‘Devil winds’ expected to whip up deadly California blazes; Death toll at 25
economic pressure on the Kremlin,” the ministry said.
The heads of the rebel regions rejected Kiev’s criticism.
“It’s a free country, we live according to our laws,” said Leonid Pasechnik, the 48-year-old acting leader of the republic of Lugansk, after casting his vote.
The acting head of the Donetsk republic, Denis Pushilin, a 37-yearold former operator of a notorious Russian Ponzi scheme, urged people to vote en masse.
“We are choosing our future,” said the former negotiator with Kiev who succeeded Zakharchenko.
While several candidates are running in each of the two regions, Pushilin and Pasechnik — both of whom have promised to seek tighter ties with Moscow — were expected to sail to victory. CALIFORNIA: Severe hot and dry “devil winds” kicked up on Sunday in fire ravaged Southern California and more winds were expected in the north, fanning the flames of wild fires that have killed at least 25 people, officials said.
“This is getting bad,” said meteorologist Marc Chenard, with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park Maryland.
“We’ll get sustained winds of up to 40 mph and gusts between 60 mph and 70 mph,” he said of the Santa Ana “devil wind” hitting the Los Angeles area where the Woolsey Fire has been burning since Thursday in the tinderdry canyon of Ventura County.
The air-masses blowing across the western US deserts including Death Valley toward the coast are expected to bring the sustained high winds at least through Tuesday, he said. “It’s nothing but bad news,” said Chenard.
Additional 40 mph winds will blow party that props up her Conservative government made new threats to vote against the terms of the deal she is working on with Brussels.
The vote in parliament, most likely to come later this year, is gearing up to be the biggest showdown in the lengthy negotiations to leave the EU.
May, who was attending a ceremony to mark 100 years since the end of World War I, found some support from ministers in her cabinet, but it would be hard for her to ignore the growing calls to change tack after a minister resigned and Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) threatened to rebel.
“If the government makes the historic mistake of prioritising placating the EU over establishing an independent and whole UK, then regrettably we must vote against the deal,” Steve Baker, a leading eurosceptic and former minister, wrote alongside the DUP’S Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
The main battleground is over a so-called backstop to prevent the across the Sierra Nevada foothills in Northern California near Sacramento where the so-called Camp Fire has claimed at least 25 lives.
The Camp Fire burned down more than 6,700 homes and businesses in Paradise, more structures than any return of a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and Eu-member Ireland, something that would only come into force if a deal on future ties cannot guarantee the type of frictionless trade needed to keep it open. Fears that proposals would mean keeping Britain inside the EU’S customs union indefinitely or that Northern Ireland would have to accept different rules and regulations to the rest of the UK have focused opposition to May’s deal.
Eurosceptics have criticised May’s proposals, but it was the resignation of Jo Johnson, the younger brother to Brexit campaign leader Boris Johnson, that highlighted the depth of anger over her plans.
Moscow says the elections are necessary to fill the power vacuum after the leader of the Donetsk republic Alexander Zakharchenko was killed in a bombing at a Donetsk café in August
other California wildfire on record, and the death toll, which could rise, also makes it one of the deadliest.
Only the Griffith Park Fire in 1933 and Tunnel Fire in 1991 have claimed more lives. Several of the bodies discovered earlier this week were found in or near burned out cars, police have said. The flames descended on Paradise so fast that many people were forced to abandon their vehicles and run for their lives down the sole road through the mountain town.
An additional 35 people have been reported missing and three firefighters have been injured. It was not immediately clear if any of the missing were among those found dead.
As of Saturday night, the Camp Fire had blackened more than 100,000 acres at the edge of the Plumas National Forest. Crews had cut containment lines around about 20 percent of the blaze. About 800 km to the south, the Woolsey Fire burning in the foothills above Malibu doubled in size from Friday night into Sunday threatening thousands of homes after triggering mandatory evacuation orders for a quarter million people in the upscale beach city as well as other communities in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.