About 100kg of stones confiscated at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport from tourists who had illegally taken them from beaches in Taitung have been returned to the seashore, the East Coast National Scenic Area Administration said.
Stones bearing distinctive stripes found on the beaches of Taitung’s Sansiantai (三仙台) and Basiandong (八仙洞) often fall prey to foreign tourists who pick up the stones for souvenirs, the agency said, adding that Chinese tour groups were the most frequent offenders.
However, many do not get past customs, with officials confiscating them when detected.
Photo: Huang Ming-tang, Taipei Times
Taoyuan Airport officials recently decided to return, for the first time, the entire trove — weighing about 100kg — to Taitung, agency deputy director Lin Wei-ling (林維玲) said.
The agency had sorted the stones — commonly known as “Meifan rocks” (麥飯石) — it received from the airport and returned them to Basiandong, Lin said.
People taking stones from Taitung’s beaches may be charged with damaging famous landmarks and natural resources, as stipulated in Article 62, Paragraph 1 of the Act for the Development of Tourism (發展觀光條例), the agency said.
Photo: Huang Ming-tang, Taipei Times
Violators may be fined a maximum of NT$500,000 (US$15,460) and be held legally responsible for restoring the damage they caused, it added.
Lin said the agency is stepping up patrols of the area and alerting tourists to avoid further damage to the beaches.
She also urged local travel agencies and tourists to follow the law.
“We must protect natural resources together to keep the east coast’s natural beauty in perpetuity,” she said.
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
TAIWAN ADVOCATES: The resolution, which called for the recognition of Taiwan as a country and normalized relations, was supported by 22 Republican representatives Two US representatives on Thursday reintroduced a resolution calling for the US to end its “one China” policy, resume formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan and negotiate a bilateral Taiwan-US free trade agreement. Republican US representatives Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania’s 10th District were backed by 22 Republican members of the US House of Representatives. The two congressmen first introduced the resolution together in 2021. The resolution called on US President Donald Trump to “abandon the antiquated ‘one China’ policy in favor of a policy that recognizes the objective reality that Taiwan is an independent country, not
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)