Associated Press Videos
New Blazes Force Evacuations in California

LOWER LAKE, Calif. (AP) — Blazes raging in forests and woodlands across California have taken the life of a firefighter and forced hundreds of people to flee their homes as an army of firefighters continue to battle them from the air and the ground.

Twenty-three large fires, many sparked by lightning strikes, were burning across Northern California on Saturday, said state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Daniel Berlant. Some 8,000 firefighters were attempting to subdue them, something made incredibly difficult by several years of drought that have dried out California.

"The conditions and fire behavior we're seeing at 10 in the morning is typically what we'd see in late afternoon in late August and September," said Nick Schuler, a division chief with the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "But because of the dry conditions, because of the drought-stricken vegetation accompanied by the steep terrain and winds, we're seeing fire activity that's abnormal for this time of year."

In the Modoc National Forest, about a hundred miles south of Oregon, David Ruhl, an engine captain from South Dakota's Black Hills National Forest, was killed fighting a fast-moving blaze. He had vanished Thursday while fighting the 800-acre fire and his body wasn't recovered until Friday.

The biggest fire was in the Lower Lake area north of San Francisco where firefighters had to wade through thick smoke and flying embers to turn loose horses, goats and other livestock in rural neighborhoods as their owners fled to safety. The fast-moving fire had burned three homes by Friday and was threatening 450 other structures. Only 5 percent contained, it had spread across 28 square miles and was growing quickly.

The fires prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency for California on Friday. As part of the order, he activated the California National Guard to help with disaster recovery.

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Fires approach a home near Lower Lake, Calif., Friday, July 31, 2015. A series of wildfires were int …

Berlant said firefighters were hoping cooler weather might help them this weekend, but there was also the threat that lingering thunderstorms could bring more lightning strikes like those that ignited several of the fires.

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BURNING HILLS

The fast-spreading wildfire near Lower Lake north of San Francisco has torched three homes and is threatening more than 450 structures.

At least 650 residents have been evacuated from their homes as the blaze raged in hills covered in dense brush and oak trees and dotted with ranch homes. It has charred 28 square miles near Lower Lake, south of Clear Lake, a popular summer recreation spot.

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Goats run from a pen after being released by Cal Fire engineer Johnny Miller at a property off of Mo …

Only 5 percent contained, it was moving southwest toward Lower Lake and Clear Lake.

"We saw it behind our house. We saw the smoke pouring over. So we just started collecting stuff and we left, to find out later that everyone was evacuated out here," said resident Julie Flannery.

When they returned Friday they found their two horses and one mule were gone. They hoped firefighters turned them loose so they could make their way to safety.

"The rest of this is just material stuff," she said. "The animals and the family is the most important."

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A fire fighter carries a hose as he watches a fire off of Morgan Valley Road near Lower Lake, Calif. …

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Firefighters walk below smoke off of Morgan Valley Road near Lower Lake, Calif., Friday, July 31, 20 …

FIRE LINES HOLDING

Crews battling a fire east of Napa Valley held their ground Friday, more than a week after it started.

The blaze has charred more than 12 square miles in Solano County. The fire is about 45 miles east of Napa's wine county, and vineyards are not threatened.

At least 136 structures are threatened, but evacuation orders have been lifted. It is mostly contained, and crews expect to have it fully corralled by Monday.

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FOOTHILLS FIRES

A woman was arrested in connection with a small fire near Groveland, a stop-off point for travelers headed to Yosemite National Park.

The 200-acre fire, about 20 miles from the park's entrance, was 45 percent contained Friday. About two dozen homes are threatened and voluntary evacuations are in place.

Lisa Ann Vilmur was arrested Thursday night for recklessly causing a fire and jailed on $100,000 bail. It was not known Friday if she has an attorney.

In a separate foothills blaze northeast of Sacramento, evacuation orders have been lifted for residents of 50 homes. The fire, which ignited Saturday, burned through more than 3 1/2 square miles and is almost fully contained.

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A firefighter sprays a hose toward a spot fire along Morgan Valley Road near Lower Lake, Calif., Fri …

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BASS LAKE BLAZE

Residents of 200 homes in the central California community of Cascadel Woods were ordered to evacuate Thursday.

A wildfire burning near Bass Lake for several days spread to more than 6 square miles and is partially contained.

Authorities say a boy acknowledged starting the fire by playing with a lighter to burn pine needles in the dry Sierra Nevada. They say the boy faces criminal charges but is not in custody because he and his family are cooperating.

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A firefighter sprays a hose toward a spot fire along Morgan Valley Road near Lower Lake, Calif., Fri …

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MODOC NATIONAL FOREST FIRE

Engine Captain David Ruhl of South Dakota was killed battling the fire that broke out Thursday in the Modoc National Forest about 100 miles south of Oregon.

The firefighter had vanished Thursday and his body wasn't found until Friday. U.S. Forest Service officials didn't immediately reveal the cause of death.

Ruhl, who was assigned to a Black Hills National Forest firefighting team, had been helping California firefighters since June.

The fire broke out southeast of Lava Camp and rapidly grew to consume 800 acres. No containment figure was immediately given.

Fueled by dry conditions and wind, raging blazes prompt Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency.
1 woman arrested

Vasyl Bryntsev (L), one of Ukraine's constitutional court judges, reads findings of the court during the sitting in Kiev, Ukraine on July 31, 2015 (AFP Photo/Sergei Supinsky)

Kiev (AFP) - Ukraine's highest court on Friday allowed parliament to vote on Western-backed constitutional amendments aimed at stemming daily bloodshed by giving pro-Russian insurgents partial autonomy in the separatist east.

The idea of granting at least three years of self-rule to rebellious parts of Ukraine's industrial war zone has struck a note of disquiet among many lawmakers and much of the Kiev media.

But it was inscribed in a truce deal that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russia's Vladimir Putin signed off on in February in the Belarussian capital Minsk.

Parliament voted by an overwhelming majority on July 16 to ask Ukraine's constitutional court to rule whether such changes to the basic law were legal.

The former Soviet country's justice Vasyl Brintsev concluded without reservations that it was.

The idea of militia-run regions holding their own elections and setting up separate police forces "does not break or limit the rights and freedoms of (Ukrainian) people and citizens," Brintsev said in the decision.

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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko leaves after his address in Kiev on July 1, 2015 (AFP Photo/Ser …

The draft constitutional clause is part of a broader "decentralisation" proposal that should see Kiev cede some of its powers to all regions -- and assign especially broad ones to pro-Russian lands -- in the years to come.

One top Ukrainian deputy said a second of three votes on the changes should take place by the end of next month. Parliament would then need to muster a two-thirds majority in a final reading for the amendments to take effect.

Poroshenko called Friday's court ruling "an important step that moves us closer to momentous changes for the state."

"For the first time in Ukraine's history, its head of state and government are ceding a large degree of their powers to the regions," he wrote on his Facebook page.

"This will make our country powerful and whole."

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Ukrainian servicemen use an automatic grenade launcher during fights with the pro-Russian separatist …

- Buffer zone -

Both Washington and its EU allies believe that autonomy could satisfy separatist fighters and remove any arguments Russia may have for arming and funding their campaign -- support Moscow firmly denies ever giving.

But the suggested changes have been denounced as insufficient by the rebels and are unlikely to make an immediate impact on the ground.

Four civilians and three Ukrainian soldiers have been reported killed since Thursday in shelling attacks on disputed towns that straddle a frontline splitting the self-declared "people's republics" of Lugansk and Donetsk from the rest of Ukraine.

The entire separatist region -- about the size of Wales -- accounted for just 2.6 percent of Ukraine's population but 15 percent of its industrial production before the war broke out with Kiev's new pro-Western government in April 2014.

Poroshenko's critics question whether Ukraine will ever be able to rebuild its imploding economy with the east's powerful coal mines and steel mills still under the insurgents' control.

But Kiev's Western governments are pushing for a resolution that could help start mending their relations with Russia and building stability across European Union's unsettled eastern edge.

The Minsk accord also demands the "withdrawal of all foreign armed formations" and Kiev's reestablishment of full control of Ukraine's border with Russia by the end of the year.

Poroshenko depends on foreign support in his standoff with Russia and has been defending the Minsk agreements against its fiercest domestic critics.

He hopes to strike a new demilitarisation agreement with the insurgents on Monday that requires both sides to pull back smaller-scale weapons from what should become a 30-kilometre-wide (18-mile-wide) buffer zone.

US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said "we strongly support President Poroshenko's call to sign an agreement on the withdrawal of heavy weapons under 100 millimetres in calibre."

"We urge all sides to implement such an agreement immediately," he told reporters on Thursday.

Hundreds of companies and investors sent a letter to 29 governors in the U.S. on Friday to show their support for the Clean Power Plan to slash carbon emissions in the electricity sector.

The Environmental Protection Agency's plan establishes pollution standards for existing power plants, for the first time limiting the amount of carbon dioxide they can pump into the air.

General Mills, Nestle, Staples, Adidas and Mars were among the 365 businesses and investors — which ranged from small companies to industry giants — to sign the letter organized by Ceres, a Boston-based sustainability nonprofit.

“Our support is firmly grounded in economic reality. Clean-energy solutions are cost effective and innovative ways to drive investment and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” the letter reads in part.

Mindy Lubber, the president of Ceres and a founding board member of the organization, said the businesses signed the letter to dispel the myth that any sort of regulation would be bad for the economy.

“It’s not the case. They don’t see it that way. They were quite interested in the EPA rules, and for good reason. They are about making a better economy,” she said in an interview with Yahoo News.

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A windmill farm is seen in front of smoke from the Lake Fire in the San Bernardino National Forest, …

The EPA developed these standards under the Clean Air Act of 1973, which requires the agency to regulate the emission of pollutants. It was passed to protect human health and the environment from air pollution.

The Union of Concerned Scientists said power plants account for nearly 40 percent of the nation’s CO2 emissions.

Lubber said climate change is already adversely affecting not only public health but also the economy. Billions of dollars have been lost in the real estate and insurance sectors alone, she said.

“We’re seeing agriculture companies all but shut down a quarter of their farms because of climate-related changes,” Lubber added.

She pointed to the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act as examples of reasonable legislation to set a level playing field for businesses and protect them from environmental harm.

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Employees of a solar farm company take notes between panels at the farm in Nakorn Ratchasima provinc …

Ceres described the letter as “an unprecedented show of business support for tackling climate change.”

The EPA first proposed the Clean Power Plan, a central component to President Obama’s climate change strategy, on June 2, 2014.

“Right now there are no national limits to the amount of carbon pollution that existing plants can pump into the air we breathe, none,” Obama said just days earlier, on May 31, 2014. “We limit the amount of toxic chemicals like mercury, sulfur and arsenic that power plants put in our air and water, but they can dump unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into the air. It’s not smart, it’s not safe and it doesn’t make sense.”

The EPA estimates that the plan would reduce emissions from the electricity sector to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

It sets state-by-state targets for reducing carbon emissions with flexible outlines for how they could be achieved, such as investment in renewable energy. But states will ultimately be responsible for drafting their plans for reaching the targets laid out by the EPA.

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Employees of a solar farm company take notes between panels at the farm in Nakorn Ratchasima provinc …

The Energy Information Administration, a nonpartisan branch of the U.S. government, released an economic analysis of the Clean Power Plan offering a range of approaches for state compliance.

It found that wind energy developmentmakes for perhaps the most cost-effective option for reducing carbon emissions and reaching those targets for nearly all of the regions.

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the industry’s trade association, says wind played a dominant role in the analysis because the price of installing windmills has been declining steadily and windmills are essentially pollution-free.

“In their base case for what would be considered their best guess, they found that wind was responsible for almost 50 percent of the most economic compliance with the Clean Power Plan,” Tom Vinson, vice president of federal regulatory affairs at the AWEA, said in an interview with Yahoo News. “One of the reason wind does so well in these economic analyses is that it is so affordable now, with costs coming down nearly 60 percent over the last five years and the ability to lock in a price today for the next 20 years or longer.”

The Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group for the solar industry, similarly says solar can help states transition off of fossil-fuel-dominant energy portfolios.

Clean Power Plan Would Save Thousands of Lives Eac …Play video

The plan has come under fire by the oil and gas industries and some energy-producing states.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has called for open defiance of the plan, which he called Obama's “attack on the middle class.”

“Think twice before submitting a state plan — which could lock you in to federal enforcement and expose you to lawsuits — when the administration is standing on shaky legal ground and when, without your support, it won't be able to demonstrate the capacity to carry out such political extremism,” he wrote in an op-ed for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

McConnell said the regulations would shrink the economy of his home state by close to $2 billion and destroy countless jobs.

Many expect the start date to be delayed by two years, from 2020 to 2022, in the final plan to give reluctant states more time to comply.

Tokyo (AFP) - Japanese police on Saturday arrested Mark Karpeles, head of the MtGox Bitcoin exchange, after a series of fraud allegations led to its spectacular collapse and hammered the digital currency's reputation.

A spokesman for the Tokyo Police said French-born Karpeles, 30, was suspected of manipulating data on the exchange's computer system in 2013 to artificially create about $1.0 million.

Earlier Saturday, Kyodo News and other Japanese media said police were also investigating his possible involvement in the 2014 disappearance of nearly $390 million worth of the virtual currency, at current exchange rates.

It was not immediately clear if there would be more charges against Karpeles, who reportedly denied the allegations.

TV footage showed Karpeles, wearing a T-shirt and baseball cap, being led away by about half a dozen investigators.

The global virtual currency community was shaken by the shuttering of MtGox, which froze withdrawals in early 2014 because of what the firm said was a bug in the software underpinning Bitcoins that allowed hackers to pilfer them.

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A van carrying Mark Karpeles (not in picture), former CEO of MtGox Bitcoin exchange, arrives at a po …

On Saturday, local media, citing police, said investigators suspect Karpeles knew details about the missing Bitcoins which were reportedly transferred to an account controlled by him -- without notifying depositors.

The top-selling Yomiuri newspaper also said police suspect that Karpeles repeatedly transferred clients' Bitcoins into his own account for speculative trading.

The exchange -- which once boasted of handling around 80 percent of global Bitcoin transactions -- filed for bankruptcy protection soon after the cyber-money went missing, admitting it had lost 850,000 coins worth 48 billion yen ($387 million). They were worth about $480 million at the time of the disappearance.

Karpeles later said he had found some 200,000 of the lost Bitcoins in a "cold wallet" -- a storage device such as a memory stick that is not connected to other computers.

- No regulations -

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The global virtual currency community was shaken by the shuttering of MtGox, which froze withdrawals …

Bitcoins are generated by complex chains of interactions among a huge network of computers around the planet and are not backed by any government or central bank, unlike traditional currencies.

A cloud has been hanging over the Tokyo-based exchange and Karpeles as investors demanded answers, and called on the firm to publicise its data so that hackers around the world can help analyse what happened at MtGox.

"They seem to refuse to make public more precise information about MtGox's own (information) and how and when it was stolen, if it was really stolen," a French investor told AFP last year at a creditors' meeting.

Karpeles had reportedly refused to travel to the United States, where he was being asked to appear for questioning in connection with MtGox's collapse.

Regulators have scrambled to respond to the use of Bitcoins, with some regulators calling for caution until rules are developed to stop them being abused.

Hundreds of crypto-currencies have been created in the last several years. Bitcoin is by far the most popular.

Launched in 2009 by a mysterious computer guru, Bitcoin offers a largely anonymous payment system and can be stored either virtually or on a user's hard drive.

Backers say virtual currencies allow for an efficient and anonymous way to store and transfer funds online.

But regulators argue the lack of legal framework governing the currency, the opaque way it is traded and its volatility make it dangerous.

After trading for cents per Bitcoin for the first two years of its existence, it began a frenzied climb in 2011 that took it to $40 a coin the following year and to $1,100 in 2013. It is currently trading at around $280.

Bitcoin's reputation was also damaged when US authorities seized funds as part of an investigation into the online criminal enterprise Silk Road.

In May, American Ross Ulbricht was convicted of masterminding Silk Road, which sold $200 million worth of drugs to customers all over the world using Bitcoin.

During his trial, a witness said investigators once suspected Karpeles of running the online black market -- a claim he subsequently denied.

Istanbul (AFP) - Around 260 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have been killed and hundreds more wounded in Ankara's week-long campaign of air strikes against targets of the group inside Turkey and in northern Iraq, the official Anatolia news agency said Saturday.

Without citing its sources, Anatolia said that among those wounded was Nurettin Demirtas, the brother of the leader of pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas.

Ankara has launched a two-pronged "anti-terror" offensive against Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants after a wave of attacks inside the country. But so far the bombardments have focused far more on the Kurdish rebels.

In the latest air strikes on Friday, 28 Turkish F-16s destroyed 65 targets of the PKK including shelters and arms depots, it said.

The heaviest air strikes were on Thursday, when 80 Turkish aircraft hit 100 targets of the PKK, Anatolia said.

"Up until now 260 terrorists have been rendered ineffective (killed) and 380-400 terrorists have been identified as injured, including the brother of Selahattin Demirtas, Nurettin Demirtas," Anatolia said. The air strikes are expected to continue, it added.

The Turkish government has so far refused to officially disclose casualty figures, with one official telling AFP that "this is not a soccer game".

But the sheer numbers of planes involved in the daily strikes on the PKK targets in northern Iraq has given an idea of the scale of the operation and raised concern in some Western capitals.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Friday urged Turkey not to "tear down the bridges" that had been built over the last years with its Kurdish minority.

The PKK's insurgency for greater rights and powers for Turkey's Kurdish minority, begun more than 30 years ago, has left tens of thousands dead. The current violence has shattered a ceasefire declared in 2013.

Selahattin Demirtas openly acknowledges that his elder brother Nurettin went to the Kandil Mountain in northern Iraq where the PKK's military headquarters are based.

"I don't even know if he's dead or alive," Selahattin Demirtas told AFP in an interview earlier this week.