A Changhua County fast-food restaurant in was allegedly the source of a fire that on Wednesday destroyed TV and Internet cables, interrupting cable TV services at about 5,000 households and Internet at almost 600.
Employees of the McDonald’s branch in Huatan Township (花壇) were burning joss paper in a Ghost Festival ritual, the Changhua Fire Department said, adding that smoldering paper fell through a maintenance hole in the ground, melting the coverings of the cable laid underneath the sidewalk.
The restaurant had to close for 90 minutes due to smoke, a statement released by McDonald’s Taiwan said, adding that the fire was put out by firefighters. The company declined to comment on the cause of the incident.
Cable TV operator NCDTV reported that the cables had been ignited by the joss paper, and that the incident cut off signals to Huatan and Dacun (大村) townships, adding that TV and Internet services were restored in the early morning yesterday, 12 hours after the fire broke out.
The company would demand compensation from McDonald’s, it said.
Cables were destroyed at a length of more than 150m, causing about NT$1 million (US$33,863) in damage, NCDTV said, while the fire department verified the reports.
A nearby dealership had to remove all the vehicles from its premises, the fire department said, adding that smoke might otherwise have damaged the cars and caused great losses to its business.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift