long been a theme, as has what Vietnam sees as China's endless provocation over maritime boundaries around the Paracel and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea – an area that about 10 countries lay full, or partial, claim to – because of its rich oil and gas reserves.

The recent attacks on Vietnam's factories and industrial parks could damage the country's economy. Industrial zones, like the Ha Tinh area where the mill was set ablaze, generate a third of Vietnam's total export revenue, according to Reuters.

Vietnam's prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, issued a message Thursday urging Vietnamese authorities to protect foreign investors. Businesses are expected to receive payouts for incurred damages.

While it seems the Vietnamese and Chinese governments each want to downplay the severity of the situation – a leaked Chinese government circular obtained by the online China Digital Times urged media to "not report on any news" regarding the protests – the repercussions are most closely felt on the ground.

"People don't feel safe here," Xu Wen Hong, a Chinese national who works at one of Vietnam's iron and steel companies and bought a one-way ticket to China, told Reuters. "We just want to get out of Vietnam. We're scared, of course. With all the factories burning, anyone would be scared."

Structure of the Lead：

   WHO-People in Vietnam

   When-Thursday

   What-At least 21 people were killed.

   Why-Violent protests against China.

   How-Not given

KeyWords:

   deadliest-致命

    confrontation-對抗

    ashore-岸上

    blunt-鈍

    provocation-挑釁

    concession-讓步

    repercussion-反射