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Palisades and Eaton fires start coming under control as fierce winds ease but forecasters predict another red flag warning for Monday. This blog is now closed.

Neighborhoods under orders now include Encino and Brentwood, with the Getty Center and its art collectionThousands of firefighters labored to contain the four wildfires raging across the Los Angeles area Saturday before evening winds forecasted to fan additional flames.In the Pacific Palisades, incarcerated firefighters dug wide trenches across the charred landscape in an attempt to contain the blaze, which has been called the most destructive in the city's history. Across the city, in Altadena, first responders dragged hoses over burned-out cars and rebar. In Mandeville Canyon, where the Palisades fire grew closer to the UCLA campus - prompting evacuation orders across the Brentwood and Encino neighborhoods - firefighting planes dropped water and retardant in an aggressive aerial attempt to halt the fire's path. Continue reading...

Smith, who tried to prosecute Donald Trump over classified documents and US Capitol riot, stepped down FridayJack Smith, the justice department's special counsel assigned to oversee two criminal investigations into Donald Trump, resigned Friday from the department.Smith's resignation came hours after the department asked a federal appeals court to move swiftly in reversing a judge's order blocking the release of his investigative report focused on Trump's alleged efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election before he re-takes office on 20 January. Continue reading...

Some smaller blazes have been contained or extinguished, but the Palisades fire threatens to spread west of the 405The ongoing battle to contain wildfires around Los Angeles took several new turns on Saturday, as officials warned that while some smaller blazes had been effectively contained or extinguished, the Palisades fire threatened to spread west of the 405 freeway into some of the priciest neighborhoods of the city.Here are the key takeaways on Saturday: Continue reading...

Rory Sykes confirmed dead as heartbroken mother claims there was no water to put out cinders on roof of his home

Questions about the viability of a female presidential candidate rise after a crushing presidential defeatDemocrats are harboring strong feelings of stress and gloom as the new year begins. And many are questioning whether their party's commitment to diverse candidates - especially women - may lead to further political struggles as Donald Trump is sworn in for a second presidency on 20 January.A recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that a significant number of Democrats believe that it may be decades before the United States will get its first female president. Continue reading...

Washington Post reporter says he never made comments to James Comer published in the congressman's new bookThe Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward forcefully denied making statements attributed to him by James Comer, the Republican chair of the powerful House oversight committee, in which Woodward supposedly said Joe Biden was financially corrupt.The statements attributed to me in what is apparently his book are false," Woodward said. I made none of those statements he attributes to me. I repeat none, and not even in a paraphrased form." Continue reading...

Fire is an inextricable part of the region's identity, as the writers knew. But the way this divided city burns has been transformedTalking about fire and Los Angeles is an exercise in repetition. Southern California does have seasons, Joan Didion once noted in Blue Nights, among them the season when the fire comes".Fire in Los Angeles has a singular ability to shock, with its destruction that takes grimly familiar pathways" down the canyons and into the subdivisions. The phrase comes from the writer and activist Mike Davis's 1995 essay The Case for Letting Malibu Burn, and it is as true for the fires as for our talk of the fires. Even our reflections take on that grim familiarity: we cite Didion citing Nathanael West. We fall in with the great writers of this great city who are always so ready to judge it. Continue reading...

Countries that cherish democratic values need to take a stand against the president-elect's throwback to unabashed American expansionismWatching politicians promise one thing, then do another, is a common experience in all democratic countries. Situations in which voters do not expect a politician to keep his word, and in many instances fervently hope and pray he will not, are rarer. Donald Trump, the US president-elect, fits this latter category. When Trump threatens to subjugate Canada, a Nato ally, by force, unilaterally annex Greenland, the autonomous territory of a friendly EU state, and override Panama's sovereignty for bogus security reasons, most people assume he is not serious and his remarks carry little real significance. This response, while comforting, is a mistake.It's entirely possible that Trump, pumped with hype, hot air and testosterone in the lead-up to his 20 January inauguration, is being gratuitously disruptive. He likes to shake things up. It amuses his Make America Great Again (Maga) hyper-nationalist fanclub. It may be that this former property developer and convicted felon, who counts himself a shrewd negotiator, is deliberately raising the stakes before more reasoned discussions about security and trade. But it is also possible Trump means what he says. Continue reading...

Warren Davidson of Ohio says aid should be withheld until the state ravaged by wildfires reforms forestry managementA Republican US congressman from Ohio has called for federal disaster relief to be withheld from California unless the state reforms its forestry management practices that some blame for the rapid spread of wind-fanned fires that broke on Tuesday.Warren Davidson's remarks to Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo on Friday came as California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, urged officials to avoid politicizing the response to the blazes which had killed people and destroyed thousands of homes. Continue reading...

In another era, the outgoing president would have made a great cold war leader. Instead, his tenure was dogged by errors, naivety and overcautionIn a week when the US bade a sad farewell to Jimmy Carter, presidential legacies came under particular scrutiny. Yet few presidents are widely remembered beyond their lifetimes, their historic" achievements even less so. In the 20th century, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D Roosevelt, John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon make the truly memorable list. Most of the rest are mere school-book names and dates.Joe Biden's standing in this unprepossessing pantheon is now being assessed, as he prepares to depart the White House on 20 January. Like his 44 predecessors, he reportedly frets about his place in history". All presidents do this. It smacks of vanity. They give valedictory lectures, endow foundations, build libraries, write memoirs. They confuse fame with continuing relevance. Continue reading...

Between Elon Musk, a free-for-all Facebook and Donald Trump, truth and decency are likely to have a hard time of it in 2025How did we get to a week in which the world's richest man could label our safeguarding minister and women's rights campaigner Jess Phillips a rape genocide apologist", and the boss of the world's biggest social platforms could abandon moderating even the most despicable content in the US?Let's go back 30 years. It's 1995, cargo pants were slung low, Oasis were riding high. We were all going to Live Forever. And then the New York supreme court ruled against a long-forgotten company called Prodigy, which hosted online message boards. An unknown user had posted a message that the brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont (which had inspired The Wolf of Wall Street) had committed fraud. Stratton Oakmont sued for defamation and a crucial question was asked: was the site that hosted the comment responsible for it, in the way a traditional publisher would be for a comment on its letters page? The court decided that, because Prodigy had moderators and content guidelines, it was responsible. Another company that didn't moderate had previously gone unpunished. Continue reading...

Sam & Dave singer's electrifying artistry was revered by musicians ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Mariah Carey

"This is what's left of the home that I grew up in for 31 years," Pacific Palisades resident Greg Benton said as he remembered his recent Christmas celebration with his family in his house. Thousands of Angelenos are returning to their homes to assess the damaged left by five fires which raged through multiple areas of the city. More than 144,000 people are under evacuation orders, local authorities have said

Seething residents are questioning city's preparedness, even as hurricane-force winds and climate crisis created unprecedented calamity conditionsAs a series of wildfires in the Los Angeles area grew into raging infernos, the city's mayor, Karen Bass, was halfway around the world - part of the US delegation attending the inauguration of the new president of Ghana.By the time she returned home on Wednesday, the fires had seared through thousands of acres. They destroyed more than 10,000 structures and killed at least 11. And Bass was facing a barrage of questions and criticism - both from within LA, and outside. Continue reading...

Many in Youngstown, Ohio, believe the president-elect will tackle the town's decline this time. Others are worried about his character flaws. Their concerns help explain how he returned to power - and how his second term might play outThe last time Donald Trump was president, he travelled to Youngstown, Ohio, among the most depressed of America's rust belt cities, and promised voters the impossible.The high-paying steel, railroad and car industry jobs that once made Youngstown a hard-living, hard-drinking blue collar boom town were coming back, he said. Don't move. Don't sell your house," he crowed to a rapturous crowd in 2017. We're going to fill up those factories - or rip "em down and build brand new ones." Continue reading...

Volunteer organizations fill in to provide rides and supplies to a city devastated by fire, and offer ways to contribute

At many points, it looked as if he never would be sentenced. That he was sentenced to nothing, then, is itself a small victoryWhat kind of a sentence, exactly, is an unconditional discharge"? When Judge Juan Merchan, of New York, issued the sentence on Friday, he declared that President-elect Donald Trump, convicted in his courtroom of 34 felonies, will face no jail time, no probation, and no fine for falsifying business records in order to conceal an affair he had with the adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the days leading up to the 2016 election. His punishment, that is, is that there will be no punishment at all.Trump was never likely to get jail time, which would have been unusual for any defendant faced with these charges, and over the past days Merchan had signaled that he would not impose probation, either. And maybe that's just as well - any punishment or sanction at all that he had imposed on Trump would have been likely to be appealed and suspended, at least for the duration of Trump's time in office. There was, that is, no formal mechanism really available by which the criminal justice system could punish Trump for the crimes he was convicted of. This court has determined that the only lawful sentence that permits entry of judgement of conviction without encroachment on the highest office of the land is a sentence of unconditional discharge," Merchan said, explaining his reasoning: there is no way to punish a man who is about to be the president. In a sense, the sentencing merely confirms what many of us already know: that by virtue of who he is, Trump is beyond the reach of consequence. Continue reading...

The president-elect has disparaged DEI. As Meta and Walmart drop diversity goals, here's how others may followEven before Donald Trump won the election in November, multiple companies with announced they were ending their diversity initiatives. After the election, some of the country's largest companies announced they too were sunsetting some of their corporate programs.In December, Walmart said it was rolling back its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals and would drop using the term altogether. McDonald's made a similar statement in January. On Friday, Meta became the latest major company to announce the end of its DEI goals, saying that the company will scrap its DEI team, its equity and inclusion training programs and requirements to have a diverse slate" of applicants when hiring. Continue reading...

As inauguration day approaches, consumers scooping up iPads, building supplies, shelf-stable foods and electric carsTablets and appliances made in China, hybrid cars built in Canada, European wine. As Donald Trump's second inauguration as president quickly approaches, Americans are stocking up on goods in anticipation of tariffs Trump plans to place on imports, according to a Guardian reader poll.Since the election, Trump has promised to immediately impose a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian imports, along with increasing existing tariffs on Chinese imports by 10%. On the campaign trail, Trump said he would put tariffs of 10% to 20% on all imports. Continue reading...

Returning Pacific Palisades residents were grieving not just homes turned to ash, but memories buried amid the rubbleWildfires had crept close to the Pacific Palisades before.Just in 2018, the catastrophic Woolsey fire wreaked havoc in nearby Malibu. There'd been other close calls: evacuations because of a brush fire in 2019. A blaze chewing through steep remote terrain nearby the following year. Continue reading...

Zuckerberg's appointment of the UFC supremo to Meta's board appears to be a calculated move to solidify ties with Trump through one of his most influential alliesIn the four months since Donald Trump accused Mark Zuckerberg of conspiring against him during the 2020 presidential election and threatened him with life imprisonment, the Meta CEO has gone to great lengths to curry favor with the incoming president.Shortly after Trump's victory in November, Zuckerberg traveled to Mar-a-Lago to dine with the president-elect and his transition team, even donating $1m to Trump's inauguration fund. He has also culled Meta's third party fact-checking program, lifting restrictions on topics like immigration and gender. And this week, Zuckerberg took his efforts to align with the incoming administration a step further by appointing Dana White - the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and a close Trump ally - to Meta's board of directors. Continue reading...

