1 . Thailand is to ban smoking on some of the country’s most popular tourist beaches, with the prospect of up to a year in prison for those caught lighting up, according to reports by local media. The move follows a recent survey of litter on Patong beach, Phuket — visited by millions of foreign tourists each year — which found an average of 0.76 cigarette butts (烟头) per square metre in a sample area, which would amount to 101,058 butts on the 2.5km-long stretch of sand.

The survey was undertaken by the country’s department of marine and coastal resources, which described it as a “serious problem”. Discarded cigarette butts accounted for a third of rubbish collected by the department.

“Cigarettes have a direct effect on the natural environment,” director general Jatuporn Buruspat told the Phuket Gazette. “The butts clog (淤积) the drains contributing to floods. When the cigarettes stay under the beach sand for a long time, it also negatively affects the eco-system. And then when the chemicals from the cigarette butts reach the water, it also releases cadmium, lead, arsenic and some acid from insecticide which are poison to the natural food chain.”

The ban, which will come into play in November, will affect 20 beaches including Patong, Koh Khai Nok, Koh Khai Nai (Phuket); Hua Hin, Cha-Am, Khao Takiab; Pattaya, Jomtien, Bangsaen and Samila.

After a trial period, the ban is expected to be enforced on all Thai beaches, as well as on passenger and tourist boats, to deal with the problem of butts damaging the underwater environment. Anyone found to be breaking the law will face one year in jail or a maximum 100,000 baht fine, or both.

2 . You wouldn’t steal a car. You would never rob a bank or pick someone’s pocket. But you may be another kind of thief.

If you have ever bought a disc for 15 yuan or less, then you have helped to rob artists or musicians of their intellectual properly rights (知识产权).

Last Thursday was World Intellectual Property Day. Activities to tell people about intellectual property rights were held around the country.

Intellectual property includes inventions, literary (文学的) and artistic works, names, and pictures. They are of little value if they are not read, seen and used.

While the cost of copying discs is very small, authors, singers and actors have to spend a lot of money and time making a new product. That’s why they have the right to make money from their work.

So buying pirated (盗版的) music of Jay Chou and Jolin Tsai is like stealing from them, paying them no respect for their hard work.

If Jay Chou cannot make money from his work, he may not make anything else. But those who make pirated goods are becoming rich without doing any hard work.

The authors should ask for a fair price for their work. Earlier this year there was much talk about how much KTV clubs should pay the music companies for using their songs.

The copyright fee also should be fair to the users. That’s good for the music’s popularity and society as well.

3 . Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox, recently signed two bills into law that strictly limit children’s use of social media platforms. Under the law, which takes effect next year, social media companies have to check the ages of all users in the state, and children under age 18 have to get agreement from their parents to have accounts. Parents will also be able to use their kids’ accounts, apps won’t be allowed to show children ads, and accounts for kids won’t be able to be used between 10:30 pm and 6:30 am without parental agreement.

While some people argue age limitation allows tech companies to collect even more data about users, let’s be real: These companies already have much private information about us. To solve this problem, we need a separate data privacy law. But until that happens, this concern shouldn’t stop us from protecting kids.

One of the key parts of the law is allowing parents to use their kids’ accounts. By doing this, the law begins to help address one of the biggest dangers kids face online: harmful content.

One huge challenge the law helps parents get over is the amount of time kids are spending on social media. A 2022 survey found that, on average, children aged 8 to 12 spend 5 hours and 33 minutes per day on social media while those aged 13 to 18 spend 8 hours and 39 minutes daily. It’s warned that lack of sleep is connected with serious harm to children — everything from injuries to depression (抑郁), fatness and diabetes. So, parents need to have a way to ensure their kids aren’t up on social media platforms all night.

Considering the experiences many kids are having on social media, this law will help Utah’s parents protect their kids. Parents in other states need the same support. Now, it’s time for the government to step up and ensure children throughout the country have the same protection as Utah’s kids.

6 . New York has become the most recent state to ban the sale of some animals in pet stores. A new law signed by Governor Kathy Hochul bans the sale of dogs, cats, and rabbits in retail shops. The new law encourages pet stores to work with animal rescue groups and shelters to make space for rescued animals that are available for adoption.

