Two children and their great-grandmother are among five people to have died in a raging wildfire in northern California, reports say.
Two firefighters died on Thursday, 17 people are missing and tens of thousands have fled their homes.
The fires in Shasta county are being sucked up by strong winds to form “fire tornados” that are uprooting trees and overturning cars, fire officials say.
Firefighters are battling the blaze, which is only 5% contained so far.
The blazes, known as the Carr fire, have destroyed at least 500 structures and are threatening thousands of homes.
The wildfire began on Monday after a car malfunctioned.
It has scorched over 48,000 acres (194 sq km) of land – an area larger than the city of San Francisco.
Sherry Bledsoe has confirmed that her grandmother Melody Bledsoe, 70, and her two children Emily Roberts, five, and James Roberts, four, died in the fire, reports say.
They were caught in the path of the fire as they were about to evacuate their home in the town of Redding, NBC reported.
Melody Bledsoe’s husband, Ed, earlier described how she had called him while he was out shopping and told him to return home because the fire was getting close to the house.
When he reached home he found it destroyed and surrounded by police tape, he said.
Another relative told NBC that Melody Bledsoe had called police to say they were trapped inside the house but the line went dead during the call.
Two firefighters – fire inspector Jeremy Stoke, and a bulldozer operator who has not yet been named, died trying contain the blaze.
More than 3,400 firefighters have been deployed – but the local fire department has warned that hot, dry weather is forecast for the rest of the week, and could make the blaze worse.
“We are seeing fire whirls – literally what can be described as a tornado,” California department of forestry and fire protection (CalFire) chief, Ken Pimlott told reporters.
“This fire was whipped up into a whirlwind of activity” by gale-force winds, he said, “uprooting trees, moving vehicles, moving parts of roadways.”
“These are extreme conditions… we need to take heed and evacuate, evacuate, evacuate.”
About 37,000 residents have been forced to leave the area.
One local, Liz Williams, found herself and her two children stuck in traffic as people rushed to evacuate. She eventually fled by foot.
“I’ve never experienced something so terrifying in my life,” she told AP news agency. “I didn’t know if the fire was just going to jump out behind a bush and grab me and suck me in.”
The Carr fire is one of almost 90 active large fires in the US, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
In California, the Ferguson fire has killed one firefighter and led to the closure of much of Yosemite National Park, while the Cranston fire in Riverside County in the south has burned 11,500 acres (46 sq km) of land.
Wildfires are a common occurrence in California during the state’s long, hot, dry summers.
Cardinal McCarrick, prominent US Catholic, resigns over abuse claims
Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a prominent US cardinal accused of sexually assaulting a teenager nearly 50 years ago.
Theodore McCarrick, 88, a former Archbishop of Washington, must also carry out “penance and prayer” pending a canonical trial, the Vatican said.
Last month, US Church officials said the allegations were credible.
Mr. McCarrick has said he has “no recollection” of the alleged abuse.
Further allegations have since emerged.
Mr. McCarrick was one of the most prominent US cardinals and is one of the most high-profile Catholic leaders to face abuse claims.
In a statement, the Vatican said Pope Francis had accepted Mr. McCarrick’s resignation from the cardinalate and had ordered his suspension from the exercise of any public ministry.
The statement also said he would be placed in seclusion “for a life of prayer and penance until the accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial.”
His resignation means the titles of Cardinal and “your eminence” are removed, America Magazine editor and Jesuit priest James Martin said on Twitter.
Mr. McCarrick’s resignation from the cardinalate is the first since 1927, when Father Louis Billot resigned because of political tensions with the Holy See, according to the New York Times newspaper.
It is also the first time that an order to carry out penance and prayer has been made before a Church trial takes place, according to Catholic University legal expert Kurt Martens, quoted by AP news agency.
The Church is now “running out of options if you want to impose a further penalty” after a canonical trial, Mr. Martens told the Washington Post.
“I would not be surprised if he gets dismissed from the clerical state,” he said.
The Pope appears to “understand the gravity of the situation and further harm to the Catholic Church’s status,” AP quoted Terence McKiernan from BishopsAccountability.org as saying.
The Vatican’s quick action stands in contrast to previous instances where cardinals have faced allegations that they carried out or covered up abuse.
READ ALSO: Kebbi flood disaster, setback to agric revolution –Buhari
In 2013 Scottish Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien resigned as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh after being accused of sexual misconduct.
However he remained in the college of cardinals until he died earlier this year.
Slobodan Milosevic Ex-Serbia leader’s war crimes lawyer shot dead
A prominent lawyer who helped defend the former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic at his war crimes trial has been shot dead.
Dragoslav Ognjanovic, 57, was killed on Saturday evening outside his apartment building in the capital, Belgrade.
His 26-year-old son was also wounded in the shooting, the interior ministry said in a statement.
Mr. Ognjanovic served on the legal team for Mr. Milosevic during his trial at The Hague in the early 2000s.
The former president of Serbia was arrested in 2001 and held at the UN war crimes tribunal for genocide and other war crimes.
But he was found dead in his cell in 2006 before his trial could be completed.
He was facing three indictments relating to atrocities carried out in Kosovo, another for crimes in Croatia, and the third alleging genocide in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995.
In a statement, the head of the Bar Association in Belgrade said the shooting of Mr. Ognjanovic was an attack on all lawyers.
“[We will] exert maximum pressure on the competent state authorities in order to find the perpetrators of this crime,” Viktor Gostiljac said.
Mr. Ognjanovic also served as a defence lawyer in several high-profile mafia cases in Serbia and Montenegro.
A number of prominent members of Serbian and Montenegrin organised crime networks have been killed in Belgrade in recent years.
Police say the killings are part of a gang war over the illegal drugs market.
Israeli Arab MP resigns over controversial ‘nation state’ law
An Israeli Arab politician has resigned in opposition to a controversial new law which declares Israel to be the nation state of the Jewish people.
Zouheir Bahloul, 67, branded parliament “racist” and “destructive” for passing the law, which also revokes the status of Arabic as an official language.
“[The law] removes the Arab population from the path of equality in Israel,” he told Israeli TV network Reshet.
“I am resigning from the Knesset,” Mr. Bahloul, a member of the opposition Zionist Union party, said on Saturday.
“Should I sit on the fence? Should I give legitimacy to this destructive, racist, extremist parliament?”
He added that he could not face telling his grandson that he had kept his seat in the Knesset.
After the bill was passed, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised it as a “defining moment” in the country’s history.
“A hundred and twenty-two years after [the founder of modern Zionism Theodore] Herzl made his vision known, with this law we determined the founding principle of our existence,” he said.
Called The Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People, the legislation essentially defines Israel first and foremost as a Jewish state.
It was created because some Israeli Jewish politicians consider the founding principles of Israel’s creation, as a state for Jews in their ancient homeland, to be under threat.
But Israeli Arabs, who comprise about 20% of the country’s population, see it as evidence that Israel is downgrading their status.
They have equal rights under the law but have long complained of being treated as second-class citizens and say they face discrimination and worse provisions than Israeli Jews.