Thursday Briefing: Los Angeles battles deadly wildfires

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January 9, 2025

	By Emmett Lindner and Justin Porter

Good morning. We’re covering wildfires in Southern California and President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy threats.

Plus, a look at longevity.

Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Deadly wildfires ravage Southern California as water runs low

Multiple out-of-control blazes in the Los Angeles area yesterday killed at least two people and seriously injured many others. The fires destroyed homes and businesses and blanketed highways in smoke. Officials warned of a dwindling water supply and said the worst was yet to come. Follow our live coverage here.

Tens of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes, and more areas were placed under evacuation orders by the hour. At least 18 school districts reported closures, and about 400,000 energy customers were without power. Air quality worsened as smoke poured into the sky. Here’s a map of the evacuations.

Hurricane-level winds in the area reached as high as 160 kilometers per hour, fueling the fires and hampering efforts to contain the devastation. Multiple firefighting agencies responded with strike teams, but the wind forced them to ground aircraft, making the fires particularly difficult to fight.

Context: The winter and late fall tend to produce catastrophic fires in California, and scientists have found that fires in the region have been moving faster. An analysis of 60,000 wildfires in the contiguous U.S. between 2001 and 2020 found that growth rates had increased over the decades in California and other parts of the West. As areas there become hotter and dryer, the ground becomes more flammable.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

World leaders reacted to Trump’s foreign policy threats

On Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump suggested that the U.S. might reclaim the Panama Canal by military intervention. Then he hinted that the same thing could be done to annex Greenland. He also threatened to use “economic force” to make Canada part of the U.S. and suggested that the Gulf of Mexico should be renamed the “Gulf of America.” The responses from world leaders were mixed.

“The sovereignty of our canal is nonnegotiable and is part of our history of struggle and an irreversible conquest,” Panama’s foreign minister, Javier Martínez-Acha, said. Residents of Greenland appeared to be bewildered and anxious. “This is all getting scary,” a native Greenlander said.

Canada was blunt. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded in a social media post that “there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.” Mexico had some fun with it. During a news conference yesterday, President Claudia Sheinbaum rejected several of Trump’s assertions and joked that the U.S. should be renamed “Mexican America.”

Related: Trump vowed that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if Israeli hostages were not freed in the next two weeks. Gazans were left to wonder: If this is not hell, then what is?

British troops returning from Afghanistan during a ceremony in Scotland in 2013. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

U.K. released evidence from a war crimes inquiry in Afghanistan

British special forces soldiers used extreme methods against militants in Afghanistan, according to testimony released yesterday as part of a British Ministry of Defense inquiry into allegations of war crimes. The evidence paints a disturbing portrait of an elite fighting force acting with impunity and putting body counts above all other benchmarks.

The testimony came from email exchanges, letters and witness statements by senior officers and rank-and-file soldiers. One member of a British unit said that the troops acted as if they had “a golden pass allowing them to get away with murder.”

Jigme Dorje/Xinhua, via Associated Press

Sports

Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press

Graham Dickie/The New York Times

Armia Khalil, an artist who worked as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, met a visitor in 2023 who was clearly looking for something specific. Their five-minute talk in the museum’s Egypt wing changed Khalil’s life.

The visitor turned out to be a museum curator planning an exhibition. After Khalil showed him his art, it was included in the show.

Lives lived: Perry, the miniature donkey who was the model for Donkey in the “Shrek” franchise, has died at 30.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.

Mike Ellis

What determines longevity?

There are countless people who live to be 100 years old, and their daily habits don’t always adhere to common medical advice — they drink, they smoke, they don’t exercise. Helen Reichert, a cigarette smoker who lived for more than a century, outlived all the doctors who told her to quit.

But decades of research have shown cases like Reichert’s to be more of an anomaly than a motivation to let loose. So, how much of a person’s longevity comes down to lifestyle, and how much is because of luck — or lucky genetics?

Both can be factors in how long you live. Read more.

Kerri Brewer for The New York Times

Cook: Want a one-pot meal? Check out this lemony Greek chicken, spinach and potato stew.

Train: This 15-minute kettlebell workout will build up your strength and your heart.

Watch: Colin Firth stars in a new Peacock series about Britain’s worst terrorist attack.

Play: Spelling Bee, the Mini Crossword, Wordle and Sudoku. Find all our games here.

That’s it for today. See you tomorrow. — Emmett & Justin

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