■ TRANSPORTATION
Vehicles must have a step
Starting in October, motor vehicles used to transport children will be required to have a step for boarding that is at least 20cm wide, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday. Liu Shih-ming (劉士銘), section chief at the ministry's Department of Railways and Highways, said the existing regulations only state the height of the boarding step and that the width of most boarding steps is between 5cm and 10cm. "Children might fall off the step if it is not wide enough," he said. The ministry is in the process of amending the regulations, he said. Once the new policy takes effect, it will only apply to new vehicles. Kindergartens and daycare centers that use motor vehicles to transport children under seven years old will be required to observe the regulations.
■ DEFENSE
F-16 jet reported missing
The air force said yesterday that one of its Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jets went missing during a routine training mission last night. The single-seater aircraft disappeared from radar screens 28 minutes after it took off from the Hualien air base at 6:50pm for a night training exercise, the air force said. At press time, two S-70C helicopters, a C-130 transport aircraft and two warships were still scouting the area where the jet was feared to have crashed, air force officials said. Hualien base spokesman Yang Feng-sheng (楊鳳生) said the jet's pilot, Major Ting Shih-pao (丁世寶), had not reported any technical problems or asked for help. Ting, 34, could have ejected before the jet crashed, Yang said. At press time, Ting was listed as missing and the air force was investigating the incident.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
RSS