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A house burns as powerful winds fueling devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area force people to evacuate, in Altadena, California, on Jan. 8, 2025.
Wildfires are raging in Los Angeles. So is their politicization.
As wildfires scorched Los Angeles for a second day on Wednesday, hurricane-strength winds and limited water supplies complicated efforts to contain the flames. The three main fires – in the Pacific Palisades, the Pasadena area, and the rural San Fernando Valley – have burned thousands of acres, decimated hundreds of buildings, killed two people, and placed tens of thousands of people under evacuation orders.
Overnight, all the fire hydrants in the affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood went dry, and officials are raising alarm bells that the city’s water system is outdated and ill-equipped to keep up with climate change, which is not only making fires more frequent in LA but also spreading them faster.
President Joe Biden is sending money to the region, thanks to the $100 billion in disaster aid passed by Congress before Christmas, $29 billion of which went to FEMA. Incoming President Donald Trump, meanwhile, accused Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday of blocking water to the region “to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water.” Trump appears to be referring to rules adjusting water allocations for cities and farms to protect areas where populations in Northern California where fish populations are depleting. But most of LA’s water is not imported from that region; it comes from groundwater and the aqueduct that runs east of the Sierra Nevada.
In the past, Trump has hesitated to give aid to Democratic-leaning states, and he has been critical of FEMA – falsely accusing the agency of misusing funds for illegal immigrants after Hurricane Helene. While he has not yet announced his pick to run the agency, its fate, and the fate of disaster-prone blue-states, could be fraught for the next four years.
Superstar Taylor Swift arrives at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, before a matchup between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs.
Hard Numbers: Swifties descend upon Toronto, Sharp increase in Russian drone attacks after Trump’s win, Men abused at Abu Ghraib receive millions, NYC contends with ‘historic amount of brush fires’
500,000: Toronto is anticipating up to 500,000 visitors as pop superstar Taylor Swift plays six shows in the Canadian city, with the first set for Thursday evening. The concerts are expected to generate roughly CA$282 million for Toronto.
44: Russian drone attacks on Ukraine have increased 44% since Donald Trump’s election win, according to an analysis from ABC News. The outlet found that there were 641 Russian drone attacks in the week after Trump’s victory. The president-elect has pledged to end the war in Ukraine in “24 hours” but has not elaborated on how he intends to do this.
42 million: A federal jury in the US on Tuesday awarded $42 million to Iraqi men who were abused at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. The jury found a Virginia-based military contractor that supplied interrogators to the US Army for the prison liable for contributing to the torture and maltreatment of the detainees.
229: The New York City Fire Department on Wednesday said it has responded to 229 brush fires since Oct. 29. FDNY Commissioner Robert S. Tucker said the “historic amount of brush fires” were a product of “remarkably dry conditions.” There have been fires across the Northeastern US in recent days as the region contends with a historic drought.Graphic Truth: Canada braces for wildfire season
As the weather warms, the US and Canada are bracing for the potential of another record-breaking wildfire season. Canada’s 2023 wildfire season was the most destructive on record, with more than 6,000 fires tearing through tens of millions of acres and blanketing the US East Coast and Midwest in smoke.
Meanwhile, the US saw the smallest number of acres burned in more than two decades last year, thanks tohigh levels of precipitation and snowfall, which kept the West mostly out of trouble. But it also experienced its deadliest wildfire in over a century in Maui, Hawaii.
Canada's federal officials are warning that this season could be even worse. Warm fall and winter conditions, combined with droughts and next to no snowfall from December to February in essential areas like southern British Columbia and the Prairies impact soil moisture levels, raising the risk of fires.Peter Navarro, who served as U.S. then-President Donald Trump's trade adviser, talks to the media before turning himself in at a federal correctional institution to begin his prison sentence for defying a subpoena from a panel that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, in Miami, Florida, U.S.
Hard Numbers: Former Trump adviser goes to jail, Cambodia bans musical car horns, DRC suffers M23 siege, Afghanistan endures dire drought
38: In a move straight out of "Footloose," Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet has banned musical horns after videos surfaced on social media showing people, especially youths, engaging in impromptu dances on roads to tunes emitted by truck horns. Manet, who succeeded his father Hun Sen, has directed the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation and police to enforce the ban nationwide, aiming to curb what he views as a public order and traffic safety issue.
230,000: Goma, a resource-rich city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is under siege from M23 rebels reportedly backed by Rwanda. With nearly all supply routes controlled by M23, the conflict is asphyxiating the city, causing a surge in basic commodity prices. Over 230,000 people fled Goma in February, with aid agencies warning of humanitarian disaster and the increasing risk of a wider regional conflict.
21 million: Afghanistan, one of the nations most susceptible to climate change, faces a dire situation as a fourth straight year of drought displaces entire villages, leaving fields barren and stomachs empty. The drought has deprived 21 million Afghans, almost half of the country's population, of access to potable water.
Researchers from the Mamiraua Institute for Sustainable Development analyze a dead dolphin at Tefe lake
Dire drought in the Amazon
In a region where rivers are the principal means of transport, water levels have dropped an average of 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) a day since mid-September, causing shortages of food, water, and other essentials. The government is dispatching emergency assistance to 500,000 people who could be affected by the drought before the end of the year.
Already, the local government response has cost $20 million, which is just the beginning of the drought's economic toll. Tourism in the region has all but halted since the Rio Negro is not deep enough to carry passenger boats to Amazonian hubs like the river port of Manaus.
The Amazon drought in the north of Brazil comes as the southern reaches of the country are experiencing severe flooding. Both are evidence of climate change and made worse by El Niño, a periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean that can exacerbate both droughts and rainfall across the Western Hemisphere and even globally.
The Amazon drought comes as scientists warn that the Amazon rainforest could be approaching a tipping point: when the Amazon would no longer be able to recover from droughts and much of the biodiverse forest would turn into savannah. The drought also makes extreme wildfires more likely, according to Eurasia Group’s Brazil expert Silvio Cascione. That in turn could undermine the government’s recent successes in reducing the rate of deforestation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a news conference following talks with Hungarian PM Viktor Orban in Moscow on February 1, 2022.
What We’re Watching: Much ado about Ukraine, Myanmar anti-junta strike, Horn of Africa drought
Busy day for Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin continued his diplomatic offensive on Tuesday with a press conference alongside Hungary’s Kremlin-friendly Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Putin previously spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian PM Mario Draghi in an ongoing effort to exploit divisions of opinion among European leaders over the future of NATO and Ukraine. Putin wants NATO to roll back from Eastern Europe and to guarantee that Ukraine will never join the alliance. He reiterated that Washington continues to “ignore” Moscow’s concerns about Russia’s national security. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is working on a new “partnership” with the UK and Poland. This appears to be little more than diplomatic window-dressing, since Britain and Poland have already pledged to supply Ukraine with weapons. Zelensky also unveiled a plan to expand Ukraine’s army by 100,000 troops over the next three years. Military action doesn’t appear imminent, but you can count on more posturing.
A silent strike in Myanmar. Opponents of Myanmar’s military rule marked the first anniversary of the junta's return to power Tuesday by... staying home. Although a few small bombs went off, the majority of citizens defied the generals by emptying the streets of Yangon and other big cities. Before the "silent strike,” pro-democracy activists had been avoiding arrest by gathering in flash mobs with revered Buddhist monks. But Tuesday’s quiet protest clearly irked authorities, who had urged public displays of support for the military and threatened to take over businesses that closed during the strike. Many shops thus remained open but had no customers to serve. Meanwhile, the pro-military rallies organized by the junta failed to draw big crowds. Although Myanmar's generals have never been popular, they must now reckon with the unified passive resistance to their rule.
Horn of Africa drought. Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia are suffering their worst drought in 40 years. Animals are dying at an unprecedented rate, herders are losing their livelihoods, and many are facing starvation. The dry spell has already led to violence between rival herders in Kenya and displaced 1.4 million people in neighboring Somalia. In Ethiopia, it’s a case of "climate change meets conflict,” according to the International Rescue Committee. The drought there is exacerbating difficulties from the ongoing violence between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Unless fighting subsides to allow convoys of aid, agencies fear that dwindling food stocks will soon run out. While dry spells are common in the region, this year's drought is so severe that some fear it will lead to a humanitarian catastrophe on the scale of Ethiopia's 1984 famine.