NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
1 France fires: Fires fueled by strong Mediterranean winds have raced across multiple towns in the Marseille region of France, leaving at least 22 people injured, destroying several businesses and forcing the evacuation of 2,700 tourists, nursing home residents and others. Some 1,800 firefighters, backed by planes and helicopters, battled the worst fire through the night around the town of Martigues. They were still working Wednesday to extinguish it more than 14 hours after it broke out Tuesday, according to the local fire service. The cause of the fires is not known.
2 Taiwan visit: Alex Azar, the U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services, is scheduled to visit Taiwan in coming days in the highestlevel visit by an American Cabinet official since the break in formal diplomatic relations between Washington and Taipei in 1979. The visit and a planned meeting with Taiwan’s president, will likely create new friction between the U.S. and China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary. Taiwan is a key irritant in the troubled relationship between the world’s two largest economies, which are also at odds over trade, technology, territorial claims in the South China Sea and China’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said China has lodged “solemn complaints“over the visit in both Beijing and Washington. The U.S. maintains only unofficial ties with Taiwan in deference to Beijing, but is the island’s most important ally and provider of defense equipment.
3 Gem find: A smallscale miner in Tanzania who had become an overnight millionaire over a month ago when he unearthed two of the biggest rough tanzanite gemstones ever found has struck it rich again, digging up a third stone weighing 13 pounds with an estimated value of $2 million. The three stones were discovered by Saninu Laizer. The first two stones have an estimated value of $3.4 million. Tanzanite, with a deep violetblue color, is found only in the East African country and considered to be one of the rarest gemstones on earth.
4 Korea explosion: A video shows plumes of black smoke rising from a North Korean city near the border with China amid reports that deadly explosions occurred there earlier this week. There has been no official word from North Korea or China about what happened in the North Korean city of Hyesan on Monday. But South Korean media and outside monitoring groups reported that gas explosions in a residential area left dozens of people dead or injured. The Seoulbased Daily NK on Wednesday cited unidentified sources in North Korea as saying that the explosions left 15 people dead and that the death toll could rise. It earlier reported gasoline stored at a house in Hyesan ignited and led to the explosion of a nearby liquid petroleum gas cylinder, and this caused chain explosions of gas cylinders attached to other houses.
5 Royal lawsuit: A British judge ruled Wednesday that the Duchess of Sussex can keep the names of five close friends secret while she brings a privacy invasion lawsuit against a British newspaper. High Court Judge Mark Warby agreed to grant Meghan Markel’s request to protect the anonymity of friends who defended her in the pages of a U.S. magazine in order to spare them a “frenzy of publicity” before the case comes to a full trial. Markle is suing the publisher of the Mail on Sunday and the MailOnline website over five articles that published portions of a handwritten letter she wrote to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, after her marriage to Prince Harry in 2018. Markle, 39, is seeking damages for alleged misuse of private information, copyright infringement and data protection breaches.