The improvements being made to the airport on Itu Aba (Taiping Island, 太平島) are for flight safety purposes and will make it possible for the facility to be used for humanitarian tasks, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday.
“Completion of the work to strengthen the periphery of the airport’s runway will enable the airport to accommodate the air force’s C-130 transport aircraft, allowing it to carry out humanitarian operations from the island,” ministry spokesman Major General David Lo (羅紹和) said.
Lo made the comments in response to media speculation that the airport is being renovated so it could house F-16 jets and P-3C anti-submarine surveillance aircraft after the changes are completed at the end of the year.
“To fulfill [the country’s] responsibility as a constructive member of the international community, Taiping Island Airport will be used by the air force’s C-130 transport planes to conduct humanitarian missions,” Lo said.
Itu Aba is the largest of the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) in the South China Sea, which have been the center of heated territorial disputes involving Taiwan, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
According to an analysis by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, the runway on Itu Aba is the third longest among those on South China Sea islands.
The runway being built by Taiwan is 1,195m long and can be used by cargo, surveillance and fighter planes to land and take off.
China’s newly built 3,000m runway on the reclaimed Fiery Cross Reef (Yongshu Reef, 永暑礁) in the Spratlys is the longest runway in the South China Sea, Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative said.
The runway on Swallow Reef (Tanwan Reef, 彈丸礁) administered by Malaysia is the second-longest in the region, measuring 1,368m after it was expanded.
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
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
RSS