California firefighters gain ground against big wildfires after hot, windy weekend
GORMAN, Calif. (AP) — Firefighters increased their containment of a large wildfire in mountains north of Los Angeles on Monday after a weekend of explosive, wind-driven growth along Interstate 5.
The Post Fire was 8 per cent surrounded after scorching nearly 23 square miles (60 square kilometres) and forcing the evacuation of at least 1,200 campers, off-roaders and hikers from the Hungry Valley recreation area on Saturday.
“That 8 per cent is good because it means we are increasing and bolstering our containment lines,” said Kenichi Haskett, a Los Angeles County Fire Department section chief.
Firefighters hoped to hold the fire at its current size, but further growth was possible, Haskett said.
The fire broke out as weather turned hot and windy in a region where grasses spawned by a rainy winter have long since dried out and easily burn.
The massive columns of smoke that marked the fire’s initial rampage were gone by Monday morning.
Russia’s Putin to visit North Korea amid international concerns over their military cooperation
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit North Korea for a two-day visit starting Tuesday, both countries announced, amid international concerns about their military cooperation.
Putin is expected to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for talks as they deepen their alignment in the face of separate, intensifying confrontations with Washington. It will be Putin’s first trip to North Korea in 24 years.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Putin will pay a state visit on Tuesday and Wednesday at Kim’s invitation. North Korean state media didn’t immediately provide details. Russia confirmed the visit in a simultaneous announcement.
There are growing concerns about an arms arrangement in which Pyongyang provides Moscow with badly needed munitions to fuel Putin’s war in Ukraine in exchange for economic assistance and technology transfers that would enhance the threat posed by Kim’s nuclear weapons and missile program.
Military, economic and other cooperation between North Korea and Russia have sharply increased since Kim visited the Russian Far East in September for a meeting with Putin, their first since 2019.
The war between Russia and Ukraine is set to grind on as a diplomatic conference packs little punch
By: Hanna Arhirova And Dasha Litvinova
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia and Ukraine are set to remain locked in battle for the foreseeable future after an international gathering billed as a first step toward peace delivered no eye-catching diplomatic breakthrough that might suggest a coming end to Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II.
The absence of Russia and China from the two-day conference in Switzerland on the weekend and the decision by some key countries — including India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Mexico — not to sign the meeting’s final document Sunday meant that the gathering had little to show beyond some goodwill and pledges to keep working for peace after more than two years of war.
Meanwhile Ukraine, after being starved of ammunition due to late deliveries of promised Western military aid, is trying to hold on against a Russian onslaught in eastern parts of the country until its prospects improve.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that the conference’s outcome was “close to zero.”
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is trying to line countries up behind his version of what an eventual peace agreement should look like, said international meetings of advisers and government ministers would follow up on the talks and lay the ground for a second meeting at some future time.
German rescue team finds 10 bodies of suspected migrants off Italy’s Lampedusa island
ROME (AP) — Rescue workers found 10 bodies of suspected migrants below the deck of a wooden boat off Italy’s tiny Lampedusa island on Monday, the German aid group Resqship said, as the Italian coast guard searched for missing people from another vessel shipwrecked off the country’s southern coast.
The crew aboard Resqship’s boat, the Nadir, “is currently caring for 51 people. The rescue came too late for 10 people,” the group said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“A total of 61 people were on the wooden boat, which was full of water. Our crew was able to evacuate 51 people, two of whom were unconscious – they had to be cut free with an axe,” it added. “The 10 dead are in the flooded lower deck of the boat.”
The other search and rescue operation off the Calabrian coast started following a Mayday call by a French boat, sailing about 120 miles (193.12 kilometres) from Italian shores, at the limit of the SAR areas under the jurisdiction of Greece and Italy, the Italian Coast Guard said in a statement.
After reporting the presence of the half-sunken boat, rescuers recovered 12 migrants from the vessel. The survivors were brought to the Calabrian port of Roccella Jonica, where they were disembarked and entrusted to the care of medical personnel.
German investigators seize cocaine worth 2.6 billion euros, calling it their biggest find ever
BERLIN (AP) — German investigators announced Monday that they seized cocaine worth 2.6 billion euros ($2.78 billion) from several container ships and arrested seven people in what they called the biggest ever cocaine find in the country.
Prosecutors in the western city of Duesseldorf said they confiscated the 35.5 metric tons (39 U.S. tons) of cocaine last year following a tip from Colombian authorities. They added they found 25 tons of cocaine in the port of the northern city of Hamburg, another 8 tons in the Dutch port of Rotterdam and almost 3 tons in Colombia. The drugs were hidden among vegetables and fruit.
The drug seizures had not previously been announced.
The suspects — aged between 30 and 54 — were arrested in recent weeks and are believed to have been behind the smuggling. The seven include German, Azerbaijani, Bulgarian, Moroccan, Turkish and Ukrainian nationals, the prosecutors said in a statement. Their identities were not given in line with German privacy rules.
A businessman from the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia set up 100 letterbox companies to make the transports appear legal, they said.
U.S. severe weather: Heat moves east, storms threaten Plains, snow falls in the Rockies
By: Anita Snow
PHOENIX (AP) — Hot and cold extremes are expected this week in the U.S. Officials warned residents from coast to coast to take precautions as a heat wave moved east, while heavy rains and flooding could drench the Gulf states and snow threatens parts of the Rockies and Northwest.
Extreme heat spread across Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Texas, Colorado and Kansas as severe weather swept across many parts of the U.S. on Sunday. There was unseasonable cold in the Pacific Northwest, snow headed to the northern Rocky Mountains and heavy rainfall forecast from the northern Plains to the Upper Midwest.
The National Weather Service estimated more than 63 million people were under heat advisories on Sunday, stretching from the Southwest northward up through Denver and into Chicago. Much of the Midwest and Northeast were under heat warnings or watches on Monday.
Temperatures in Phoenix, which hit 112 degrees Fahrenheit (44.4 Celsius) on Saturday, eased slightly on Sunday to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius). Weather service forecasters say the first two weeks of June in Phoenix already have been an average of 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than normal, making it the hottest start to June on record.
At least 9 dead, dozens injured as trains collide in India’s Darjeeling district, a tourist hotspot
NEW DELHI (AP) — A cargo train rammed into a passenger train in India’s eastern state of West Bengal on Monday, killing at least nine people and injuring dozens of others, officials said.
Television channels showed video of one train rammed into the end of the other, with one compartment rising vertically in the air. Doctors and ambulances rushed to the accident site in the Darjeeling district, a tourist spot nestled in the Himalayan foothills, soon after the collision. Scores of people gathered as rescuers searched through the debris.
Three of the nine dead were railway personnel, said Sabyasachi De, spokesperson of the Northeast Frontier Railway. Nearly 50 people were hospitalized.
The driver of the cargo train, who was among the dead, disregarded a signal and caused the collision, De said. Four compartments at the rear of the passenger train derailed due to the impact, he said, adding that most of the cars were carrying cargo while one was a passenger coach.
