• A fire broke out at California's Moss Landing Power Plant on Thursday.
• The plant, said in 2023 to be the world's largest, stores energy for the California grid.
• 40% of the battery plant was burned, officials said, terming it a "disaster."

A major fire broke out Thursday at one of the world's largest battery storage plants.

The facility — in Moss Landing in northern California — stores energy for general use as part of the state grid and is a significant part of California's clean energy efforts.

Officials in Monterey County said it caught fire Thursday afternoon, prompting evacuation orders for over 2,000 people. County officials said at a press conference Friday that the fire caused no injuries or deaths and that most of the fire is now extinguished.

North County Fire Protection District Chief Joel Mendoza said at the press conference that every battery rack inside the facility has a "fire suppression system," but it wasn't enough.

"In other incidents that we've had, that system has worked perfectly," Mendoza said. "In this particular case, that system was not sufficient. It was overridden and that led to fire overtaking the system and eventually overtaking the entire building."

Ali Rangwala, the director of the explosion protection engineering program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, told Business Insider that lithium-ion batteries, being a high-energy-density fuel, present a possibility of an explosion hazard.

"Besides toxic gases, batteries also off-gas — or release — hydrogen, carbon monoxide, etc," Ranwala said in an email to Business Insider. "These gases, if confined and ignited, can pose an explosion hazard. This could propel fragments over large distances, depending on fuel load."

Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church said at the press conference that the incident was "more than just a fire."

"It's really a wake-up call for this industry, and if we're going to be moving ahead with sustainable energy, we need to have a safer battery system in place," Church told reporters.

Church said the fire is the fourth at the site since 2019.

"There are two battery operations going on there, and both of them have had fires, and this has got to be the last one," Church said.

The facility is operated by Vistra Energy, a Fortune 500 firm based in Irving, Texas. It serves some 4 million residential and commercial customers across 20 states.

Although its stock price was down just over 5% in premarket trading on Friday, it has soared more than 330% in the past 12 months, valuing it at $59 billion.

One of the batteries at Moss Landing, the Elkhorn Battery, was built in partnership with Tesla.

The system uses Tesla Megapack battery units, which contain lithium-ion batteries and power conversion equipment, and has a capacity of 730 megawatt hours of energy storage.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on X that any insinuation that the fire is related to Tesla is "false."

"This fire has nothing to do with Tesla and our Megapacks are operating well," Musk wrote.

Vistra Director of Community Affairs Brad Watson said at the press conference that the company is hiring an outside consultant to help with air quality testing in the area around the fire in addition to testing by the local government and the EPA.

"Safety is our top priority, and we've heard the comments, last night and this morning, from residents and officials, about the concern about air quality from what happened at our facility," Watson said.

In a press release announcing the plant's expansion in 2023, Texas-based Vistra Energy said it was one of the world's largest battery storage plants.

The site has experienced problems before. In 2015, a transmission tower at the power plant collapsed, resulting in a significant power outage.

A failing heat detector also damaged the battery complex in 2021, and in 2022, a fire broke out at a nearby Pacific Gas & Electric-owned battery plant.

Church said that the expansion of renewable energy in Monterey County "needs to be safe" and that he had been "personally assured" that the kind of fire that broke out Thursday would not happen at the facility.

"There were safety protocols in place," Church said. "Well, obviously, that failed. And I think that just shows the nature that nobody knows really what we're dealing with here in this technology, and as the importance of it is, we got to learn a lot more about it."

• Providing on-site protection during a fire is a tiny part of what private firefighting companies do, executives told BI.
• Crews for on-site protection cost thousands per day.
• Companies in the space said they mostly contract with the federal government or insurers, not private landowners.

Private firefighters aren't doing what you likely think they are — not exactly.

Reports of wealthy homeowners in the Los Angeles area paying private firefighters thousands of dollars per day have spread on social media in the past week, perpetuating the perception among some that on-site emergency protection for structures is what the industry is all about. Executives at two California-based private firefighting companies told Business Insider that's not the case.

