This year has been terrible for wildfires, and the ones currently blazing a path of destruction through Southern California are shaping up to the be the worst of the worst. Remember the wildfires that devastated Northern California wine country in October? The Thomas Fire, which is the largest of the fires currently burning, is three times larger than the largest of the wine country fires.
The blazes are massive, dramatic and dangerous. Here’s why they’re so historic, and how they’re affecting everything: Traffic, weather, thousands of lives and homes, and the future of one of America’s largest, most populous cities.
They could be the most destructive in California history
There are four different fires burning in the Los Angeles area. The biggest, the Thomas fire, has already burned 96,000 acres north of Los Angeles – an area more than twice the size of Washington, DC. In fact, it is on pace to become one of the most destructive fires in the state’s history. It’s also raging at a shocking pace. At one point, it spread over 31,000 acres in about nine hours. That’s an acre a second.
Together, the four fires – the Thomas and Rye fires, which are north of LA, and the Creek and Skirball fires, which are directly in the LA metro area, have burned more than 116,000 acres.
As the Los Angeles area battles massive wildfires that have scorched more than 140,000 acres and forced nearly 200,000 people to evacuate, a rapidly advancing blaze in nearby San Diego County is sparking new concerns.
Firefighters from across California, some 5,700 in total, traveled to Ventura and Los Angeles counties on Thursday to help halt the massive wildfires that have destroyed more than 500 structures.
In San Diego County, firefighters worked to stop a rapidly intensifying blaze that prompted officials to clarify burn estimates from about 500 to some 4,000 acres in less than three hours. Authorities continued to release evacuation warnings throughout the night as the fire spread with zero percent containment.
The blazes are fueled by strong winds, which have made it increasingly difficult to get them under control. The Santa Ana winds, which blow in hot and dry from the California desert, could potentially reach hurricane-force speeds of 75 mph on Thursday, creating an “extreme fire danger,” according to an alert sent by the countywide emergency system in Los Angeles.
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MARK RALSTON via Getty Images
A wall stands in the burned-out Vista del Mar Hospital after the Thomas wildfire swept through Ventura, California, on Wednesday.
Britain agreed Friday to concessions to the European Union in negotiating its split from the bloc, leaders said, as Prime Minister Theresa May overcame bitter divisions at home to advance to a crucial new phase of talks.
The bargain amounted to a capitulation by May on issues dear to the European Union: preserving peace and open borders in Northern Ireland, guaranteeing rights for the 3 million E.U. citizens living in Britain, and living up to British funding commitments in Europe for years to come.
On those issues and a host of others, Britain has been forced to fold to the European Union after saying earlier this year that it held the upper hand in the negotiations. Instead, British negotiators have found a largely united bloc that sees little need to give in to London’s demands. Friday’s agreement appears likely to unlock the next phase of the Brexit negotiation, focused on trade between the European Union and an unfettered Britain after it exits in March 2019.
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After months of deadlock, Britain and the E.U. reached an agreement on key issues, including the Irish border and rights for E.U. citizens in Britain.(Reuters)
Four siblings wrote hundreds of letters to each other during World War II. The story they tell of service, sacrifice and trauma was hidden away in an abandoned storage unit — until now.
The storage unit’s corrugated metal door slid upward, revealing 100 square feet of mostly empty space. Not very promising, thought Joe Alosi, a businessman who bid on units, sight unseen, when tenants stopped paying the rent. Several plastic bins sat in the middle of the floor, and dust billowed as Alosi peeled off the first lid.
Inside, tightly packed, were rows of envelopes. Alosi opened one, and then another, and then another. The Marine Corps veteran felt a slight chill.
The mostly handwritten letters, on tissue-thin paper, dated to World War II and were penned mostly by the members of a single family — the Eydes of Rockford, Ill. Three brothers were in the military: one in the Marine Corps, one in the Army and one in the Army Air Forces.
It’s been difficult to watch the Christian community embrace a person like Donald Trump. Evangelicals have had to perform mental gymnastics to pretend Donald Trump felt about religion anything close to what they claim to feel. This was supposed to be the “family values” party. Mike Pence, who won’t even have dinner with a woman other than his wife, suddenly doesn’t mind that Trump had babies with three different women and said on tape that he liked to grab women by the p***y.
Trump might be a lying, scheming, narcissistic con-artist but he doesn’t pretend to be religious. Sure, he faked it a couple of times by holding up a Bible with pages looking like they’d never been opened. He also tried quoting some scriptures but that went horribly wrong when he said “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians.” But he doesn’t claim to consult God before making decisions.
