Kinsey Metts moved to California for its wilderness and great outdoors. Now she wants to leave for the same reasons.

This autumn’s rash of destructive wildfires — predicted to grow worse in coming years as climate change strengthens — is threatening to shatter the California Dream that has long lured people to the state, drawn by its sunny weather and opportunities for a better life.

With increasingly powerful fires ripping through Northern and Southern California again and again, the question of leaving is now on plenty of people’s minds.

Metts, on maternity leave with a 9-week-old son, was forced to evacuate her rural Geyserville home, in the wine country north of the San Francisco Bay area, when the October Kincade fire tore through the hills behind it.

“We’ve loved our life here,” said Metts, who works for a nonprofit helping at-risk children. “We love the outdoors and to backpack and kayak.”

“But I don’t know if I want to stay here anymore. It just feels like it’s getting worse and worse,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

California has long faced annual wildfires, but their geographic extent has increased fivefold since the early 1970s, according to research published this summer in Earth’s Future, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, an international group of scientists.

The study pointed to more fires and to fires increasingly fueled by vegetation made drier by climate change.

“Human-caused warming has already significantly enhanced wildfire activity in California … and will likely continue to do so in the coming decades,” the study said.

Many residents say those differences are now hitting perilously close to home.

Rocio Mercado moved to California from Mexico 23 years ago and was one of the nearly 200,000 people ordered to evacuate as the Kincade fire burned.

“I love California, but honestly I don’t know if I want to live here for the rest of my life,” she said outside the Healdsburg grocery store, where she is a supervisor. “I don’t feel safe anymore.”

Stay or go?

More people have been moving out of California than moving in from other states, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Last year, about 691,000 people left California but only about 500,000 people arrived, part of a trend that reaches back several years, data showed.

Those leaving California are driven by more than just wildfires, but the growing fire threat has become too significant to ignore, some feel.

“For the very first time in our lives, we’re probably going to leave California,” said Lynne Imel, whose house burned in the Camp Fire that devastated the town of Paradise in 2018.

The blaze killed 85 people and stands as the state’s most lethal wildfire on record.

“I don’t want to talk about the fire for the rest of my life. We want a fresh start,” Imel said as she attended a memorial ceremony marking the one-year anniversary of the disaster.

Imel and her husband, who live in Sacramento, had planned to retire to their Paradise home, but may now move across the border into the state of Nevada, she said.

But for many others, leaving doesn’t feel like an option.

“The question is, where do you relocate?” asked Michael Pigoni, the fire chief in El Cerrito, California. He pointed to hurricanes in the U.S. Southeast, tornadoes and flooding in the Midwest and cold weather in the North.

Wherever weather-related threats hit, “you learn to adjust,” he said.

Diane Wilson, whose Soda Rock Winery in Healdsburg burned in the Kincade fire, similarly said she and her husband would rebuild, noting she was “not a big worrier.”

“I don’t see us leaving because of the fires. We have to adapt,” she said. “We were a little traumatized,” she admitted. But “now we’re looking forward.”

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Ahmed Sabrie woke up to find his house half-submerged in fast-rising flood waters.

Frightened and confused, he herded sleepy family members onto the roof of their home in central Somalia as scores of thousands of people in the town, Beledweyne, scrambled for their lives. Clinging to an electric power pylon by the edge of the roof, the family watched as their possessions were washed away.

“I could hear people, perhaps my neighbors, screaming for help but I could only fight for the survival of my family,” the 38-year-old Sabrie, the father of four, recalled. As one of his children wailed, the family waited for more than 10 hours before a passing rescue boat spotted them.

Death toll unknown

Authorities have not yet said how many people died in the flooding last month, Somalia’s worst in recent history and the latest reminder that the Horn of Africa nation must prepare for the extremes expected to come with a changing climate.

At least 10 people went missing when their boat capsized after the Shabelle river burst its banks. Local officials have said at least 22 people in all are presumed dead and the toll could rise.

“This is a catastrophic situation,” Mayor Safiyo Sheikh Ali said. President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, who visited the town and waded through submerged areas, called the devastation “beyond our capacity” and pleaded for more help from aid groups.

With no proper emergency response plan for natural disasters, local rescuers used rickety wooden dhows to reach trapped people while helicopters provided by the United Nations plucked people from rooftops. African Union and Somali forces have joined the rescue operations and the Somali government airlifted food.

