CANBERRA, Australia — 

Scores of wildfires continued to rage across vast tracts of Australia’s drought-stricken east coast on Wednesday, forcing hundreds of residents to evacuate their homes, some for the second time in a week.

The most intense fires were concentrated in the northeastern states of New South Wales and Queensland, although a fire emergency warning had also been issued for a blaze threatening the west coast city of Geraldton.

New South Wales had lost more than 200 homes since Friday, while 14 homes had been destroyed in southeast Queensland.

Some communities have been evacuated repeatedly as the fire danger recedes, then returns with flames fanned by strong wind changes.

Tony Wellington, mayor of the Queensland town of Noosa North Shore, said residents there were being evacuated for the second time in a week.

“It’s bad enough being evacuated once, let alone multiple times,” Wellington told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “It’s terribly distressing, always, to be evacuated.”

A severe fire danger warning was in place for much of southern Queensland, with soaring temperatures and thunderstorms expected.

“We’ve got another tough day today and there is an extended forecast that we are not out the woods by any means,” said Michael Wassing of the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services Commission.

The Insurance Council of Australia, an industry body, said insurers had received 450 fire damage claims in the disaster areas.

In New South Wales, 13 firefighters were injured overnight by catastrophic wildfires that subsided on Wednesday.

At one point on Tuesday, 16 fires raged out of control at emergency level simultaneously across New South Wales, a near record number.

Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons warned that rain that would quench the fire danger on the east coast is not forecast for months.

State Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she was relieved that the destruction on Tuesday had not been worse. A weeklong state of emergency for New South Wales was declared on Monday because of the fire danger, with Tuesday having been forecast as the most dangerous day.

“I have to confess to being hugely relieved this morning that yesterday our amazing volunteers and emergency service personnel withstood the catastrophic conditions and did manage to save life and property,” Berejiklian said.

Fitzsimmons said none of the injured firefighters had been seriously hurt.

Click Here: Rugby league Jerseys

Here are the stories you shouldn’t miss today:

TOP STORIES

Will These Hearings Be Unimpeachable?

Public hearings in the impeachment inquiry of President Trump are scheduled to begin this morning with testimony from State Department official George Kent and William B. Taylor Jr., the by-the-book senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine.

Both have already told lawmakers they were troubled by the president and his administration’s pressure on Ukraine to conduct investigations that would benefit Trump politically while holding up congressionally approved military aid to the U.S. ally. (Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, will publicly testify Friday.)

How it will play out on TV is anyone’s guess, but Democrats’ top challenge is to keep the proceedings serious and straightforward, but also engaging, while Republicans are looking to question the fairness and integrity of the investigation. Need a quick primer on all this? Here you go.

DACA in the Balance

The Supreme Court’s conservative justices sounded skeptical Tuesday about the legality of the Obama-era policy known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which has allowed 700,000 young immigrants to live and work in the United States. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., whose vote is likely to be the deciding one, appeared to agree with Trump’s claim that the policy of protecting the so-called Dreamers was legally questionable. A decision in the case won’t come until next year.

After Tuesday’s hearing, University of California President Janet Napolitano — who created the program in 2012 as U.S. Homeland Security secretary — spoke in its defense. Meanwhile, hundreds of L.A. students walked out of class and rallied downtown in support of DACA.

More Politics

— White House advisor Stephen Miller sent emails that “promoted white nationalist literature and racist propaganda” to conservative news site Breitbart, the Southern Poverty Law Center said after releasing excerpts.

— White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said that he no longer plans to sue over the impeachment proceedings and will instead follow Trump’s directions and decline to cooperate.

— Trump said the United States will increase tariffs on Chinese goods if the first step of a broader trade agreement isn’t reached.

— Mark Sanford has dropped his challenge to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, saying the focus on impeachment has made it impossible for his campaign to gain traction.

A Shaken Campus

A series of student deaths at USC this semester has prompted concern and a demand for answers among the campus community. Nine have died since Aug. 24, and officials have confirmed that three of them died by suicide. University administrators are now engaged in a delicate balancing act as they notify students, attempt to quell rumors, offer mental health resources and also try to avoid triggering students who may be in the midst of a mental health crisis.

Relentless Pursuit

At a serial killer’s trial in 2016, Times reporter Christopher Goffard met Anaheim Police Det. Julissa Trapp, the homicide detective who had spent two years working at the center of the case. He found a story of tenacious policework and obsession — one that is taught to patrol officers graduating to detective work. Now that story is being told in the podcast “Detective Trapp.” It will be released Nov. 19, but Times subscribers can listen to the first two episodes now.

Your support helps us deliver the news that matters most. Subscribe to the Los Angeles Times.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

On this date in 1958, then-Sen. John F. Kennedy was visiting his sister Patricia and her husband, actor Peter Lawford, with plans to attend their daughter’s baptism the next day; he’d finished a 17-state campaign swing for fellow Democrats. As Kennedy chatted with reporters in his sister’s Santa Monica beachfront home, The Times’ William S. Murphy snapped an informal portrait in a relaxed moment, capturing him with his sports jacket tucked under his arm.

That photo became one of Jacqueline Kennedy’s favorites, and after her husband’s assassination in 1963, she asked that it be used in his first commemorative postage stamp. Murphy autographed the print and placed one of the stamps in the corner. Read more about Murphy, the photo and the stamp here.

CALIFORNIA

— L.A. Archbishop José Gomez, already the highest-ranking Latino in the U.S. Catholic Church, has marked another milestone by becoming the first Latino elected president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

— Former public defender Rachel Rossi is entering the L.A. County district attorney race, joining a field otherwise filled by career prosecutors and law enforcement officials in a bid to unseat D.A. Jackie Lacey.

— The U.S. has nearly 1,700 high-hazard dams in risky condition, an Associated Press review of federal data found. Six are in California.

— Five survivors of the Gilroy Garlic Festival mass shooting have sued the event’s organizers, saying negligent security contributed.

— Uber has appealed L.A.’s suspension of its permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes, setting up a possible legal showdown amid an impasse over the city’s new data-sharing rule.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

— Streaming service Disney+ launched to massive anticipation and (surprise!) technical glitches. One of its new original series, “The Mandalorian,” is the first live-action series in the “Star Wars” universe. TV critic Lorraine Ali says the first episode is the epitome of “Star Wars”: a safe, entertaining blockbuster.

Click Here: Cardiff Blues Store

— “Parasite” and its take on the class divide could end South Korea’s dry spell at the Oscars.

— “Mixed-ish” showrunner Karin Gist explains how Hollywood still makes inclusion hard to achieve.

— Netflix is out with its first look at its upcoming series about Selena.

NATION-WORLD

— Hate crimes rose sharply last year against Latinos and transgender people, per new FBI data, and there was a shift overall toward hate crimes against people, not property.

— From 7-degree cold in Chicago and dustings in Memphis to record snowfall in famously snowy Buffalo, a broad swath of the eastern half of the U.S. saw snow and cold records shattered as it was slammed by an arctic air mass that started in Siberia.

— Ousted Bolivian President Evo Morales landed in Mexico, where he has been granted political asylum. The avowed socialist, who became his country’s first indigenous president, has pledged to return and says he was the victim of a coup. Meanwhile, an opposition senator has declared herself interim president, and the U.S. appeared to recognize her as Bolivia’s new leader.

BUSINESS

— JetBlue is jumping on the budget-economy bandwagon with a no-frills fare option of its own, dubbed Blue Basic.

— Richard Plepler, who led HBO through its creative renaissance with “Game of Thrones” and other shows, is in advanced talks with Apple for a production deal to create original programming for its streaming service.

SPORTS

— As head coach of the Phoenix Suns, onetime Lakers coaching candidate Monty Williams has his new team off to a fast start. But the LeBron James and Kyle Kuzma led a late surge as the Lakers won Tuesday night at Phoenix, 123-115.

— Paul George will make his Clippers debut on the road this week, perhaps as soon as today in Houston.

— Matt Luff is bringing a more measured mind-set to what he hopes will be his second extended stint with the Kings.

OPINION

— Regardless of what the Supreme Court does, Congress should make DACA stronger and permanent, The Times Editorial Board writes.

— The U.S. has helped create a world in which extrajudicial drone executions are the norm, writes human rights advocate Jennifer Gibson.

— Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney‘s defiance of Democrats’ subpoenas in their impeachment inquiry highlights how limited Congress’ power is to enforce its demands, writes deputy editorial page editor Jon Healey.

WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING

— After the deadly crashes of two 737 Max jets, Boeing first blamed the pilots. Then a victim’s family — including a famous consumer-advocate uncle — got involved. (ProPublica / The New Yorker)

— Inside WeWork‘s toxic phone booths. (Businessweek)

— Tiny biotech companies, not giant drug makers, are worried House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s drug pricing bill could be “devastating” to their industry. (Stat News)

ONLY IN CALIFORNIA

Art Shapiro is a professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis and a collector of quotes, books, names and stories. Particular interests include Argentinian politics, hermetic texts, meteorology and cheap beer. His specialty, though, is butterflies. For nearly half a century, he has meticulously tracked butterfly populations at 10 sites in north-central California. And at 73, he has no plans to retire.

If you like this newsletter, please share it with friends. Comments or ideas? Email us at [email protected].

Contradicting a version of events presented by the U.S. military and reported widely by the corporate press, a human rights group and a journalist in Yemen are citing witnesses who said a raid by U.S. Navy SEALs on Monday night killed multiple innocent civilians and not just “Al Qaeda militants” as the Pentagon claimed.

“This new flawed raid by President Trump shows the US is not capable of distinguishing a terrorist from an innocent civilian.”
—Kate Higham, ReprieveReprieve, a UK-based human rights group, cited witnesses from the village of Al-Jubah in Marib province, where the raid took place, and offered the names of five civilians killed as Nasser Ali Mahdi Al-Adhal; Al-Ghader Saleh Salem Al-Adhal; Saleh Al-Taffaf; Yasser Al-Taffaf Al-Adhel; and Shebreen Saeed Salem Al-Adhal.

The witnesses said that none of those five were fighting for al-Qaeda and that Nasser al-Adhal, identified as being approximately 70-years-old and partially blind, was the first one shot by the U.S. soldiers when he mistook them for arriving guests and came out to greet them. According to Reprieve:

The four other villagers were killed when they started to argue with the Navy Seals after the shooting of Nasser al-Adhal. Six villagers were seriously injured, including another elderly man who was around 69-years-old.

Al-Qaeda fighters gathering nearby, who are thought to have been the original target of the raid, were alerted by the gunshots in the village and firefight ensued in which at least two of them were killed. The Navy SEALs then left with the help of air support from a helicopter.

Independent journalist Iona Craig, who has reported from the ground in Yemen for years, helped corroborate the version of events provided to Reprieve. “Five tribesmen amongst killed in US raid last night were not AQ,” Craig tweeted on Tuesday. “They were tribesmen of young activists who drove me from Mareb into Yakla.”

Part of the wider “global war on terror” that the U.S. began in the wake of the September 11th attacks in 2001, Yemen has been a target of drone strikes and clandestine operations for years. But as foreign policy experts and the people of Yemen have repeatedly stated, the use of drones and clandestine raids have only hardened Al-Qaeda’s position in the country and the killing of innocent civilians as provided a nearly perfect recruiting tool for the militant group.

In addition to backing the ongoing Saudi-led war against Yemen, the military under President Donald Trump has continued to target Al-Qaeda aligned forces in the country. In January, just days after his inauguration, Trump was roundly criticized for a botched raid that led to the death of one U.S. soldier and as many as thirty civilians, including children.

Kate Higham, head of the Assassinations Programme at Reprieve, said this week’s killing of more innocent Yemenis proves that Trump is no better than his predecessors when it comes to protecting civilian lives.