Ghost ship bearing Indonesian flag found off Myanmar coast
Yangon: A rusting cargo ship empty of crew and goods and bearing the Indonesian flag was found drifting off the coast of Myanmar earlier this week, police in Yangon said.
Fisherman came across the vessel, bearing the name “Sam Rataulangi PB 1600”, floating in the Gulf of Martaban about 11 kilometres (7 miles) from the shore of Myanmar’s commercial capital. State-run media reported that the ship was being towed to neighbouring Bangladesh.
Authorities and navy personnel boarded the vessel on Thursday to investigate the situation, said a Yangon police statement posted on Facebook on Thursday.
The ship was “stranded on the beach (and it was) bearing an Indonesian flag,” the statement said. “There was no sailors or goods on the vessel.” According to the Marine Traffic website, which lists the movements of ships around the globe, the vessel was built in 2001 and had a deadweight of 26,500 tonnes. The ship’s transponder last reported its location off the coast of Taiwan in 2009.
This is the first reported instance of an abandoned ship appearing in Myanmar’s waters. Old and unseaworthy vessels are often towed to Bangladesh’s southern Chittagong province, which houses a thriving — and controversial — ship-breaking industry. (AFP)
August 30 named as Britain’s Cupid day
London: August 30 has proved the most popular day for couples in Britain to tie the knot, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Thursday.
Statisticians from ONS have trawled through thousands of records spanning the last 20 years to discover the most popular date of the year for weddings, Xinhua reported.
With an average of 1,602, the Cupid day of the year in Britain is August 30, beating even that famous day for romantics, Valentine’s Day on February 14.
The records also show the least popular day of the year for matrimonies is December 25, Christmas Day.
Saturday’s, traditionally a day for marriages in Britain, remains popular with the first Saturday in September beating all other Saturdays in the year. The summer months of July and August as well as early September remain popular with brides and grooms.
The ONS figures or 2015, the last full year for which figures are available show July 25 was the most popular wedding day, with 4,712 couples uttering those famous words “I do”, followed closely by September 1 when 4,090 couples were married.
In that year August 30, the most popular day on average, fell on a Sunday and played host to 1,309 weddings. In the same year 18 couples married on January 1 and just three couples celebrated their big day on Christmas Day. (IANS)