“Many people are still trapped in their submerged houses and we have no capacity and enough equipment to cover all areas,” said Abdirashakur Ahmed, a local official helping to coordinate rescue operations. Hundreds are thought to still be stuck.

More rain, flooding

With more heavy rains and flash flooding expected, officials warned thousands of displaced people against returning too quickly to their homes.

More than 250,000 people across Somalia were displaced by the recent severe flooding, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Beledweyne town was the worst affected. Several thousand people were sheltering under trees or in tents.

“Floods have destroyed more than three-quarters of Beledweyne and submerged many surrounding villages,” said Victor Moses, the NRC’s country director.

Aid groups said farms, infrastructure and roads in some areas were destroyed. The destruction of farmland near rivers is expected to contribute to a hunger crisis.

To better prepare for “major climate-induced shocks” such as flooding and drought that Somalia already faces every two to five years, the country and the U.N. Development Program this week launched a $10 million project to expand weather monitoring resources and train a largely rural population in water conservation and flood management.

The possibility of further damage from heavy rains in the coming days remains a concern, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Parts of the Lower Juba, Gedo and Bay regions, where IOM has supported displaced populations for years, have been affected. Many displaced people were stranded without food, latrines or shelter.

“In Baidoa, people have moved to high ground where they are in immediate need of support,” said Nasir Arush, the minister for humanitarian and disaster management for South West State.

Survivors like Sabrie now must struggle to rebuild their lives.

“We’re alive, which I am thankful to Allah for, but this flood disaster wreaked havoc on both our livelihoods and households so I see a tough road ahead of us,” he said from a makeshift shelter built on higher ground outside town.

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Security forces killed two protesters and wounded 35 others in Baghdad Thursday, police and medical sources said, as thousands of Iraqis continued a wave of anti-government protests.

One protester died immediately after a tear gas canister hit his head and another died in a hospital from wounds from a stun bomb fired by security forces, the sources said.

Security forces used live fire, rubber bullets and shot tear gas canisters in a bid to disperse hundreds of protesters gathered near Tahrir Square, a Reuters cameraman said.

Most of those hurt had choked on tear gas or had been hit by rubber bullets and were taken to hospital, medical sources said.

Protesters said the security forces had stepped up their firing of tear gas canisters and rubber bullets early Thursday morning.

More than 300 people have been killed since Oct. 1, as security forces have fired tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at crowds of protesters.

Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s government has taken some measures to try to quell the unrest, including handouts to the poor and creating more job opportunities for college graduates.

But it has failed to keep up with the growing demands of demonstrators who are now calling for an overhaul of Iraq’s sectarian political system and the departure of its entire ruling elite.

The unrest is among the biggest and most complex challenges to the current ruling elite since it took power after the U.S. invasion and the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.

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Drug-resistant “superbug” infections have been called a developing nightmare that make conquered germs once again untreatable.

So there’s some surprising news in a federal report released Wednesday: U.S. superbug deaths appear to be going down.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated about 36,000 Americans died from drug-resistant infections in 2017. That’s down 18% from 2013.

Officials credit an intense effort in hospitals to control the spread of particularly dangerous infections.

But while deaths are going down, the report says infections overall increased nationally. And while superbugs mainly have been considered a hospital problem, they are appearing much more often elsewhere.
 

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North Korea intensified its demand Wednesday that the United States take steps by the end of this year to normalize relations, saying it is out of patience with Washington. 

“We, without being given anything, gave things the U.S. president can brag about, but the U.S. side has not yet taken any corresponding step,” said the statement from North Korea’s State Affairs Commission and circulated by its U.N. mission. “Now, betrayal is only what we feel from the U.S. side.”

Diplomatic efforts to get North Korea to denuclearize have been largely stalled since a second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in February, which was cut short with no agreement.

Pyongyang is especially upset that the U.S. and South Korean militaries plan to hold joint aerial exercises next month. The Pentagon said the routine drills, which involve aircraft and fighter jets, would go ahead but be scaled back this year. 

North Korea warned that such acts have put relations between the two countries “on the verge of a breakdown.” 

“Our official stand is that we can no longer remain an onlooker to such a reckless act of the U.S.,” the statement said. 

