AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EST

Wildfires burn out of control across Los Angeles area and kill 2 as thousands flee homes

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Massive wildfires roaring through the Los Angeles area left neighborhoods in ruins Wednesday, killing at least two people and threatening landmarks made famous by Hollywood as desperate residents escaped through flames that spread out of control with help from hurricane-force winds.

Three major blazes that erupted just a day earlier grew substantially while winds scattered embers far and wide. The fires blanketed the city with a thick cloud of smoke and ash and destroyed homes across the metropolitan area, from the Pacific Coast inland to Pasadena, home of the famed Rose Parade.

One of the fires was the most destructive in the modern history of the city of LA and reduced grocery stores and banks to rubble, leveling entire blocks.

With thousands of firefighters already attacking the flames, the Los Angeles Fire Department put out a plea for off-duty and out-of-state firefighters to help. The winds temporarily stopped aircraft from dumping water from above until they were able to resume flights.

More than 1,000 structures were destroyed, and many people were hurt in the fires, including first responders, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said.

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Celebrities among thousands evacuated and waiting to learn their homes’ fates in Los Angeles fires

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Wildfires that ripped through the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles forced many Hollywood stars, including Mark Hamill, Mandy Moore and James Woods, to evacuate their homes.

California firefighters are battling wind-whipped fires tearing across the area, destroying homes, clogging roadways as tens of thousands fled and straining resources as the fires burned uncontained early Wednesday.

The Pacific Palisades neighborhood is a hillside area along the coast dotted with celebrity residences and memorialized by the Beach Boys in their 1960s hit “Surfin’ USA.” In the frantic haste to get to safety, roadways became impassable when scores of people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, some toting suitcases.

“Evacuated Malibu so last minute,” wrote Hamill in an Instagram post Tuesday night. “Small fires on both sides of the road as we approached (the Pacific Coast Highway).”

Less than 72 hours before, Hollywood’s highest-wattage stars had convened to walk the Golden Globes’ red carpet, the first major event of the exuberant and, for many, triumphant awards season. The revelry of awards season had quickly been snuffed out, too: Premieres of contenders like “Better Man” and “The Last Showgirl” were canceled, the Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations were announced via press release instead of at a live event and weekend events like the AFI Awards were preemptively scrubbed.

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Justice Department says it plans to release only part of special counsel’s Trump report for now

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Wednesday that it intends to release special counsel Jack Smith’s findings on Donald Trump’s efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election but will keep under wraps for now the rest of the report focused on the president-elect’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The revelation was made in a filing to a federal appeals court that was considering a defense request to block the release of the two-volume report while charges remain pending against two Trump co-defendants in the Florida case accusing the Republican former president and current president-elect of illegally holding classified documents. Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed judge presiding over the classified documents case, granted the request Tuesday, issuing a temporary block on the report.

The Justice Department said it would proceed with plans to release the first of two volumes centered on the election interference case but would make the classified documents section of the report available only to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees for their private review as long as the case against Trump’s co-defendants — Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira — is ongoing.

“This limited disclosure will further the public interest in keeping congressional leadership apprised of a significant matter within the Department while safeguarding defendants’ interests,” the filing said.

The decision lessens the likelihood that the report on the classified documents investigation, which of all inquiries against Trump had once seemed to carry the greatest legal threat, would ever be released given that the Trump Justice Department almost certainly will not make the document public even after the case against Nauta and De Oliveira is resolved.

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Trump asks the Supreme Court to block sentencing in his hush money case in New York

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to call off Friday’s sentencing in his hush money case in New York.

Trump’s lawyers turned to the nation’s highest court on Wednesday after New York courts refused to postpone the sentencing by Judge Juan M. Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial and conviction last May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump has denied wrongdoing.

Prosecutors were expected to file a response by Thursday morning.

Trump’s team sought an immediate stay of the scheduled sentencing, saying it would wrongly restrict him as he prepares to take office. While Merchan has indicated he will not impose jail time, fines or probation, Trump’s lawyers argued a felony conviction would still have intolerable side effects.

The sentencing should be delayed as he appeals the conviction to “prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government,” they argued.

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Body of an Israeli hostage is found in Gaza, possibly alongside his son’s remains, army says

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli soldiers recovered the body of a 53-year-old hostage in an underground tunnel in southern Gaza, the military said Wednesday, and the army was determining if another set of remains belongs to the man’s son.

The discovery of Yosef AlZayadni’s body comes as Israel and Hamas are considering a ceasefire deal that would free the remaining hostages and halt the fighting in Gaza. Israel says about a third of the remaining 100 hostages have died, but believes as many as half could be dead.

Yosef and his son Hamzah AlZayadni were thought to still be alive before Wednesday’s announcement, and news about their fate could ramp up pressure on Israel to move forward with a deal.

The military said it found evidence in the tunnel that raised “serious concerns” for the life of Hamzah AlZayadni, 23, suggesting he may have died in captivity. Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesperson, said the circumstances behind Yosef AlZayadni’s death were being investigated.

AlZayadni and three of his children were among 250 hostages taken captive after Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people.

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A Russian missile attack in southern Ukraine has killed at least 13 civilians, officials say

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A daytime Russian missile attack on the southern Ukraine city of Zaporizhzhia killed at least 13 civilians and injured about 30 others Wednesday, officials said.

Footage posted on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Telegram channel showed civilians lying in a city street littered with debris. They were being treated by emergency services and taken away on gurneys.

Russian has frequently launched aerial attacks on civilian areas during the almost three-year war. Thousands of civilians have been killed in Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II.

Zelenskyy and regional Gov. Ivan Fedorov said Wednesday’s attack killed at least 13 civilians. Minutes before the attack, Fedorov had warned of a threat of high-speed missiles and devastating glide bombs being fired at the Zaporizhzhia region.

Russian troops started launching the glide bombs at Zaporizhzhia in the middle of the afternoon, and at least two bombs struck residential buildings in the city, Fedorov said.

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Biden casts doubt on his fitness to serve another four years days before term ends

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden, in a new interview days before he leaves office, cast doubt on his fitness to serve another four years even as he maintained that he could have won election to a second term.

The outgoing Democratic president also told USA Today in the interview published Wednesday that he tried during his Oval Office meeting with President-elect Donald Trump to discourage the Republican from going after his political opponents, as he has said he would. And Biden said he had not decided whether to issue sweeping pardons to preemptively protect those individuals from any possible retribution by Trump or the incoming administration.

“I don’t know,” Biden responded when USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page asked if he would’ve had the vigor to serve another four years in office. Biden and Page sat down at the White House on Sunday for the president’s rare interview with a print publication.

Biden, 82, talks about how he didn’t intend to run for president in 2020, but says that when Trump sought reelection last year, “I really thought I had the best chance of beating him. But I also wasn’t looking to be president when I was 85 years old, 86 years old.”

“But I don’t know. Who the hell knows?” he added. “So far, so good. But who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?”

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Trump meets with Republicans on Capitol Hill as GOP struggles to agree on legislative strategy

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump arrived on Capitol Hill late Wednesday to meet privately with Republican senators as House and Senate GOP leaders are straining to come up with a strategy for tackling his legislative priorities as the party takes power in Washington.

Trump said it “feels great” to be back inside the U.S. Capitol for the first time since he left office four years ago, after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by his supporters. With his wife, Melania, he is also paying tribute to the late President Jimmy Carter lying in state in the Rotunda with a stream of visitors ahead of funeral services Thursday.

With Trump taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, Republicans have no time to waste.

“We’re looking at the one bill versus two bills, and whatever it is, it doesn’t matter,” Trump said about the conflicting strategies, as he made his way through the halls. “We’re going to get the result.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who greeted Trump at the Capitol, has said he sees himself operating as the GOP quarterback with Trump as their coach calling plays. But Republicans are quickly finding themselves in a dilemma: What happens when the coach changes his mind?

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Jimmy Carter’s life intersected with slavery’s legacy. His record on Civil Rights is complicated

ATLANTA (AP) — Young Jimmy Carter and his friends were walking across a pasture after a day’s farm labor during the Great Depression. As they came to a gate, his companions stood aside and let Carter enter first.

This was no act of kindness or intuitive deference to a future U.S. president. The teens stopped because they were Black, and James Earl Carter Jr. was white, a 14-year-old whose father owned the Georgia land they all worked.

After years of playing and working as equals, his friends’ silent statement opened Carter’s eyes.

“We only saw it vaguely then, but we were transformed at the place,” Carter wrote in a poetry collection published years after his presidency. “A silent line was drawn between friend and friend, race and race.”

Carter, who died Dec. 29 at the age of 100, spent his life intertwined with America’s and the world’s enduring legacy of slavery. His approach revealed a dualism in Carter that, at least earlier in life, pitted his political ambitions against the idealism of his religious and social values.

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Photos of fire, smoke and flight as wildfires race across Southern California

Strong winds that sent wildfires ripping through the mountains and foothills around Los Angeles on Wednesday fed a spectacle of smoke, flames and flight.

The blaze left an apocolympic wake of destruction. A burned out car sat on a street, with so much smoke in the surrounding sky that the sun barely shown through. An outside swimming pool was surrounded by palm trees, singed and blacked by fire, yet still standing. A statue of a human, without a head, lay on a street surrounded by the debris of burned houses. And the world famous Hollywood sign, a reference point for Angelinos that is a symbol of the movie industry’s glitz, was hard to spot amid so much grey smoke.

Beginning Tuesday night, vivid orange flames lit the sky in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, where firefighters dragged hoses to meet blazes flaring up in brush dried out by persistent drought. Others fought to protect structures from the fires.

The fast-moving fires forced thousand of residents to evacuate. Authorities moved to get the most vulnerable out first, such as people in a senior center. One woman was brought out in a wheelchair, wrapped in a blanket. Another woman, also in a wheelchair, wore a mask, her eyes conveying fear.

Firefighters raced to try to beat the flames back from homes. One firefighter lugged a hose in front of a house engulfed in flames while another, standing on a roof of a smoldering home, sprayed water downward. In the sky, a helicoper dropped water in an area where hills intersperced with homes and flames. Meanwhile, a woman stood outside of her garage, hand on her head, as a firetruck sprayed water on a neighboring house.

The Associated Press