The government stepped in late last night to guarantee insurance coverage to Taiwan's airlines amid anxiety in the insurance industry following the attacks on the US.
In a meeting late last night, Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (
PHOTO: CHANG CHIA-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
The relevant bills will be passed by the Cabinet tomorrow and sent on as quickly as possible to the legislature for approval, Chang said.
The move came in response to insurers worldwide yesterday imposing new regulations on maximum third-party war risk insurance coverage, severely limiting liability to only US$50 million, far short of the up to US$1.7 billion required of airlines by most international airports.
According to Alex Shih (施建華), secretary general of the Taipei Airlines Association, Taiwan's major carriers can secure US$150 million from insurers and were banking on the government to guarantee the remaining US$1.55 billion.
No details were released regarding the total extent of the coverage or how long the measure would be in place.
Airlines are concerned that with the insurance limitations airlines will be grounded due to fear of incidents for which they alone would be liable, possibly shuttering the company forever.
"We are most worried about the coverage limitation because none of our airlines would be able to bear the cost and once it [an incident] happens, it is likely to force an airline to go bankrupt,'' said another executive at the association.
The association handed its request to the Civil Aeronautics Administration on Monday and expects it to be presented to the Cabinet today. However, there is growing concern that bureaucratic red tape and legislative wrangling may stall approval for a special budget necessary to cover the liability.
"The government has been slow to understand the full implications of the situation," said Paul Wang (
Even now that the Cabinet has decided to cover third-party losses for the airlines, the measure would still require approval from the legislature, a process which can lengthen the time it takes to get approved, Wang said.
As of press time, governments in China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Austria, South Korea, Sri Lanka the US, and the UK and New Zealand had agreed to cover liability for war and terrorism risk for their airlines to keep them in the skies.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained