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COMMERCE, Texas - A woman was arrested over the weekend after police allegedly caught her "testing" homemade bombs following a string of fires in Commerce, authorities said. Since Feb. 19, police have been investigating a series of fires reported across the city over a three-day span. On Saturday night, a patrol officer spotted a fire at Centennial Park and observed a woman leaving the immediate area. Officers detained the woman, identified as Jamia Howell, and discovered nine homemade bombs inside her backpack. Investigators also recovered a lighter and other materials used to manufacture explosive devices. Howell was taken into custody...

Several conservative House Republicans are demanding the immediate resignation of Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) following the release of damning leaked text messages. The scandal centers on a series of leaked communications between Gonzales and Regina Santos-Aviles, a 35-year-old regional district director for his office. She died in September 2025 after setting herself on fire at her home; her death was ruled a suicide by the Bexar County medical examiner’s office. As The Gateway Pundit reported last year, Rep. Tony Gonzales, a married father of six, is accused of carrying on an extramarital affair with his senior aide, Regina Santos-Aviles, who...

Los Angeles Fire Department officials tried to run damage control for Mayor Karen Bass before releasing findings on how the city handled the devastating Palisades fire, according to a bombshell report. An unsigned, confidential memo flagrantly admits fire officials’ goal before releasing an October after-action report on the blaze was to protect Bass and others from a backlash, the Los Angeles Times first reported. “It’s our goal to prepare and protect Mayor Bass, the City, and the LAFD from reputational harm associated with the upcoming public release of its AARR, through a comprehensive strategy that includes risk assessment, proactive and...

The city of Malibu slapped Los Angeles and the state of California with a lawsuit over the devastating Palisades fire — saying officials didn’t do enough to stop the deadly blaze that “hollowed out” the oceanside community. Malibu said the city’s “entire character changed” when the wildfire swept through and that it is “still reeling from the destruction it left in its wake,” according to the suit. The 66-page complaint seeks to “recover significant financial losses” resulting from the devastating fire. “This decision was not made lightly,” Malibu Mayor Bruce Silverstein said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “The City...

A fire at an oil refinery in Cuba has been brought under control quickly, as the country faces a deepening fuel crisis. Black smoke clouds could be seen billowing from the Ñico López Refinery in the capital Havana on Friday. No-one was injured and an investigation into the blaze has been set up, Cuba's energy ministry said in a post on X. The fire occurred close to where two oil tankers were moored in Havana Bay. Cuba's fuel shortage has worsened after the US blocked Venezuela's oil shipments to the island. Venezuela, a long-standing ally of Cuba, was previously believed...

Changes could be coming to longstanding Massachusetts building codes that advocates say would make it much easier to build multifamily housing. Gov. Maura Healey signed an executive order Thursday establishing an advisory group to explore allowing new residential buildings with a single staircase, which is banned for those taller than three stories under the current building code. The change would make it much cheaper to build mid-sized multifamily projects, encouraging increased production “We’re all about making it easier to build more housing across our state to drive down costs for everyone,” Healey said in a statement. “While the double stair...

The full extent of the Palisades Fire report cover-up has been revealed. The California Post has obtained the first draft of the Palisades After-Action Fire Report — before it was quietly altered and released to the public. Newly uncovered edits show sweeping changes to the 92-page document that was meant to deliver a warts-and-all account of the disaster, putting more pressure on Mayor Karen Bass to explain whether her office played a role in softening the language to blunt criticism of the city’s response to a fire that killed at least 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures. Mayor...

Construction on part of the High-Speed Rail project came to a halt on Wednesday as crews battled a fire at the Church Avenue overpass in southeast Fresno. "There's a lot of plywood and lumber that's involved in this," Josh Sellers with Fresno Fire said. Workers, all unharmed, watched as firefighters attacked from above. "We have the railroad tracks here that we ended up having to close down and stop the trains because we have a ladder truck in place that's blocking the tracks," Sellers said.

The conference centre hosting the World Economic Forum in Davos has been evacuated, with authorities yet to give any indication of the cause. Reports from the event said emergency services had rushed to the scene and that an unusual smell was in the air and was “making some people in our area cough”. "They evacuated us all. We left all our things inside because there seems to be a fire in a hotel nearby," said Lilli Gruber, a reporter in Davos. "There are helicopters flying overhead, it's full of firefighters."

Minnesota governor Tim Walz (D.) suggested the federal prosecutor behind the Somali fraud convictions in the state should be fired, accusing him of “defamation” for providing an estimate of the total amount defrauded from Medicaid programs. “You saw a U.S. attorney stand up, which … would have been let go by any other administration, speculating about things with no factual information,” Walz said Tuesday. “That’s defamation … and that’s coming from the attorney. We are under assault like no other time in our state’s history because of a petty, vile administration that doesn’t care about the well-being of Minnesotans.” Walz...

Le Parisien reports: 'According to our information, Jacques Moretti is no stranger to the French justice system. 'He is known for pimping cases dating back some twenty years, as well as for a kidnapping and confinement case. He was imprisoned in Savoie.'

bout 30% of San Francisco was blacked out Saturday, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. said, as a power outage grew to about 130,000 customers. PG&E spokesman Edgar Hoida said the cause of the outage was under investigation. PG&E's online outage status reported 124,555 customers without power, or 30.1% of San Francisco, at 6:44 p.m. Outages were first reported in the Inner Sunset neighborhood at about 9:40 a.m., affecting about 14,700 customers. At 10:10 a.m., more outages were reported impacting about 25,000 customers in the Richmond District, the Presidio, Golden Gate Park, Inner Sunset District, and near the Civic Center. Scattered...

If we are to propitiate the angry climate, we must make certain sacrifices — like the occasional school bus driver. Via KTLA: An electric school bus burst into flames in Los Angeles on Wednesday morning, prompting a massive emergency response and shutting down a stretch of the 210 Freeway in Sylmar, authorities said. The oversized moonbatmobile burst into flames as it went under an overpass at 9:20 a.m. Sky5 was over the scene as heavy flames and thick black smoke poured from the fully involved bus. The driver was taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation. Fortunately, there were no...

Archaeologists have found the earliest evidence yet of fire technology — and it was created by Neanderthals in England more than 400,000 years ago. Neanderthals were the world's first innovators of fire technology, tiny specks of evidence in England suggest. Flecks of pyrite found at a more than 400,000-year-old archaeological site in Suffolk, in eastern England, push back archaeologists' evidence for controlled fire-making and suggest that key human brain developments began far earlier than previously thought. "We're a species who've used fire to really shape the world around us," study co-author Rob Davis, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the British Museum,...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. What we know so far: 44 people, including a firefighter, have died. Some 279 are still missing Among those hospitalised, 45 are in serious condition The eight residential blocks in the estate had been undergoing renovations since July 2024, sheathed in bamboo scaffolding and green mesh Authorities say the rapid spread of fire was “unusual”, with styrofoam material found in buildings Government will launch investigations, including criminal probes, to find cause of deadly blaze Blazes in three of the...

HONG KONG (AP) — Firefighters battled a blaze at a high-rise residential complex in Hong Kong for the second day on Thursday, as the death toll rose to 55 in one of the deadliest blazes in the city’s modern history.Thick smoke continued to pour out of the Wang Fuk Court complex, a dense cluster of high-rise towers housing thousands of people in Tai Po district, a northern suburb near the border with the mainland. Flames can still be seen inside the buildings Thursday evening.Hong Kong leader John Lee said contact had been lost with 279 people around midnight Thursday. Rescues...

Los Angles Mayor Karen Bass recently did a little victory dance about the ‘first rebuild’ of a house in the Pacific Palisades after the wildfires. Hey, it has only been almost a year, right? There is one little problem with the house that Bass is celebrating, however. It was a developer project that was in the works before the fires even happened. That’s right, this house wasn’t even one of the average homes destroyed by fires and her incompetence. What a surprise. The New York Post reports: LA Mayor Karen Bass called out for ‘phony’ Palisades rebuild after devastating wildfire...

Pray for search and rescue authorities in Hong Kong today. At least 36 people have died and 279 people are unaccounted for, officials say. Residents remain trapped on higher floors of the buildings. https://t.co/iclSJYO8p1 pic.twitter.com/FtoFH3FyZ5— CNN (@CNN) November 26, 2025Officials said 279 people are 'uncontactable.' Meanwhile, 29 people remain hospitalized, with 7 in critical conditions, officials said. The fire, which tore through bamboo scaffolding ubiquitous in the city, appears to be the most deadly blaze in Hong Kong in nearly three decades. 900 other residents have managed to flee to shelters. Clips of the fire look apocalyptic: BREAKING: At least...

HONG KONG, Nov 26 (Reuters) – A massive fire ripped through multiple high-rise residential blocks in Hong Kong’s northern Tai Po district on Wednesday, killing at least 14 people and injuring scores as authorities struggled to bring the blaze under control. Firefighters battled the orange flames into the night as thick black smoke billowed from the 32-story towers, which were sheathed in bamboo scaffolding – whose use the government began phasing out in March for safety reasons – and green construction mesh. The cause of the blaze was not immediately known.

A rowdy mob pummeled a Queens couple and set a car ablaze when the residents and other locals tried to stop a wild car meet-up in their neighborhood early Sunday, according to the victims and video. The disturbing attack occurred when a bunch of out-of-control drivers descended on South Drive and 141 Street in Malba, doing donuts and speeding over lawns around 12:30 a.m. “When I came out, I said, ‘Bro, you gotta get the f–k off my property,’ and that’s when it all started,” victim Blake Ferrer told The Post. Video shows a group of about a dozen ruffians...