Taiwan News
Date: 2017/04/06
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)–Persecutors decided Thursday not to press charges against

Persecutors decided not to press charges against four people who spread a fake photo of a collapsed building and fake news that buildings collapsed. (By Central News Agency)

four people who spread a fake photo of a collapsed building and fake news that buildings collapsed in a large city in southwestern Taiwan following a strong earthquake that struck the area in February this year.

An earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale rocked southwestern Taiwan and its offshore area around 1 a.m. on February 11 this year and many residents in the region were awakened during sleep by the tremor. Tainan City, a metropolitan city located in southwestern Taiwan, had previously suffered serious causalities from a stronger temblor on February 6 last year, and people in this city still have memories of the catastrophic quake that took 117 lives, of whom 115 were residents of one building that collapsed in the quake.

Not long after the February 11 quake, a photo of a collapsed building circulated on social media websites and apps with the captions “building collapsed again in Tainan” and “building collapsed on Jinhua Road in Tainan,” prompting many people to call the city government, police and fire departments to seek confirmation of the news. They were told it was fake news.    [FULL  STORY]