UNITED STATES
California fire threat easing
Firefighters have gotten their first hold on California’s deadliest and most destructive fire of the year and on Wednesday expected that the blaze would remain stalled through the weekend. The McKinney Fire near the Oregon border as of Wednesday night was 10 percent contained and firefighters were making progress carving firebreaks around much of the rest of the blaze, officials told a community meeting. Evacuation orders for part of Yreka, a town of 7,800 people, were downgraded to warnings, allowing people to return home. About 1,300 residents remained under evacuation orders, officials said. The fire did not advance on Wednesday, following several days of brief, but heavy rain. “This is a sleeping giant right now,” said Darryl Laws, an incident commander on the blaze.
GERMANY
Explosion sparks forest fire
A large fire yesterday broke out in a popular Berlin forest following an explosion in a police munitions storage site. Firefighters were still unable to begin putting out the flames in the affected area of 1.5 hectares. “There are still explosions” at the storage area just outside Grunewald forest, a Berlin fire service spokesman said. “The situation is unpredictable. It’s burning uncontrollably in the forest,” he added. Officials are building a security cordon to allow firefighters to begin extinguishing the flames from a distance of about 1km from the ammunition storage zone.
CHINA
Tourist town locked down
Authorities partially locked down Sanya in Hainan Province after detecting about two dozen new COVID-19 cases this week, stranding thousands of tourists at one of the country’s most popular summer spots. People in areas deemed high-risk are banned from leaving their homes, while other residents can only venture out of their compounds once every two days to purchase necessities, the Sanya City Government said. The city has shut indoor venues including karaoke parlors and bars, and halted the movement of buses, ships and yachts. It reported 11 new cases on Wednesday, taking the total number of cases found this week to 25.
AUSTRALIA
Rocket debris identified
Space debris found on farmland more than 400km south of Sydney belongs to a SpaceX craft, the Space Agency said yesterday. Experts had visited the impact site in the Snowy Mountains and confirmed the pieces came from a SpaceX mission, it said. Among images broadcast on local media, one showed a shard of debris, wider and taller than an adult human, standing upright after apparently spearing into a hillside. The parts belong to a SpaceX Crew-1 Trunk that re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on July 9, said Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at Australian National University who visited the site. US space officials last month chided Beijing after remnants of a massive Chinese rocket fell back to Earth over the Indian Ocean. Such debris carried “a significant risk of loss of life and property,” NASA said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Parliament exits TikTok
Parliament has closed its TikTok account following objections from Conservative politicians about the app’s connections to China. The speakers of the House of Commons and House of Lords said they had not been consulted on setting up the account and would close it immediately. Last week, lawmakers Tom Tugendhat and Iain Duncan Smith, a former Conservative leader, were among the signatories of a letter calling for the account to be taken down.
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
Argentine President Javier Milei on Sunday vowed to “accelerate” his libertarian reforms after a crushing defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections. The 54-year-old economist has slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023. He acknowledged his party’s “clear defeat” by the center-left Peronist movement in the elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province, the country’s economic powerhouse. A deflated-sounding Milei admitted to unspecified “mistakes” which he vowed to “correct,” but said he would not be swayed “one millimeter” from his reform agenda. “We will deepen and accelerate it,” he
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
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