Major California freeway shut amid US military live-fire exercise

A major US freeway in California was shut Saturday due to the US Marine Corps firing live artillery over the roadway as part of ceremonies marking its 250th anniversary, an event attended by Vice President JD Vance.The closure of a 17-mile (27-kilometer) stretch of Interstate 5, which links Los Angeles and San Diego, snarled traffic for hours and set off another spat between California’s liberal governor and Republican Donald Trump’s White House.”The President is putting his ego over responsibility with this disregard for public safety,” said Governor Gavin Newsom, a frequent Trump critic who is expected to make a White House run in 2028.”Firing live rounds over a busy highway isn’t just wrong — it’s dangerous.”Signs near the interstate warned on Saturday: “Live weapons over freeway.”The order to shut the freeway came after California Highway Patrol officials warned that live munitions flying overhead would distract drivers on the oceanfront stretch of Interstate 5 near Camp Pendleton.In a statement, the Marine Corps insisted there was no risk to the public.”Artillery pieces have historically been fired during routine training from land-based artillery firing points west of the I-5 into impact areas east of the interstate within existing safety protocols and without the need to close the route,” it said in a statement. “This is an established and safe practice.”The massive Marine exercise featured fighter jet flyovers, amphibious ships, explosions in a simulated village and Navy SEALS dropping into the Pacific Ocean from helicopters.In his address, Vance said the Trump administration was focused on supporting Marines and removing “woke” priorities that he argued have weakened the US armed forces.”When officials try to shift focus to mandating diversity quotas, or they try to inject partisan politics into the American armed forces, they impede the Marine Corps’s ability to do its best work. “And that’s why the secretary of war and the president of the United States have stood so firmly against that crap,” Vance, a Marine veteran, told the assembled troops.The Marine display came the same day that millions took to the streets from coast to coast in the United States to protest the hardline policies of the Trump administration, which have included the dismantling of diversity and equity programs. In June, Trump ordered National Guard troops to Los Angeles to support federal officials in carrying out sweeping immigration raids and to tamp down local protests. The deployment, which also included hundreds of Marines, was criticized by Newsom and local officials, who argued that the relatively small demonstrations could have been easily handled by city and state law enforcement.

China’s power paradox: record renewables, continued coal

Call it the China power paradox: while Beijing leads the world in renewable energy expansion, its coal projects are booming too.As the top emitter of greenhouse gases, China will largely determine whether the world avoids the worst effects of climate change.On the one hand, the picture looks positive. Gleaming solar farms now sprawl across Chinese deserts; China installed more renewables last year than all existing US capacity; and President Xi Jinping has made the country’s first emissions reduction pledges.Yet in the first half of this year, coal power capacity also grew, with new or revived proposals hitting a decade high.China accounted for 93 percent of new global coal construction in 2024, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clear Air (CREA) found.One reason is China’s “build before breaking” approach, said Muyi Yang, senior energy analyst at think tank Ember.Officials are wary of abandoning the old system before renewables are considered fully operational, Yang said.”Think of it like a child learning to walk,” he told AFP.”There will be stumbles — like supply interruptions, price spikes — and if you don’t manage those, you risk undermining public support.”Policymakers remain scarred by 2021–22 power shortages tied to pricing, demand, grid issues and extreme weather.While grid reform and storage would prevent a repeat, officials are hedging with new coal capacity, even if it sits idle, experts said.”There’s the basic bureaucratic impulse to make sure that you don’t get blamed,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, CREA co-founder and lead analyst.”They want to make absolutely sure that they don’t block one possible solution.”- Grid and transmission -There’s also an economic rationale, said David Fishman, a China power expert at Lantau Group, a consultancy.China’s electricity demand has increased faster than even record-breaking renewable installations.That may have shifted in 2025, when renewables finally met demand growth in the first half of the year. But slower demand played a role, and many firms see coal remaining profitable.Grid and transmission issues also make coal attractive.Large-scale renewables are often in energy-rich, sparsely populated regions far from consumers.Sending that power over long distances raises the cost and “incentivises build-out of local energy capacity,” Fishman told AFP.China is improving its infrastructure for long-distance power trading, “but it’s definitely not where it needs to be”, he added.Coal also benefits from being a “dispatchable resource” — easily ramped up or down — unlike solar and wind, which depend on weather.To increase renewables, “you have to make the coal plants operate more flexibly… and make space for variable renewables,” Myllyvirta said.China’s grid remains “very rigid”, and coal-fired power plants are “the beneficiaries”, he added.- ‘Instrumental’ economic driver -Other challenges loom. The end of feed-in tariffs means new renewable projects must compete on the open market.Fishman argues that “green power demand is insufficient to keep capacity expansion high”, though the government has policy levers to tip the balance, including requiring companies to use more renewables.China wants 3,600 gigawatts of wind and solar by 2035, but that may not meet future demand, risking further coal increases.Still, coal additions do not always equal coal emissions — China’s fleet currently runs at only 50 percent capacity.And the “clean energy” sector — including solar, wind, nuclear, hydropower, storage and EVs — is a major economic driver.CREA estimates it contributed a record 10 percent to China’s gross domestic product last year, and drove a quarter of growth.”It has become completely instrumental to meeting economic targets,” said Myllyvirta.”That’s the main reason I’m cautiously optimistic in spite of these challenges.”

Netanyahu says Gaza war not over until Hamas disarms

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Saturday that the war in Gaza would not be over until Hamas was disarmed and the Palestinian territory demilitarised.His declaration came as Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, handed over the remains of two further hostages on Saturday night under a US-brokered ceasefire agreement.Netanyahu’s office said late Saturday that a Red Cross team had received the remains of two hostages from Hamas and handed them to Israeli forces in Gaza, from where they would be taken to Israel to be identified.The issue of the dead hostages still in Gaza has become a sticking point in the implementation of the first phase of the ceasefire. Israel has linked the reopening of the key Rafah crossing to the territory to the recovery of the hostages’ remains.Netanyahu cautioned that completing the ceasefire’s second phase was essential to ending the war and involved the disarming of Hamas and the demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip.”When that is successfully completed — hopefully in an easy way, but if not, in a hard way — then the war will end,” he added in an appearance on right-wing Israeli Channel 14.Hamas has so far resisted the idea and since the pause in fighting has moved to reassert its control over Gaza.The US State Department on Saturday said it had “credible reports” that Hamas was planning an imminent attack against civilians in Gaza, warning that would be a “ceasefire violation”.”Should Hamas proceed with this attack, measures will be taken to protect the people of Gaza and preserve the integrity of the ceasefire,” it said in a statement, without elaborating on the nature or target of such an attack.- Rafah crossing closed -Under the ceasefire deal brokered by US President Donald Trump, Hamas has so far released all 20 living hostages, along with the remains of nine Israelis and one Nepalese.In exchange, Israel has released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and 135 other bodies of Palestinians since the truce came into effect on October 10.Hamas has said it needs time and technical assistance to recover the remaining bodies, which it says are buried under Gaza’s rubble.Netanyahu’s office said he had “directed that the Rafah crossing remain closed until further notice”.”Its reopening will be considered based on how Hamas fulfils its part in returning the hostages and the bodies of the deceased, and in implementing the agreed-upon framework,” it said, referring to the week-old ceasefire deal.Hamas warned late Saturday that the closure of the Rafah crossing would cause “significant delays in the retrieval and transfer of remains”.- Digging latrines -Further delays to the reopening could also complicate the task facing Tom Fletcher, the UN head of humanitarian relief, who was in northern Gaza on Saturday.”To see the devastation — this is a vast part of the city, just a wasteland — and it’s absolutely devastating to see,” he told AFP.Fletcher said the task ahead for the UN and aid agencies was a “massive, massive job”.He said he had met residents returning to destroyed homes who were trying to dig latrines in the ruins.”We have a massive 60-day plan now to surge in food, get a million meals out there a day, start to rebuild the health sector, bring in tents for the winter, get hundreds of thousands of kids back into school.”- Gaza killings continue -Some violence has persisted despite the ceasefire. Gaza’s civil defence agency, which operates under Hamas authority, said on Saturday that it had recovered the bodies of nine Palestinians — two men, three women and four children — from the Shaaban family after Israeli troops fired two tank shells at a bus.Two more victims were blown apart in the blast and their remains have yet to be recovered, it said.At Gaza City’s Al-Ahli Hospital, the victims were laid out in white shrouds as their relatives mourned.”My daughter, her children and her husband; my son, his children and his wife were killed. What did they do wrong?” demanded grandmother Umm Mohammed Shaaban.The Israeli military said it had fired on a vehicle that approached the so-called “yellow line”, to which its forces withdrew under the terms of the ceasefire, and gave no estimate of casualties.burs-rlp/aha