World

Castaic, United States — An explosive new wildfire erupted north of Los Angeles on Wednesday, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes and setting nerves jangling in an area still reeling from two deadly blazes.

Ferocious flames devoured hillsides near Castaic Lake, spreading rapidly to cover more than 9,400 acres in just a few hours.

The fire was fanned by strong, dry Santa Ana winds racing through the area, pushing a vast pall of smoke and embers ahead of the fire front.

Evacuations were ordered for 31,000 people around the lake, which sits 35 miles north of Los Angeles, and close to the city of Santa Clarita.

"I'm just praying that our house doesn't burn down," one man told broadcaster KTLA as he packed his car.

The Hughes Fire came as the greater Los Angeles area was on edge after two enormous fires tore through America's second largest metropolis, killing more than two dozen people and wreaking billions of dollars of devastation.

Around 4,000 fire fighting personnel, backed up by aircraft and bulldozers, surged to the new blaze, a massive response that Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said was paying dividends.

"The situation remains dynamic, and the fire remains a difficult fire to contain, although we are getting the upper hand," he told an evening press conference.

"We are going to be on scene all night long, gaining more perimeter control, making sure that we can put out the hot spots, and then have enough resources and staging so that if we do have a flare up, we can move those resources to the fire line."

The hopeful tone came after a nervous day for the region, where many people remained glued to television coverage of the aerial fire fight, scenes that became common during lengthy battles to contain the Eaton and Palisades Fires.

Helicopters dropped water and planes dumped tens of thousands of fire retardant, laying down lines of red intended to corral the flames and pinch the fire front.

The fleet included two Super Scoopers, enormous amphibious planes that can carry hundreds of gallons of water, as well as DC-10 jets and dual rotor helicopters.

Crews from the Los Angeles County Fire Department and Angeles National Forest also attacked the blaze from the ground.

 Jails 

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said the Pitches Detention Centre in Castaic was under an evacuation order, and about 500 inmates had been moved to a neighbouring facility.

Around 4,600 inmates held at other jails in the area were sheltering in place, but buses were on hand in case conditions changed and they needed to be moved, he said.

California Highway Patrol shuttered the I5 freeway for several hours, severing a major artery that runs the length of the US west coast.

The freeway re-opened during rush hour, but had bumper-to-bumper traffic, as thousands of drivers inched home.

Cal Fire's Brent Pascua said conditions had come together to make the fire especially volatile.

"We're getting the winds, we're getting the low humidity, and this brush hasn't seen any moisture in so long," he said.

"That all combined together is just making this fire spread extremely fast."

Winds were expected to continue overnight and into Thursday.

Human activity, including the unchecked burning of fossil fuels, is changing Earth's climate, increasing average global temperatures and altering weather patterns.

Even though January is the middle of the region's rainy season, Southern California has not seen any significant precipitation in around eight months, leaving the countryside tinder dry.

BERLIN — A 41-year-old man and a two-year-old boy were killed and two other people severely wounded in a knife attack in the German city of Aschaffenburg on Wednesday, police said.

A 28-year-old man from Afghanistan was arrested close to the crime scene, they said on social media platform X, without indicating a motive.

The stabbings happened in a public park in the centre of the Bavarian city at around 11:45 am (1045 GMT).

"Two people were fatally injured," police said, while "two seriously injured people are receiving treatment in hospital.

"The suspect was arrested in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene."

A second person arrested was a witness and was being questioned, police said 

"There are no indications of other suspects" and no further danger to the public, police said.

Police said investigations into the "background of the crime" were ongoing.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned a deadly knife attack Wednesday as "an unbelievable act of terror" and demanded to know why the Afghan suspect had been able to stay in the country.

Bavaria state interior minister Joachim Herrmann said the suspect had come to the attention of authorities for violent behaviour on three separate occasions.

"The authorities must explain as quickly as possible why the attacker was even still in Germany," Scholz said in a statement reacting to the killing of a man and a child in Aschaffenburg.

Police had cordoned off the park in Aschaffenburg, around 36 kilometres (22 miles) southeast of Frankfurt.

Germany has been shaken by a series of deadly stabbings in recent months.

Three people were killed and eight wounded in a stabbing spree at a street festival in the western city of Solingen in August. 

The attack was claimed by the Islamic State group and police arrested a Syrian suspect.

The presumed Islamist motive behind that stabbing fuelled a bitter debate in Germany over immigration.

The government responded to the incident by tightening controls on knives and strengthening security services with new powers of investigation.

PANAMA CITY — Panama has complained to the United Nations over US President Donald Trump's "worrying" threat to seize the Panama Canal, even as it launched an audit of the Hong Kong-linked operator of two ports on the interoceanic waterway.

