I say poo pooh on this. The UPI cannot be trusted to know the difference between a wing and a canard. I say it wasn’t a wing until I see a photo.
Maybe it was the winglet/rudder on the end of one of the wings.
Those have fallen off of VariEZs before, with fatal results, however. Typically, when something falls off a Rutan design, they don’t wanna fly anymore.
(Of course, this is true of most planes, just moreso on such a highly optimized design)