Since the two leaders met in Singapore at their first summit in June 2018, the U.S. has either suspended or scaled down the joint military exercises it holds with South Korea in order to enhance the atmosphere for denuclearization talks to continue.

North Korea says the U.S. move is a violation of the joint statement adopted at that summit. 

“It is our intention and will to answer dialogue with dialogue and recourse to force in kind,” the statement said. “To look back on the past hours which we let them pass with patience, we no longer feel the need to exercise any more patience.”

North Korea wants international economic and trade sanctions imposed on it lifted in exchange for progress on the denuclearization file.
 

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Rapper Kodak Black has been sentenced to more than three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to weapons charges stemming from his arrest just before a scheduled concert performance in May.

The 22-year-old Black admitted in August that he falsified information on federal forms to buy four firearms from a Miami-area gun shop on two separate occasions.

Black also faces drug, weapons and sexual assault charges in other states. Black is a Florida native who was born to Haitian American parents as Dieuson Octave and who now goes by the legal name of Bill Kapri.

He was arrested during a Miami-area hip-hop festival in May that was marred by several violent incidents, The rapper is known for songs such as “ZeZe” and “Roll in Peace.”

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Nine privacy, social justice and consumer groups are calling for the U.S. government to block Google’s $2.1 billion acquisition of fitness-gadget maker Fitbit, citing antitrust and privacy concerns.

They say in a Wednesday letter to the Federal Trade Commission that the deal would consolidate Google’s dominance over internet services like search, advertising and smartphone operating systems.

They also worry it’ll add to Google’s store of consumer data. Health information is of particular concern. Google has hired health care executives, hinting at a health-data business to come.

Politicians and regulators have been scrutinizing Google and other Silicon Valley companies for how they use customer data and leverage their size to thwart competitors.

Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
 

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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will quit his fractious right-wing Social Liberal Party (PSL) and start a new one by March 2020, PSL lawmakers Daniel Silveira and Bia Kicis said on Tuesday after meeting with the president.

The PSL, which Bolsonaro joined as a vehicle to win the elections in October, is split down the middle over control of the party, though it is not clear how many of its 53 representatives and three senators will follow the president.

A meeting will be held on Nov. 21 to begin setting up the new party, which will be called Movimento pelo Brasil, or Movement for Brazil, Kicis told Reuters by telephone.

The split came to a head last month with an exchange of insults between the president and PSL founder Luciano Bivar, who has not wanted to hand over the reins to Bolsonaro and his sons.

At stake is 390 million reais ($94 million) in public campaign funds for municipal elections, an unprecedented war chest for the PSL, which rode Bolsonaro’s coattails to grow from a single lawmaker in Congress to the second-largest bench.

While senators, governors and mayors can freely switch parties, lower house lawmakers are subject to rules that bar them from continued access to the campaign funding if they swap parties.

“Several representatives plan to follow the president. We are prepared to lose the campaign funds because we want to found a new party to follow him,” Kicis said.

Bolsonaro needs to gather 500,000 signatures to start a new party, and his supporters are confident he can achieve that through social media, a tool that greatly aided his successful run for president last year.

One of the PSL’s three senators, Senator Soraya Thronicke from the farm state of Mato Grosso, told Reuters she has not made up her mind yet.

If she stayed in the PSL, only one senator would follow Bolsonaro, his son Flavio Bolsonaro.

The breakup of the PSL is not expected to affect Brazil’s economic reform agenda, which has ample backing in Congress.

But starting a new party could politically weaken Bolsonaro, who switched allegiances among eight parties during his 28 years in Congress before joining the PSL last year.

($1 = 4.1637 reais)

…

Michael Bloomberg filed paperwork Tuesday to appear on the ballot in Arkansas’ March 3 presidential primary, the latest indication that the billionaire former New York City mayor may seek the Democratic nomination .

Bloomberg sent staffers to Alabama last week to file for the primary there, but filed his paperwork in person in Arkansas two hours before the state’s deadline.

“We’re getting closer” to making a decision, Bloomberg told reporters after filing paperwork at Arkansas’ Capitol.

He’s moving toward a presidential bid as he warns that the current field of Democratic presidential candidates isn’t equipped to defeat President Donald Trump next year. If he runs, Bloomberg plans to skip campaigning in the traditional early voting states and focus more on Super Tuesday states, including Arkansas and Alabama.

Bloomberg has rebuffed criticism from his potential rivals that his candidacy would amount to buying the election, saying self-financing his campaign means he wouldn’t be beholden to anyone.

“I’m going to finance the campaign, if there is one, with my own money so I don’t owe anybody anything,” he said. “Other people ask for donations in return for which they’ve got to give favors. But it costs a lot of money, whether you’re doing it with your own money or somebody else’s money, to get a message out.”

Bloomberg also promised to support whoever wins the Democratic nomination.

“That is a very easy thing to say yes, given who the Republican candidate is going to be,” Bloomberg said.

Bloomberg filed to run in a state that had once been a Democratic stronghold in the South, but turned solidly red over the past decade. Republicans hold all of Arkansas’ seats in Washington, its statewide offices and both chambers of the Legislature. Lawmakers this year moved the state’s primary up from May to attract more attention from presidential hopefuls.

Bloomberg’s appearance in Little Rock raised hopes from state Democrats that Arkansas will play a greater role in the nominating contest, especially with a crowded field.

“I think they realize when we start counting delegates, if this thing is jumbled up going into Super Tuesday, every state’s in play,” state Democratic Party Chairman Michael John Gray said.

…

Turkish authorities have detained hundreds of people for posting comments of social media that questioned the country’s military offensive in Syria, according to Amnesty International. The human rights group says dozens of innocent people, including many journalists, are facing absurd criminal charges over legitimate criticism of the operation, which began last month following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the area. As Henry Ridgwell reports, Amnesty International says the crackdown is part of a wider attack on freedom of expression in Turkey.
 

…

The chief of Bosnia’s border police warned Tuesday that his guards cannot contain the migratory pressure along the country’s eastern border with Serbia and that the situation could easily escalate and put in danger the overall stability of the politically fragile nation.

Zoran Galic told The Associated Press in an interview that securing the nation’s entire 1,600-kilometer (995-mile) border along a popular migration route into Europe was like the “work of Sisyphus.” That was a reference to the Greek mythical hero who was condemned for eternity to push a rock up a mountain only to watch it roll all the way down every time he reaches the top.

“We are in a constant struggle to deter migrants, but they never quit,” he said.

Describing the scale of the problem, he said:  “We encounter women who are eight months pregnant, juvenile children, and we are doing our best to treat them morally, with respect for all international (human rights) conventions.”

Since the start of the year, more than 13,000 migrants have arrived in Bosnia, according to Bosnian government statistics. The impoverished country is unable to provide them with appropriate accommodation and many are left without access to hot meals, showers or proper medical care, to the growing consternation of local communities.

Galic said his border police forces is short 1,000 officers and the modern technology required to secure the borders. He said the country only has one officer per every 30 kilometers (19 miles) of border.

Bosnia is located along the so-called Balkan route that migrants from the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa take in hopes of reaching western Europe. The route became more popular nearly three years ago after other countries in the region sealed off their borders.

Most migrants arrive in Bosnia from Serbia after moving relatively unimpeded across the poorly guarded border between the two countries. From there they walk northwest to Bosnia’s border with the European Union-member Croatia.  

The Bosnian border with both Serbia and Croatia is mostly porous, with rivers, mountains and vast tracts of forest.

But Croatia has been taking increasingly efficient steps to prevent cross-border movement, so a growing number of desperate migrants remain stuck in Bosnia, one of the poorest and most volatile countries in Europe.

Migrants caught by Bosnian border police officers, after making the illegal crossing from Serbia, described to the AP being smuggled across the Drina River by human traffickers.

“I am paying crossing river 3,000 euro. Who take the money? It is smuggler, men smuggler,” said a migrant who identified himself only as Waqar, and said he was a 17-year-old Pakistani.

Over the past few months, the high influx of migrants has unleashed acrimony among Bosnia’s squabbling nationalist leaders who represent the often-competing interests of the country’s Bosniak, Croat and Serb ethnic communities.

Most notably, Bosnian Serb hard-line leader Milorad Dodik, who is a member of Bosnia’s multi-ethnic joint presidency, has blocked efforts to deploy the army to stem the influx of migrants from Serbia.

Dodik is also blocking the deployment of the EU’s border protection agency teams along Bosnia’s border with Croatia, using the crisis to promote his Serbian-first attitude, including by refusing to accommodate any migrants in the country’s highly autonomous Serb-run half.

Many Bosnians have sympathy for the asylum seekers, with memories of when many of them sought refuge elsewhere.

During the war in Bosnia of 1992-95 — the deadliest of the ethnic wars sparked by the breakup of Yugoslavia — more than 100,000 people died, and more than half the population was forced to flee.

…

Clashes broke out in the streets of the Bolivian capital Tuesday evening after an opposition leader in the Senate declared herself the country’s interim president following the resignation of Evo Morales.

Jeanine Anez assumed temporary control of the Senate late in the day, putting her next in line for the presidency. Lawmakers of Morales’ Movement for Socialism party were not present when she made the announcement.

Angry Morales’ supporters tried to reach the Congress building screaming, “She must quit!” Police and soldiers fired tear gas trying to disperse the crowd.

Morales, who sought to transform Bolivia as its first indigenous president, flew to exile in Mexico on Tuesday as thousands of his supporters clamored for his return in the streets of the Bolivian capital.  

Military fighter jets flew repeatedly over La Paz in a show of force that infuriated Morales loyalists who were blocked by security forces from marching to the main square.

“We’re not afraid!” shouted demonstrators, who believe the ouster of Morales following massive protests was a coup d’etat as well as an act of discrimination against Bolivia’s indigenous communities.

“Evo was like a father to me. We had a voice, we had rights,” said 35-year-old Maria Apasa. Like Morales, she is a member of the Aymara indigenous group.  

Despite their anger, the demonstrators were peaceful. The march followed weeks of clashes and protests against Morales, who was accused by his many detractors of becoming increasingly authoritarian and rigging an election. His resignation Sunday led to a power vacuum in the Andean nation.

Morales was met at Mexico City’s airport by Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard after a flight from Bolivia on a Mexican government plane and repeated his allegations he had been forced to resign by a coup.

“The president of Mexico saved my life,” Morales said, thanking President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for granting him asylum. He vowed to “continue the struggle.”

Ebrard said Mexican diplomats had to scramble to arrange a flight path for the plane because some nations initially closed airspace to it. The plane stopped in Paraguay to refuel.

Urged to resign by the military, Morales had stepped down following widespread outrage fed by allegations of electoral fraud in the Oct. 20 presidential election that he claimed to have won.

Resignations by all other constitutionally designated successors left unclear who would take his place and how.

Anez had positioned herself to become interim president by taking temporary control of the Senate and moving into a spot to succeed to the presidency.

Morales’ resignation still needed to be approved by both houses of Congress. And lawmakers failed to get the quorum for an assembly session Tuesday. Anez also needed to be approved as president of the Senate, but she said that lawmakers loyal to Morales declined to be part of the session and that Bolivia could not be left in a power vacuum.

Morales’ departure was a dramatic fall for the one-time llama shepherd from the Bolivian highlands and former coca growers’ union leader who as president helped lift millions out poverty, increased social rights and presided over nearly 14 years of stability and high economic growth in South America’s poorest country.

In the end, though, his downfall was prompted by his insistence on holding onto power.

He ran for a fourth term after refusing to accept the results of a referendum that upheld term limits for the president — restrictions thrown out by a top court that critics contend was stacked in his favor.

Morales had also promised to remain austere when he became president in 2006. But shortly after, he bought a new airplane and built a 26-story presidential palace with a heliport.

Morales’ stepped aside shortly after accepting calls for a new election by an Organization of American States team. The team reported irregularities in the election whose official results showed Morales getting just enough votes to avoid a runoff that analysts said he could lose against a united opposition.

After Morales resigned, angry supporters set barricades ablaze to close some roads leading to the country’s main airport Monday, while his foes blocked most of the streets leading to the capital’s main square in front of Congress and the presidential palace.

Street tensions ebbed after Gen. Williams Kaliman, chief of the armed forces, announced a joint police-military operation in a television address. He said the hope was to “avoid bloodshed and mourning of the Bolivian family,” and he urged Bolivians to help restore peace.

Ronald Arias said he had left his home in El Alto and walked for three hours to his job in downtown La Paz because the cable car connecting the cities was suspended for security reasons and barricades blocked access to public transportation.

Arias, a native Aymara, said that thanks to Morales, his parents in the countryside gained access for the first time to running water and gas for cooking.

“I was so saddened by his resignation,” he said. “A lot of people in El Alto shed tears for the president.”

…