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Global events can feel bigger and more intractable than ever, but there's still hope Continue reading...

The 1990 protest track has nothing to do with families losing everything they have' says the rapper, hitting out at TikTok and Instagram videos

More than 1,800 structures destroyed as Eaton and Palisades fires still less than 30% contained

Two planeloads of more than 70 firefighters, along with their equipment, landed at Los Angeles International Airport where they were greeted by California governor Gavin Newsom. Newsom expressed gratitude for Mexico's support, emphasising the importance of international cooperation and friendship. Continue reading...

Ukrainian president says 150 firefighters are ready to be deployed, days after Donald Trump Jr accused LA's fire department of donating supplies to UkraineVolodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine is ready to assist those affected by the devastating wildfires in California, with 150 Ukrainian firefighters ready to go.The offer by the Ukrainian president comes three days after Donald Trump Jr, son of US president-elect Donald Trump, responded to the Los Angeles wildfires by appearing to blame Ukraine on social media. Oh look of course the LA fire department donated a bunch of their supplies to Ukraine," Trump Jr said in a post on X on 8 January. Continue reading...

County sheriff says anyone who tries to scam the thousands of people looking for accommodations will be prosecuted

Former top UK official believes intensifying economic pressure on Tehran would erode internal support for regimeThe UK should back Donald Trump's expected maximum economic sanctions against Iran as part of an effort to encourage nationals to end their support for the current regime in Tehran, Mark Sedwill, the former cabinet secretary, argues in a report published on Monday.He writes: It is not for the west, let alone the UK, to determine who rules Iran. That is for the Iranian people. But we can make clear that the right choice will bring benefits just as the wrong one will bring more of the same." Continue reading...

Governor calls for a version of Marshall Plan as investigators speculate power lines may have sparked dry vegetationGavin Newsom is scheduled to ease building restrictions for victims of the Los Angeles wildfires - part of a reconstruction effort that he said on Sunday would need a California version of the Marshall Plan, the US-led effort to rebuild western Europe after the second world war.The California governor ordered the state's tough environmental laws and permitting requirements to be suspended to help wildfire victims rebuild their homes and businesses, with costs so far placed at $135bn to $150bn over 10 years, according to AccuWeather. Continue reading...

Side-by-side footage of the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles shows the extent of the destruction caused by the Palisades wildfire. The original video shows homes and businesses in the affluent Los Angeles neighbourhood and was filmed by a couple who create travel content for social media. Reporters then retraced their steps after the wildfire destroyed large swathes of the area, showing a devastating scene of homes reduced to rubble and burnt-out cars Continue reading...

Los Angeles sheriff Robert Luna said during a briefing that 16 people had been reported missing amid the deadly wildfires which are ravaging the southern California city. At least 16 people have been killed in the blazes and thousands of firefighters are battling the flames being swept across vast swathes of the city by the strong winds

The vast majority of countries have outlawed the death penalty. Yet the annual toll is growing - and Donald Trump wants to increase its useThe good news: Zimbabwe has just banned the death penalty. While it should remove an exemption clause, which might allow for capital punishment's return were a state of emergency to be declared, the decision is another welcome step in the global journey towards abolition: 113 states have now banned executions.The bad news is that fewer countries have been killing more people in the last few years. Last May, Amnesty International recorded 1,153 executions in 2023, a 31% increase from the previous year and the highest level for almost a decade. (The figure is an underestimate since countries including China, believed to be the world's largest executioner, do not publish data on the death penalty.) There was no letup in 2024. Iran reportedly executed more than 900people. Saudi Arabia is believed to have killed another 330, compared with 172 in 2023. Continue reading...

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Ex-Trump adviser denounces tech CEO's embrace of some forms of immigration and vows to take this guy down'In an escalation of discontent among the highest-profile far-right followers of Donald Trump, his former adviser Steve Bannon has called Trump's newest favorite, Elon Musk, racist" and a truly evil guy", pledging to take this guy down" and kick him out of the Maga movement.In an interview with the Corriere della Sera newspaper in Italy, excerpts of which were published this weekend by Breitbart, Bannon criticised Musk's embrace of some forms of immigration and vowed to ensure that Musk does not have top-level access to the White House. Continue reading...

New aerial footage shows the wildfires in California spreading as firefighters struggle to contain the deadly blazes encroaching on Los Angeles. The Palisades and the Eaton fires continued to advance as winds picked up, making it difficult for teams to contain the flames destroying homes and businesses and forcing thousands to flee. At least 16 people have been killed, many of them older residents who refused to abandon their homes. The state governor, Gavin Newsom, welcomed firefighters from Mexico, who arrived to reinforce the teams on the ground that have been battling the blazes around the clock

This year marks the first time in nearly 20 years that both an American man and woman are seeded in the top four of a majorAnalyzing a grand slam draw before the tournament begins is a fraught exercise. Very rarely does a draw play to form as upsets and injuries can disrupt the seemingly logical progression of the 128-player field. And how a player is performing heading into the event is often a better indicator of their chances than their ranking or seeding would indicate. Further, no major is as difficult to forecast as the Australian Open, which is already under way in Melbourne; being that it's the first big tournament after the sport's off-season" (if one can call six weeks a legitimate off-season), it's very tough to gauge the level of the top players.Having said that, things do look promising for the top American man and woman at the Australian Open, as Taylor Fritz and Coco Gauff are playing stellar tennis. The duo teamed up to lead the United States to victory in the United Cup team event this past week in Brisbane and are looking in top form. This also marks the first time in nearly 20 years (2006) that both an American man (Fritz, No 4) and woman (Gauff, No 3) are seeded in the top four of a major. Continue reading...

The kindness of strangers allowed two men to escape the deadly Palisade fire, while businesses and non-profits gear up to assist evacueesMany things went wrong for Aaron Samson on Tuesday morning. But a few lucky breaks - and the kindness of two strangers - allowed him and his 83-year-old father-in-law, Ron, to escape the deadly Palisades fire as it swiftly closed in around them.After getting an alert about the impending wildfire on his phone, Samson sprang into action at Ron's home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, where the retired cardiologist had lived for nearly 50 years. Samson grabbed clothes and medication for his father-in-law, who has Parkinson's disease and was recovering from a recent surgery, and texted his own wife and kids, who were back home in Berkeley. Continue reading...

US planemaker may have delivered 340 aircraft compared with 766 of European group, analysis suggestsBoeing is expected to confirm it made less than half of the aircraft of its rival Airbus in 2024, with analysts questioning whether the troubled US planemaker will be able to increase its rate of production as planned.The company is expected to report that it delivered only 340 aircraft to customers, when it publishes numbers on Tuesday, according to forecasts by Flight Plan. That is far below the 766 delivered by Airbus, Europe's planemaking champion. Continue reading...

Availability of manuals and instructions on less moderated apps and forums is making extremist content accessibleA spate of recent vigilante and extremist attacks in the US have highlighted how the booming availability of internet resources is a growing national security concern.Experts and world governments have been sounding the alarm on digital radicalization as accessibility to materials such as assassination manuals, files for 3D printed guns, or something as simple as ChatGPT grows. Continue reading...

Program kicked off after years of roadblocks, but some worry government won't come through on transit promisesNew York City concluded its first week with its congestion pricing program, which aims to reduce traffic in Manhattan and increase funding for the city's public transit, after years of roadblocks and concerns about a public backlash.Some New York City residents said they worry the government won't come through on their transit promises and instead will just make driving more expensive for workers who can't afford the additional costs. Continue reading...

Amid deepening debt and an onslaught by the president-elect, Labour must calm the markets, then think big economicallyIt's certainly not 2008, nor even Truss 2022, but the men and women who move the financial markets are suddenly darkly pessimistic. Some of the private emails and WhatsApp messages circulating last week matched any efforts by Cassandra. The mood has turned against Britain.It is not one single thing, but a toxic mix. There is the prospect of a long period of stagflation, the consequence, as even the markets recognise, of 14 years of epic misgovernment. The problem now is partly that Labour does not have a plausible growth story, partly that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is painted as having an economic tin ear that douses capitalist animal spirits, and partly because Trump's arrival has exposed just how dependent an indebted, economically wounded Britain is on the kindness of strangers. It's not yet a crisis - the stock market has held up - but without some skilful economic and political statecraft, and a measure of luck, it may become one. Continue reading...

Suspension of executive order until 18 June gives courts time to review steelmakers' legal challengeThe Biden administration has delayed until June an order for Nippon Steel to abandon its $14.9bn bid for US Steel, potentially giving the companies some time to revive the politically contentious deal.Joe Biden blocked the acquisition on national security grounds on 3 January and the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said this week the proposed deal had received a thorough analysis" by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). Continue reading...

California governor calls president-elect's claim that water is being withheld from southern California delusional'Gavin Newsom, California's Democratic governor, appeared briefly to put his long-running feud with Donald Trump to one side on Friday, when he invited the president-elect to Los Angeles to survey devastation from the wildfires and meet with first responders, firefighters and the Americans" affected.In the spirit of this great country, we must not politicize human tragedy or spread disinformation from the sidelines," Newsom wrote in a letter to Trump on Friday. Hundreds of thousands of Americans - displaced from their homes and fearful for the future - deserve to see all of us working in their best interests to ensure a fast recovery and rebuild." Continue reading...

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