Latest News
As winds pick up, LA firefighters desperately battle to contain monster inferno
Firefighters are making an all-out assault to prevent the largest of the deadly wildfires that is threatening Los Angeles from spreading into one of the city’s most exclusive neighbourhoods.
Aerial crews have been bombarding the flaming hills with water and fire retardant to hold back the Palisades fire, which has expanded an additional 1,000 acres and is now menacing Brentwood.
Officials have been on the defensive amid mounting anger at how hydrants ran dry as firefighters struggled to contain the fast-moving blazes. Winds are expected to pick up again overnight, further fanning the flames that have already left at least 16 people dead.
On Saturday evening, the LA County coroner’s office announced that 11 of the deaths were attributed to the Eaton fire and five to the Palisades fire.
“LA County had another night of unimaginable terror and heartbreak,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath on Saturday.
Firefighters have made modest progress against the worst of the infernos, the Palisades fire, which has scorched nearly 23,000 acres and is 11% contained.
But the conflagration has spread into the Mandeville Canyon neighbourhood, sparking evacuation orders for swathes of Brentwood, a ritzy enclave where Arnold Schwarzenegger, Disney chief executive Bob Iger and NBA star LeBron James have homes.
Also in the evacuation zone is the Getty Center, a hilltop museum that holds more than 125,000 artworks, including masterpieces by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Rubens, Monet and Degas. The building is undamaged so far.
The second-biggest blaze, the Eaton fire, has razed more than 14,000 acres and was 15% contained. Firefighters have mostly contained two smaller blazes, the Kenneth and Hurst fires.
But the National Weather Service warned that the gusty Santa Ana winds that whipped up the fires at the outset would increase again on Saturday and into Sunday.
Seven neighbouring states, the federal government and Canada and Mexico have rushed resources to California.
No cause has yet been established for the fires. The two biggest ones combined have razed an area more than twice the size of Manhattan.
Some 153,000 residents are under mandatory evacuation orders and another 166,000 have been warned they may have to flee, too.
The political repercussions have begun.
On Friday, Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat with rumoured White House aspirations, ordered an investigation into why a key reservoir was out of service and some fire hydrants ran dry.
Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley complained about the shortage. “When a firefighter comes up to a hydrant, we expect there’s going to be water,” she said.
Chief Crowley has also attacked city leadership for cutting her department’s budget and eliminating mechanic positions, which she said had resulted in more than 100 fire apparatuses being out of service.
On Saturday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass – who has been criticised for being in Ghana attending the inauguration of the African country’s president when the fires erupted in LA on Tuesday, hinted at her tensions with Chief Crowley.
“Let me be clear about something,” Bass told a news conference, “the fire chief and I are focused on fighting these fires and saving lives, and any differences that we might have will be worked out in private.”
More than 70,000 people have signed a change.org petition demanding the mayor’s immediate resignation.
As fears of looting grow, a sunset-to-sunrise curfew is being strictly enforced in evacuated areas, official said.
Newsom announced on Saturday that he would double the number of National Guard on the ground to “keep communities safe”, deploying 1,680 troops.
About two dozen arrests have been made, including for burglary, looting and curfew violations.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said cadaver dogs are helping 40 search and rescue team scour razed neighbourhoods.
The death toll is expected to rise once house-to-house searches are conducted.
[BBC]
Flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the South Korean passenger plane that crashed last month stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, the country’s transport ministry has said.
The crash of the Jeju Air flight killed 179 people, making it the deadliest air accident on Korean soil. Two cabin crew members were the only survivors.
Investigators had hoped that data on the recorders would provide insights about the crucial moments before the tragedy.
The ministry said it would analyse what caused the “black boxes” to stop recording.
The recorders were originally examined in South Korea, the ministry said.
When the data was found to be missing, they were taken to the US and analysed by American safety regulators.
The plane was travelling from Bangkok on 29 December when it crash-landed at Muan International Airport and slid into a wall off the end of the runway, bursting into flames.
Sim Jai-dong, a former transport ministry accident investigator, told Reuters news agency that the loss of data from the crucial final minutes was surprising and suggested that all power, including back-up, could have been cut.
Many questions remain unanswered. Investigators have been looking at the role that a bird strike or weather conditions may have played.
They have also focused on why the Boeing 737-800 did not have its landing gear down when it hit the runway.
[BBC]
Shaun Pollock the media representative of the ICC’s cricket committee, has said that the body is “working on something” to give bowlers “bit more leeway on wides”, particularly with batters often moving around the crease in limited-overs formats.
“If a batter jumps across at the last minute, it doesn’t really work out for me,” Pollock told PTI on the sidelines of the SA20. “I think a bowler, at the start of his run-up, needs to know where he can bowl it.
“The current rule tends to suggest that if the batter moves and it’s that point of delivery where the batter is, and that’s according to where the wide will be called, I want a little bit of a change. I want them to know exactly when they’re running up why or how – how can a bowler be expected to change his game plan at the last second when he’s bowling? He needs to have a clear idea where he can go.
“So it’s in the pipeline, we’re all discussing. We need to give a little bit back to the bowlers.”
As things stand, though, the ICC’s playing conditions specify that a ball should be called a wide if it “passes wide of where the striker is standing and which also would have passed wide of the striker standing in a normal batting position”, and also, it is not a wide “if the striker, by moving, either causes the ball to pass wide of him, or brings the ball sufficiently within reach to be able to hit it by means of a normal cricket stroke”.
That aside, at the IPL and the WPL in India since 2023, players – bowlers and batters – have been empowered to review wide calls by umpires using DRS.
Simon Taufel, though, has not been in favour of it.
“I’m really conscious around trying to turn the art of officiating into a science and seek perfection, whatever that looks like, with decision making,” Taufel had told ESPNcricinfo. “So with wides for example, and here we’re going to, potentially according to you, or according to the player or the debate, take a wide call and throw that back to the third umpire for them to judge on something that might be marginal and is still a judgement call.”
Pollock said South Africa should look to leverage their players’ experience in subcontinent conditions during the upcoming Champions Trophy, which will be played in Pakistan (with the exception of matches featuring India, which will be played in Dubai).
“You’ve got basically the similar players that were at that [2023 ODI] World Cup, where we got to the semi-final and lost to Australia,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of IPL stars who play for South Africa. In those situations, everything looks good. The amount of IPL players, people like Heinrich Klaasen, David Miller, even Quinton de Kock, all those guys who spend so much time over there, getting an understanding for conditions, that can only help South Africa.
“They have got the ICC Test Championship final now as well, so it’s been some good stuff and, hopefully, some younger individuals come up. We’ve seen it starting to develop in the Test arena.”
The SA20, South Africa’s pre-eminent franchise-based T20 competition, is now in its third season, and Pollock said it had “gone from strength to strength” in its short existence.
“Some of the activities at the ground as well, the Catch 2 Million competition this year has been added,” he said. “I know the young kids are taught ‘you’ve got to get to the ground’, because we need some money these days with the economy the way it is. But it’s definitely gone from strength to strength.
“South African cricket needed this injection – there’s no doubt about it. They needed something to create a bit of unbelievable interest in the game.”
[Cricinfo]
The US has announced an increased $25m (£20.4m) reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on the day he was sworn in for a third six-year term in office.
The inauguration ceremony was overshadowed by recrimination from the international community and Venezuelan opposition leaders.
Rewards have also been offered for information leading to the arrest and or conviction of Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello. A new reward of up to $15m for Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino has also been offered.
The UK also issued sanctions on 15 top Venezuelan officials, including judges, members of the security forces and military officials.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said those sanctioned were responsible for “undermining democracy, the rule of law, and human rights violations”.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy went on to describe Maduro’s regime as “fraudulent”.
Also on Friday, the EU said it was extending “restrictive measures” against Venezuela because of “the lack of progress… leading to the restoration of democracy and the rule of law”. The bloc also sanctioned a further 15 Venezuelan officials.
Canada also imposed fresh sanctions in what Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly called Maduro’s “shameless actions”.
Joly said Canada “will not tolerate the erosion of the democratic process or the repression of citizens seeking to express their rights”.
Maduro and his government have repeatedly denounced many of the allegations made by Western countries and opposition leaders.
The reward from the US cites narcotics and corruption charges dating back to 2020.
In 2020, the US changed Maduro and other senior officials in the country with “narco-terrorism”.
It accused them of flooding the US with cocaine and using drugs as a weapon to undermine the health of Americans.
Maduro has rejected the accusations. The US also re-imposed oil sanctions last year, after temporarily easing them in the hope Maduro could be incentivised to hold free and fair elections.
The Venezuelan president has blamed an economic collapse in his country on US-led sanctions he calls illegitimate and imperial. His critics blame corruption and economic mismanagement.
On Friday, President Maduro took the oath of office, vowing his third six-year term in office would be a “period of peace”.
“This new presidential term will be the period of peace, prosperity, equality, and the new democracy,” he said.
“I swear by history, I swear by my life, and I will fulfil it,” he added.
The 28 July election results were widely rejected by the international community, including by Brazil and Colombia, some of Venezuela’s left-wing neighbours.
(BBC)
-
Midweek Review4 days agoUnfolding AKD security strategy
-
Latest News3 days agoMembers of Parliament Prof. Chrishantha Abeysena and Shanakiyan Rasamanickam elected as Co-Chairs of the Parliamentary Caucus for Open Parliament Initiative
-
Sports4 days agoZumri steps onto a field of rugby magicians
-
News6 days agoProf. Udagama condemns Peradeniya Uni ban on IMF austerity programme lecture
-
Features5 days agoThe future is female
-
Editorial6 days agoDrivers from hell
-
Features5 days agoThree Great Editors: Mervyn, Gamma and Ajith
-
Business5 days agoDialog brings ‘The Future.Today’ to life as Sri Lanka’s first Drone Countdown takes flight