■ 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.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
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