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the government in Panama City referred to an article of the UN Charter precluding any member from "the threat or use of force" against the territorial integrity or political independence of another.

The missive distributed to reporters Tuesday, urges Guterres to refer the matter to the UN Security Council, without asking for a meeting to be convened.

Trump, in his inaugural address Monday, repeated his complaint that China was effectively "operating" the Panama Canal through its growing presence around the waterway, which the United States handed over at the end of 1999.

"We didn't give it to China, we gave it to Panama. And we're taking it back," Trump said.

The Panamanian comptroller's office that oversees public entities then announced "an exhaustive audit" would be launched "aimed at ensuring the efficient and transparent use of public resources" at the Panama Ports Company.

The company, part of Hutchison Ports, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings, operates the ports of Balboa and Cristobal on either end of the canal.

The comptroller's office said the aim was to determine whether the company was complying with its concession agreements, including adequate reporting of income, payments and contributions to the state.

Panama's President Jose Raul Mulino has denied that any other nation was interfering in the canal, which he said was operated on a principle of neutrality.

"The canal is and will remain Panama's," Mulino said in response to Trump's threats.

The Republican has been raising pressure for weeks over the canal -- through which 40 percent of US container traffic travels -- and has refused to rule out using military force to reclaim it.

The Panama Ports Company's concession agreement was extended by 25 years in 2021.

The United States is the canal's main user, followed by China.

Since 2000, the waterway has contributed more than $30 billion to Panama's state coffers, including nearly $2.5 billion in the last fiscal year.

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump said Monday he was not confident a ceasefire deal in Gaza would hold, despite trumpeting his diplomacy to secure it ahead of his inauguration.

Asked by a reporter as he returned to the White House whether the two sides would maintain the truce and move on in the agreement, Trump said, "I'm not confident."

"That's not our war; it's their war. But I'm not confident," Trump said.

Trump, however, said that he believed Hamas had been "weakened" in the war that began with its unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

"I looked at a picture of Gaza. Gaza is like a massive demolition site," Trump said.

The property tycoon turned populist politician said that Gaza could see a "fantastic" reconstruction if the plan moves ahead.

"It's a phenomenal location on the sea -- best weather. You know, everything's good. It's like, some beautiful things could be done with it," he said.

Israel and Hamas on Sunday began implementing a ceasefire deal that included the exchange of hostages and prisoners.

The plan was originally outlined by then president Joe Biden in May and was pushed through after unusual joint diplomacy by Biden and Trump envoys.

Trump, while pushing for the deal, has also made clear he will steadfastly support Israel.

In one of his first acts, he revoked sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank imposed by the Biden administration over attacks against Palestinians.

The health ministry in Gaza said Tuesday that 47,107 people had been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, with the toll continuing to rise in spite of a ceasefire as new bodies were found under the rubble.

The ceasefire has held since going into effect on Sunday, bringing a halt to more than 15 months of fighting in the Palestinian territory. 

But the health ministry is finding more dead, as the truce has allowed people to comb the ruins. Other people have died from wounds received before the fighting stopped, with the territory's health system devastated by the war.

The bodies of 72 people "arrived at hospitals... over the past 24 hours", the ministry said in a statement. 

"A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulances and civil protection teams are unable to reach them," it added.

The ministry said the number of wounded had reached 111,147 since the start of the war on October 7, 2023.

The ministry called on the families of people killed or missing in the war to register online to aid in the identification of bodies and to compile a more accurate death toll.

Israel has regularly questioned the credibility of the ministry's figures, although the United Nations deems them reliable.

A study in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet published in early January estimated that the number of deaths during the first month of the war was around 40 per cent higher than the official ministry figure. 

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday vowed Gaza would never again pose a threat to Israel, as a tense calm prevailed on the second day of a truce in the Palestinian territory.

Three Israeli hostages, all women, were reunited with their families after Hamas fighters handed them over on Sunday, followed by the overnight release of 90 Palestinian prisoners from an Israeli jail in the occupied West Bank.

In the war-battered Gaza Strip, displaced Palestinians set off on foot or by car to return home as trucks loaded with sorely needed humanitarian aid funnelled into the devastated territory.

The truce mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States began on Sunday, on the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration for a second term as US president.

In a video message on Monday, Netanyahu thanked Trump for helping to secure the hostage release deal and once more vowed to "return the remaining hostages... and to ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel".

PARIS — The United States withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is a blow to global cooperation on climate change, but other countries are marching ahead and stepping up leadership on the issue.

China is dominating the clean energy race, Brazil will be steering global climate negotiations, Denmark has approved a world-first tax on livestock emissions and Colombia is saying farewell to fossil fuels.

There are fears the US retreat, announced by President Donald Trump on Monday, will hinder global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But some observers also see a chance for more ambitious countries to forge new alliances, set the agenda and champion a climate deal endorsed by nearly all nations.

"It's a bigger pact than just the United States," said Frances Colon, a senior fellow from the Centre for American Progress, a Washington-based policy institute.

 Emerging players 

One of these emerging leaders is Brazil, which this year is hosting one of the most important UN climate summits since the Paris accord was adopted in 2015.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has positioned himself as a global flag-bearer for the environment, and since taking office deforestation in the Amazon has fallen impressively.

But he also wants to expand Brazil's oil exploration, complicating its image as COP30 host. 

Along with South Africa, which is hosting the G20 this year, Brazil is expected to shape a global reform agenda that demands climate and development goals go hand in glove.

"This could be a year for Global South leadership," said Tim Sahay, co-director of the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December boasted of his country's "leadership" rolling out solar and wind energy. 

"India is setting global standards in climate action," he said on X.

 Renewable power 

China's economic contribution to reducing global emissions, the chief purpose of the Paris Agreement,  is already unrivalled.

The country produces more than half the world's electric vehicles, about 70 per cent of its wind turbines, and 80 per cent of solar panels, helping drastically cut the cost of low-carbon technologies.

On Tuesday, China announced it had installed a record amount of renewable energy in 2024 and vowed to "work with all parties to actively address the challenges of climate change".

As political headwinds frustrate global climate action, "China's performance in advancing and deploying green technologies might become the saving grace", said Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

China already flexes considerable diplomatic muscle in global climate negotiations, informally leading a major developing country bloc.

At the same time, China is responsible for the overwhelming majority of the growth in planet-warming emissions since the Paris Agreement was inked.

It will soon overtake the European Union as the second-largest historic polluter, behind the United States, and could feel less pressure under Trump to take more ambitious action.

 Old guard 

The EU has a long history of climate leadership and slashed its emissions 7.5 per cent between 2022 and 2023,  streets ahead of any other nation or bloc.

The 27-nation bloc is also the largest contributor of climate finance to poorer countries, outspending all other wealthy nations.

"The Paris agreement continues to be the best hope of all humanity. So Europe will stay the course, and keep working with all nations that want to protect nature and stop global warming," EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday.

During the last Trump presidency, the EU and China launched a climate dialogue with Canada to ensure unwavering high-level support for the Paris Agreement while the United States was outside the process.

Strong leadership will again be needed to rally momentum, said Alex Scott, a senior associate at Italian climate think tank ECCO. 

"The EU and China could collaboratively provide that geopolitical pole," she told AFP.

But the EU is preoccupied with its own domestic problems, including political swings to anti-climate parties, while Beijing is locked in a trade spat with Brussels over its tax on carbon-intensive imports. 

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump was sworn in for a historic second term as president on Monday, pledging a blitz of immediate orders on immigration and the US culture wars as he caps his extraordinary comeback.

With one hand raised in the air and the other on a Bible given to him by his mother, the 47th US president solemnly took the oath of office beneath the huge Rotunda of the US Capitol.

Republican Trump and outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden had earlier traveled by motorcade together to the Capitol, where the ceremony was being held indoors -- and with a much smaller crowd -- for the first time in decades due to frigid weather.

Earlier, they and their spouses met for a traditional tea at the White House.

"Welcome home," Biden said to Trump as he and First Lady Jill Biden greeted their successors at the front door to the presidential residence.

Trump, 78, was a political outsider at his first inauguration in 2017 as the 45th president, but this time around he is surrounded by America's wealthy and powerful.

The world's richest man, Elon Musk, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos and Google CEO Sundar Pichai all had prime seats in the Capitol alongside Trump's family and cabinet members.

Musk, who bankrolled Trump's election campaign to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollars and promotes far-right policies on the X social network, will lead a cost-cutting drive in the new administration.

While Trump refused to attend Biden's 2021 inauguration after falsely claiming electoral fraud by the Democrat, this time Biden has been keen to restore the sense of tradition.

Biden joined former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton at the Capitol. Former first ladies Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush were there but ex-first lady Michelle Obama pointedly stayed away.

'American decline' 

Unusually for an inauguration where foreign leaders are normally not invited, Argentina's hard-right president Javier Milei was attending, along with Italy's far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

The bitter cold weather has forced Trump's inauguration indoors for the first time since Ronald Reagan's in 1985, missing out on the customary massive crowds along the National Mall.

Behind the pomp and ceremony, the billionaire is kickstarting his nationalist, right-wing agenda with a barrage of around 100 executive orders undoing Biden's legacy.

