■ 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 can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
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