Three people were indicted in Greater Taichung yesterday for their alleged roles in a deadly fire that engulfed a pub earlier this year.
Nine people were killed and 12 injured in an early-morning blaze at the ALA Pub in Greater Taichung on March 6, making it one of the nation’s deadliest fires in recent years.
During a performance, dancer Chu Chuan-yi (朱傳毅) had accidentally set fire to the ceiling of the pub with a torch, triggering the blaze at about 1:30am.
Greater Taichung Prosecutor Wu Tso-yen (吳祚延) announced yesterday that Chu and Wang Ming-che (王銘哲), the owner of the bar, were charged with accidental homicide by the Taichung District Court.
Wu said prosecutors were seeking a six-year prison sentence and a fine of NT$2 million (US$66,000) for Wang and three-and-a-half-years for Chu.
Chang Shang-yi (張尚義), an employee with the municipality’s government, was charged with corruption and faces five years in jail.
Wu said the pub was in violation of zoning regulations because it was operating in a residential district, and when the municipal government became aware of the violation in 2008, water and electricity supplies to the pub were stopped.
Wu said Wang then applied to have the services restored and hired a worker named Chiu Ching-fa (邱進發) to do the work.
Chang, who worked at the municipality’s Urban Development Department, oversaw the application and reportedly told an intermediary contact that Wang needed to pay him NT$5,000 to ensure water and electricity supplies would resume, which Wang allegedly did, Wu said.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
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