Briefly

UNITED STATES

Wine region wildfire forces evacuation

A wind-driven wildfire erupted on Sunday in the heart of northern California's Napa Valley wine country to spread across nearly 800 hectares, forcing the evacuation of a hospital and hundreds of homes, authorities said. Fire crews were out in force, scrambling to fend off flames threatening neighborhoods and vineyards at the northern end of the famed wine-growing valley and surrounding hillsides, about 120 kilometers north of San Francisco. The blaze, dubbed the Glass Fire, broke out before dawn near Calistoga and raced toward the adjacent communities of Deer Park and St. Helena, with flames reaching within a mile of the Adventist Health St. Helena hospital. Authorities ordered about 600 homes evacuated on Sunday, with residents of 1,400 more warned to be ready to flee at a moment's notice. The notices affected at least 5,000 people.

GERMANY

Govt starts new search for nuclear waste site

Germany has launched a new search for a site to store its most radioactive nuclear waste, eliminating a disputed site at a former salt mine that was earmarked decades ago and has long been a focus of protests. A report issued on Monday by Germany's waste management organization, or BGE, identified 90 areas covering 54 percent of the country's surface area as potentially geologically suited for a nuclear storage site. It kicked off what is bound to be a politically fraught process, with a final decision slated for 2031. The aim is to start using the selected site in 2050. Following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan nine years ago, Germany decided to phase out its own nuclear power generation by the end of 2022.

LEBANON

PM-designate steps down amid impasse

Lebanon's prime minister-designate resigned on Saturday amid a political impasse over government formation, dealing a blow to French President Emmanuel Macron's efforts to break a dangerous stalemate in the crisis-hit country. The announcement by Moustapha Adib nearly a month after he was appointed to the job further delays the prospect of getting the foreign economic assistance needed to rescue the country from collapse. Adib told reporters he was stepping down after it became clear that the kind of Cabinet he wished to form was "bound to fail". The French leader has been pressing Lebanese politicians to form a Cabinet made up of nonpartisan specialists that can work on enacting urgent reforms to extract Lebanon from a devastating economic and financial crisis.

IRAQ

Foreign minister in first visit to Iran

Iraq's foreign minister arrived on Saturday in Teheran for bilateral talks with senior Iranian officials, according to the state-run news agency. IRNA reported that Fuad Hussein planned to meet his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani, in what marked his first visit to the Iranian capital. Zarif visited Baghdad in mid-July, when he met with Hussein and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi. It was Zarif's first visit to Iraq since a US airstrike in January killed a senior Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, outside Baghdad's international airport. Iran sees neighboring Iraq as a possible route to bypass US sanctions that US President Donald Trump reimposed in 2018.

JAPAN

JAL embraces gender neutral greetings

Japan Airlines is ditching the phrase "ladies and gentlemen" and instead embracing gender neutral terms during in-flight and airport announcements from next month, the company said Monday. From Thursday, JAL "will abolish expressions that based on (two types of) sex and use gender-friendly expression" like "good morning" and "good evening," a spokesperson for the airline said. In Japanese, the expression generally used for such announcements is already gender-neutral, but the decision applies to other languages used by the airline.

Agencies Via Xinhua