According to the tax bureau, companies can submit applications for invoices and declare tax on the blockchain platform supported by Tencent, which will automatically generate invoices after transactions are completed.

Cai Yige, manager of Tencent’s blockchain business, said the distributed ledger, a core technology of blockchain, enabled secure sharing and storage of transaction records among all parties in the invoicing process, making it impossible to tamper with invoice information.

The bureau and Tencent launched an innovation lab in May, to explore solutions to optimize tax services and prevent risks using cloud computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain and big data.

All of the 44 people inside, including 33 patients, were evacuated after the fire started at the hospice on the seventh floor of a nine-storey government hospital in New Taipei city.

Sixteen patients had cardiac arrests and seven were revived.

The other nine died with the cause of death given as smoke inhalation, according to the local fire department.

New Taipei fire department official Hung Liang-chien told reporters an initial probe showed that the fire was likely caused by the short circuit of an electrical device.

Members of the media gather outside as burnt out windows (top) are seen on a hospital following a fire on the seventh floor in New Taipei City on August 13, 2018. // AFP PHOTO

“We are clarifying whether it’s the power cable of the hospital’s electric bed or an air cushion bed brought in by relatives” of a patient, he said.

One caregiver working in the hospice reported seeing a spark on the bed where the fire started, according to local media.

Local fire chief Huang Te-ching earlier denied reports the sprinkler system had malfunctioned.

“The sprinkler device was on but there’s some distance between its location and where the fire started so the fire couldn’t be immediately put out,” he told reporters.

He added that authorities were also examining why there was a nine minute delay by the hospital in reporting the fire.

CCTV footage on local media showed staff rushing through the hospice corridors, carrying patients out in their arms or in wheelchairs to evacuate them after the fire broke out.

The injured were rushed to several nearby hospitals, with 11 listed as in serious condition.

Premier William Lai apologised to the public and gave his condolences over the tragedy.

“We will review the cause of the incident to prevent a similar situation from happening again,” he said.

There have been nine hospital fires in Taiwan in the past decade claiming 37 lives.

The worst was in 2012 when a cancer patient set a fire in a nursing facility in southern Tainan city that killed 13 people and injured 60 others. The arsonist was sentenced to death.

The accident took place on Sunday at 1130 GMT, the committee said, and two helicopters have been sent on a rescue and recovery mission to the crash site.

The emergency committee said the climbers were returning from an expedition up the Ismoili Somoni mountain, once known as Peak Communism and the highest mountain in the former Soviet Union.

The statement did not identify the climbers or the crew.

The accident comes two weeks after four Western cyclists were killed in an attack initially reported as a hit-and-run road accident, striking a blow to the country’s emerging tourism sector.

The Islamic State group said it carried out the attack — ramming the tourists with a car and attacking them with knives — but the authoritarian government refused to acknowledge the group’s claim.

“Many @harleydavidson owners plan to boycott the company if manufacturing moves overseas. Great!” Trump tweeted.

“Most other companies are coming in our direction, including Harley competitors.

A really bad move!” Trump has taken it personally since Wisconsin-based manufacturer — once a presidential favorite — announced on Monday it is moving some production out of the US.

Harley-Davidson was targeted with EU tariffs after Trump imposed stiff duties on European steel and aluminum.

An array of US companies have complained they are being hurt by the administration’s tariff policies. But Trump has treated the issue as a loyalty test. “I’ve done so much for you, and then this,” Trump tweeted earlier this week.

“Other companies are coming back where they belong! We won’t forget, and neither will your customers or your now very HAPPY competitors!” Last year, Harley-Davidson announced it would build a plant in Thailand after Trump pulled out of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, which would have abolished tariffs on their motorcycles across 40 percent of the world’s economy.

The company has repeatedly described the Thailand factory, along with other overseas production, as vital to its long-term need to boost foreign markets to make up for sluggish sales in the US. In January, Harley-Davidson announced it would close its Kansas City, Missouri assembly plant and consolidate jobs in York, Pennsylvania.

“A Harley-Davidson should never be built in another country-never!” Trump said earlier on Twitter.

The group refused to enter Bangladesh in the months during and after Myanmar’s military campaign, which drove 700,000 other Rohingya across the frontier in an act the United Nations, United States and other western countries have condemned as ethnic cleansing.

They are now stuck in a narrow “no mans land” relying on international aid sent by Bangladesh.

Myanmar called for the aid to be halted in talks between Bangladeshi Foreign Minister A.H. Mahmood Ali and Myanmar’s top diplomatic envoy, Kyaw Tint Swe, in Myanmar’s capital Napyidaw on Friday, the foreign ministry said late Saturday.

