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Chinese companies have turned out in force again at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, with their prospects overshadowed by the threat of steeper tariffs from incoming US president Donald Trump.XPeng’s “flying car” and TCL’s AI-enhanced television were just a few of the products offered by Chinese companies that have won attention at CES, the annual Las Vegas tech confab.The potential for Trump’s trade policies to roil the global tech industry has loomed large over the event. Trump campaigned on a threat to impose 60 percent tariffs on Chinese goods, and has reinterated a hardline stance since winning the November election.  Analysts view the threat as at least partly a negotiating tactic, but note that Trump’s first term included a bruising trade war with Beijing, including tariffs that were maintained and enhanced during President Joe Biden’s tenure. Chinese companies expressed varying levels of concern about the threat.”We are worried about Trump’s government policy, but we think it might not last long,” said Mekia Yang of startup Jitlife, which makes its “smart” suitcases in Guangdong Province.”Trump might act tough at the beginning, and then he might change, because there will be some pressure from domestic markets,” due to rising prices, she said. Zhanbin Ao of Mammotion Technology Co., which sells autonomous lawnmowers, acknowledged unease about new levies but said the company is currently shifting production to Thailand, Vietnam and other Asian countries. “So once we move our manufacturing to other countries, a tariff is not an issue for us,” he said.Other Chinese companies brushed off the threat. Haojia Dengyang of Shenzhen Haoqitansuo Technology, predicted its products would attract US customers even with new tariffs “because they’re valuable, they can really help people.”Shenzhen Haoqitansuo sells smartphone cases, charging devices and other products under the Torras brand in the United States.- Retaliation? -At a November CES press preview held after the election, organizers took a diplomatic line on politics. Gary Shapiro, president of CES organizer the Consumer Technology Association, expressed hope Trump would pivot from the aggressive antitrust posture of the Biden administration that he likened to “death by a million cuts.”But Shapiro also railed against tariffs, saying they amounted to a tax on consumers.Trump’s threatened 60 percent levy on Chinese goods “would be devastating,” Shapiro said.China and other targeted markets “are going to hit back on us, so our exports will be affected as well,” he said. “This is not good for the country.””We need a future of strong trade ties with our friends and allies around the world. In today’s world, no country can go it alone…we must avoid unnecessary tariffs,” Shapiro later said at an industry dinner Wednesday.Like their Chinese counterparts, US companies at CES have steered away from political discussion at product launch events. But executives told AFP the issue is top of mind, even if they aren’t sure exactly what to expect.John Pfeifer, CEO of Oshkosh, said most of the industrial company’s goods sold in the United States are made within the country’s borders, but a fraction are imported. “If they do a 20 percent blanket tariff on anything coming into the US, that would have an impact on us,” he said, pointing to operations in Europe, Mexico and India.”We’d have to decide, okay, what to do — to either reshore this or reengineer so that we can get a different supply base to avoid that tariff.”Oshkosh might also resort to price hikes if tariffs lift prices of critical parts or materials imported to US plants, Pfeifer said.  Like Oshkosh, US agricultural giant John Deere manufactures the vast majority of its equipment sold in the United States within the country’s borders.”It’s a little early to tell what the tariff situation would be, but we’ve navigated through this in the past,” said Deanna Kovar, president, Worldwide Agriculture & Turf Division at Deere.She described the impact on Deere’s products as secondary to the concerns about retaliatory tariffs.”Our biggest concern is to make sure our customers have markets for their products — the corn, the soybeans, the pistachios and almonds that they grow and that there aren’t retaliatory tariffs,” she said.”The most important thing is our customers and that their businesses are viable in the long run,” she said.

Jimmy Carter was to be honored Thursday with a state funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral, amid a groundswell of tributes honoring the 39th US president and the last from the so-called Greatest Generation.The service caps a week of mourning that has seen Americans quietly filing past the flag-draped coffin in the US Capitol to pay their respects to Carter, who died on December 29 at the age of 100 in his home state of Georgia.President Joe Biden will deliver the eulogy for his fellow Democrat at the Episcopal church that has been a traditional venue for send-offs of US presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush.Biden revealed in an interview with USA Today published Wednesday that Carter had asked him to do the honors when the pair — longstanding friends — met for the last time four years ago.”Carter was a decent man. I think Carter looked at the world not from here but from here, where everybody else lives,” Biden said as he gestured from above his head towards his heart.Biden’s living predecessors — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — are expected to join around 3,000 mourners at the service, and Thursday has been designated a national day of mourning, with federal offices closed.Carter, who served a single term before a crushing election loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980, was perceived as naive and weak in the dog-eat-dog world of Washington politic.- ‘Decent and humble’ -A more nuanced image of him has emerged as the years passed, reassessing achievements like the brokering of a peace deal between Israel and Egypt.He also received high praise for his post-presidential humanitarian efforts, and a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.The first president to reach triple digits, he had been in hospice care since February 2023 in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, where he died and will be buried next to his late wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter.Mourners begun paying their respects on Saturday, as the carefully choreographed six-day farewell got underway with US flags flying at half-staff around the country.A black hearse bearing Carter’s remains paused at his boyhood family peanut farm in Plains, where a bell was rung 39 times and staff stood in silent tribute.Crowds gathered along the roadside to say their goodbyes, snap photographs or salute as the motorcade rolled slowly past.Carter’s flag-draped casket arrived at Washington’s snow-covered US Capitol on Tuesday atop a gun carriage.It was accompanied by hundreds of service members, with military pallbearers carrying Carter to the Rotunda to lie in state ahead of Thursday’s ceremony — the first presidential funeral since Bush Senior died in 2018.Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, described Carter as “one of the most decent and humble public servants we have ever seen.” “President Carter was a living embodiment of leadership through service, compassion, and a thirst for justice for all,” he said.

Homes reduced to ashes, businesses in flames, and in the midst of the devastation, haggard residents: the California city of Altadena, ravaged Wednesday by a violent fire, looked like an area that has just been bombed. “This was our home,” William Gonzales told AFP, pointing to smouldering ruins where only embers and a chimney remain.”We have lost practically everything,” he sighed. “The flames have consumed all our dreams.” Swathes of the Los Angeles area have been ravaged since Tuesday by violent fires that have killed at least five people.More than 100,000 people have been told to flee their homes in the face of flames and violent winds that have gusted up to 100 miles (160 kilometers) per hour.In Altadena, behind the mountains north of Los Angeles, firefighters have been overwhelmed by the scale of a blaze that has already destroyed around 500 buildings, including many homes.On Wednesday, the streets were filled with ash, with buildings everywhere in flames.AFP met a shopkeeper in his sixties who was crying in front of the ruins of his liquor store.”This was my whole life,” he sobbed.A dazed Jesus Hernandez said he did not know if his parents would be compensated for their $1.3 million house.”Hopefully the insurance can pay for most of it, if not, then we’re going to have to stay with friends or someone,” he said.- Water cut – Fires have sprouted all over the Los Angeles area in little more than 24 hours, with the latest breaking out in the Hollywood Hills, mere yards (meters) from storied Hollywood Boulevard.Vicious winds have flung embers up to 2.5 miles (4 kilometers), sparking new spot fires faster than firefighters can quell them.The Santa Ana winds that are currently blowing are a classic part of Californian autumns and winters. But this week, they have reached an intensity not seen since 2011, according to meteorologists. That has combined with tinder dry countryside to create the perfect fire storm — and a nightmare for firefighters who have also struggled with water supplies.In the Pacific Palisades fire, hydrants stopped working after massive storage tanks ran dry.David Stewart said he was not prepared to just surrender his neighborhood to the flames.”The county turned off our water supply so we’re out there with shovels throwing dirt on fires,” he told AFP.”We saved I think three neighbors’ houses so far but the fires are still moving towards our house.”He struggled to make sense of the area he has lived his whole life.”This was a just a little antique shop, a pizza place. These places have been here forever, ever since I’ve been alive.”A fretful Jesse Banks was trying to make contact with his son, who had fled the flames earlier in the day.”My son left the house before us on foot, he doesn’t have a cell phone or anything like that, so I’m searching for him now,” he said.”I’ve lived in this area for over 20 years and we’ve seen fires in the mountains and the hills and that, but never anything like this.” The fight is far from over. Wind speeds were expected to moderate, but a Red Flag warning — alerting residents to high fire risk — was set to remain in place until Friday evening.Amid the catastrophe, scientists’ warnings, which regularly remind us that humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme events, are being felt in the flesh. “It’s probably climate change affecting everything,” said shop owner Debbie Collins.”I’m sure it’s added to it, made this happen. The world’s just in a really bad place and we need to do more.” 

At least five people have been killed in wildfires rampaging around Los Angeles, officials said Wednesday, with firefighters overwhelmed by the speed and ferocity of multiple blazes — including in Hollywood.Up to 1,500 buildings have burned in fires that have broken out around America’s second biggest city, forcing over 100,000 people from their homes.Hurricane-force winds whipped up fireballs that leapt from house to house in the upmarket Pacific Palisades area, incinerating a swathe of California’s most desirable real estate favored by Hollywood celebrities.On Wednesday evening, a new fire erupted in the Hollywood Hills, just a few hundred meters (yards) from the storied Hollywood Boulevard, sparking an evacuation order for the world’s entertainment capital.Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said his crews were overwhelmed by the scale and speed of the unfolding disasters.”We’re doing the very best we can. But no, we don’t have enough fire personnel in LA County between all the departments to handle this,” he said.The fire raging in Pacific Palisades had consumed around 16,000 acres (6,500 hectares) as of Wednesday afternoon, taking 1,000 homes and businesses with it.A separate 10,600-acre (4,300-hectare) fire was burning around Altadena, north of the city, where flames tore through suburban streets.Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said five people were known to have perished, with more deaths feared.”Remember, this is still a very fluid situation, there’s zero containment on this fire. I’m really praying we don’t find more, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case,” he said.William Gonzales got out alive, but his Altadena home was gone.”We have lost practically everything; the flames have consumed all our dreams,” he told AFP.- Hydrants run dry -Pasadena fire chief Chad Augustin said up to 500 buildings had been lost to the flames.He hailed the bravery of first responders. “Our death count today would be significantly higher without their heroic actions,” Augustin told reporters.Vicious gusts pushed the flames, whipping red-hot embers hundreds of yards (meters) and sparking new spot fires faster than firefighters could quell them.Late Wednesday, a fire began in Runyon Canyon in the heart of Hollywood, close to historic sites like the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the Walk of Fame and the El Capitan Theatre, as well as the AFP bureau.An evacuation order was put in place for a number of streets, all the way down to Hollywood Boulevard, as firefighters took to the skies to dump water on the blaze.”There is no time to delay,” Margaret Stewart of LAFD said.”We do not want people stuck. We want everyone safely exiting, get in your vehicles, grab your friend who doesn’t have a car, and head south.”The sudden eruption created gridlock on Hollywood’s streets, hampering efforts by people who live in the area — a mixture of ritzy homes and rent-controlled apartments — to leave.Los Angeles Department of Water and Power chief executive Janisse Quinones pleaded with people to save water after hydrants in Pacific Palisades ran dry.President-elect Donald Trump took to his social media platform on Wednesday to claim — wrongly — that the lack of water was the result of the state’s environmental policies.In fact, much of Los Angeles’ water comes from the Colorado River, and farming — rather than residential use or firefighting — takes the lion’s share of all water that flows into Southern California.US President Joe Biden cancelled a trip to Italy this week to instead focus on the federal response to the fires. “We’re doing anything and everything, and as long as it takes to contain these fires,” Biden earlier told reporters.- ‘Panic mode’ -Having razed perhaps hundreds of multimillion-dollar homes, the Pacific Palisades fire looked set to be one of the costliest blazes on record.AccuWeather said it estimated up to $57 billion of losses.More than 300,000 households were without electricity in the region, according to Poweroutage.us. Utilities in California frequently de-energize lines during high winds to minimize the risk of new fires.Wildfires are part of life in the US West and play a vital role in nature.But scientists say human-caused climate change is altering weather patterns.Southern California had two decades of drought that were followed by two exceptionally wet years, which sparked furious vegetative growth — leaving the region packed with fuel and primed to burn.Meteorologist Daniel Swain said the fierce winds — which have gusted up to 100 miles (160 kilometers) an hour — are stronger than the usual seasonal Santa Ana winds, but are not unexpected.”The winds are the driver, but the real catalyst… is this incredible antecedent dryness,” he said.”That’s something that we haven’t seen in records going back to the 1800s.”

One rum, two owners: the decades-long legal battle between the Cuban government and spirits giant Bacardi over the popular Havana Club rum brand has entered a new phase with the enactment of a new US trademark law.Entitled “No Stolen Trademarks Honored in America Act” and signed into law last month by outgoing US President Joe Biden, it prohibits US courts from recognizing trademarks that were “illegally confiscated” by the Cuban government since the 1959 Cuban Revolution.The law cements Bacardi’s rights to Havana Club and could prevent Cuba’s state-owned Cubaexport and its French partner, beverage giant Pernod Ricard, from asserting their rights to the brand in the United States.While Cuba currently cannot export its rum to the United States because of a decades-long trade embargo, the government in Havana and Pernod Ricard believe that maintaining trademark rights to the iconic drink is important in case restrictions are lifted.The law, which was championed by incoming Secretary of State and Cuba hardliner Marco Rubio, was swiftly criticized by the government of the Communist island, which said that it violates international norms.”Once again, the United States government provides space for the dark interests of the most aggressive anti-Cuban sectors whose manipulation of the American political system has become a practice,” the government said in a recent statement.Bacardi, which was exiled from Cuba after the country’s Communist revolution, says that the Cuban government unlawfully seized rum distilleries and the Havana Club brand from its founder Jose Arechabala SA in 1960. But the Cuban government has maintained its rights to the brand and has marketed Havana Club worldwide, with the exception of the United States because of the embargo Washington imposed in 1962. In 1976, Cuba managed to assert its rights to the brand in the United States, until Bacardi contested it in 1995 and started selling its own rum in the United States under the Havana Club brand.- Booming market -The legal fight is unlikely to subside because the rum industry is booming.According to a recent report by Dublin-based consultancy Research and Markets, the global rum market is expected to grow at an average rate of 7.7 percent per year over the next six years, jumping from $19.1 billion in 2024 to $32.2 billion by 2031. In 2016, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) renewed Cubaexport’s registration of the Havana Club brand for ten years, but the enactment of the law is likely to complicate its renewal in 2026.John Kavulich, director of the New York-based Cuba-US Trade and Economic Council described the law as “an immensely cost-effective” lobbying effort for Bacardi.”Most significantly was the complete lack of opposition — even from the most vocal members of the United States Congress who support commercial, economic, financial, and political re-engagement with Cuba,” Kavulich said to AFP.After the brief thaw in US-Cuban ties that began under Barack Obama (2009-2017) and the strengthening of sanctions during Republican Donald Trump’s first presidency (2017-2021), which largely remained unchanged under Democrat Biden, tensions with Havana could rise further under Trump’s second term.

Donald Trump returns to the White House in two weeks with everything seemingly going his way — from stronger grassroots support than ever to a cowed billionaire class and a demoralized opposition.Yet a chaotic and polarized Republican Party on Capitol Hill threatens to frustrate his ambitions for a legacy-defining second term unless he is able to master the political equivalent of herding cats.The Republican rank-and-file reveres Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) agenda of tax cuts, tough border controls and boosted fossil fuel production, but long-simmering disagreements on how to get it into law are starting to boil over.”Our members are ready to get to work and we have hit the ground running, as we promised everyone we would on the campaign trail,” an upbeat Mike Johnson, who leads the Republicans in the House of Representatives, told reporters this week.But Johnson’s troops have been locked in an increasingly heated debate with their Senate colleagues over whether to pass Trump’s entire agenda in one giant, all-or-nothing package or break it up into smaller chunks.Top MAGA policy aides have argued that a piecemeal approach would allow Trump to notch a straightforward early win on border security without having to get bogged down in more contentious fights.But House Republicans worry that, with their threadbare and fractious majority, they will only get one swing at this — and that renewing Trump’s fast-expiring 2017 tax cuts will fall by the wayside if it is peeled off from immigration reform.- ‘Big, beautiful bill’ -Trump muddied the waters in his inimitable style by flip-flopping on his own preference.”I like one big, beautiful bill and I always have, I always will,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “But if two is more certain, it does go a little bit quicker, because you can do the immigration stuff early.”The fight is just one of many potential speed bumps as Trump races against time to make his mark before the Republican iron grip on Washington is potentially weakened by midterm elections in just 22 months. The former real estate mogul, 78, is already behind the pace he set on winning his first term in 2016, when the Senate took important procedural steps towards passing his priorities before he set foot on Pennsylvania Avenue.Trump has previewed other upcoming battles — from reversing President Joe Biden’s offshore drilling restrictions to acquiring Greenland and the Panama Canal — that could drag the administration into court.But support from a Supreme Court bolstered by three of Trump’s own nominees seems more assured than an easy ride in Congress.Trumpist Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin acknowledged during a leadership challenge in the House last year that a disunited rank-and-file on Capitol Hill could be Trump’s biggest frustration.”The Republican Party, it’s like trying to herd cats. Everyone is going in different directions,” he told Fox News.Trump has already demonstrated that he is not above rolling up his sleeves and wading into the fray. – Charm offensive -He micro-managed Republicans through the recent House leadership election, upbraiding lawmakers by telephone in the middle of votes for ticking the wrong box, and strategizing in daily phone calls with key players.He has spent much of the post-election period on a charm offensive targeting high-profile business executives and key Republican interest groups at Mar-a-Lago, the oceanfront redoubt that he calls his “Winter White House” in Florida.Having won what critics see as tacit concessions from leading press barons and tech CEOs that he can expect less friction in 2025 than he got in 2017, Trump was due in Washington on Wednesday to build trust with Senate Republicans.A dinner is planned at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday with Republican governors — heavyweight, largely independent-minded politicians needed by Trump to execute his program at a state level — and various lawmakers are dropping by on Saturday.Trump also plans a giant bash for the entire Senate Republican group in the coming weeks, US media reported. On the Democratic side, leaders in Congress have pledged to work with Republicans to improve people’s lives — but also to hold Trump’s feet to the fire over campaign promises.”They are now in the majority. They now have the responsibility,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor of the chamber on Tuesday.”We and the American people will be watching.”

Tech giant Meta has rolled back restrictions around topics such as gender and sexual identity, a sweeping move advocacy groups fear will fuel hate speech.The change coincides with the company’s shock announcement on Tuesday that it was ending its third-party fact-checking program in the United States and adopting a crowd-sourced model to police misinformation similar to the Elon Musk-owned X.The latest version of Meta’s community guidelines said its platforms — which include Facebook and Instagram — would now permit users to accuse people of “mental illness or abnormality” based on their gender or sexual orientation.The updated version also struck out previous restrictions on referring to women as “household objects or property,” Black people as “farm equipment” and transgender or non-binary people as “it.””We’re getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate,” Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, wrote in a blog post.”It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms.”But advocacy groups quickly voiced concern that the policy shift threatened the safety of marginalized communities.”Removal of fact-checking programs and industry-standard hate speech policies make Meta’s platforms unsafe places,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president of the advocacy group GLAAD.”Without these necessary hate speech and other policies, Meta is giving the green light for people to target LGBTQ people, women, immigrants, and other marginalized groups with violence, vitriol, and dehumanizing narratives.”Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, in a video announcing the changes, claimed the previous restrictions on immigration and gender were “just out of touch with mainstream discourse.””What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it has gone too far,” Zuckerberg said.The move comes just weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House with his Republican Party also back in control of Congress after fiercely attacking social media speech restrictions during the election campaign.Gender identity issues were also a key line of attack by Trump and Republicans against their Democratic opponents.After the move was announced on Tuesday, CyberWell, a nonprofit focused on combating online antisemitism, denounced the “systematic lowering of the bar” by Meta on policies against hate speech and harassment.”This change particularly undermines the safety of all marginalized communities,” CyberWell executive director Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor said in a statement.

Two US astronauts who have been stuck for months on the International Space Station (ISS) said Wednesday they have plenty of food, are not facing a laundry crisis, and don’t yet feel like castaways.Veteran astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived at the ISS in June aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, and were due to spend only eight days on the orbiting laboratory.But problems with the Starliner’s propulsion system prompted NASA to change plans, with a return flight now scheduled for late March at the earliest.Williams said spirits were still high despite the unexpectedly long stay in space.”It’s just been a joy to be working up here,” he said during a call with NASA officials.”It doesn’t feel like we’re cast away,” he added. “Eventually we want to go home, because we left our families a little while ago but we have a lot to do while we’re up here.”Wilmore chuckled while offering reassurance about food supply.”We are well fed,” he said.Laundry requirements are also not comparable to Earth, he explained. “Clothes fit loosely up here. It’s not like on Earth where you sweat and it gets bad. I mean, they fit loosely. So you can wear things honestly, for weeks at a time, and it doesn’t bother you at all,” he said. After the propulsion problems developed, NASA ultimately decided to return the spacecraft to Earth without its crew, and to bring the two stranded astronauts back home with the members of the SpaceX Crew-9 mission.Crew-9’s two astronauts arrived at the ISS aboard a Dragon spacecraft in late September, with two empty seats for Wilmore and Williams. The plan was for all four to return home in February 2025.But the return was postponed last month when NASA announced that Crew-10, which would relieve Crew-9 and the stranded pair, would now launch no earlier than March 2025, and both teams would remain on board for a “handover period.”According to those timelines, Wilmore and Williams are scheduled to spend more than nine months in space.”When we get home, we’ll have lots of stories to tell,” Williams said. 

A prolonged dry spell combined with strong winds has created the “perfect conditions” for Los Angeles wildfires to rage out of control, even though experts say it’s too soon to pinpoint exactly how much climate change contributed.At the same time, perennial debates over suburban sprawl and forest management are intensifying, spurred by political mudslinging from incoming President Donald Trump and his close ally Elon Musk.”We see these fires spread when it is hot and dry and windy, and right now all of those conditions are in place in southern California,” Kristina Dahl, vice president for science at Climate Central, told AFP. “The clearest climate signal for those three conditions is with the temperature,” she added.While it’s not yet known what started the blazes, “human-caused climate change is intensifying the heat that drives wildfires, increasing temperatures in southern California up to two-degrees Celsius (3.6F) since 1895,” Patrick Gonzalez, a climate change scientist at the University of California, Berkeley told AFP.2024 is set to be named the hottest year on record for both the United States and the world, capping a decade of unprecedented heat.- ‘Widening’ fire season -Although wildfire activity can vary greatly from year to year, short-term extreme weather conditions helped create the “perfect conditions” for the rencent blazes, said wildfire scientist Maria Lucia Ferreira Barbosa of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.Last year’s El Nino weather system brought heavy rains that fueled excessive vegetation growth in the first half of 2024. But the second half of the year was marked by drought across southern California, setting the stage for what scientists call “precipitation whiplash,” another potential hallmark of climate change that turned the region into a tinderbox.Low humidity — combined with strong, dry Santa Ana winds blowing inland — further parched the already desiccated shrublands.Small embers can also be carried by the wind to ignite new areas, explained Rory Hadden, Professor of Fire Science at the University of Edinburgh. This can quickly overwhelm firefighters “and can also make escape challenging as visibility is reduced,” he added.”The ongoing wildfires in California are unprecedented, in the sense that they are dramatic for this time of the year,” said Apostolos Voulgarakis, an atmospheric scientist at Imperial College London, adding that research shows the state’s fire season is “widening” as a consequence of climate change.Attribution studies, which use statistical modeling to measure humanity’s impact on climate, will be needed to determine the precise culpability of human-driven warming on the current fires. However, scientists broadly agree that rising temperatures are making such fire-prone conditions more frequent. A recent UN Environment Programme report found a potential global increase in extreme fires by up to 14 percent by 2030, 30 percent by 2050, and 50 percent by the end of the century.- Prescribed burns and political feuds – As more people move into wildfire-prone ecosystems — partly driven by housing costs in safer coastal areas — the danger to lives and property only grows.Dahl noted that this dynamic is especially visible in places like Lake Tahoe, which has attracted newcomers, resulting in a marked growth in what is called the “wildland-urban interface.”Forest management is also under scrutiny. The United States long practiced aggressive fire suppression before gradually embracing prescribed burns — a tactic supported for centuries by Native American tribes. California treats about 125,000 acres (50,000 hectares) of wildlands each year with controlled burns, but it isn’t clear if that’s sufficient, and the state’s patchwork of regulations governing land under state, federal or private jurisdictions pose challenges to scaling it. In the political arena, Musk took to X to slam “nonsense regulations” he believes hamper more active fire prevention, while Trump labeled Gavin Newsom “the incompetent governor,” highlighting how the growing number of disasters is increasingly fueling ideological battles.

A member of the Japanese yakuza criminal underworld pleaded guilty to handling nuclear material sourced from Myanmar and seeking to sell it to fund an illicit arms deal, US authorities said Wednesday.Yakuza leader Takeshi Ebisawa and co-defendant Somphop Singhasiri had previously been charged in April 2022 with drug trafficking and firearms offenses, and both were remanded.He was then additionally charged in February 2024 with conspiring to sell weapons-grade nuclear material and lethal narcotics from Myanmar, and to purchase military weaponry on behalf of an armed insurgent group, prosecutors said.The military weaponry to be part of the arms deal included surface-to-air missiles, the indictment alleged.”As he admitted in federal court today, Takeshi Ebisawa brazenly trafficked nuclear material, including weapons-grade plutonium, out of Burma,” said Acting US attorney Edward Kim, using another name for Myanmar.”At the same time, he worked to send massive quantities of heroin and methamphetamine to the United States in exchange for heavy-duty weaponry such as surface-to-air missiles to be used on battlefields in Burma.”Prosecutors alleged that Ebisawa, 60, “brazenly” moved material containing uranium and weapons-grade plutonium, alongside drugs, from Myanmar.From 2020, Ebisawa boasted to an undercover officer he had access to large quantities of nuclear materials that he sought to sell, providing photographs of materials alongside Geiger counters registering radiation.During a sting operation including undercover agents, Thai authorities assisted US investigators in seizing two powdery yellow substances that the defendant described as “yellowcake.””The (US) laboratory determined that the isotope composition of the plutonium found in the Nuclear Samples is weapons-grade, meaning that the plutonium, if produced in sufficient quantities, would be suitable for use in a nuclear weapon,” the Justice Department said in its statement at the time.One of Ebisawa’s co-conspirators claimed they “had available more than 2,000 kilograms (4,400 pounds) of Thorium-232 and more than 100 kilograms of uranium in the compound U3O8 — referring to a compound of uranium commonly found in the uranium concentrate powder known as ‘yellowcake’.”The indictment claimed Ebisawa had suggested using the proceeds of the sale of nuclear material to fund weapons purchases on behalf of an unnamed ethnic insurgent group in Myanmar.Ebisawa faces up to 20 years imprisonment for the trafficking of nuclear materials internationally.Prosecutors describe Ebisawa as a “leader of the Yakuza organized crime syndicate, a highly organized, transnational Japanese criminal network that operates around the world (and whose) criminal activities have included large-scale narcotics and weapons trafficking.”Sentencing will be determined by the judge in the case at a later date, prosecutors said.