Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
The owners of an iconic Hong Kong floating restaurant that made headlines around the world after reports emerged it had sunk at sea, appeared Thursday to walk-back earlier claims it was beyond salvageable, insisting the vessel "was still in the waters" near the Paracel Islands, as calls grow for a full investigation into the incident.
Jumbo Kingdom -- a 260-foot (80 metres), three-story restaurant styled after a Chinese imperial palace -- encountered "adverse conditions" last weekend while being towed through the South China Sea. "Water soon entered before it began to tip," its owners initially said in a statement Monday.
"The water depth at the scene is over 1,000 metres [3,300 feet], making it extremely difficult to carry out salvage works," read the statement.
But on Thursday, facing pressure from authorities to disclose the circumstances surrounding the apparent wreckage, the vessel's owner, Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises Limited, said in a statement the vessel and its accompanying tugboat were still in waters near the Paracel Islands (known as the Xisha Islands in China).
The statement, provided to the Hong Kong government, did not indicate whether the vessel was still afloat, or if it had become separated from its tugboat.
The apparent shift in messaging follows a request from Hong Kong's Marine Department for the restaurant group to provide a written report into the incident as part of an initial investigation.
A spokesman for Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises Limited told CNN on Friday it had always used the term "capsize" to describe the incident and had never claimed the vessel had sunk.
Asked whether this contradicted previous statements, the spokesman said the firm was required "to report the depth of the waters where (the incident) took place," and declined to answer whether this meant the vessel was salvageable or remained afloat.
Once the world's largest floating restaurant, Jumbo Kingdom shut its doors indefinitely in 2020 as the double hit of citywide protests and the pandemic contributed to losses of more than US$13 million.
A principal Hong Kong tourist attraction, the restaurant had provided a backdrop for numerous movies, including "Enter the Dragon" starring Bruce Lee, and "James Bond: The Man with the Golden Gun." It also hosted visiting luminaries including Queen Elizabeth II, Jimmy Carter and Tom Cruise.
Several proposals had been put forward to save the restaurant, but its high maintenance cost had deterred potential investors, with Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam also ruling out a potential government bailout to save the attraction.
The boat was towed away from Hong Kong on June 14, after nearly half a century moored in the city's southwest waters.
Although the owners initially declined to state its intended location, it was later revealed by the Marine Department that it was due to be taken to a shipyard in Cambodia.
News of its sinking had been met with consternation online, with many Hong Kong social media users bemoaning the inelegant end to one of the city's most recognized historic icons.
Tourism lawmaker Perry Yiu Pak-leung said Jumbo Kingdom's sinking was a loss for the city's heritage.
"Hong Kong should take this as a lesson. The government, conservationists, historians and the commercial sector should be working together to protect and make good use of these [historic] sites," he said. "We stalled too long."
Hong Kong lawmakers are now calling on the government to launch a more thorough investigation.
"We need to know if the tug boat company were involved in any malpractice or human error at sea when they towed away the Jumbo Kingdom vessel," said Tik Chi-yuen, chairman of the Third Side political party.
Stephen Li, a professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University's Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, said it was "quite uncommon" for a vessel to sink simply due to bad weather, adding that sea transport is "very safe these days" given advancements in navigation technology.
But an investigation could take years, said Li, especially as it occurred outside of the city's jurisdiction in international waters.
The Marine Department said in a statement on Wednesday that the ship owner had hired an agency to inspect the vessel and made sure it was seaworthy before being towed.
It is not clear whether the vessel was insured, potentially complicating any salvage operations.
Andrew Brooker, managing director of Hong Kong-based marine insurance firm Latitude Brokers, said it was "incredibly unlikely" the vessel was insured for loss or damage.
"The marine insurance market does not like [to carry the risk of] 50-year-old barges being towed across 1,000 kilometres of open ocean in typhoon season," he said.
Brooker added that Jumbo Kingdom's owners would not have been legally required to insure the vessel outside of Hong Kong waters.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.