It started as a routine call for medical attention at an Ontario home early Saturday morning. But with a series of terrifying twists — a husband with gunshot wounds, a wife firing on arriving police, a five-hour hostage standoff — the call for help revealed a domestic tragedy.

Just after dawn, SWAT officers forced their way into the home on East F Street and discovered the bodies of the woman who had shot at police, a teenage girl and an elementary school-age boy, police said.

Police did not identify the deceased, but said the woman was an off-duty San Bernardino County probation officer. Her husband, who escaped the home when police arrived, is being treated for life-threatening injuries.

“We don’t have anybody to confirm identities yet,” said Ontario police Sgt. Bill Russell. “The husband is in the hospital and everybody else is deceased. So nobody has been able to shed light on what happened.”

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Investigators from the department and the coroner’s office were in the home Saturday hunting for answers to a host of questions: Who died first? Who shot whom? How are the children related to the adults? And, perhaps most difficult of all, why did this happen?

Russell said detectives were in contact with relatives of the couple and were also looking into whether there had been prior requests for aide at the residence.

The incident began shortly after 2:30 a.m. when the husband called 911. He indicated that someone was hurt in the home, but didn’t say anything about being shot himself, Russell said.

Officers went to the home with firefighters prepared to provide medical treatment. When they knocked on the door, the man answered and walked outside. It was clear he had been shot and officers looking through the doorway could see his wife holding a gun.

Russell said it was not clear whether officers or the woman fired first, but at some point she did shoot at them before barricading herself in the home.

“She … pretty much ceased all communication at that point,” Russell said.

Police learned that two children were possibly also in the house and called in SWAT and hostage negotiators. About 40 law enforcement officers descended on the neighborhood, a quiet area of single-family homes near a junior high, and nearby residences were evacuated while negotiators worked to establish contact with the woman. After about five hours without success, police entered the home and found the bodies, Russell said.

A spokeswoman for the probation department said she was still in the process of being briefed and had no immediate comment.

Beverly Hills police are investigating vandalism of Nessah Synagogue on Saturday morning after an employee arrived at the place of worship at 7 a.m. to discover an open door, overturned furniture and damage to several relics.

Police are investigating the incident as a hate crime but report that there is no evidence to suggest that the attack was anti-Semitic in nature. The synagogue’s main scrolls were locked up and undamaged.

Damage inside the synagogue was “ugly,” according to one witness who had conversations with people who saw the damage first hand, and will require extensive cleanup.

A place of worship for the Persian Jewish community in Southern California, the Nessah Synagogue occupies a respected place in Los Angeles’ Iranian community. It was founded by David Shofet, who immigrated to the United States in 1980 from Tehran in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution.

When members arrived Saturday morning for Shabbat, they found papers and fliers from the lobby strewn across the front of the property. Police soon cordoned off Rexford Drive, where the synagogue is located.

“This cowardly attack hits at the heart of who we are as a community,” Mayor John Mirisch said in a statement. “It is not just an attack on the Jewish Community of Beverly Hills; it’s an attack on all of us. The entire City stands in solidarity behind Nessah, its members and congregants.”

The attack comes at a time when the community is especially alert to anti-Semitic violence. On Tuesday, two shooters attacked a cemetery and a Jewish grocery store in Jersey City, N.J., leaving six dead.

“In the aftermath of the terrible tragedy in Jersey City earlier this week, the American Jewish community is understandably anxious,” said Richard Hirschhaut, director of the American Jewish Committee in Los Angeles. “Reports of vandalism and damage to a synagogue are deeply troubling and cause further sense of discomfort amid the presumption of anti-Semitic intent.”

Moshe Isaacian has been a member of the Nessah Synagogue for 16 years. Isaacian said that the temple often rallied for other synagogues in the country that have experienced similar acts of vandalism.

“To have this happen on our home turf is very jarring,” he said. “Our community can’t stay silent about this.”

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On Twitter, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti also expressed his concern.

“Shocked and outraged by the vandalism at Nessah Synagogue in the city of Beverly Hills,” he said. “We will stand together and speak out strongly against any act of hate and intolerance in our community. We’re keeping our friends and neighbors in our thoughts as police investigate.”

On Saturday afternoon, Beverly Hills police released a description of the suspect as a white man, 20 to 25 years old with short dark curly hair, a thin build, wearing possibly prescription glasses and carrying a backpack and pulling a rolling suitcase.

Susan Lieu had been sitting in her car for over an hour. She planned to stop quickly by her tailor’s shop, to have a hole in her costume mended. But she couldn’t make it home in time for her Times interview, so she made do by taking the call in the Seattle tailor’s parking lot.

It’s one of many chats Lieu has scheduled directly with reporters. She has no public relations consultant, no representative emailing video links or offering photography of her onstage.

Lieu has to self-promote for her solo show, coming to Los Angeles’ Highways Performance Space on Saturday and Sunday and Orange County’s Nguoi Viet Community Room on Dec. 21-22. It’s a national tour for which she’s juggling nearly every job behind-the-scenes: writer, performer, financier. She has spent tens of thousands of dollars of her own money.

Titled “140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother,” the 75-minute performance recounts how, when Lieu was 11, her mother went in for plastic surgery and died mid-procedure from loss of oxygen to her brain. Directed by Sara Porkalob, the show sees Lieu playing 12 characters and tackling emotionally taxing topics like the dangerous ideal of Vietnamese feminine beauty, the lack of accountability in the medical system, and forgiveness amid overwhelming grief.

A trailer for Susan Lieu’s show “140 LBS.”

“The hardest part of all this isn’t the performance, surprisingly, because it seems to really resonate with people,” Lieu said. “What I’ve really found to be difficult about this whole thing is to do it gracefully, to still enjoy this process of being pregnant.”

Because if it weren’t enough of a challenge to be reliving a family tragedy onstage and coordinating everything offstage, Lieu is also expecting a child.

“I’m six months now — it’s the size of an eggplant!” exclaimed Lieu, who has been journaling about her journey toward motherhood. Those thoughts will be included in an expanded version of the show called “Over 140 LBS,” which she’ll premiere in February in Seattle. By then, she’ll have performed 51 shows in 10 cities, for a total audience of 6,500.

What Lieu gets done offstage is as impressive as the moving narrative she performs onstage.

“When I’m not performing, I’m making sure that I’ve done all the math right and all my checks have cleared, that I’m talking to enough press in the next few cities, that I’ve reached out to every single person I know who lives there,” she said. “I’m constantly updating my website and posting on social media to promote the show, I’m reaching out to groups or organizations in every city to get interest. It’s a lot and, yeah, it’s nonstop!”

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An undergraduate alum of Harvard and graduate of the Yale School of Business, Lieu prioritized performing “140 LBS” nationwide after getting laid off from her management consulting gig.

“That was the biggest gift I could have ever gotten, because I would have just kept working and only dreaming of doing this someday,” she said. It wasn’t the best time to pursue her passion, since she and her husband had recently bought a house and were discussing when to start a family. “But I couldn’t imagine telling my future kid to be anything they wanted to be when I wasn’t really doing that myself.”

Lieu launched her tour using the profits from nine sold-out shows in Seattle, plus more in her hometown of San Francisco. She made a meticulous rubric of major U.S. cities with Vietnamese populations — potential audiences with whom the show may resonate with most — plus every single person she knew in each region. Her decision to circumvent the gatekeepers of theatermaking wasn’t to make any kind of a statement, but because she was facing her own deadline.

“I thought, I have a mortgage, I have massive student loans, and I have a baby coming — I cannot wait for my next break, I don’t have time to see if an artistic director will program me in one or two years from now,” Lieu said. “I don’t have any formal theater training, so I honestly didn’t really know I was breaking the rules because I didn’t know the rules to begin with.”

Her unconventional approach has led to performances in nontraditional spaces, like a funeral home in San Francisco and George R.R. Martin’s Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe. Other times, she booked theaters as private rentals and hoped its ticket sales would cover costs. “I just thought: How can I make this successful? If I were working with a startup, with a small budget and these kinds of time limits, what kind of unconventional things should they try?”

Lieu keeps the show’s overhead low. Everything she needs to perform — denim jacket, maternity clothing and some digitized family photos that get projected onstage — fits in a carry-on suitcase. She hires a local stage manager in each city to set up the space, execute the performance and sell merchandise afterward, when Lieu usually can be found chatting with ticket-holders who share their own stories.

It’s a solo show, sure, but Lieu isn’t in this alone. Thanks to the generosity of friends, family members and community organizations, Lieu has paid for only about half of her car rentals and flights — a godsend, since her stops include New York, Pittsburgh, Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C. In a 10-city tour, she is paying for just one night of lodging, instead couch-surfing with friends and family. Multiple photographers have gifted her with head shots and production stills.

“I acknowledge my privilege here — I have access to these alumni networks, I have friends who are extremely generous with their time and their contacts, I’m married,” she said. “I’m so thankful that these people believe in the work enough to help me share it.

“And the fans, they buy tickets for friends in other cities to see the show, they help hang up posters, they tag their friends on social media. They have been behind me a hundred percent pushing this vision bigger and better than I could have imagined.”

Lieu hopes to evolve “140 LBS” into a book or a streaming special, or adapt it into a narrative feature or miniseries. She credits her entrepreneurial approach to theater-making to her Yale degree but also her parents — Vietnamese refugees who provided for her by opening a nail salon. And she’s happy to advise other playwrights or performers who want to take control of this process as she has.

“If you follow the conventional, traditional path, you will have a conventional, traditional result,” she said. “That just wasn’t an option for me, and I’m so happy for that. If I were just waiting for someone to discover me, there’s no way I would have already performed the show as many times as I have.”

“Fortnite” is already one of the biggest games on the planet — more than 250 million people are estimated to have given the game a try — and over the last year it’s proven itself relatively adept at advertising, especially for Disney brands such as Marvel and “Star Wars.”

On Saturday, “Fortnite” put director J.J. Abrams live into the game to introduce a less-than-60-second clip of his upcoming film “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” due in theaters next week. Abrams joked that he’s never been thinner than his digital “Fortnite” self, and he traded some barbs with a Stormtrooper, comedian Ben Schwartz portraying the world’s most juvenile First Order soldier. Then those who tuned in watched a brief clip featuring Daisy Ridley’s Rey, John Boyega’s Finn and and Oscar Isaac’s Poe.

It furthers Epic Games’ continued attempts to evolve “Fortnite” from a competitive multiplayer game to a communal hangout full of limited-time events. Earlier this year, the game was given a makeover to promote “Avengers: Endgame” and before that “Fortnite” hosted a live in-game concert from electronic artist Marshmello. The goal is to “push the idea of what a persistent virtual place can be” said, Donald Mustard, Epic’s worldwide creative director, at Thursday evening’s Game Awards. The host of the Game Awards as well as today’s “Fortnite” event, Geoff Keighley, described it as a “talk show.”

Consider it a fascinating experiment designed to meld a living narrative with an often aggressive, albeit cartoonish, game. Yet it’s also an acknowledgment that our virtual worlds are hangout spaces every bit as vital as our physical ones, using, as Keighley described on social media, “game worlds as a basis for original programming.” With players having the ability to walk around the virtual world — and, of course, dance while Abrams spoke — “Fortnite” went from a battleground to a theater stage.

And there was clearly demand for the event Saturday, as Epic delayed it for 10 minutes to allow more players to join. I arrived about 40 minutes early but eventually left and rejoined at the designated 11 a.m. PST start time, as my digital avatar was routinely being killed.

That’s one potential shortcoming of hosting communal activities in a game. One must be willing to adapt to the rules of the digital universe. Ultimately, if you come alone, you’ll need to come ready to play. Blissfully, combat was turned off closer to the event’s launch. Commercials, after all, must arrive with no distractions, and once things got underway the game shifted our attention to the Millennium Falcon entering the “Fortnite” world amid a battle with First Order ships.

Before the clip we were treated to some of “Fortnite’s” adolescent humor. Those participating were asked to vote on what we would see, with choices from “Darth Jar-Jar” to a power ballad duet between Rey and Adam Driver’s villain character Kylo Ren. It was a light attempt to create a sense of audience participation but felt more like padding to make up for what would be such a brief scene from the film.

As for the actual clip from “The Rise of Skywalker,” it wasn’t one that provided any significant spoilers, unless you’re the type who analyzes every fashion and weapon choice of the characters. But it was entertaining enough, and it showed that while Abrams is bringing the Skywalker saga to an end, he’s thankfully doing so with the franchise’s trademark goofy humor.

We watched our heroes exit a ship that appeared to have just landed on a First Order starship. They proceeded to take out a couple of Stormtroopers and sneakily zip around enemy territory before being cornered by more Stormtroopers. This allowed Rey to flash some of her Force powers, namely the famous Jedi mind tricks. “It’s OK that we’re here,” she said, as the troopers proceeded to agree. “It’s OK,” said one, before another added more comically, “It’s good.”

The clip ended with Poe making an aside to Finn: “Does she do that to us?”

Fans didn’t leave empty-handed. Well, virtually empty-handed. Those who took in the clip were gifted a lightsaber to add to their “Fortnite” weapon arsenal.

This isn’t the first time Epic has dipped into the “Star Wars” universe. The company’s technology helps power the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. The latter represents a fully game-like theme park attraction, with six guests taking on the role of pilots, gunners or engineers as they go on a mission to steal cargo.

Saturday’s brief snippet likely wasn’t going to live up the two and a half day pre-event tease, especially for those who had trouble logging on or didn’t want to deal with all the “Fortnite” trappings. But like a Super Bowl commercial, we gather round because it’s hard to resist a spectacle, and for many, “Fortnite” is as much a place to hang with friends on the weekend as it is a spot to play.

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With the holidays fast approaching, “Saturday Night Live” set aside the week’s political news of the impeachment battle in the House of Representatives for a potentially more contentious setting: houses hosting family dinners across America.

Toggling between three geographic locations, “Saturday Night Live” offered a snapshot from Christmas dinner tables across ideologies, including Trump supporters, progressives and a black family in Atlanta. Although impeachment was the dominant topic along party lines for two of those groups, Kenan Thompson’s patriarch took a different tack, asking, “Who do you think is getting voted off ‘Masked Singer’ next week?”

While Chris Redd’s visiting son pleaded with his family to talk politics, Thompson’s father character made a compelling if more grounded case, asking, “Oh, you mean talk about how Trump is getting impeached but reelected? I don’t think so.”

The sketch continued switching through its various political contrasts, including some hearty laughter about Pete Buttigieg’s appeal in Atlanta, Beck Bennett’s Trump-supporting dad earning a federal appointment after a presidential retweet and Thompsons’ toast for a year that saw “three black quarterbacks who have beaten Tom Brady.” But, in switching to focus on an all-knowing snowman that recalled Leon Redbone’s cameo in 2003’s “Elf,” “Saturday Night Live” offered a reminder that none of these opinions mattered because of their respective home states, thanks to the holiday “magic” of the electoral college.

Lest that cold splash of political reality threaten to end things on a discouraging note, Kate McKinnon arrived as recent Time magazine Person of the Year Greta Thunberg, who wished everyone a “merry last Christmas to all.” Later, referencing the petulant tweet from the president in the wake of the Person of the Year news, McKinnon’s Thunberg responded by saying, “I can’t believe I’m saying this to a 70-year-old man, but grow up.”

Current events turned up again later in the episode, which was hosted by Scarlett Johansson with musical guest Niall Horan. Referencing the actress’ role in Noah Baumbach’s Netflix drama “A Marriage Story,” Johansson played a therapist to contentious political power couple George and Kellyanne Conway.

Recounting their divergent ideological viewpoints that often play out on social media, the couple were taken aback to realize they were in counseling and not speaking with the media. “What you say doesn’t leave this room,” Johansson assured them. The Conways looked confused. “Then why are we doing this?” they asked.

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LONDON (AP) — Oscar-winning British actor Colin Firth has split from his Italian film producer wife Livia Giuggioli after 22 years of marriage.

Their publicists said in a statement that the couple “maintain a close friendship and remain united in their love for their children.”

The pair, who lived together in London and Rome, have two sons, Luca and Matteo, who were both born in Rome.

A joint statement from their publicists confirmed the news Friday and said they would not comment further.

Firth, who won the best actor Oscar and a Golden Globe in 2011 for his portrayal of stuttering British monarch King George VI in “The King’s Speech,” also has a son with former partner Meg Tilly.

Giuggioli is an environmental activist and co-founder and creative director of Eco-Age, a sustainable consultancy firm.

A California law that will make alligator-skin boots and purses taboo has Louisiana farmers ornery.

The Bayou State accused California in a lawsuit of trying to “destroy” the lucrative market for American alligator with its ban on the sale of the animals’ skins.

Due to take effect Jan. 1, the ban has already resulted in canceled orders and a steep drop in the price for alligator skins, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Sacramento. Louisiana asked a judge to put the restriction on hold while it challenges it in court.

The alligator skins are just the latest items on California’s hit list. Free plastic grocery bags and complimentary plastic straws in restaurants aren’t allowed. Sales of foie gras and fur are banned. And California also became the first state to prohibit pet stores from selling dogs, cats or rabbits that don’t come from shelters or adoption centers.

California banned the sale of alligator skins decades ago over concerns about animal cruelty and the dwindling number of the animals left in the wild. But for years, lawmakers granted exemptions, and only now are they allowing the ban to take effect.

Louisiana officials say the alligator industry pumps $80 million a year into the state. Trappers collected 15,052 alligator skins in 2017 while farmers harvested 382,039 alligators valued at more than $70 million, including the meat, according to the Louisiana Alligator Advisory Council.

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If allowed to stand, the California ban will devastate the industry, state officials say.

“If the California ban is allowed to go into effect — it would destroy the alligator industry and its jobs in Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and California,” Louisiana Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry said in a statement.

The California attorney general’s office didn’t have an immediate comment on the lawsuit, but the state often sets the pattern for others to follow.

“California’s large economy often results in its product standards becoming de facto national standards,” said the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission, which filed the lawsuit, citing vehicle emission standards and product labeling standards as examples.

Companies won’t make state-specific products and will instead forgo using alligator altogether, the commission said.

The group claims that California’s ban violates federal laws that allow the sale and importation of alligator skins throughout the country.

American alligators were once threatened by extinction, but after being placed on the endangered species list in 1967, the population rebounded, and in 1979 rules were adopted to allow the export of American alligator hides. The American alligator is now listed as “threatened due to similarity of appearance” to other species throughout its range, according to the lawsuit.

Already, one tannery canceled an order for 600 alligator hides and “one of the world’s largest purchasers” has threatened to quit buying hides entirely, according to the suit.

“Foreign tanners and manufacturers have stated that if California ports are closed to importation of alligator products, it will become too confusing to keep their clients informed of which U.S. ports can or cannot receive alligator products,” the commission claims.

The ban and the accompanying price drop are pushing up the cost of controlling “nuisance” gators, the commission says. The price of hides has fallen so much that Louisiana wildlife officials are now having to pay for removal of nuisance alligators, whereas earlier, trappers would get rid of them for their hides and meat.

Burnson writes for Bloomberg.

Still have money set aside for medical expenses that you need to spend by the end of the year?

There are plenty of ways to meet the deadline for flexible spending accounts, and you don’t need to buy big-ticket items. You can use up the balance on everyday purchases such as bandages and items you’ve already bought.

Flexible spending accounts, or FSAs, let workers have pretax money deducted from each paycheck to pay for healthcare costs not covered by insurance or other plans. For 2019, the amount was up to $2,700. Next year, it’s $2,750. Because they’re not taxed, those dollars go further.

“Most people could find 10 things that they buy regularly that could qualify for FSA” by reviewing their receipts from pharmacies and supermarkets, said Jina Etienne, a Silver Spring, Md., certified public accountant. “It’s tedious, but I’ll do a lot for free money.”

The accounts are popular. There are about 15 million of them covering a total of 35 million Americans, said Jeremy Miller, founder of the decade-old FSAstore.com, which guarantees all 4,500 products it sells are FSA-eligible and notes which items require a doctor’s prescription.

Pharmacy chains and some major retailers also indicate FSA-eligible items on their websites, including CVS Health, Walgreens, Costco, Walmart and Amazon. They usually also note which purchases are FSA-eligible on customer receipts, making record keeping easier.

To start, check your spending deadline with your FSA plan administrator or employee benefits office. Some plans have a use-it-or-lose-it policy. But most companies give workers until mid-March of the next year to spend the balance or let them roll over up to $500, said Gary M. DuBoff of accounting firm MBAF in New York.

Then review what you’ve already spent, check your medicine cabinet for things running low, and try squeezing in care you’ve postponed, like lab tests or getting an eye exam and new eyeglasses.

Some often-overlooked items that experts note are FSA-eligible:

— Copays for doctor and emergency room visits, prescription medicines, other out-of-pocket expenses and some health insurance premiums.

— Bandages, hearing aids, first aid kits, antiseptic spray and wound ointments, heating pads, compression socks, blood sugar test kits, pill organizers, blood pressure monitors, crutches, wheelchairs, and wigs for people who’ve lost their hair due to a disease, along with replacement batteries and shipping costs.

— Family planning expenses such as birth control pills, pregnancy tests, prenatal vitamins, in vitro fertilization, vasectomies and abortions.

— Baby and child items such as breast pumps and related supplies, breastfeeding classes, training pants but not regular diapers, allergy ID bracelets and “smart” items such as socks that monitor breathing and wireless thermometer patches.

— Dental treatments, including X-rays, teeth cleaning, fillings, crowns, braces, extractions, dentures and denture cleaning supplies and fluoride treatments to prevent tooth decay.

— Out-of-pocket costs for corrective eye surgery, prescription glasses, readers, wipes and repair kits for glasses and contact lenses and solutions.

—Over-the-counter medicines for colds, allergies and pain and more usually are not FSA-eligible, but they are if your doctor writes a prescription for them.

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— Fitness-recovery products such as braces for wrists, knees and elbows, along with hot and cold packs, portable nerve-stimulating devices to control pain and special elastic tape to support injured areas.

— Steam inhalers and CPAP machines for respiratory care.

— Ambulance rides, lodging near a hospital and trips to your doctor, via car, taxi or public transit. Receipts or written records are needed.

— Inpatient addiction treatment, service animal costs, nursing services and Braille books.

Before buying anything you want to deduct, make sure it’s FSA-eligible. Check with your plan or review Internal Revenue Service publication 502 for allowable medical deductions. Sometimes there are limitations. For example, sunscreen and lip balm are only eligible with an SPF of 15 or higher.

DuBoff noted that plenty of items don’t qualify, including cosmetic surgery, medicines purchased from outside the U.S., pet medicines and medical marijuana.

Johnson writes for the Associated Press.

DAVAO, Philippines (AP) — A strong earthquake jolted the southern Philippines on Sunday, killing at least one person and causing a three-story building to collapse, setting off a search for an unspecified number of people who were feared to have been trapped inside, officials said.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the magnitude 6.9 quake struck an area about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) northwest of Padada town in Davao del Sur province at a depth of 30 kilometers (18 miles). The region has been battered by a series of powerful quakes in recent months.

A child died in a village in Davao del Sur’s Matanao town when a wall of her house tumbled down as the ground shook and hit her in the head, officials said.

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Davao del Sur Gov. Douglas Cagas said a three-story building housing a grocery store collapsed in downtown Padada during the quake, trapping an unspecified number of people inside. Search and rescue efforts were underway, he told the DZMM radio network, adding that a still-unknown number of people were injured in his province.

Matanao Mayor Vincent Fernandez said his two-story town hall was badly damaged by the intense shaking, along with two bridges and several buildings already weakened by previous quakes.

“The shaking was different this time, it wasn’t swaying. It’s like a roller was rumbling by underneath,” Fernandez told DZMM from an emergency shelter. As he was being interviewed, he paused briefly, saying the ground was shaking again in the latest of dozens of aftershocks.

Fernandez appealed for food packs and tents to be used by residents who needed immediate shelter from the rainy weather. Many buildings that can be used as evacuation centers have been damaged by recent earthquakes, he said.

President Rodrigo Duterte was safe with his daughter in his house in Davao city, where the earthquake was felt strongly. He returned to sleep after the tremors, said Brig. Gen. Jose Niembra, who heads the presidential security force.

Classes in Davao del Sur province, along with cities and town, including Davao, will be suspended Monday to allow checks on the stability of school buildings. Some cities and town lost their power due to the quake, officials said.

The Davao region has been hit by several earthquakes in recent months, causing some deaths and scores of injuries and badly damaging houses, hotels, malls and hospitals.

The Philippine archipelago lies on the so-called Pacific “Ring of fire,” an arc of faults around the Pacific Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes occur. It’s also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms each year, making the Southeast Asian nation of more than 100 million people one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.

Beirut — 

Libya’s aspiring strongman Khalifa Haftar has besieged Tripoli for months in a bid to enter the capital, unseat the U.N.-recognized government and cement his hold over the country. But the septuagenarian general, who heads a grouping of factions styling themselves as the Libyan National Army, has made little headway, despite his many backers.

Now, there is new urgency in his campaign as tensions rise in a nearby flashpoint: the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

The saber-rattling began last month, when Turkey signed a memorandum of understanding with the Libyan government in Tripoli establishing economic maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean. The agreement, which went into effect last week, involves the same underwater region where Greece, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt also are competing for gas and oil riches.

The deal has brought fresh umbrage upon Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from the European Union, Egypt and others, and it also threatens an escalation in Libya’s long-festering civil war, with Turkey set to deploy its troops to insure the survival of the so-called Government of National Accord (and the maritime agreement with it) even as Haftar’s patrons — including Russia, the United Arab Emirates and France — redouble their efforts to destroy it.

The threat to add Turkish boots on the ground in Libya — a chaotic free-for-all of militias fighting alongside mercenaries from Russia, Sudan and Chad as well as military personnel from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and France — has stirred up a flurry of diplomatic maneuverings: On Wednesday, Erdogan phoned Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the possibility of a “speedy cease-fire and resumption of intra-Libyan peace talks,” according to Russian state news; Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Sisi spoke before a forum in the south of Egypt, saying he planned along with partner states to end the crisis in Libya “within months”; Greece and Turkey tussled over the legality of the maritime agreement in the United Nations; and the U.S., already alarmed by reports of Russian troops in the country, discussed Libya in a meeting between Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

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“There is no military solution to this. There is no capacity for any of the forces that are competing there to resolve this in a way that they can create victory on the battlefield that leads to a political resolution that has stability,” said Pompeo after the meeting. “We want to work with the Russians to get to the negotiating table, have a series of conversations that ultimately lead to a disposition that creates what the U.N. has been trying to do for an awfully long time.”

There was little talk of political resolution from Haftar.

“The zero hour is nigh, the hour of the … crushing incursion awaited by every honorable, free Libyan,” said Haftar in a televised address Thursday meant to exhort his troops to wage a “final assault” on Tripoli.

Since then, his Libyan National Army forces have escalated their offensive on Tripoli’s southern outskirts.

At stake is more than just the massive wealth of Libya, a country flush with the world’s tenth largest oil reserves and vast mineral resources, not to mention its status as a major transit hub with almost 1,200 miles of Mediterranean coastline. There are also some 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 122 trillion cubic feet of gas estimated to be in the east Mediterranean , according to a 2010 study by the U.S. Geographical Survey; it’s a prospective bonanza that has already kicked up acrimonious disputes among nations in the region.

U.S. companies are already investing in those areas.

This month, Noble Energy, a Houston-based hydrocarbon exploration company, said it would deliver commercial gas sales to the Israeli domestic market and regional markets from the Leviathan field off Israel’s shores. ExxonMobil has announced one of the world’s largest natural gas discoveries near the Greek portion of Cyprus and said it would work with the Greek Cypriot government to develop it. (Cyprus is a divided country, with Turkey recognizing a Turkish Cypriot state in the northern part of the island.)

Turkey’s agreement with Libya further complicates a growing diplomatic row over the issue of exclusive economic zones, or EEZs. The U.N.’s Convention on the Law of the Sea grants countries 212 miles from their coast where they can claim exclusive fishing, mining and drilling rights. But there isn’t enough distance between the countries on the East Mediterranean, which means they have squabbled over where to place the boundaries separating their EEZs.

The deal also promises to funnel more weapons into Libya, which, more than eight years after a NATO operation dislodged Col. Moammar Kadafi, persists as a maelstrom of violence that birthed its own Islamic State affiliate and has left the country divided between rival governments supported by an array of international actors.

Last Monday, a panel of experts tasked by the U.N. released a report detailing a large portion of that support — weapons transfers to Libya despite an international arms embargo on the country.

The 376-page report, complete with shipping receipts and related correspondence, cites consistent and “sometimes blatant” violations of the embargo by the Emirates, Egypt, France, Jordan and Russia, which deliver military support to Haftar; and Turkey, which has become the Tripoli government’s main supporter. (There were also half-hearted attempts at hiding the violations; one transaction involved an Irish navy patrol vessel bought by the UAE as a “pleasure yacht” before appearing in Haftar’s navy.)

In recent weeks, the generosity of Haftar’s backers has changed the calculus of the battlefield near Tripoli’s southern suburbs, where his forces have been mired in stalemate since April.

Though Haftar has yet to break the deadlock, said Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya specialist at the Clingendael Institute, the fighters aligned with the Tripoli government are outgunned and may soon be forced to abandon their defense of the capital.

“You realize it’s an international alliance with unlimited resources, that it’s here forever, and you’re standing with your AK-47,” Harchaoui said in an interview Wednesday.

Pompeo criticized the violations in his remarks Wednesday, saying that “no nation ought to be providing incremental material inside of Libya.”

“It only creates more risk, more violence and moves us away further from the political resolution that Libya so desperately needs.”

But it’s unclear what, if any, leverage the U.S. has. Aside from a tacit blessing of Haftar’s assault on Tripoli when he started the operation in April, President Trump and his administration have largely taken a hands-off approach. That has changed with the entry of Russian troops, said Frederic Wehrey, a Libya scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, but it may not be enough.

“There’s a cooling of enthusiasm regarding Haftar in the White House, but how far is the U.S. really going to push to stop this war?” Wehrey said in a phone interview Wednesday, adding that Haftar had met with high-level U.S. officials warning him of involvement with the Russians.