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.
RE-EDUCATION: The ambassador to Australia told reporters that he understood there ‘might be a process for the people in Taiwan to have a correct understanding of China’ China’s ambassador to Australia yesterday said that Beijing is prepared to use “all necessary means” to prevent Taiwan from being independent, saying there can be “no compromise” on its “one China” principle. Chinese Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian (肖千) repeatedly told the National Press Club in Canberra that the US was to blame for the recent escalation in tensions, adding that China’s decision to launch ballistic missiles in live-fire exercises in response to US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan was “legitimate and justified.” Xiao said that after a “good start” with the new government of Australian Prime Minister
Newly married and with his first child on the way, auto worker Wang (王) wanted to move into the apartment he bought in Wuhan three years ago, but those hopes were dashed by China’s ballooning property crisis. Saddled with nearly US$300,000 in debt and with his unit nowhere near completion, the 34-year-old decided he had enough and stopped making mortgage payments. He is among numerous home buyers across dozens of cities in China who have boycotted payments over fears that their properties will not be completed by cash-strapped, debt-laden developers. “They said construction would resume soon,” Wang said, only giving his surname. “But
PROPAGANDA LEAFLETS: Seoul voiced ‘strong regret’ as Kim’s sister threatened to eradicate South Korean authorities for sending the virus across the border North Korean leader Kim Jong-un suffered from a “high fever” during a recent COVID-19 outbreak, his sister Kim Yo-jong said yesterday, as she vowed to “eradicate” South Korean authorities if they continued to tolerate propaganda leaflets the regime blames for spreading the virus. Kim Yo-jong blamed “South Korean puppets” for sending “dirty objects” across the border in leaflets carried by balloons, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. The revelation of her brother’s illness marked an unusual admission for a regime that rarely comments on the leader’s health — and then only to show that he shares the struggles of
A landmark sexual harassment case in China yesterday returned to court after an earlier ruling dealt a blow to the country’s fledgling #MeToo movement. Zhou Xiaoxuan (周曉璇) stepped forward in 2018 to accuse state TV host Zhu Jun (朱軍) of forcibly kissing and groping her during her 2014 internship at the broadcaster. While the case of Zhou, now 29, inspired many others to share their experiences of sexual assault publicly and sparked a social media storm, a court ruled last year there was insufficient evidence to back her allegation. Zhou appealed, and returned to court for another hearing yesterday in Beijing. “I still feel
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