Private firefighting for individual private landowners is niche

Jess Wills, president of Firestorm Wildland Fire Suppression, says his business primarily focuses on contracting with the federal government to suppress wildfires.

Deborah Miley, the executive director of the National Wildfire Suppression Agency, which represents more than 300 private firefighting companies, told BI that private firefighters have been contracting with the federal government since the 1980s, whereas the sliver of the industry that contracts directly with private landowners is "in its infancy." Some private companies also contract directly with insurers, Miley said, a practice that is also relatively new and far more common than working with homeowners directly.

Private firefighting as it's often perceived — with trucks stationed outside an individual's home, dousing it with water as a blaze burns — is not widespread, Wills said. He said that the practice makes up a tiny part of his business.

Private contractors who work for owners of homes or private land comprise less than 1% of the private fire service industry, according to the National Wildfire Suppression Association. Some private firefighting companies contract with insurance carriers to protect properties.

Wills said he first noticed interest in on-site fire suppression from private landowners a little under two decades ago.

"You started seeing high-net-worth folks making phone calls," Wills told BI, saying he doesn't publicly advertise the service. "For us, what happens is, fires kick-off, and then people start just getting online, Googling, searching 'private fire protection,' and somehow we come up."

Joe Torres, the founder of All Risk Shield, said he offers on-site protection as a small portion of his business. All Risk Shield provides three tiers of year-round fire defense services at varying price points, with the most basic costing $2,500 per year. The first tier includes preventive maintenance, and the second adds fire monitoring and further preparatory services. Only tier three, the most expensive, includes an on-site team to protect a property during a blaze. He declined to share how much tier three costs.

All Risk Shield doesn't offer on-site protection outside of the year-round package. Torres, who was a public firefighter for 24 years before founding his company, said he only has "a handful of those clients" who opt for a tier three service in California.

On-site protection can cost thousands per day

Neither Wills nor Torres shared how much it costs to hire a private firefighting crew for on-site emergency protection for an individual landowner. Both said that estimates of around $5,000 per day are consistent with what they believe some competitors charge.

Wills told BI that he charges individuals a very similar rate to the federal government — for a three-person crew in California, he said his contracts with the federal government cost about $4,000 per day. Rates vary based on location, the size of the property, and the number of trucks, he said.

Torres said his primary goal is to make basic fire protection accessible to as many people as possible, particularly through his least expensive, tier-one package. He said he worries that some companies are charging people exorbitant rates in dire situations.

"I've heard some numbers and some stuff, and it doesn't sound good," he said.

David Torgerson, the CEO of a company that exclusively works with insurers, previously told BI that he never interfaces with homeowners. His company, he said, protects vulnerable structures ahead of fires based on risk, not value.

Aspects of the private firefighting industry could be on the rise

Wills doesn't anticipate that the private firefighting industry will significantly grow in the next few years or that many people will take preventative action to fire-proof their homes. He said people are quick to forget about fires a few months after they happen.

Torres said he has seen an uptick in business since 2018, telling BI that there has been "significant growth" in his company since 2020. Miley, of the National Wildfire Suppression Agency, said she thinks more people will become interested in fire-hardening, or protecting their properties before a blaze comes in.

Fire mitigation strategies can include applying protective gels, removing combustibles, and cleaning gutters, Torgerson previously told BI. Typically, his crews will work on insured properties hours or days before a wildfire is anticipated to pass through.

Customers using private firefighters face criticism

Some of the few Californians that have hired on-site protection for their homes have faced criticism.

Keith Wasserman, cofounder and managing partner of Gelt Venture Partners, a Los Angeles-based real estate investment firm, sparked backlash after posting on social media asking if anyone had access to private firefighters to protect his home in Pacific Palisades, where the average property price is around $3.4 million.

"Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in the Pacific Palisades?" he asked in a since-deleted X post earlier this month. "Need to act fast here. All neighbors houses burning. Will pay any amount."