The birth of a baby boy on a dangerously overcrowded refugee boat should be a wake-up call to all of usIt has become something of a cliche to compare modern photographic compositions to Renaissance paintings, but that is what I thought of when I saw the image of the baby boy born on a crowded small boat that was rescued off the coast of Lanzarote this week. Granted, Renaissance painters were notoriously bad at babies, and with his wrinkled little face and his full head of hair, this baby is as real as it gets. But composition-wise, there is something in the twist of the torsos of all those exhausted people turning towards him and his mother, the arms outstretched, hands reaching. For a photo not taken by a professional, the effect is startling.What had this new mother just gone through? To be in early labour in such circumstances, let alone the later stages, let alone delivery ... once again, I'm left astonished by the sheer physical and emotional endurance of women.Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

There is a narrow window. Public media and fair reporting must be supported: the rules must be upheldIn early 2017, Mark Zuckerberg was on what might be termed an apology tour" of the United States. In the tumultuous few months since Donald Trump won his first presidential victory, the young chief executive of Facebook was reeling from his company's part in serving US voters Russian disinformation, and widespread accusations that the social media platform had disseminated a vast spray of fake news". Fighting a rearguard action, Facebook announced changes to its algorithms, and a major initiative to include third-party factcheckers" as part of the content moderation efforts.Touring the country, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla, stopped off in Selma, Alabama. They posed for a casual photo outside the offices of the iconic local paper, the Selma Times-Journal. Zuckerberg posted a heartfelt thank you" to journalists who work tirelessly and sometimes put their lives in danger to surface the truth. I don't always agree with everything you say, but that's how democracy is supposed to work." The choice of the Times-Journal was freighted with significance. A paper that had campaigned against the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and reported on the Montgomery to Selma civil rights marches in the 1960s was a pointed reminder of how the local press could provide a bulwark against fascism. Continue reading...

This blog is now closed. You can read our latest report hereAn update on the Hurst fire from the US forest service has increased the acreage burned to 771 and is 37% contained.477 personnel were assigned to the fire. Continue reading...

A visual guide to the damage caused by the wildfires that have devastated the cityWildfires continue to ravage parts of Los Angeles, California, with at least 11 people dead, thousands of homes, businesses, schools and churches leveled and more than 150,000 people still under evacuation orders. The Palisades fire - which continues to burn - already ranks as one of the most destructive in the city's history. The second largest blaze, the Eaton fire, to the east, has destroyed homes and lives in and around Altadena, which neighbors Pasadena, home of the Rose Bowl. Meanwhile, smaller fires rage on but are more contained. Continue reading...

Residents share their stories of evacuation, destruction of homes, and air pollution amid ongoing blazes

California has seen deadly blazes over the years - Camp fire decimated Paradise town in 2018 and Tubbs fire burned 36,810 acres in 2017

Adi Levin and a fellow reservist in the Israel Defense Forces came to New Orleans as part of a six-week trip to the USTwo Israeli military members on leave were critically wounded in the New Year's Day truck attack on New Orleans' famed Bourbon Street and remain hospitalized, according to a diplomatic official from Israel.Adi Levin and a fellow reservist in the Israel Defense Forces came to New Orleans as part of a six-week trip to the US meant to finish in Florida, said Elad Shoshan, the Israeli consul in Houston.The Associated Press contributed reporting Continue reading...

It's the second time this week that the former NY mayor has been found to be contempt for defaming election workersRudy Giuliani was found in contempt of court on Friday for continuing to spread lies about two former Georgia election workers after a jury awarded the women a $148m defamation judgment.Federal judge Beryl Howell in Washington DC is the second federal judge in a matter of days to find the former New York City mayor in contempt of court. Continue reading...

US president moves to shield roughly 230,000 Salvadorans and 600,000 Venezuelans against Trump administrationThe Biden administration on Friday extended temporary humanitarian protections for about 230,000 Salvadorans and 600,000 Venezuelans living in the US, in an effort to shield those groups from an incoming Trump administration that has promised to deport them.The decision in the dying days of Joe Biden's presidency came after immigrant advocates and lawmakers urged the Department of Homeland Security to extend temporary protected status (TPS), designed to protect immigrants from being deported to countries that are engulfed in disaster or conflict. Continue reading...