California was the first state to pass a retail ban in 2017. Maryland followed in 2018 and a statewide ban in Illinois went into effect in February. Maine and Washington passed laws that ban the sales in new pet stores. Now, more than 300 cities and counties throughout the United States have passed pet-sale bans. There are at least 10,000 commercial pet stores in the country, and fewer than 3,000 of them are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to the estimates from the Humane Society of the United States.

In these commercial pet stores, animals are usually kept in dirty, crowded cages with limited access to medical care and human interaction. They often don’t get enough to eat or drink, have little protection from cold or heat; and don’t have a separate place to go to the bathroom. Many animals raised in the commercial pet stores go on to have physical and emotional problems.

Although conditions are often horrible, commercial pet stores are usually legal unless authorities are called in to close those with extremely inhumane (不人道的) conditions. “Dogs, cats, and rabbits across New York deserve loving homes and humane treatment,” Governor Hochul said in a statement. “I’m proud to sign this law, which will make meaningful steps to cut down on bad treatment and protect the welfare of animals across the state.” However, some pet store owners have argued that the law will cause a large quantity of pet stores in New York to close.

8 . This week the Portuguese parliament attracted headlines around the world after we banned bosses from contacting their employees outside of working hours. Under the new laws, employers will now face punishment if they text-message, phone or email their workers when they are off the clock.

There should be a boundary between the time in which a worker is a resource in the service of the person paying their salary, and the time in which they should be the owner of a life that is not all about work. We have introduced these new labour laws to avoid the blurring (模糊) of the boundary needed for a good work-life balance.

In the age of the industrial revolution, workers could be little more than workers. The demand for shorter working hours was a central tenet of the labour movement from the very beginning. Long working hours can cause poor health. The worry has been that the rise of remote working is threatening to take us back to that period before trade unions won protections for their members, when the working day stretched out endlessly. Remote working has to be step forward, not a step back. When more and more of us are working remotely, it is all the more essential to establish clear boundaries.

Labour market regulation cannot ignore the inequality between the parties: employers and employees. A work relation is not one between equals that can be freely regulated by the individual contract. Between the weak and the strong, the state must be involved to regain the balance.

In an unequal relationship such as that between boss and worker, it is not enough to establish the latter has a “right to disconnect”; to switch off their mobile phone, close their laptop, or ignore phone calls that arrive in the middle of dinner with their family. Any abuse that conflicts with that right must be stopped through punishment. This is why we have prohibited employers from contacting workers outside working hours, and imposed potential fines for breaking the rules.

9 . E-cigarettes are battery-operated devices that allow users to breathe in nicotine (尼古丁) without lighting a cigarette. They come in many shapes and sizes like regular cigarettes, pens, USB sticks and other everyday items.

Though e-cigarettes may be less harmful than regular cigarettes, their effect on health can still be serious. Using e-cigarettes, or vaping, has been associated with a higher risk of lung injury. E-cigarette exposure may be particularly harmful to young adults — it can harm their brain development and cause a lifelong addiction to nicotine. According to Food and Drug Administration(FDA), an increasing number of students are using e-cigarettes every year and FDA is trying to work out how to regulate using e-cigarettes.

One way to cut e-cigarette consumption is to impose a tax. A study by the Centre for Health Economics &Policy Studies at San Diego State University found that a $1 increase in e-cigarette taxes is associated with a 14% — 26% decrease in vaping among high-school students. Young people tend to be strapped, so even a small tax increase could discourage their vaping. Unexpectedly, the tax increase seems also to decrease teenage alcohol consumption. According to the study, a $1 increase in e-cigarette taxes is associated with a 10%-11%reduction in teenage excessive alcohol use. Smoking and drinking tend to go together.

Teenagers who drink are twice as likely as others to light up. In turn, raising taxes on cigarettes has been found to reduce teenage drinking.

So should lawmakers surely rush to carry out an e-cigarette tax? The answer is not so simple. Catherine Maclean, one of the study's authors, warned, “Despite the potential of a tax increase on e-cigarettes to restrict young adults' using cigarettes, it may lead to some others switching to regular cigarettes or illegal vaping products.”

Many other ways are put forward. Some believe requiring a prescription (处方) for e-cigarettes could help as well. Another tighter regulation is also a possible answer — Britain and the Euro-pean Union regulate the amount of nicotine in e-cigarettes.