As for family values, Trump’s been married three times, dumping each wife for the woman he was having an affair with. His wives raise his kids for him. On the Howard Stern show, Trump said “I mean, I won’t do anything to take care of them. I’ll supply funds and she’ll take care of the kids. It’s not like I’m gonna be walking the kids down Central Park.” Other than his adult children who run his businesses, we never see Trump spending time with his kids. There are a couple of photo-ops with his 10-year old, Barron. But instead of golfing at his resorts, shouldn’t Trump spend time with his, um, you know, 10 year old? He also has another daughter who is around so infrequently most people don’t remember her name. Obviously, Trump will never be mistaken for the dad from Leave It To Beaver.
Giraffes are the tallest land animal in the world. With a world population that is under 100,000, many conservationists say they are endangered. Giraffes are mammals and are only naturally found in Africa. Giraffe babies, or calves, are some of the biggest newborns on record, but it’s not just their size that sets them apart from other animals.
Mama giraffes give birth to live babies after 14 months of gestation. When a baby giraffe is born, it drops up to 6 feet to the ground and lands on its head. The fall does not hurt the baby giraffe at all, but makes it take a deep, first breath. After an hour or so, the baby can walk on her own.
When baby giraffes are born, the animals average 6 feet tall and can weigh anywhere from 100 to 150 lbs. Baby giraffes are considered fully mature, or adults, around the time they turn 4 years old. Male giraffes will grow up to 18 feet tall and can weigh up to 3,000 lbs. and female giraffes can be up to 14 feet tall and weigh 1,500 lbs. when fully grown. Baby giraffes will gain most of that height and weight in the first three years of life.
Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said Thursday that he will not attend the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum this weekend because President Donald Trump’s “attendance and hurtful policies are an insult to the people portrayed” in the museum.
“After careful consideration and conversations with church leaders, elected officials, civil rights activists, and many citizens of our congressional districts, we have decided not to attend or participate in the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum,” Lewis, a hero of the civil rights movement, said in a statement.
Lewis said the president’s “disparaging comments about women, the disabled, immigrants, and National Football League players disrespect the efforts” of civil rights leaders.
“The struggles represented in this museum exemplify the truth of what really happened in Mississippi,” he added. “After President Trump departs, we encourage all Mississippians and Americans to visit this historic civil rights museum.”
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Paul Morigi via Getty Images
Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) speaking at an event in Washington, D.C., in May. He announced on Thursday that he will not attend the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum this weekend.
Facing a string of sexual misconduct allegations and mounting pressure from fellow Democrats, Sen. Al Franken announced Thursday he will leave office in the coming weeks. But Franken, a former comedian, didn’t go down without taking some scathing parting shots at President Donald Trump and Republicans who have been accused of similar actions.
“I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who has preyed on underage girls is running for the Senate with the full support of his party,” Franken, D-Minn., said in emotional speech on the Senate floor.
He was referring to Trump, who has also been accused of sexual misconduct, and Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama, who has faced allegations of sexual misconduct with teenage girls. Trump and Moore have both denied the claims.
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Sen. Al Franken holds hands with his wife, Franni Bryson, as he leaves the Capitol after announcing his resignation. Jacquelyn Martin / AP
University of Chicago professor Richard Thaler has won the 2017 Nobel Prize in economics for his work on behavioral economics, which tries to understand how humans make decisions, especially bad ones.
Thaler, an American, is one of the leading experts in the relatively new field that combines psychology and economics. He has made a career of studying people’s poor choices — everything from why people save so little for retirement to why National Football League teams that go early in the annual draft typically do a poor job of selecting new players. He’s even looked at how to make bathroom floors cleaner.
“We Americans eat too much, take on too much debt, save too little and put off anything mildly unpleasant as long as possible,” Thaler wrote in a New York Times op-ed in 2011.
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American economist Richard Thaler won the 2017 Nobel Economics Prize for his research on behavioral economics, the study of how humans make decisions.(Reuters)
It was late morning in an artsy cafe, the smell of coffee and baked goods sweetening the air, and Ashley Bishop sat at a table, recalling a time when she was taught that most of secular American society was worthy of contempt.
Growing up in private evangelical Christian schools, Bishop saw the world in extremes, good and evil, heaven and hell. She was taught that to dance was to sin, that gay people were child molesters and that mental illness was a function of satanic influence. Teachers at her schools talked about slavery as black immigration, and instructors called environmentalists “hippie witches.”
Bishop’s family moved around a lot when she was a child, but her family always enrolled her in evangelical schools.
So when Bishop left school in 2003 and entered the real world at 17, she felt like she was an alien landing on Planet Earth for the first time. Having been cut off from mainstream society, she felt unequipped to handle the job market and develop secular friendships. Lacking shared cultural and historical references, she spent most of her 20s holed up in her bedroom, suffering from crippling social anxiety.
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Amanda Lucier for HuffPost
Ashley Bishop didn’t find out until after she graduated from Christian schools that she was unprepared for a wider world of education.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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War correspondence
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