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson claims case was witch hunt' to prevent president-elect's return to White HouseRepublicans in Washington launched a fierce defense of Donald Trump on Friday after the president-elect received an unconditional discharge in his New York hush-money case, while Democrats maintained a conspicuous silence on the historic conviction.The speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, characterized the case as a politically motivated and contrived witch hunt" designed specifically to prevent Trump's return to the White House. Continue reading...

Trump's absence was felt in the New York courtroom, and on video it wasn't the outlandish display many might have expected

Up to 9in of snow expected in Arkansas and Tennessee as climate crisis leads to more frequent extreme weather casesMore than 80 million people across southern US states were on alert on Friday as a powerful winter storm that dumped heavy snow and glazed roads with ice across much of Texas and Oklahoma lumbered eastward.Some governors have declared a state of emergency as the weather forced school closures across the region and unleashed havoc for traffic. Continue reading...

Alice Weidel's livestreamed chat with the X owner made for excruciating listening - but even talk of Hitler won't deter her supportersImagine a politician fighting a general election being granted the opportunity of a publicly livestreamed chat with one of the most powerful figures in the world, only to be heard wriggling out of it after 70 minutes. I don't know what to continue (with)," Alice Weidel said to Elon Musk, in effect shutting down the unique audience the owner of X had gifted the AfD leader on Thursday evening.Admittedly, the rambling conversation felt longer than 70 minutes. It missed moderation and while Musk and Weidel giggled a lot and agreed on almost every issue, the sense that they were boring each other became increasingly acute as they droned on about space travel and religious belief rather than the alleged decline of western civilisation. Had Adolf Hitler not been mentioned, the highly anticipated live talk would have been shocking only for being so unnewsworthy.Thomas Vorreyer is a Berlin-based journalist with a focus on East German politicsDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Takeover combines electricity generators to become largest independent US power provider, with 2.5 million customersThe US nuclear power giant Constellation Energy has agreed to buy the natural gas and geothermal firm Calpine Corporation for $16.4bn, one of the biggest takeovers in the US power industry.The acquisition would combine two of the biggest electricity generators in the US into the largest independent power provider in the country, with some 2.5 million customers. Continue reading...

Now we have to make sure there's not a second, financial tragedy that follows the physical catastrophe,' says consumer advocate

An evacuation order when the Eaton fire threatened Galen Buckwalter's Sierra Madre home triggered a nightmare odyssey through chaotic streets

Trump and Maga allies are using the fires to attack leaders like Newsom - possibly foretelling power struggles aheadIf ever a situation cried out for elevating national unity over political divisions, the dystopian scenes emanating from the Los Angeles fires surely qualified.The catastrophe that has left at least five people dead, more than 1,000 structures destroyed and forced thousands fleeing their homes would - in an ideal and less polarised America - spur humane empathy and solidarity in place of tribal partisanship. Continue reading...

Media giants had hoped to attract younger viewers who don't subscribe to cable with NBA, NFL and Fifa offeringsDisney, Fox and Warner Bros Discovery on Friday abandoned plans to launch Venu Sports, their live sports joint venture, pulling the plug on a much-heralded effort that ran into substantial legal opposition.Shares of Warner Bros Discovery were down about 2% and Fox's stock fell about 1%, while FuboTV's shares were up nearly 8% after the surprise announcement. Continue reading...

The US president and his broligarch pal are treating their oldest allies as enemies. Britain can't face down that threat aloneFlood the zone with shit. So advised Steve Bannon, onetime chief strategist for Donald Trump, who understood long ago that if you want to get away with an outrageous act, follow it with another and then another. That way, the media will be sure to move on to the newest horror, so forgetting the one before.Trump continues to live by that rule, making it hard to keep up with everything he and his circle do and say - and he's not even back in office yet. It therefore requires a conscious effort to take a step back and see what's happening. That might be easier this week than others because the most egregious outrages form a pattern, one that poses a severe and direct challenge to Britain and its neighbours.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Summer holidays are a time of memory-making. We asked Guardian writers and contributors to share some of the summer holiday photos that transport them back to a simpler time