World Notes Argentina

After a series of warnings, an Argentine warship began to fire at a Taiwanese squid trawler, leaving the vessel in flames. The casualties: one Taiwanese killed, one missing and five injured.

The clash was the latest round in Argentina's improbable squid war, in which the Buenos Aires government, claiming control over its coastal waters to a distance of 200 miles, has been trying to clear the region of as many as 300 foreign trawlers. Over the past month, the Argentines have chased or captured fishing boats from Spain, Japan, Poland and Taiwan. The Taiwanese vessel may have been trying to escape the warship by heading toward the 150-mile-deep British exclusion zone around the Falkland Islands. Taiwan was furious. Britain, which fought Argentina to retain the Falklands in 1982, denounced the latest action as "excessive and unjustified."