Newly discovered ‘Christmas asteroid’ could collide with Earth

Rock wider than football pitch could have devastating impact if it hits our planet – which, according to Nasa scientists, is possible

An asteroid the width of a full-size football pitch could hit Earth in seven years, astronomers have warned.

A space rock between 40 and 100 metres wide was spotted on Christmas Day by a telescope in Chile, in South America, which specialises in identifying objects in space that could collide with our planet.

Analysis of the rock and its flight revealed it is moving away from Earth at around 38,000mph but its orbit will bring it into close proximity around Christmas 2032.

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What L.A. Has Lost

In addition to the death toll and the financial cost, the fires have claimed essential aspects of American culture.

Los Angeles is the American city most associated with the future. But contrary to popular belief, it also possesses a rich past. And major parts of it are going up in flames along with homes in Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and Pasadena, as the L.A. wildfires, already among the most devastating natural events in American history, finally edge toward containment. Losses run to the hundreds of billions. But not every loss can be measured in dollars and cents. Along with their property and, yet more tragically, their lives, the people of Los Angeles have lost some of the best parts of their history and culture.

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Even Hollywood is turning on LA Mayor Karen Bass

After her election as mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, Karen Bass was a heroine of California’s Left. A former backer of Fidel Castro, she decisively defeated billionaire businessman Rick Caruso, who spent more than $100 million to try and defeat her. With a struggling economy, rising crime, and a high cost of living, Bass’s election seemed to confirm LA’s final transition from a place of political diversity to a single-party city dominated by a well-organised Left and funders from the public unions.

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Here are the famed movie and TV locations destroyed in the Southern California fires

With its intricate, carved-wood paneling and diamond-shaped glass panes, location scout Lori Balton thought the smoking room of the historic Andrew McNally House was just glorious.

The distinctive look of the Altadena mansion, built in 1887 for the co-founder of maps and atlas firm Rand McNally Publishing, made it a favorite for filming. The Queen Anne-style home appeared in the HBO series “Entourage,” among other productions.

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And Suddenly, Gavin Newsom’s Electric Car Mandate Looks Pretty Dumb to LA Fire Victims

He’ll save the inedible bait fish, the weed that no one’s ever heard of, elevate meritless executives, and kill the gas car. Those are the highest environmental aspirations of Gavin Newsom, the alleged visionary governor of California, whose distorted priorities have combined to create the conditions for LA Inferno 2025. As the smoke begins to clear, the cruel environy is dawning.

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LAFD team tasked with preventing wildfires accused of corruption, laziness before blazes devastated city

The arm of the Los Angeles Fire Department in charge of preventing wildfires faced years of allegations of corruption, laziness, harassment and discrimination before the blazes that have devastated the city.

It’s just one of the black marks against the LAFD — which include allegations that a deputy chief was drunk while overseeing a 2021 wildfire in the Pacific Palisades, the very same area devastated by the most destructive blaze in LA history this month.

That firefighter was later cleared of wrongdoing by the department and given a $1.4 million payout.

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LA fires become breeding ground for ‘climate change’ propaganda

It has been obvious for a long time that the climate is and has always changed cyclically and naturally. So why do most journalists continue to repeat that humans and our use of natural resources is causing warming that is causing ice to melt, oceans to rise, more severe storms, droughts, floods and disastrous fires?

The only answer I can come up with is that they are just Democrats through and through. They will push whatever agenda Democrats are trying to force on the American people, no matter how unpopular or destructive they are. Facts and science clearly don’t matter.

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The Armed Homeowners Defying the Rules of L.A.’s Burn Zones

LOS ANGELES—In the still-smoldering neighborhoods of Altadena, where fires destroyed more than 2,700 structures, about 80 people have defied orders to evacuate, staying behind to protect what is left of their properties from looters and more fires after losing faith in authorities.

Residents, many of them armed, patrol streets and interrogate strangers, living in a Hobbesian world without electricity or clean drinking water. They are hemmed in by yellow caution tape at neighborhood entrances flanked by National Guard troops, Los Angeles County Sheriff deputies and California Highway Patrol officers.

“We do feel like we’re in the Wild West,” said Aaron Lubeley, a 53-year-old lawyer who is one of the holdouts and serves as an unofficial emissary with police and fire representatives.

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L.A. fire officials could have put engines in the Palisades before the fire broke out. They didn’t

As the Los Angeles Fire Department faced extraordinary warnings of life-threatening winds, top commanders decided not to assign for emergency deployment roughly 1,000 available firefighters and dozens of water-carrying engines in advance of the fire that destroyed much of the Pacific Palisades and continues to burn, interviews and internal LAFD records show.

Fire officials chose not to order the firefighters to remain on duty for a second shift last Tuesday as the winds were building — which would have doubled the personnel on hand — and staffed just five of more than 40 engines that are available to aid in battling wildfires, according to the records obtained by The Times, as well as interviews with LAFD officials and former chiefs with knowledge of city operations.

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LA fire victims fear new housing crisis

Thank Goodness Malibu Goat is safe.

Michael Storc and his family had just survived a devastating wildfire.

Now they have to face a daunting new challenge that he had hoped to never experience again – the Los Angeles housing market.

After losing the Altadena home that he owned in the Eaton fire, he was scouring for a new place to rent, and having little luck.

“What’s available is not nice at all and the rents have gone up a lot,” Mr Storc told the BBC. “I told my teenage daughter we had to accept we would live somewhere not very nice.”

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L.A. Leaders Can’t Hide Behind the Media Anymore

Social media has enabled residents to learn about the gross negligence that contributed to the current devastation.

For days, now, the wildfires ravaging Los Angeles have left behind scenes that can only be described as apocalyptic, like something out of Dante’s Inferno. These haunting, powerful images, once the province of print and broadcast media, now circulate freely on social media platforms like X, Facebook, and Instagram. In past emergencies, if you couldn’t find out something in the newspapers or on TV, you had to seek it out yourself; today, news and images spread across the globe in an instant, thanks to citizens documenting disasters in real time.

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Growing anger as homeowners face insurance crisis after companies refuse to pay out and LA residents could face a $115billion shortfall

The anger of homeowners in Los Angeles is growing as they are facing an insurance crisis as companies could struggle to cover the staggering costs of the wildfires.

Tens of thousands of displaced LA residents have lost everything but the clothes they were wearing and a few select personal items, leaving insurance companies on the hook for colossal payouts.

But customers of one of California’s biggest insurancers ranted against the company last week after the company cancelled fire coverage for thousands of homeowners in the Pacific Palisades last summer in an attempt to avoid ‘financial failure’.

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As America Fixates on Los Angeles, North Carolina Residents Struggle Months After Hurricane Helene

With Los Angeles still reeling from wildfires that devastated thousands of homes and took at least 14 lives over the past several days, victims of a different natural disaster — Hurricane Helene in North Carolina — are urging Americans not to forget them as they face the prospect of losing their temporary housing in the coming days, months after the storm tore through the western part of the state.

Even as the fires continue to flare up in Los Angeles County, officials are scrambling to accommodate those still suffering in North Carolina, where a winter storm has blanketed parts of the state with snow and ice. Weather services are predicting that temperatures could drop well below freezing in the central and western parts of the state in the coming days.

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Weather service issues its most severe fire warning for L.A. as winds pick up

The most serious red flag fire weather warning has been issued by the National Weather Service for swaths of Los Angeles and Ventura counties starting before dawn Tuesday, underlining the continuing threat in a region weary after nearly a week of firestorms.

The ominous “particularly dangerous situation” warning was first issued by the local National Weather Service office in October 2020, and then in December 2020 — and then not again until 2024.

Issuing this warning “is one of the loudest ways that we can shout,” said Rose Schoenfeld, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

Fire victims compete to find new homes as real estate market rages in Pacific Palisades, Altadena

Thousands of families were displaced on Tuesday when fires torched homes throughout Pacific Palisades and Altadena, kicking off a regionwide house hunt as victims scoured a tight market looking for homes to rent — or even buy.

People are desperate, local agents said. Their homes are in ashes, and they’re looking for stability — somewhere for their family to go that’s not a shelter, a friend’s house or a hotel room.

Some landlords are now sharply raising rent, even beyond what temporary price gouging protections allow. And some would-be renters are offering a year’s rent upfront in cash and engaging in bidding wars.

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