“Myanmar particularly requested Bangladesh to stop providing humanitarian assistance to those people… and proposed to arrange supply of humanitarian assistance from Myanmar side,” the ministry said.

Bangladesh made no commitment but “responded positively” to Myanmar’s proposal to conduct a survey of the no mans land area, the ministry said.

A Myanmar minister on a visit to the strip of land earlier this year warned the Rohingya refugees that they will face “consequences” if they do not take up a Myanmar offer to return.

Dil Mohammad, a Rohingya community leader among the group on the border, told AFP the latest pressure from Myanmar to vacate the no mans land area would add to their hardship.

“There will be uncertainty whether Myanmar will regularly provide us with food and humanitarian assistance. If Bangladesh stops helping us from their side, we will have a huge problem,” he said.

Kyaw Tint Swe, a minister in the office of Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, also made a new pledge to speed up implementation of a repatriation deal agreed with Bangladesh in November.

Myanmar committed to taking the Rohingya back in that deal, but none have returned. Rohingya leaders say that those sheltering at overflowing refugee camps in Bangladesh will not go back until their safety is guaranteed.

The majority of Myanmar’s Rohingya fled the country following a crackdown that started last August after attacks by Rohingya militants on police posts.

They have joined about 300,000 in camps around Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district who fled earlier waves of violence in Myanmar.

Myanmar views the Rohingya as illegal migrants and has long denied them citizenship and basic rights, despite their long roots in the country’s west.

“Philippine military aircraft! I’m warning you again. Leave immediately or you will bear responsibility for all the consequences!” a voice was heard as saying during a reconnaissance flight of the US Navy’s P-8A Poseidon last Friday.

Television networks BBC and CNN were given the rare opportunity to join the surveillance flight and witness China’s expansion in the Spratly Islands from a view of 16,500 feet.

BBC was able to pick up the radio warning of the Chinese to the Philippine military aircraft supposedly flying nearby. It noted the difference in tone with the ones issued to the US.

“We overhear China warning a Philippine aircraft. This time, they are not as nearly as polite,” BBC’s Rupert Wingfield- Hayes said in his report.

READ: PH airs concern over Chinese radio warnings

The US plane flew over four of China’s artificial islands — Kagitingan (Fiery Cross), Zamora (Subi Reef), Panganiban Reef (Mischief), and Mabini (Johnson) Reef.

The report said the US Navy was warned by China at least five times within the flight. But China appeared to have issued milder warnings to the US: “Leave immediately and keep out to avoid any misunderstanding.”

During the warnings, the US consistently replied with: “This is United States naval aircraft conducting lawful military activities beyond the national airspace of any coastal state and exercising these rights is guaranteed by international law. I am operating with due regard for the rights and duties of all states.”

The US pilot on board Lt. Matt Johnson said the warnings were a “routine occurrence” and it has no effect on their operations.

Nine vehicles were also spotted moving around in one of the reefs during the surveillance flight.

Philippine defense and military officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Euan Graham, director of the International Security Program at the Australian-based Lowy Institute, also noted the “striking” difference of China’s approach to the Philippines and US.

“The more menacing tone of PLA [People’s Liberation Army] warning to Philippine aircraft, compared to US aircraft, is striking. Calibrated to intimidate smaller, weaker states?” he wrote on his Twitter account.

Acting Supreme Court Chief Justice Antonio Carpio, a staunch critic of President Rodrigo Duterte’s foreign policy on China, said the Philippines should file a diplomatic protest over the incident.

“Subi Reef, a low-tide feature, is part of the territorial sea of Pagasa (Thitu) as ruled by the arbitral tribunal. The airspace above Subi Reef is part of the territorial airspace of Pagasa,” he told Inquirer.net.

Pagasa is the biggest island occupied by the Philippines in the Spratlys, and the only one inhabited by civilians. It is located less than 20 nautical miles from Zamora Reef.

Paganiban (Mischief) Reef, meanwhile, is a low-tide feature part of the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone as ruled by the international court, Carpio argued.

“Only the Philippines can build structures on Mischief Reef. There is freedom of overflight in the airspace above Mischief Reef,” he said.

China claims most parts of the South China Sea, including waters close to the shores of the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam.

The ruling on a challenge brought by the Philippines, the UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague invalidated China’s sweeping claim in July 2016.

But the Duterte government set aside the ruling in exchange for economic opportunities and friendly ties with China.

Early this year, the Inquirer published close-up surveillance images of China’s reclaimed features now equipped with runways, radar towers, missile shelters and other military facilities. The photos showed that the bases are almost operational and awaiting the deployment of personnel and aircraft.

China insists that the facilities on its man-made islands in the Spratlys are primarily for civilian purposes and they have “indisputable sovereignty” over the area.