Wasserman didn't reply to a request for comment from Business Insider.

It's not the first time celebrities have hired private firefighters to protect their homes. In 2018, Kim Kardashian West and Kanye West, who now goes by the name Ye, hired crews to protect their $60 million home when blazes approached their neighborhood.

That incident also led to backlash.

Wills said he thinks it's the first time many people are learning about the private firefighting industry. Both he and Torres told BI that they don't think most understand the bulk of their business focus, but are well aware of the emerging negative connotations associated with the industry.

"I understand how the perception is on that, of course, but it's like, welcome to the real world," Wills said about the bubbling controversy. "Ask anybody: if you had the money in the bank and you knew somebody that had an engine available, why wouldn't you?"

• Spain's planned 100% tax on non-EU homebuyers is unlikely to solve its housing crisis.
• Spain's prime minister said too many foreigners were buying properties as investments, not homes.
• But hiking taxes could discourage buyers and hurt Spain's economy, economists told BI.

Spain's plan to impose a 100% tax on homebuyers from non-EU countries like the US and UK may fail to achieve its intended results, and could easily backfire on the country's economy, experts told Business Insider.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the measure on Monday, as part of his government's efforts to tackle the country's growing housing problem.

If approved by lawmakers, the 100% tax would effectively double the cost of properties for non-EU homebuyers.

Sánchez said that too many foreign buyers saw Spanish property as an investment, and were buying homes for financial gains rather than to live in.

But experts said the impact may not be what the government hoped.

Jesús Alonso, a real-estate agent with Engel & Völkers, said the tax was unlikely to resolve Spain's housing crisis.

Instead, he said it could trigger a decline in demand for luxury properties, which could reduce new projects, especially in regions reliant on foreign buyers.

He also said the move could hurt regions reliant on foreign spending, as well as the retail and hospitality sectors, especially in coastal regions.

"A drop in demand could discourage new developments and stagnate this market," he added.

According to Spain's Association of Registrars, foreigners bought 24,700 properties in Spain in the third quarter of 2024, accounting for 15% of all real estate purchases.

This included EU and non-EU buyers.

The number was higher in the first half of 2024, when foreigners bought and sold 69,412 properties, or 20.4% of total sales and purchases, according to data from Spain's General Council of Notaries.

Antonio Fatas, a professor of economics at INSEAD, a French business school, said foreign purchases are not large enough to determine market prices.

He described the 100% tax as an "easy" fix to a "complex" problem, one that ignores the underlying cause of Spain's housing crisis, which is about supply and demand.

According to research by Caixa Bank, the supply of new housing in Spain is being weighed down by factors including a lack of land earmarked for development and a shortage of skilled labor.

"In the absence of a significant increase in the housing supply in the coming years, the gap between supply and demand will steadily widen," it said.

Caixa Bank said in September that it expected Spanish house prices to rise by 5% in 2024, and 2.8% in 2025.

José Carlos Díez Gangas, an associate partner at the venture capital firm LUAfund, said the government's strategy is to try to curb demand growth.

However, echoing Fatas' point, he said: "There is a shortage of supply, and the greatest effect will be on prices, which will surely continue to rise until more houses come on the market."

At the same time, Spain has seen many ghost towns spring up, due in part to the 2008 financial crisis, a lack of public services, and migration from rural areas to cities.

Some estimates point to upward of 3,000 abandoned villages, even as other areas struggle to find enough housing.

Still, experts say the latest government idea could backfire on the economy as a whole.

"Does it make sense to make it difficult for a foreigner to buy a home in Spain?" said Fatas, adding: "Clearly, this represents a flow of capital into Spain that can have positive effects on the economy."

He said that stopping these flows would "negatively affect the construction, tourism sector, and anyone who could benefit from such a transaction."

• Officials warn the Los Angeles fires aren't over yet.
• Though winds are forecast to die down this week, they could pick up again next week.
• The fires have burned through 40,000 acres and could have caused up to $275 billion in damage.

Los Angeles officials said Wednesday that they'd generally been able to keep the wildfires ravaging the area from spreading further — but they warned the region isn't in the clear yet.

Extreme fire danger conditions were forecast to continue through at least Wednesday evening local time, the National Weather Service said. Meteorologists said conditions could improve on Thursday.

The wildfires, which have now been raging for more than a week, have already burned through 40,000 acres and destroyed more than 12,300 homes and other structures.

More than 8,500 firefighters have been marshaled to fight the blazes, which have caused at least 25 reported deaths.

LA fires rage on for a ninth day

Officials said Wednesday that, over the past 24 hours, winds had not been as bad as expected, but the area still faced dangerous conditions.

The LA County Fire Department said Wednesday morning that a "red flag" warning for the Eaton Fire, one of the major blazes, had been extended into the evening. It said that the Santa Ana winds will gradually subside throughout the day, but very dry conditions will likely persist through Thursday.

"The anticipated 70-mile-an-hour winds have yet to materialize," Anthony Marrone, the Los Angeles County Fire Department chief, said at a Wednesday briefing. "However, this could change, and we are still at risk."

And though conditions may improve in the next few days, weather forecasters are already sounding the alarm for potential critical fire weather conditions beginning again toward the middle of next week.

The Palisades and the Eaton Fires — the two largest at 23,712 acres and 14,117 acres — were 19% and 45% contained as of Wednesday evening, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CalFire. The Hurst Fire, at 799 acres, was almost fully contained, it said.

Los Angeles County Robert Luna said that as of Wednesday morning, fewer people were under evacuation orders, noting 82,400 people affected. Evacuation warnings had risen slightly because of the winds, up to 92,400.

Looting, burglary, arson, and price gouging are hitting the area

As thousands of LA area residents struggle to pick up the pieces of their lives, others have taken advantage of the situation for their own gain.

LA officials have reported suspected instances of looting, burglary, and other crimes in wildfire-ravaged areas.

Sheriff Luna said Wednesday that his officers had made 44 arrests related to the Eaton and Palisades Fires, including for suspected burglary, trespassing, curfew violation, possession of guns and narcotics, and impersonating a firefighter.

In addition to those arrests, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell said Wednesday that his department had made 14 arrests related to the fires — for things like suspected felony vandalism, impersonating a firefighter, possession of burglary tools, and shoplifting.

There have also been a few cases of suspected arson, officials said.

In one suspected case on Tuesday evening, a bystander caught someone starting a fire near the edge of the Hurst Fire zone and detained them until officers arrived, McDonnell said. The bystander had already put out the fire by the time officers got there, and the suspect was taken into custody where McDonnell said he admitted to sparking the fire because "he liked the smell of burning leaves."

Another person was booked on suspicion of arson that day after McDonnell said she admitted to starting multiple rubbish and trash fires because she said she "enjoyed causing chaos and destruction."

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said his office has seen instances of price gouging on medical supplies and hotels, as well as landlords overcharging above the legal limit.

Jason Oppenheim, the star of "Selling Sunset" who co-runs the real estate brokerage the Oppenheim Group, has also reported seeing landlords engaging in suspected price gouging.

Damage from the LA fires is mounting

The scope of the LA fires' destruction is beginning to come to light.

Preliminary estimates from AccuWeather peg the total damage and economic losses associated with the Southern California wildfires at up to $275 billion.

That would make the fires more economically damaging than the Maui wildfires from 2023, which AccuWeather said caused up to $16 billion in damages — and more destructive than 2024's Hurricane Helene, which caused $225 to $250 billion in damages, according to AccuWeather's estimate.

AccuWeather's estimate accounts for more than just damage to buildings and infrastructure — it also includes the expected financial impact of evacuation orders, the long-term cost of rebuilding or relocation for people whose homes were destroyed, anticipated cleanup and recovery costs, emergency shelter expenses, immediate and long-term healthcare costs for those who were injured or exposed to unhealthy air quality, as well as lost wages for people whose jobs will have been affected.

Meanwhile, according to Goldman Sachs, the total damage from the LA fires could rank among the top 20 costliest natural disasters in US history in terms of GDP.

And all that loss isn't going to help California's ongoing insurance crisis, where many homebuyers already struggle to get approved for loans, home insurance, and fire insurance — even in areas outside the typical risk zones.

Rising prices, which experts say will now likely only get worse, have forced some residents to go without insurance entirely — and for those impacted by the fires, the recovery costs will be significant.

Looking beyond the destruction of the LA fires

LA officials are already looking beyond the fires, despite firefighters still struggling to put out the larger blazes fully.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass issued an executive order to speed up the city's building permit review process. The order calls for reviews to be completed within 30 days of submission.

The executive order also aims to streamline processes for clearing debris.

Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday issued an executive order barring land developers from making unsolicited and undervalued offers to buy properties.

"Make no mistake — this is a prosecutable crime," he said in an X post.

• Spain wants to put a 100% tax on homebuyers on foreign buyers.
• Its prime minister said too many were buying Spanish property as investments rather than homes.
• Spain faced some of Europe's largest housing price hikes in 2024.

Spain plans to put a 100% tax on homebuyers from overseas in an effort to tackle the country's housing crisis.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the measure in a Monday speech at a housing forum in Madrid.

He said that too many foreign buyers saw Spanish property as investment vehicles and were buying homes for financial gain rather than to live in.

He said he would push for legislation to enact the new tax, effectively doubling property prices for non-EU buyers. The move would require the approval of Spanish lawmakers.

That would include US citizens, as well as people from the UK, where Spain is a popular retirement destination.

According to Spain's Association of Registrars, foreigners bought 24,700 properties in Spain in the third quarter of 2024, accounting for 15% of all real estate purchases in the country.

That figure did not differentiate between EU and non-EU foreign buyers.

Sánchez said the present situation was "absolutely unbearable" and an "emergency."

"Our homes cannot serve as a financial asset or a bank deposit," he said.

Sánchez pointed to recent laws in Canada as precedents — two provinces there charge 20-25% extra to foreign buyers.

Spain's housing market faced some of Europe's largest price hikes last year.

Home prices increased by 8.3% year-on-year in the last quarter of 2024, per Eurostat. The EU average was 3.8%.

According to research from Spain's Caixa Bank, new homes saw the sharpest price increase, with a 10.7% increase year over year in the first half of 2024.

Sánchez said the most significant factor in this rise was people using housing as an investment vehicle — though he also cited factors like population growth, land scarcity, rising construction costs, and restricted access to mortgages.

He said the "unprecedented" 100% tax would narrow a gap between "wealthy landlords" and "poor tenants," pointing to data showing Europe's average house prices rose 48% in the last decade — almost twice as much as disposable income.

"Spain's housing should be for Spanish people to live in, as well as for migrants who come here to work and build a life and contribute to the development and prosperity of our country," he added.

Sánchez didn't offer details on how the tax would work or a timeline for getting a law passed by Spain's legislature.

Spain's government didn't immediately reply to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Russia's elites are growing frustrated with Putin's efforts to wage war in Ukraine, per Meduza.
• Sources told the outlet they're also concerned about the long-term impact of Western sanctions.
• But Russian security officials appear to want Putin to intensify the war, a DC think tank said.

Russia's elites are growing tired of waiting for the war to end and are concerned about the long-term impact of Western sanctions on Russia's economy, according to a report by Meduza.

High-ranking sources told the independent Russian outlet that Russia's "elites" are disappointed that the war with Ukraine didn't end in 2024.

The sources included people close to and in the Russian presidential administration, two State Duma deputies, a senator, and three high-ranking officials in Russian regional governments.

One government source told the outlet that the overall emotions are "disappointment" and "fatigue."

"We were waiting for the war to end, for the fighting to end," they said. "We are tired of even waiting."

Two people close to the presidential administration said that the government doesn't have a clear postwar vision.

