People flee Idaho town through a tunnel of fire and smoke as Western wildfires spread
By: John Antczak And Holly Ramer
Lightning strikes have sparked fast-moving wildfires in Idaho, prompting the evacuation of multiple communities, including one in which a man drove past a building and trees engulfed in flames as a tunnel of smoke rose over the roadway.
Videos posted to social media include a man who said he heard explosions as he fled Juliaetta, about 27 miles (43 kilometres) southeast of the University of Idaho’s campus in Moscow. The town of just over 600 residents was evacuated just ahead of the Gwen Fire, as were several other communities near the Clearwater River.
The Idaho Department of Lands said “multiple structures” were burned, but the agency did not immediately release additional details, including whether the structures were homes or outbuildings.
As that and other blazes scorch the Pacific Northwest, authorities announced that a wildfire that tripled in size to become California’s largest of the year was started by a man who was seen pushing a burning car into a gully.
A massive firefighting response couldn’t contain the fire as it roared through dry brush and rough terrain and sent a huge plume of smoke over neighbouring states. It had burned more than 257 square miles (666 square kilometres) by early Friday as it expanded from the hills above Chico, a city of about 100,000 in the northern Central Valley.
Barack and Michelle Obama endorse Kamala Harris, giving her expected but crucial support
By: Bill Barrow
ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama have endorsed Kamala Harris in her White House bid, giving the vice president the expected but still crucial backing of the nation’s two most popular Democrats.
The endorsement, announced Friday in a video showing Harris accepting a joint phone call from the former first couple, comes as Harris builds momentum as their party’s likely nominee after President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection bid and endorse his second-in-command against Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump.
It also highlights the friendship and potentially historic link between the nation’s first Black president and the first woman, first Black woman and first person of Asian descent to serve as vice president, who is now vying to break those barriers at the presidential rank.
“We called to say Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office,” the former president told Harris, who is shown taking the call as she walks backstage at an event, trailed by a Secret Service agent.
Netanyahu will meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago, mending a yearslong rift
By: Ellen Knickmeyer
WASHINGTON (AP) — As president, Donald Trump went well beyond his predecessors in fulfilling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top wishes from the United States. Yet by the time Trump left the White House, relations between the two had broken down after Netanyahu rapidly congratulated Joe Biden on his 2020 presidential victory.
On Friday, the two men will meet face-to-face for the first time in nearly four years in a test of whether the relationship can be mended. Both have an interest in getting past their differences.
For Trump, now the Republican presidential nominee, the meeting could cast him as an ally and statesman, as well as sharpen efforts by Republicans to portray themselves as the party most loyal to Israel.
That’s as divisions among Americans over U.S. support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza open cracks in what has been decades of strong bipartisan backing for Israel, the biggest recipient of U.S. aid.
Typhoon Gaemi wreaked the most havoc in the country it didn’t hit directly – the Philippines
BEIJING (AP) — What was Typhoon Gaemi headed to inland China on Friday after weakening to a severe tropical storm soon after making landfall on the east coast the previous night.
The storm felled trees, flooded streets and damaged crops in China but there were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage. Five people died in Taiwan, which Gaemi crossed at typhoon strength on Thursday before heading over open waters to China.
The worst loss of life, however, was in a country that Gaemi earlier passed by but didn’t strike directly: the Philippines. A steadily climbing death toll has reached 34, authorities there said Friday. The typhoon exacerbated seasonal monsoon rains in the Southeast Asian country, causing landslides and severe flooding that stranded people on rooftops as waters rose around them.
Gang kills at least 26 villagers in remote Papua New Guinea, officials say
By: Rod Mcguirk
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — At least 26 people were killed by a gang in three remote villages in Papua New Guinea’s north and eight villagers remained missing Friday in the latest violence in the South Pacific island nation relating to contested land ownership and sorcery allegations, officials said.
“It was a very terrible thing … when I approached the area, I saw that there were children, men, women,” the acting police commander in East Sepik province, James Baugen, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Friday.
Baugen said all the houses in the villages had been burned and the remaining villagers had taken shelter at a police station, too scared to name the perpetrators.
“Some of the bodies left in the night were taken by crocodiles into the swamp. We only saw the place where they were killed. There were heads chopped off,” Baugen said.
Chris Jensen, country director for the aid group World Vision, said 26 people were confirmed dead, eight were missing and 51 families were displaced from their homes in Angoram district on the crocodile-infested Sepik River, the longest river on New Guinea island.
UN Commissioner for Human Rights Volke Turk said the dead included 16 children.
Search for people missing after Ethiopia mudslides continues as death toll rises to 257
By: Amanuel Gebremedhin Birhane
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Search teams were still digging at the site of deadly mudslides in southern Ethiopia on Friday, as the death toll rose to 257, according to the U.N. humanitarian office.
Heavy rain triggered deadly slides on Sunday and Monday in a remote part of the country. The U.N. humanitarian office, known as OCHA, said in an update Thursday that the death toll could rise to as many as 500, citing local officials.
“More than 15,000 affected people need to be evacuated” from the area, it said.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is expected to visit the remote area on Friday. Mudslides there have been triggered by heavy rainfall in recent days. Abiy said earlier in the week that he was “deeply saddened by this terrible loss.”
Photos from the scene show residents standing over the shrouded bodies of mudslide victims who are being pulled, one by one, from the muddy earth.
Harris tells Netanyahu ‘it is time’ to end the war in Gaza and bring the hostages home
By: Aamer Madhani
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday said she urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a cease-fire deal soon with Hamas so that dozens of hostages held by the militants in Gaza since Oct. 7 can return home.
Harris said she had a “frank and constructive” conversation with Netanyahu in which she affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself but also expressed deep concern about the high death toll in Gaza over nine months of war and the “dire” humanitarian situation there.
Yet she offered a more forceful tone about the urgency of the moment just one day after Netanyahu gave a fiery speech to Congress in which he defended the war, vowed “total victory” against Hamas and made relatively scant mention of cease-fire negotiations.
“There has been hopeful movement in the talks to secure an agreement on this deal,” Harris told reporters shortly after meeting with Netanyahu. “And as I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done.”
Netanyahu met separately earlier in the day with Biden, who has also been calling on Israel and Hamas to come to an agreement on a U.S.-backed, three-phase deal to bring home remaining hostages and establish an extended cease-fire.