Trump will declare a national emergency at the Mexico border, give the US military a key role on the frontier, and end birthright citizenship, as he seeks clamp down on undocumented migrants, an official from his incoming administration said.

Trump has pledged to start immediate deportations of undocumented migrants.

He will also sign an order for the US government to recognize only two biological sexes and seek to eliminate federal government diversity programs as he takes office.

The announcement of the hardline policies came a day after Trump had promised a "brand new day" and to end "four years of American decline."

"I will act with historic speed and strength and fix every single crisis facing our country," Trump told an inauguration eve rally where he danced with the Village People band.

 'Ecstatic' 

Despite promising a new "golden era," populist Trump also campaigned on often apocalyptic depictions of the country in his victorious election campaign against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in November.

At sunrise on Monday, the National Mall, where the inauguration was originally due to be held, was largely empty -- save for the Fairchild family, who traveled from Michigan to pay tribute to Trump.

"Ecstatic," said grandmother Barb, when asked how they were feeling, adding she thought the move indoors was made "to protect our president."

With minutes left in his presidency, Biden issued extraordinary pre-emptive pardons for his brothers and sister to shield them from "baseless and politically motivated investigations."

He also pardoned former Covid-19 advisor Anthony Fauci, retired general Mark Milley, and members of a US House committee probing the violent January 6, 2021 US Capitol attack by Trump's supporters.

Biden said he had also restored the tradition of leaving a letter for his successor -- though he said the contents were between him and Trump.

Trump will make history by replacing Biden as the oldest president to be sworn in. He is also just the second president in US history to return to power after being voted out, after Grover Cleveland in 1893.

Another first is Trump's criminal record, related to paying a porn star hush money during his first presidential run -- and a string of far more serious criminal probes that were dropped once he won the election in November.

For the rest of the world, Trump's return means expecting the unexpected.

From promising sweeping tariffs, to making territorial threats to Greenland and Panama and calling US aid for Ukraine into question, Trump looks set to rattle the global order once again.

Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Trump ahead of the inauguration and said Monday he was open to talks on the Ukraine conflict, adding he hoped any settlement would ensure "lasting peace".

WASHINGTON —  President Donald Trump's administration on Monday announced the United States' intention to withdraw from the Paris climate accord for a second time, a defiant rejection of global efforts to combat planetary warming as catastrophic weather events intensify worldwide.

The Republican leader also said his administration would declare a "national energy emergency" to significantly expand drilling in the world's top oil and gas producer and scrap upcoming stringent pollution standards for cars and trucks, which he has derided as an "electric vehicle mandate".

"President Trump will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord," the White House said in a statement shortly after the Republican was sworn into office, without providing a specific timeline.

It would take a year to leave the agreement after submitting a formal notice to the United Nations framework that underpins global climate negotiations.

Even before the formal exit, the move delivers a serious blow to international cooperation aimed at reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Critics warn it could embolden other major polluters like China and India to scale back their own commitments.

It comes as global average temperatures over the past two years surpassed the critical 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold for the first time, underscoring the urgency of climate action.

"The US withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is unfortunate, but multilateral climate action has proven resilient and is stronger than any single country's politics and policies," said Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a key architect of the Paris Agreement.

More drilling, fewer EVs 

Trump used his inauguration speech to preview a raft of sweeping energy-related federal orders aimed at undoing Biden's climate legacy.

"The inflation crisis was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices, and that is why today I will also declare a national energy emergency. We will 'Drill, baby, drill!'" Trump said.

"We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it," he added.

"With my actions today, we will end the Green New Deal, and we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry."

Trump's mention of the "Green New Deal" may be a reference to the Inflation Reduction Act -- Biden's signature climate law that channels billions into clean energy tax credits --rather than a 2019 resolution of the same name, which never passed Congress.

Praise and scorn 

Trump's domestic actions were welcomed by energy industry leaders, who view the administration's policies as a return to the era of "American energy dominance".

"The US oil and natural gas industry stands ready to work with the new administration to deliver the commonsense energy solutions Americans voted for," said Mike Sommers, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute.

But they sparked immediate outrage from environmental advocates, who argue that doubling down on fossil fuel production ignores the pressing challenges of climate change.

"This declaration is more proof that Trump doesn't seem to recognise the real world," said Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club's land protection program, in comments to AFP. "The US is producing more energy, more oil and gas than any country has ever produced."

Trump's actions come despite overwhelming scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels has driven global temperatures to unprecedented levels, contributing to increasingly severe climate-driven disasters.

Last year brought a barrage of destructive hurricanes, including Hurricane Helene -- the second-deadliest storm to strike the mainland in over half a century -- while this month, wildfires supercharged by climate change have devastated Los Angeles.