LABOR
Flight attendants unhappy
Flight attendants and their representatives said yesterday that a proposed government rule to allow longer working hours per week would violate the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法). Federation of Aviation Employees director-general Jesse Lee (李昭平) said the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) plans to allow flight attendants to work up to 75 hours over seven consecutive days. The labor law stipulates that the maximum working hours in a two-week period should not exceed 84 hours, he told a press briefing at the legislature. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) said the CAA cited “fatigue management” as the reason for the planned change, but the shift would only help airlines legitimize prolonged working hours. Flight attendants attending the press conference said the proposed change not only disregards the health of flight attendants, it also ignores flight safety and passenger safety. Chang Ling-ti (張羚悌), a CAA flight standard section chief, said flight attendants’ opinions would be taken into account and that the agency would continue to communicate with them.
TRAVEL
EVA, Guam entice couples
More than 800 couples have registered to compete for three free Guam wedding packages next month, a special offer to celebrate EVA Airways’ launch of passenger service to the Pacific island on June 18, the company said yesterday. The applicants will be interviewed tomorrow, when they will be asked to tell about how they met and decided to tie the knot. The three winning couples will be determined by how interesting their stories are, EVA officials said. The five-day, four-night packages are being offered in collaboration with a wedding company. Each package includes round-trip business class tickets, wedding gowns and suits, five-star hotel accommodation and a chapel ceremony, the officials said.
FOOD
USDA bars Nebraska poultry
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has banned the export of all poultry and poultry products from Nebraska to Taiwan. Nebraskan poultry products loaded on a vessel on or after Monday are ineligible for export to Taiwan, the latest version of Export Requirements for Taiwan issued by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) said. Those products loaded on or before Sunday were not affected. The requirements also ban any poultry sourced from birds hatched or raised in Canada from being exported to Taiwan. FSIS did not specify the reason for the change. FSIS had previously prohibited poultry from Missouri that were loaded on or after April 19 from being sent to Taiwan.
TOURISM
New Tamsui cruise planned
A new cruise route linking Huajiang Wharf in Banciao (板橋) with the left bank of the Tamsui River (淡水河) in Bali (八里) will be launched by the end of this year, New Taipei City (新北市) Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) said. Ecological parks will be built at both ends of the Erchong canal in Sanchong (三重) and Wugu (五股), while more bicyle routes will be constructed, he said. Chang Yen-kuang (張延光), director of the city’s Water Resources Department, said dredging projects are being implemented in the Tamsui River, Sindian River (新店溪) and Dahan River (大漢溪) ahead of the launch of the “blue way” tour from Huangjiang Wharf to Bali. Two more wharfs will be built next year at Liji (利濟) in Sinjhuang (新莊) and Chongyang (重陽) in Sanchong, Chang said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods