MONTECITO, California: Firefighters trying to prevent one of the biggest fires in California’s history from consuming homes in Santa Barbara and the nearby wealthy enclave of Montecito were hoping less powerful winds would help them after they managed to stop it from burning thousands of residences.
After winds roared at around 30 mph (48 kph), with gusts to about 60 mph (97 kph) on Saturday, they were expected to ease Sunday with gusts of up to 35 mph (56 kph).
But even the lower intensity winds are still extremely dangerous, said fire spokesman Jude Olivas.
The fire that started 12 days ago has burned at least 700 homes and killed a firefighter, but Olivas said firefighters saved thousands of homes from being destroyed on Saturday.
The winds “will go down a little bit, hopefully we can do the same job (Sunday) that we did today,” he said.
Earlier Saturday, residents piled into cars and fled, turning downtown Santa Barbara into what one resident called “a ghost town.”
There were mandatory evacuations around Montecito and neighboring Summerland came as firefighters sprayed water onto hot spots sparked by wind-blown embers. They also drove to the historic San Ysidro Ranch in yellow firetrucks as heavy smoke rose from the coastal hills, blotting out blue skies.
A portion of Santa Barbara was under mandatory evacuation. At the city’s zoo, workers began putting some animals into crates and kennels, to ready them for possible evacuation.
In downtown Santa Barbara, Maya Schoop-Rutten, owner of Chocolate Maya, said she saw through the window of her chocolate shop smoke suddenly appear after strong winds blew through.
“It was absolutely incredible,” she said. “There was a huge mushroom of smoke that happened in just a matter of a few minutes.”
Restaurants and small stores on normally bustling State Street were shuttered.
“It’s a ghost town. Everything is shut down,” Schoop-Rutten said. “It’s very, very eerie.”
The northbound lanes of US Highway 101, coming up the coast from Los Angeles, were closed for a few hours south of Santa Barbara, with cars stopped on the freeway.
The 418-square-mile (1,083-square-kilometer) blaze called the Thomas fire was moving rapidly westward and crested Montecito Peak, just north of Montecito. Known for its star power, the enclave boasts the mansions of Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres and many other celebrities.
“It is right above the homes,” Olivas said.
Winfrey expressed her dismay on her Twitter account.
“Still praying for our little town. Winds picked up this morning creating a perfect storm of bad for firefighters,” Winfrey tweeted. It was not clear if the former talk show host was in Montecito.
Pierre Henry, owner of the Bree’osh Bakery in Montecito, said he got a text to evacuate Saturday morning as the fire approached homes.
“The worst was the smoke,” Henry said. “You couldn’t breathe at all and it became worse when the wind started. All the ashes and the dust on the street were in the air. It was very, very frightening.”
The day passed with no homes damaged or destroyed as firefighters dealt with “extreme and erratic” fire behavior, Olivas said.
Schoop-Rutten said the fire is taking an economic toll, even if it does not invade the city.
“It’s tragic for businesses at this time of the year because this is when we make the money,” she said. “Imagine all the restaurants, all the Christmas parties have been canceled. People lost a ton of revenue in the past few days.”
There was a spot of good news down the coast. Emergency officials announced that the same fire that was burning about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Montecito was 40 percent contained. Evacuation orders for the city of Ventura were lifted.
As the northerly “sundowner” wind was driving the fire south and west, firefighters could only hope it would calm back down.
“When the sundowners surface in that area and the fire starts running down slopes, you are not going to stop it,” Mark Brown, of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told a news conference. “And we are not going to stand in front of it and put firefighters in untenable situations.”
Olivas said 400 fire engines were sent to protect homes in the area. The fire is now the third-largest in California history.
The firefighter who was killed, Cory Iverson, 32, died of burns and smoke inhalation, according to autopsy results announced Saturday.
Since the fire began on Dec. 4, about 95,000 people have been placed under mandatory evacuation. The evacuation zone near Santa Barbara on Saturday was 17 miles (27 kilometers) long and up to 5 miles (8 kilometers) wide and the new expansion encompassed about 3,300 people.
The Santa Barbara Zoo has about 150 species of animals, including a pair of Amur leopards, a critically endangered species. Workers began putting vultures, California condors and some smaller animals into crates and kennels in case the fire approached.
“Everything is fine right now. The wind has shifted in our favor,” spokesman Dean Noble said. “However, we just don’t want to get caught by something unexpected.”
Flames threaten rich California enclave; residents flee
Flames threaten rich California enclave; residents flee
Putin touts ‘multipolar world order’ at flagship BRICS summit
The meeting in the city of Kazan is the largest diplomatic forum in Russia since Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022, triggering a barrage of Western sanctions and international condemnation.
Around 20 leaders, including from China, India, Turkiye and Iran, are gathering in the central city of Kazan, where they will address topics such as developing a BRICS-led international payment system and the conflict in the Middle East.
Moscow sees the platform as an alternative to Western-led international organizations like the G7 — a position supported by key ally Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“The process of forming a multipolar world order is underway, a dynamic and irreversible process,” Putin said at the official opening of the summit.
The BRICS organization was “strengthening its authority in international affairs,” Putin said, as he called on its members to consider how they could address the most pressing issues on the global agenda, including “acute regional conflicts.”
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres arrived in Russia on Wednesday to attend the summit, his first visit to the country for more than two years, which has drawn scorn from Ukraine.
Putin hailed Moscow’s close ties and “strategic partnerships” with its partners during talks on Tuesday with leaders including Xi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Xi, meanwhile, praised China’s “profound” ties with Russia in what he called a “chaotic” world.
Russia and China’s relations have “injected strong impetus into the development, revitalization and modernization of the two countries,” Xi said.
Putin said he saw relations between Beijing and China as a foundation of global “stability.”
Heightened security
Security in Kazan is tight around the summit, AFP journalists at the venue reported.
The surrounding Tatarstan region, around 1,000 kilometers from the Ukraine border, has previously been hit in drone attacks launched by Kyiv.
But Moscow is intent on not letting the conflict overshadow the summit, and is laying out a warm welcome for the arriving leaders.
Women wearing traditional Tatar costumes greeted the arriving delegations, who were offered sweet Tatar pastries made from flour and honey.
Starting in 2009 with four members — Brazil, Russia, India and China — BRICS has since expanded to include other emerging nations such as South Africa, Egypt and Iran.
Underpinning his vision of the group as a challenge to the West, Putin will hold separate talks with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian and Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro on Wednesday.
He will also meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkiye, a NATO member, is casting itself as a possible mediator between Russia and Ukraine and strives for warm relations with Moscow.
Guterres will hold talks with Putin on Thursday, where the pair will discuss the Ukraine conflict, the Kremlin said.
Kyiv has railed against UN chief Guterres’ trip.
“The UN Secretary General declined Ukraine’s invitation to the first Global Peace Summit in Switzerland. He did, however, accept the invitation to Kazan from war criminal Putin,” its foreign ministry said in a post on X.
The UN chief’s spokesperson said the trip was part of his regular attendance at “organizations with large numbers of important member states” and said it offered a chance to “reaffirm his well known positions” on the Ukraine conflict “and the conditions for just peace.”
Modi calls for end to Ukraine war
Modi, who is also casting himself as a possible peacemaker, called for a quick end to the conflict during talks with Putin on Tuesday.
“We have been in constant touch over the conflict between Russia and Ukraine,” Modi told Putin after the two shook hands and embraced.
“We believe that disputes should only be resolved peacefully. We totally support efforts to quickly restore peace and stability,” the Indian leader added.
India has walked a tightrope since the Ukraine conflict began, pledging humanitarian support for Kyiv while avoiding explicit condemnation of Moscow’s actions.
Moscow has been steadily advancing on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine this year as it strengthens ties with the likes of China, Iran and North Korea.
bur/jxb
Vietnam tycoon’s death row appeal to begin in November
- Property developer Truong My Lan was found guilty in April of swindling cash and sentenced to death
- A total of 48 defendants are appealing, including Lan, and the trial is scheduled to end on November 25
HANOI: The appeal trial of a Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death for fraud totalling $27 billion will begin in November, state media said Wednesday.
Property developer Truong My Lan was found guilty in April of swindling cash from the Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) — which prosecutors said she controlled — and sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history.
Tens of thousands of people who had invested their savings in the bank lost money, shocking the communist nation and prompting rare protests from the victims.
“The High People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City has issued the decision to open an appeal trial for Truong My Lan and accomplices in the first Van Thinh Phat case on November 4,” state-controlled Tuoi Tre newspaper said, referring to the major real estate developer of which Lan was chair.
A total of 48 defendants are appealing, including Lan, and the trial is scheduled to end on November 25, the newspaper added, citing the court.
The announcement comes days after Lan was convicted of money laundering and jailed for life in a separate case.
During her first trial, Lan was found guilty of embezzling $12.5 billion, but prosecutors said the total damages caused by the scam amounted to $27 billion — equivalent to around six percent of the country’s 2023 GDP.
The court ordered Lan to pay almost the entire damages sum in compensation.
Eighty-five others were also sentenced on charges ranging from bribery and abuse of power to appropriation and violations of banking law.
They were arrested as part of a national corruption crackdown that has swept up numerous officials and members of Vietnam’s business elite.
Between 2012 and 2022, Lan used nearly 1,300 fake loan applications to withdraw money from SCB, in which she owned a 90 percent stake, the court found.
Her driver transported the equivalent of more than $4.4 billion in cash from SCB’s headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City to her nearby home and Van Thinh Phat’s head office, state media reported, citing the police investigation.
Indigenous Australian senator intensifies criticism of King Charles III
- Sen. Lidia Thorpe’s comments follow an encounter with the monarch at a parliamentary reception on Monday
- ‘I have decided to be a Black sovereign woman and continue our fight against the colony and for justice for our people’
CANBERRA, Australia: An Indigenous senator has intensified her criticism of King Charles III, again accusing the British monarch of complicity in the “genocide” against Australia’s First Nations peoples and declaring on Wednesday she will not be “shut down.”
Sen. Lidia Thorpe’s comments followed an encounter with the monarch at a parliamentary reception Monday where she was escorted out after shouting at him for British colonizers taking Indigenous land and bones.
Despite facing political and public backlash, Thorpe was resolute in a television interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and said she would continue to press for justice.
“The colonial system is all about shutting black women down in this country,” Thorpe said from Melbourne. “For those that don’t agree with what I have said and what I have done, I can tell you now there are elders, there are grassroots Aboriginal people across this country and Torres Strait Islander people who are just so proud.”
“I have decided to be a Black sovereign woman and continue our fight against the colony and for justice for our people,” she added.
Thorpe particularly highlighted the ongoing harm to Australia’s First Nations peoples, including holding on to the remains of Indigenous ancestors.
“I’m sorry, Charlie, but you can’t come here and think you can say a few nice words about our people while you still have stolen goods. You are in receipt of stolen goods, which makes you complicit in theft,” she said.
Thorpe also pressed on the endemic social disadvantage that Indigenous Australians continue to experience and that it was being papered over by platitudes that fail to address the systemic issues.
At the parliamentary reception, Charles spoke quietly with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese while security officials stopped Thorpe from approaching and ushered her from the hall.
Charles concluded his visit to Australia and traveled Wednesday to Samoa, where he will open the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
Stranded in Lebanon, Sierra Leone women shelter from war in warehouse
BEIRUT: Not far from Beirut’s heavily bombed southern suburbs, Jaiatu Koroma and her five-month-old daughter have taken refuge along with dozens of women from Sierra Leone in a dilapidated warehouse turned shelter.
After Israeli forces began heavily striking Lebanon around a month ago, Koroma, 21, from Freetown, said she strapped her young child to her back and fled her home in south Beirut, initially sleeping “in the streets.”
She eventually was taken to the volunteer-run shelter — an old concrete structure on the outskirts of Beirut now filled with mattresses, bed covers and hastily packed suitcases, as well as a donated baby crib and change table.
Wearing a red beanie, she expressed gratitude that she and her baby were now getting “food, water,” nappies and a place to sleep.
A year of deadly cross-border exchanges between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah over the Gaza conflict escalated to all-out war on September 23, with Israel heavily striking Hezbollah strongholds in south and east Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The bombardment has sent more than one million people fleeing, according to Lebanese authorities, with at least 2,546 people killed in a year of violence, more than half of them in the past month.
At the graffitied building — an empty venue called The Shelter, usually hired out for events — women sat on mattresses talking, resting, praying or doing each other’s hair.
Others carried laundry in plastic tubs to and from a washing area, where lines of brightly colored clothes were hung up to dry in a dark, damp room.
Waiting to return home
“I want to return to my country,” said Koroma, as the sound of chatter echoed around the derelict space.
She said she worked for months but her employment agent took her earnings and she got “nothing,” adding that the agent also had her passport.
Jaward Gbondema Borniea from the Sierra Leone consulate in Beirut said that “a huge number of our citizens... have been stranded.”
Scores of migrants from Sierra Leone travel to Lebanon every year for work, with the aim of supporting families back home.
Migrant workers are employed under Lebanon’s controversial “kafala” sponsorship system, which rights groups have repeatedly said facilitates exploitation, with persistent reports of abuse, unpaid wages and long work hours.
Borniea said the consulate was working to provide emergency travel documents for the most vulnerable, and collaborating with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to facilitate repatriations.
Mathieu Luciano, the IOM’s head of office in Beirut, said the United Nations agency had received “15,000 requests from migrants and their embassies for return assistance,” including 1,300 who hail from Sierra Leone.
The UN agency estimates that “approximately 17,500 migrants... have been displaced” by the war, Luciano told AFP, out of around 180,000 migrants residing in Lebanon before the crisis.
Dea Hage Chahine, among a handful of volunteers running the warehouse shelter, said that “when we started 21 days ago, we hosted 60 women. We are at 175 now.”
“We’re working non-stop,” she said, adding that some of the women require medical or psychological assistance.
“The hardest thing is... the number of women coming in every day is increasing.”
Life on hold
The volunteer said she secured the space after finding women camped outside the Sierra Leone consulate, who had later been kicked out of a government shelter to make way for Lebanese families.
The volunteers have set up a kitchen, subscribed to a patchy power generator system, installed some lights and arranged water deliveries for washing and showering.
The are also running an online fundraising campaign to help cover the women’s journeys home and associated expenses, Hage Chahine said, noting many “don’t have their passports.”
She blamed the kafala system and an “inherited education of racism” for the lack of support for migrant workers, saying they were often treated as “second-class humans.”
Among those hoping to leave is Susan Baimda, 37, who said she came to the shelter two weeks earlier “because of the fighting.”
“The situation is very rough,” said Baimda, but in the shelter, “it’s very fine now.”
“Everybody is taking care of us,” she added as she and others helped prepare large quantities of pasta salad for dinner.
She has four children back home in Freetown, and has only seen them via video call since she came to Lebanon three years ago.
“Let me go back to them” and “to our country,” she said.
“We are tired of the fighting... we want to save (our) lives,” Baimda added.
Two migrants die trying to cross Channel: French authorities
- The small boat sank shortly after 8:00 a.m. around two kilometers from the port of Calais
- Channel crossings to Britain by undocumented asylum seekers have surged since 2018
LILLE, France: Two people died while attempting to cross the Channel from northern France to Britain early Wednesday, French authorities said, adding that around 50 people more had been rescued from a sinking boat.
The small boat sank shortly after 8:00 a.m. (0600 GMT) around two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the port of Calais, the Channel prefecture said, adding that several nearby ships were called to help.
Channel crossings to Britain by undocumented asylum seekers have surged since 2018 despite repeated warnings about the perilous journey.
The Channel has heavy maritime traffic, icy waters and strong currents.
Wednesday’s sinking follows the death of a four-month-old baby last week in an overloaded boat headed for Britain, with the latest fatalities bringing the toll so far this year to at least 54 people.
More than 26,000 migrants have landed on British shores since January 1, according to UK Home Office figures.
