Students involved in the poaching of seashells at Kenting National Park last year will be punished by not only the university they attend, but also the park's headquarters.
A report by an online news agency on Wednesday exposed illegality involving the capture of rare seashells at the national park by students of the Keelung-based National Taiwan Ocean University (NTOU) last year. Photographs accompanying the report show that students were displaying and grilling seashells, fish and octopi.
NTOU officials said yesterday that the story was exaggerated because the facts had not been verified.
The report came after officials at the Kenting National Park Headquarters (
The officials notified the NTOU of the event, urging the administration to launch a fact-finding mission based on clues found on the Web site.
Yesterday, two students involved in the matter said during a university investigation that only some of the photos that appeared with the online report were taken at Kenting, implying that the news report conveyed unverified information.
According to Chen Ming-ren (陳銘仁) from the NTOU Secretariat, other photos of fish and octopi being grilled were taken at other places, including the northeast coast, Audi (澳底) fishing port and Penghu island (澎湖).
Chen said that in April last year, two students from the Department of Environmental Biology and Fisheries Science visited the national park where they dived to collect certain seashells. Chen said this was in violation of regulations.
"In connection with the regrettable event in Kenting, the administration will not only record demerits but also use the case as an example to educate other students," Chen said.
The two senior male students involved yesterday took a letter of penitence to the park's headquarters to apologize for their behavior.
Officials said that the students would be fined between NT$3,000 and NT$15,000 for violating the National Parks Law (
Other related laws, such as the Wild Animal Protection Law (
"We have not made a final decision to take them to court. Seizing the chance to educate other students is more important," said Lee Yeng-sen (
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater