US authorities have confirmed that at least one of the victims in a killing spree last week in California was a Taiwanese student, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Anna Kao (高安) said yesterday.
Representatives from the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Exchange Office (TECRO) branch in Los Angeles has “established direct contact with local authorities” and the University of California at Santa Barbara to offer its assistance, Kao added.
On Friday night, Elliot Rodger, 22, allegedly stabbed to death his two roommates — Hong Cheng-yuan (洪晟元), also known as James, 20, and George Chen, 19 — and a visitor, Wang Weihan, 20, from Fremont, California, in their apartment near the university campus.
Rodger then drove to the Alpha Phi sorority house on campus and shot three women on the lawn.
Katherine Cooper, 22, and Veronika Weiss, 19 — both students at the university — were killed. The third women, as yet unidentified, is being treated for multiple gunshot wounds.
Rodger drove on to a local deli, went inside and shot and killed Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez, 20.
He injured 13 more either with gunshots or a car that he used as a battering ram against bicyclists and skateboarders.
The killing spree claimed seven lives, including Rodger’s.
The Santa Barbara County Sherriff’s Office said Rodger took his own life after the rampage.
US media reports said Rodger had uploaded multiple YouTube videos, including one, which has since been removed, titled Day of Retribution, promising to have “his revenge against humanity” — particularly the women whom he claims rejected him.
Hong, who identified himself on Facebook as having grown up in Taipei, had graduated from Lynbrook High School in San Jose, California, the TECRO office in Los Angeles said.
The office is still seeking confirmation with the university whether Chen was also Taiwanese.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS