CALIFORNIA (AP) - An explosion at a fireworks warehouse in northern California caused several fires, sending black smoke into the air and forcing evacuations, authorities said. There were no immediate reports of injuries. People were urged to avoid the area of Esparto and Madison for several days following the Tuesday night explosion, which set off multiple fireworks and caused a large fire that led to other spot fires and collapsed the building. “The fire will take time to cool, and once it does, explosive experts must safely enter the site to assess and secure the area,” the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.

 

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PARIS (AFP) - Two people died in France as a result of “heat-related illness,” said the minister for ecological transition on Wednesday, as the country registered its second-hottest June since records began in 1900. A heatwave across Europe this week broke high temperature records, leading to the closure of nearly 2,000 schools in France at midday on Tuesday. “More than 300 people have been treated by firefighters and two have died following heat-related illnesses,” ecology minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said on Wednesday. 

 

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DHAKA (Reuters) Bangladesh’s ousted and self-exiled prime minister Sheikh Hasina was sentenced to six months in prison by the country’s International Crimes Tribunal on Wednesday in a contempt of court case, a top prosecutor said. Hasina has been facing multiple cases since she fled to India after deadly student-led protests in August, but it was the first time the former leader was sentenced in one of them. Shakil Akand Bulbul, a leader of the Awami League party’s banned student wing Chhatra League, was also sentenced to two months in prison in the same case, Chief Prosecutor Muhammad Tajul Islam told reporters. The party had been led by Hasina for years.

 

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BEIJING (Reuters) - China is willing to enhance communications with the European Union and make sound preparations for the next China-EU leaders’ meeting, a Chinese foreign ministry statement quoted Foreign Minister Wang Yi as saying on Wednesday. Wang, in meeting with European Council President Antonio Costa, called on both sides to respect each other’s core interests and increase mutual understanding, adding that “unilateralism and acts of bullying have seriously undermined the international order and rules,” according to the statement. The two men also discussed the Ukrainian crisis, with Wang reiterating Beijing’s stance of promoting peace talks and a political settlement to the conflict, the statement said.

 

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CARACAS/GENEVA (Reuters) - The Venezuela government-allied National Assembly unanimously declared United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk persona non grata on Tuesday after Turk publicly decried what he said were arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances and other human rights violations in the South American country. The government of President Nicolas Maduro has rejected Turk’s comments, made before the Human Rights Council in Geneva last week. It has previously said that Turk failed to defend the rights of Venezuelans deported to an El Salvador prison by the United States and to call for the return of Venezuelan minors separated from migrant parents in the United States.