Authorities revise boat sinking survivors to 12, down from 14

Chinese authorities slightly revised the number of people who survived when a river cruise ship capsized this month, saying that 12 of 454 people on board lived, down by two from the previously reported figure, a state broadcaster said Saturday. China Central Television did not explain why the number of survivors from China’s deadliest boat disaster in decades had been revised. It said each of the 454 people aboard the Eastern Star has been accounted for. There were 403 tourists, five tourism agency workers and 46 crew members on board when the boat capsized June 1 during a cruise on the Yangtze River. Authorities have attributed the sinking to a freak storm that generated tornado-like winds, but also have launched an investigation and placed the surviving captain and his first engineer in police custody.

Former Party official Qiao Shi dies at 91

Qiao Shi, a senior Communist Party official and chairman of China’s legislature in the 1990s, died yesterday at the age of 91, state media said. Qiao died yesterday morning in Beijing of an unspecified illness for which he was being treated, the official Xinhua News Agency said. For 10 years starting in 1987, Qiao was a member of China’s top leadership panel, the Politburo Standing Committee, at a time when the Communist Party was led by Zhao Ziyang and then Jiang Zemin. Qiao also served as chairman of China’s top legislature, the National People’s Congress, from 1993 to 1998.