Taoyuan prosecutors indicted a pastor on Friday on charges of sexually abusing 13 young female members of his congregation, and were seeking a 15-year prison term.
Tang Tai-shen (唐台生), 58, who has a prior conviction for molestation, is suspected of sexually assaulting the women under the pretext of offering sex counseling in sessions that he videotaped.
OTHERS INDICTED
Eight female staffers, including Tang's daughter-in-law, who was in charge of recruiting members for Tang's congregation, were also indicted on charges of molestation.
Prosecutors are seeking an eight-year sentence for one of those staffers, Wu Ching-jung (
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS
Prosecutors said that Wu and Tang had sexual intercourse in September last year in front of a female congregation member. Wu then asked the woman to have sex with Tang, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said several women have told them that Tang assaulted them and that they did not consent to having sex. Tang claims the sex was consensual.
SENTENCE
Tang was arrested in June when the sex sessions came to light and has been in police detention since then. He faces a maximum 10-year jail term if convicted of rape and a maximum of five years if found guilty of molestation.
In 1999, Tang was arrested for molesting more than 30 female congregation members and was sentenced to three years and two months in prison in a case that shocked the nation.
He was released in June 2001, after which he continued to recruit young female religious followers, whom he sexually assaulted, prosecutors said.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS