AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EST

New LA-area fire prompts more evacuations while over 10,000 structures lost to the 2 biggest blazes

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The two biggest wildfires ravaging the Los Angeles area have burned at least 10,000 homes, buildings and other structures, officials said Thursday as they urged more people to heed evacuation orders after a new blaze ignited and quickly grew.

The fast-moving Kenneth Fire started in the late afternoon in the San Fernando Valley just 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from a school serving as a shelter for fire evacuees and then moved into neighboring Ventura County by the evening.

Only hours earlier officials expressed encouragement after firefighters aided by calmer winds and help from crews from outside the state saw the first signs of successfully beating back the region’s devastating wildfires that have killed seven people so far.

“We are expecting this fire to rapidly spread due to high winds,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said, echoing the forecast that called for winds to strengthen Thursday evening through Friday morning.

The orders came as Los Angeles County officials announced the Eaton Fire near Pasadena that started Tuesday night has burned more than 5,000 structures, a term that includes homes, apartment buildings, businesses, outbuildings and vehicles. To the west in Pacific Palisades, the largest of the fires burning in the LA area has destroyed over 5,300 structures.

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What to know about thousands of evacuations and homes burned in Los Angeles-area fires

LOS ANGELES (AP) — At least seven people were killed and thousands of structures were burned as fierce wildfires raged in the Los Angeles area, officials said. Fast-moving flames blazed through homes and businesses as residents fled smoke-filled canyons and picturesque neighborhoods that are home to many celebrities.

Many of the towering fires that began Tuesday were fueled by powerful Santa Ana winds, which gusted to more than 70 mph (112 kph) in some spots. The winds dropped Thursday, but the National Weather Service warned that even the reduced gusts could still spread fire rapidly and the wind is expected to strengthen again Thursday evening. Another round of strong winds may form Tuesday.

The exact death toll remained unclear, but it was expected to rise as crews begin to search the rubble.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said California has deployed more than 1,400 firefighting personnel to battle the blazes. Oregon, Washington, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona dispatched teams to assist.

AccuWeather, a private company that provides data on weather and its impact, increased its estimate of the damage and economic loss to $135 billion to $150 billion. Government officials have not yet released any damage estimates.

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Far from wildfire flames, residents of sunny Los Angeles go about their lives in disquiet and fear

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Pedestrians shuffled by the famed Chateau Marmont hotel, customers queued up at Starbucks on Sunset Boulevard and car horns bleated at gridlocked intersections. But overhead, shadowing the usual bustling Los Angeles scene, a blackish dome of wildfire smoke turned daybreak into an eerie twilight.

Even beyond the reach of the flames from five wildfires, Los Angeles residents accustomed to radiant sunshine and balmy weather are living with disquiet and even fear. Across the city are reminders of nearby danger: Thumping helicopters overhead. Wildfire ash tumbling like snowflakes. A lingering whiff of smoke just about everywhere. The familiar crystalline sky turned ashen gray.

“It is otherworldly,” said Lydia Thelwell, a bartender visiting a hair salon where wildfire smoke could be seen from the front window. “You know it’s happening, but we just go on with our day.”

The sprawling, congested city of nearly 4 million has always been disjointed, what’s been called dozens of separate cities in search of a unified whole. It’s not uncommon for temperatures in different neighborhoods to vary by as much as 30 degrees, with cooler days at the beach and desert-like communities in the San Fernando Valley.

But nearly everywhere now is the sense of nearby danger from the fires, with smoke coiling for miles across the sky. L.A. hasn’t seen fires like these, especially in winter months, any time in recent memory.

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Trump to be sentenced in hush money case, days before return to White House

NEW YORK (AP) — In a singular moment in U.S. history, President-elect Donald Trump faces sentencing Friday for his New York hush money conviction after the nation’s highest court refused to intervene.

Like so much else in the criminal case and the current American political landscape, the scenario set to unfold in an austere Manhattan courtroom was unimaginable only a few years ago. A state judge is to say what consequences, if any, the country’s former and soon-to-be leader will face for felonies that a jury found he committed.

With Trump 10 days from inauguration, Judge Juan M. Merchan has indicated he plans a no-penalty sentence called an unconditional discharge and prosecutors aren’t opposing it. That would mean no jail time, no probation and no fines would be imposed, but nothing is final until Friday’s proceeding is done.

Regardless of the outcome, Trump will become the first person convicted of a felony to assume the presidency.

Trump, who is expected to appear by video from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, will have the opportunity to speak. He has pilloried the case, the only one of his four criminal indictments that has gone to trial and possibly the only one that ever will.

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Appeals court denies bid to block public release of special counsel’s report on Trump Jan. 6 probe

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Thursday denied a bid to block the public release of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned down a emergency challenge aimed at keeping under wraps the report expected to detail unflattering revelations about Trump’s failed effort to cling to power in the election he lost to President Joe Biden.

A separate volume of the same special counsel report — related to Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate — will not become public while the case against two co-defendants of the president-elect remains pending, the Justice Department has said.

Even with the appeals court ruling, though, the election interference report will not immediately be released, and there’s no guarantee it will be as more legal wrangling is expected. A lower court ruling from Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida temporarily blocking the Justice Department from releasing the report remains in place for three days.

The defendants may now ask Cannon to rule on the merits of their request to block the report, which she did not do earlier when she granted their emergency motion. They could also conceivably ask the conservative-dominated Supreme Court to intervene.

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Jimmy Carter lauded for humility and service in Washington before being laid to rest in Georgia

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jimmy Carter was celebrated Thursday for his personal humility and public service before, during and after his presidency in a funeral at Washington National Cathedral featuring the kind of pageantry the 39th U.S. president typically eschewed. It was followed by an intimate hometown funeral near where he was born a century ago.

All of Carter’s living successors attended in Washington, with President Joe Biden, who was the first sitting senator to endorse his 1976 run for the White House, eulogizing his longtime friend. Biden and others took turns in the morning praising Carter’s record — which many historians have appraised more favorably since he lost his bid for a second term in 1980 — and extolling his character.

The dual ceremonies in Washington and Plains, Georgia, provided a moment of national comity in a notably partisan era and offered a striking portrait of a president who was once judged a political failure, only for his life ultimately to be recognized as having lasting national and global impact.

“He built houses for people who needed homes,” said Joshua Carter, a grandson who recalled how Carter regularly taught Sunday school in Plains after leaving the White House. “He eliminated diseases in forgotten places. He waged peace anywhere in the world, wherever he saw a chance. He loved people.”

Jason Carter, another grandson, wryly noted his grandparents’ frugality, such as washing and reusing Ziploc bags, and his grandfather’s struggles with his cellphone.

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Earth records hottest year ever in 2024 and the jump was so big it breached a key threshold

Earth recorded its hottest year ever in 2024, with such a big jump that the planet temporarily passed a major climate threshold, several weather monitoring agencies announced Friday.

Last year’s global average temperature easily passed 2023’s record heat and kept pushing even higher. It surpassed the long-term warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit ) since the late 1800s that was called for by the 2015 Paris climate pact, according to the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Service, the United Kingdom’s Meteorology Office and Japan’s weather agency.

The European team calculated 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.89 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. Japan found 1.57 degrees Celsius (2.83 degrees Fahrenheit) and the British 1.53 degrees Celsius (2.75 degrees Fahrenheit) in releases of data coordinated to early Friday morning European time.

American monitoring teams — NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the private Berkeley Earth — were to release their figures later Friday but all will likely show record heat for 2024, European scientists said. The six groups compensate for data gaps in observations that go back to 1850 — in different ways, which is why numbers vary slightly.

“The primary reason for these record temperatures is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere” from the burning of coal, oil and gas, said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead at Copernicus. “As greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, temperatures continue to increase, including in the ocean, sea levels continue to rise, and glaciers and ice sheets continue to melt.”

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Senate Democrats join Republicans in voting to advance bill to detain migrants accused of crimes

WASHINGTON (AP) — Newly in the minority, Democrats voted with Republicans on Thursday to advance legislation that would require federal authorities to detain unauthorized immigrants who have been accused of certain crimes — signaling that they will try and find spots to work with President-elect Donald Trump while simultaneously trying to block much of his agenda.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and most other Democrats voted to proceed with the legislation, advancing the bill 84-9. Trump and Republicans have pushed the bill and made it a priority since Georgia nursing student Laken Riley was killed last year by a Venezuelan man who entered the U.S. illegally and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.

Still, Schumer hasn’t promised to vote for the final bill — and he made clear that Democrats want Republicans to work with them on bipartisan amendments. Thursday’s procedural vote will allow that process to begin.

On the Senate floor ahead of the vote, Schumer said that new Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., “has said he wants to make the Senate a place where all members should have a chance to make their voices heard. This bill would be a fine place to start.”

Schumer’s support for the bill comes after Democrats lost the Senate and the presidency in the November elections and are trying to thoughtfully pick their battles against Trump while still trying to block much of his agenda. Republicans will need seven Democratic votes to pass most major policy items in the 53-47 Senate, and Schumer has said repeatedly that Thune will have to work with them to get things done.

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Notre Dame gets late pick and field goal to make title game with 27-24 win over Penn State

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — A diving interception off an ill-advised pass set up Notre Dame’s trip to play for the program’s 12th national title after a thrill-a-minute 27-24 victory over Penn State on Thursday night in the Orange Bowl.

Defensive back Christian Gray snared Drew Allar’s pass across the middle at the Nittany Lions 42 with 33 seconds left, then the Irish moved 19 yards to set up Mitch Jeter’s 41-yard winner with 7 seconds left.

The game featured three ties, three lead changes and 31 points in the fourth quarter alone.

Notre Dame (14-1), seeded seventh in this, the first 12-team college playoff, will have a chance to bring its first title since 1988 back under the Golden Dome with a game Jan. 20 in Atlanta against the winner of Friday night’s Texas-Ohio State semifinal in the Cotton Bowl.

In the final, Irish coach Marcus Freeman will try to become the first Black coach to win the title at college football’s highest level.

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Alec Baldwin sues for malicious prosecution after judge dismissed case of fatal ‘Rust’ set shooting

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Actor Alec Baldwin has filed a civil lawsuit for malicious prosecution and civil rights violations in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the Western movie “Rust.”

The lawsuit was filed Thursday at state district court in Santa Fe, where a judge in July dismissed a charge of involuntary manslaughter against Baldwin in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Baldwin also alleges defamation in the suit, saying that prosecutors and investigators intentionally mishandled evidence as they pursued the case.

Defendants named in the lawsuit include special prosecutor Kari Morrissey and Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies, along with three investigators from the Santa Fe County sheriff’s office and the county board of commissioners.

“Defendants sought at every turn to scapegoat Baldwin for the acts and omissions of others, regardless of the evidence or the law,” the lawsuit states. It also says prosecutors and investigators targeted Baldwin for professional or political gain.

The Associated Press