The military is launching a contest to come up with a name for its advanced supersonic jet trainer aircraft currently under development.
Taichung-based Aerospace Industrial Development Corp (AIDC) is scheduled to deliver 66 advanced trainer aircraft to the government by 2026 to replace the air force’s aging AT3 trainers and F5 fighters, the Ministry of National Defense said.
The government-funded AIDC had provisionally named the new jets “Blue Magpie,” after the endemic bird species, but when asked at a news conference in Taipei yesterday why the military was ditching the name, Major General Tang Hung-an (唐洪安), the head of the air force command’s planning division, sidestepped the question.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
He would only say that the military wanted to allow public participation in the naming process.
Taiwanese should submit names that consist of two Chinese characters and are accompanied by an explanation of no more than 100 words, Tang said.
The winner of the contest would be awarded a NT$50,000 cash prize, while the runner-up and third-place finisher would receive NT$30,000 and NT$20,000 respectively, he said.
On June 1, AIDC began the assembly of the first of the 66 advanced jet trainers.
Ground testing of the aircraft is scheduled for September next year and the first test flight is scheduled to take place in June 2020, the ministry said.
The project is going smoothly and remains on schedule, Tang said.
AIDC so far has completed about 15 percent of the project, he said.
The company has completed more than 10,000 blueprints of the jet and signed 122 contracts with subcontractors to build some of its systems, he added.
The modernization and production of indigenous aircraft and submarines has been high on the agenda of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration since she came to power in May 2016.
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
RSS