Author: Disha Mishra

LOS ANGELES, Jan 11 (Reuters) – Fierce winds that have supercharged wildfires sweeping parts of Los Angeles finally eased on Friday night, bringing some relief to weary firefighters, but the largest blaze was reported to have shifted direction, triggering new evacuation orders. Six simultaneous wildfires have devastated Los Angeles County neighborhoods since Tuesday, killed at least 11 people and damaged or destroyed 10,000 structures. Those tolls were expected to grow once it was safe enough for firefighters to conduct house-to-house searches. On Friday night, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Palisades Fire on the city’s western edge was heading…

Jan 11 (Reuters) – Syria’s Intelligence Directorate foiled an attack by the Islamic State group on the Sayeda Zeinab shrine in a Damascus suburb, a site of mass pilgrimage for Shi’ites, state news agency Sana reported on Saturday. It said members of the cell were arrested before they could detonate an explosion inside the shrine. The foiled attack will stoke fears that Islamic State is hoping to stage a comeback in Syria following the fall last month of President Bashar al-Assad. Some Syrians and foreign powers have worried that the country’s new leaders, who are from the Sunni Islamist Hayat…

ALTADENA, California, Jan 11 (Reuters) – As Los Angeles construction worker Ivan De La Torre surveyed a landscape of smoking wreckage in fire-ravaged Altadena, a question nagged at him: how would insurance companies cover the cost of rebuilding an entire neighborhood? As hundreds of Los Angeles residents return to find homes reduced to ashes due to a devastating wave of wildfires, many are fearful that their insurance policies may not cover the rebuild cost and that future premiums will be astronomical. “My concern is that the insurance companies won’t be able to handle all the claims and file for bankruptcy…

BEIRUT/DAMASCUS, Jan 10 (Reuters) – U.S., French and German envoys have warned Syria’s new Islamist rulers that their appointment of foreign jihadists to senior military posts is a security concern and bad for their image as they try to forge ties with foreign states, two sources familiar with the matter said. The warning from the U.S., part of Western efforts to get Syria’s new leaders to reconsider the move, was delivered in a meeting between U.S. envoy Daniel Rubinstein and Syria’s de facto ruler Ahmed al-Sharaa on Wednesday at the presidential palace overlooking Damascus, a U.S. official said. “These appointments…

BEIJING, Jan 11 (Reuters) – British finance minister Rachel Reeves, facing criticism for travelling to China during financial market turmoil at home, said on Saturday that “pragmatic and predictable” relations with Beijing would help boost economic growth and trade. Under pressure from a sharp rise in British interest rates, Reeves defended her budget at the start of the two-day visit to China, where she is seeking to revive high-level economic and financial talks that have been frozen for nearly six years. “The fiscal rules that I set out in my budget in October are non-negotiable, and growth is the number…

SEOUL, Jan 11 (Reuters) – The flight data and cockpit voice recorders on the Jeju Air jet that crashed on Dec. 29 stopped recording about four minutes before the airliner hit a concrete structure at South Korea’s Muan airport, the transport ministry said on Saturday. Authorities investigating the disaster that killed 179 people, the worst on South Korean soil, plan to analyse what caused the “black boxes” to stop recording, the ministry said in a statement. The voice recorder was initially analysed in South Korea, and, when data was found to be missing, sent to a U.S. National Transportation Safety…

(Forelines) – Ukraine carried out drone attacks in multiples regions of Russia, targeting two residential houses in the Tambov region and injuring at least three people, Russia stated on Saturday, quoted by Reuters. The regional head, Evgeny Pervyshov, stated via Telegram messaging app several people were treated for injures causing from shattered windows after drones struck two homes in Kotovsk, a town located about 480 kilometers (300 miles) southeast of Moscow, as per Reuters report. Pervyshov further stated that the buildings sustained only minor damage and that residents were offered temporary accommodation. Separately, Russia’s defence ministry reported that it intercepted…

(Reuters) – Business was brisk at Teddy’s Cocina in Pasadena as wildfire evacuees ate lunch and passersby ducked indoors to escape from the brown, smoky air blanketing the city. “It’s not breathable,” said Dulce Perez, a cook at the restaurant, as an eye-watering haze hung overhead on Thursday about two miles (3.2 km) away from one of the multiple fires burning around Los Angeles. “We just try to stay indoors.” This week, as the wildfires raged and smoke billowed across Los Angeles, officials issued air quality alerts, schools canceled classes and scientists warned about the dangerous – even fatal -…

NEW YORK, Jan 10 (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will not go to jail or face any other punishment for his criminal conviction stemming from hush money paid to a porn star, a judge ruled on Friday but said Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration would not erase the jury verdict. Justice Juan Merchan’s sentencing of Trump, 78, to unconditional discharge places a judgment of guilt on his record and closes a case that had loomed over Trump’s bid to retake the White House. Trump will be the first president to take office with a felony criminal conviction. Merchan said he…

ISTANBUL/ANKARA, Jan 10 (Reuters) – Talks aimed at ending a 40-year-old militant conflict have fostered peace hopes in Turkey but the precarious situation of Kurdish forces in Syria and uncertainty about Ankara’s intentions have left many Kurds anxious about the path ahead. Abdullah Ocalan, jailed head of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, has been cited as indicating a willingness to call on the PKK to lay down arms in a peace process to end the insurgency he launched against NATO-member Turkey in 1984. The conflict has killed more than 40,000 people, stunted development in the mainly Kurdish southeast…