Los Angeles firefighters brace for threat of more powerful winds

Los Angeles firefighters brace for threat of more powerful winds
Fire fighters spray water and soap to eliminate hotspots in a wooden wall next to the Getty Vllage Museum on Jan. 12, 2025 in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. (AFP)
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Updated 15 January 2025
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Los Angeles firefighters brace for threat of more powerful winds

Los Angeles firefighters brace for threat of more powerful winds
  • Local officials urged residents to stay vigilant throughout the day on Wednesday and be prepared to evacuate at a moment’s notice
  • Some 6.5 million people remained under a critical fire threat

LOS ANGELES: The threat of powerful wind gusts combined with bone-dry humidity in Los Angeles on Wednesday could pose a severe test for firefighters who have been battling to keep monstrous fires in check since last week.
Local officials urged residents to stay vigilant throughout the day on Wednesday and be prepared to evacuate at a moment’s notice, even after tamer-than-expected winds over the last 24 hours.
“We want to reiterate the particularly dangerous situation today. Get ready now and be prepared to leave,” County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said during a news conference on Wednesday.
Some 6.5 million people remained under a critical fire threat as winds were forecast to be 20 to 40 miles (32-64 km) an hour with gusts up to 70 mph and humidity dropping into the single digits during the day, the National Weather Service said.
The combination of low humidity and strong winds has further dried out the brush, increasing the risk of fire, Los Angeles City Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said.
“The danger has not yet passed,” she said, noting that firefighters have seen up to 40 mph winds on Wednesday.
The death toll from the fires stood at 25. The estimate of structures damaged or destroyed held steady at over 12,000, portending a Herculean rebuilding effort ahead. Entire neighborhoods have been leveled, leaving smoldering ash and rubble. In many homes, only a chimney is left standing. Some 82,400 residents were still under evacuation orders with other 90,400 facing evacuation warnings, County Sheriff Robert Luna said.
Winds were tamer than expected on Tuesday, letting firefighters extinguish or gain control of some small brush fires that ignited. No major wildfires erupted in the area, as had been feared.
During the day, the milder-than-expected conditions also allowed some 8,500 firefighters from at least seven states and two foreign countries to hold the line on the Palisades and Eaton fires for the second day running.
The Palisades Fire on the west edge of town held steady at 23,713 acres (96 square km) burned, and containment nudged up to 19 percent — a measurement of how much of the perimeter was under control. The Eaton Fire in the foothills east of the city stood at 14,117 acres (57 sq km) with containment at 45 percent. The fires have consumed an area the size of Washington, D.C.
“In the past 24 hours, there has been little to no fire growth on both incidents,” Cal Fire Incident Commander Gerry Magaña said.
A fleet of aircraft dropped water and retardant into the rugged hills while ground crews with hand tools and hoses have worked around the clock since the fires broke out on Jan. 7, with the aircraft occasionally grounded by high winds.
Crowley and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass fielded questions on Wednesday about a Los Angeles Times report that 1,000 firefighters were on standby but not quickly deployed after fire broke out on Jan. 7.
“We did everything in our capability to surge where we could,” Crowley said.
Southern California has lacked any appreciable rain since April, turning brush into tinder as Santa Ana winds originating from the deserts whipped over hilltops and rushed through canyons, sending embers flying up to two miles ahead of the fires.
Private forecaster AccuWeather estimates total damage and economic loss between $250 billion and $275 billion, which would make it the costliest natural disaster in US history, surpassing Hurricane Katrina in 2005.


A special tribunal to prosecute Russian leaders over Ukraine wins backing from European institutions

A special tribunal to prosecute Russian leaders over Ukraine wins backing from European institutions
Updated 51 min 16 sec ago
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A special tribunal to prosecute Russian leaders over Ukraine wins backing from European institutions

A special tribunal to prosecute Russian leaders over Ukraine wins backing from European institutions
  • Legal experts agreed on the framework for the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine
  • “Now, justice is coming,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said

BRUSSELS: A project to establish a court to prosecute the Russian leaders who orchestrated the invasion of Ukraine took a step forward Wednesday, with an announcement from a group of international organizations, including the European Union and the Council of Europe, working together with Ukraine.
Legal experts agreed on the framework for the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, which will allow for the prosecution of senior Russian officials for planning and coordinating the full-scale invasion in 2022.
“When Russia chose to roll its tanks over Ukraine’s borders, breaking the UN Charter, it committed one of the gravest violations: the Crime of Aggression. Now, justice is coming,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement.
The move to create a special tribunal aims to fill a void created by limitations on the International Criminal Court. While The Hague-based court can go after Russian nationals for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, it cannot prosecute Russians for orchestrating the invasion itself.


The 2002 Rome Statute which created the court does include the crime of aggression but only for countries who have joined the court. The Russian Federation is not a member state.
“The accountability gap for the crime of aggression must be closed right now because the lid of Pandora’s Box is blown off completely and our world is plunged into chaos and darkness,” Ukraine’s deputy minister of justice Iryna Mudra told reporters after the announcement was made.
Ukraine has been pushing for the creation of a special tribunal since early in the conflict. “If we want true justice, we should not look for excuses and should not refer to the shortcomings of the current international law but make bold decisions that will correct those shortcomings that unfortunately exist in international law,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a visit to the Netherlands in 2023.
There are still significant issues to be worked out, including how the tribunal will be paid for and where it will be located. The Netherlands, home to the ICC, the International Court of Justice and other judicial organizations, has offered to host the tribunal.
It is already home to the International Center for Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression, which supports evidence-gathering for a future tribunal and is overseen by the European Union’s judicial cooperation agency, Eurojust. The Council of Europe-backed register of damages, which allows Ukrainian victims of war to catalog the financial harm they have suffered, is also based in the Netherlands.
The tribunal will be established under Ukrainian law, which leaves the future court unable to prosecute the so-called troika, consisting of a country’s head of state, head of government and foreign affairs minister. International law grants that trio immunity while they are in office.
The ICC, which isn’t limited by immunity, has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and several military leaders for war crimes.
The Council of Europe aims to get the tribunal up and running by the end of the year.

 

 


Italy blames badly drafted ICC warrant for Libyan suspect’s release

Italy blames badly drafted ICC warrant for Libyan suspect’s release
Updated 05 February 2025
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Italy blames badly drafted ICC warrant for Libyan suspect’s release

Italy blames badly drafted ICC warrant for Libyan suspect’s release
  • Justice Minister Carlo Nordio told parliament Wednesday that Najim had been arrested on a warrant “that I do not hesitate to define as characterised by inaccuracies “
  • Najim was freed after an appeals court refused to validate his arrest

ROME: Italy’s government shifted blame Wednesday for its much-criticized release of a Libyan war crimes suspect to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which it said had presented a poorly written arrest warrant.
Osama Almasri Najim, the head of Libya’s judicial police, was arrested in the northern Italian city of Turin on January 19 on an ICC warrant, only to be released and flown home to Tripoli two days later on an Italian air force plane.
Opposition parties have denounced the decision to free a man wanted on charges including murder, rape and torture relating to his management of Tripoli’s Mitiga detention center.
Justice Minister Carlo Nordio told parliament Wednesday that Najim had been arrested on a warrant “that I do not hesitate to define as characterised by inaccuracies, omissions, discrepancies and contradictory conclusions.”
Najim was freed after an appeals court refused to validate his arrest.
The justice minister said the court had noted discrepancies concerning dates within the arrest warrant, with crimes attributed to Najim in places dated to February 2011 and others to February 2015.
“An irreconcilable contradiction emerges regarding an essential element of the criminal conduct of the arrested person, regarding the time of the crime committed,” said Nordio, citing “patent, gross and serious contradictions” within the warrant.
The ICC six days later sent a “corrected version” of the arrest warrant, Nordio said, including the dissenting opinion of a judge who had questioned a lack of jurisdiction by the court.
AFP asked for comment from the ICC, but did not immediately receive a response.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni revealed last week that she, Nordio and Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi were under investigation over the case.
A complaint had been made to a Rome prosecutor, who passed it onto the special court that considers cases against ministers.
Elly Schlein, leader of the center-left opposition Democratic Party, said Wednesday that Italy’s “international credibility has been tarnished” by the case.
And she called again for Meloni to come to parliament herself to explain what she said was the government’s “deliberate choice... to free and escort home a Libyan torturer.”
“What kind of country do we want to be, colleagues? On the side of the tortured or on the side of the torturers?” Schlein asked in parliament.
Piantedosi spoke to MPs shortly after Nordio, where he repeated that once Najim had been released from custody, he was deemed too dangerous to remain in Italy.
He denied suggestions that Italy had bowed to pressure from Libya in repatriating Najim.
Some opposition politicians have alleged the suspect was sent home to avoid jeopardizing relations with Libya.
Italy has a controversial agreement dating from 2017 with the UN-backed Libyan government in Tripoli in which Rome provides training and funding to the Libyan coast guard for help deterring the departures of migrants, or returning those already at sea back to Libya.
“I deny in the most categorical manner that... the government received any act or communication that could even remotely be considered a form of undue pressure,” Piantedosi said.


Belgian police hunting two suspects after Brussels metro shooting

Belgian police hunting two suspects after Brussels metro shooting
Updated 05 February 2025
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Belgian police hunting two suspects after Brussels metro shooting

Belgian police hunting two suspects after Brussels metro shooting
  • Police initially launched a manhunt in the tunnels of the metro system
  • Broadcaster VRT said the shooting was probably drug-related and said the shooters

BRUSSELS: Belgian police were hunting two suspects on Wednesday after a shooting near the Brussels South international railway station, the city’s prosecutor’s office said.
Nobody was injured in the shooting, which happened around 6.00 am (0500 GMT), at the Clemenceau metro station in central Brussels, prosecutors said, adding there were no indications of a terrorist motive in the incident.
Police initially launched a manhunt in the tunnels of the metro system, which was partially closed after two men carrying machine guns were seen fleeing into the Clemenceau station.
Broadcaster VRT said the shooting was probably drug-related and said the shooters had aimed at one person but had missed.
VRT showed on its website images of two people walking into Clemenceau metro station in central Brussels and opening fire with automatic weapons. The station along with several others around the station were shut for hours after the incident.
Another video showed a large group of heavily armed police assembling at the Clemenceau station, as a massive search for the suspects got underway.
The incident crippled traffic on the heavily used metro system in Brussels, which hosts many European Union institutions and NATO’s headquarters.
By 2 p.m. (1300 GMT) the whole city metro system had reopened, including the stations around the Gare du Midi international train station, the arrival point for Eurostar trains from Paris and London.


Ukraine brings back 150 POWs in latest swap with Russia, Zelensky says

Ukraine brings back 150 POWs in latest swap with Russia, Zelensky says
Updated 05 February 2025
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Ukraine brings back 150 POWs in latest swap with Russia, Zelensky says

Ukraine brings back 150 POWs in latest swap with Russia, Zelensky says
  • “Some of the boys were held captive for more than two years,” Zelensky said

KYIV: Ukraine has brought back 150 troops from Russian captivity, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday, announcing the latest prisoner swap with Russia.
“All of them are from different sectors of the front... Some of the boys were held captive for more than two years,” he said on the Telegram messaging app.


Frenchman returns home after Indonesian death row reprieve: airport source

Frenchman returns home after Indonesian death row reprieve: airport source
Updated 05 February 2025
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Frenchman returns home after Indonesian death row reprieve: airport source

Frenchman returns home after Indonesian death row reprieve: airport source
  • Serge Atlaoui, 61, was to be driven from the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris to court and then on to jail
  • Atlaoui’s lawyer Richard Sedillot has said he would work to have his client’s sentence “adapted” so that the father of four could be released
Serge Atlaoui, 61, was to be driven from the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris to court and then on to jail
Atlaoui’s lawyer Richard Sedillot has said he would work to have his client’s sentence “adapted” so that the father of four could be released

BOBIGNY, France: A Frenchman reprieved after 18 years on death row in Indonesia for alleged drug offenses landed back in France on Wednesday, an airport source said.
Serge Atlaoui, 61, was to be driven from the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris to court and then on to jail, according to a source close to the case and the prosecutor’s office in the nearby town of Bobigny.
Under an agreement last month between both countries for his transfer, Jakarta has left it to the French government to grant him either clemency, amnesty or a reduced sentence.
France abolished capital punishment in 1981.
A prosecutor in Bobigny would inform Atlaoui “of his imprisonment in France in execution of his sentence,” the public prosecutor’s office there said before he landed.
He will then immediately be taken to prison, it added.
Atlaoui’s lawyer Richard Sedillot has said he would work to have his client’s sentence “adapted” so that the father of four could be released.
Atlaoui was arrested in 2005 at a factory in a Jakarta suburb where dozens of kilogrammes of drugs were discovered, with Indonesian authorities accusing him of being a “chemist.”
A welder from Metz in northeastern France, he has always denied being a drug trafficker, saying that he was installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylic factory.
Atlaoui had left Jakarta for Paris on Tuesday evening on board a KLM flight via Amsterdam.
His return was made possible after an agreement between French Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin and his Indonesian counterpart, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, on January 24.
In the agreement, Jakarta said it had decided not to execute Atlaoui and authorized his return on “humanitarian grounds” because he was ill.
Atlaoui was tight-lipped and wore a face mask at a news conference at Jakarta’s main airport, after he was driven there in a black van from the capital’s Salemba prison and handed over to French police officers.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws and has executed foreigners in the past.
The Southeast Asian country has in recent weeks released half a dozen high-profile detainees, including a Filipino mother on death row and the last five members of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug ring.
According to French association Ensemble contre la peine de mort (“Together Against the Death Penalty“), at least four other French citizens are on death row around the world: two in Morocco, one in China, and a woman in Algeria.