Meanwhile, another source said Russian elites, primarily high-ranking security officials, are growing irritated by the lack of manpower and material to wage the war, and believe Putin must launch a mobilization effort to further shift Russian society and economy to a war footing.

Since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has significantly grown its military and war economy. However, the war has come at a considerable cost.

Russian troop losses have risen for six straight months, the UK Ministry of Defence said this week, citing Ukrainian data. It said Russia's costliest day came on December 19, when 2,200 of its troops were killed or wounded.

Russia's economy has also come under strain due to persistent high inflation, slowing economic growth, and Western sanctions.

Even so, the Institute for the Study of War, a DC think tank, said Meduza's report, published Thursday, suggests that high-ranking Russian military and security officials believe Putin should escalate the war rather than seek a diplomatic solution.

In an update on Thursday, the ISW said that Russian security and military officials don't appear ready to abandon the war, despite mounting battlefield losses.

Instead, it said, they are seemingly advocating for Putin to intensify Russia's war effort by calling for additional partial reserve call-ups and a formal decision to transition to a wartime footing.

But, according to the ISW, Putin is against further mobilizing the Russian economy or a partial involuntary reserve call-up because these measures would be extremely unpopular and would worsen the country's labor shortages.

• Wildfires are burning across Los Angeles County.
• Hundreds of thousands of people are under evacuation orders or warnings.
• Insured losses could top $20 billion, JPMorgan analysts estimated — the most-ever in California.

The Los Angeles area is battling a series of massive wildfires that continue to rip through its picturesque mountains and hillsides — creating a hellscape of burned-out neighborhoods and upended livelihoods that could ultimately be the most costly fire disaster in California history.

Authorities on Friday night expanded the evacuation zone related to the largest blaze, the Palisades Fire, east toward Santa Monica, less than 1.5 miles from the iconic Santa Monica Pier. The zone now encompasses the famous Getty Center, home of the Getty Museum.

Officials have now ordered over 153,000 residents to evacuate and warned another 166,000 to be ready to leave if the fires continue to spread. About 38,000 acres have burned. Officials have reported 13 deaths related to the fire as of Saturday.

At a press conference on Friday evening, officials managing the Eaton fire, which now spans over 14,000 acres and is one of the largest and deadliest, said they did not expect the blaze to spread significantly over the weekend due to more moderate wind conditions. However, officials said they are anticipating another high-wind event early next week. It was strong Santa Ana gusts of up to 90 miles per hour that first whipped the fires into a frenzy earlier this week.

JPMorgan analysts said the blazes tearing through the region could lead to over $20 billion in insured losses — and about $50 billion in total economic losses. That would make these conflagrations "significantly more severe" than the Camp Fires that struck the state in 2018 and racked up $10 billion in insured losses, the current record.

Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman described the scene in LA as apocalyptic, as thick bands of smoke surrounded the city. Los Angeles County is home to about 10 million people.

"Not since the 1990s, when Los Angeles was hit with the fires, the flood, the earthquake, and the riots, have I seen such disaster occur here in our city," Hochman said at a briefing, referring to the Northridge Earthquake and the disturbances in the wake of the Rodney King verdict.

Erroneous emergency alerts telling residents to evacuate areas unaffected by the fires further heightened panic in the region. Kevin McGowan, the director of the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management, apologized for the messages at Friday's conference.

"There is an extreme amount of frustration, anger, fear, with regards to the erroneous messages that have been being sent out through the wireless emergency alert system. I can't express enough how sorry I am for this experience," he said.

He reassured residents that resolving the issue is his "top priority" and that he has technical specialists working to identify the root cause. "I implore everyone to not disable the messages on your phone," he said.

Late Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration warned civilians against flying unauthorized drones in areas undergoing firefighting efforts, after a firefighting plane sustained wing damage from a civilian drone and had to be grounded.

Satellite images of the LA fires showed the destruction left in their wake.

Starlink, Elon Musk's SpaceX subsidiary that provides satellite internet service, said Thursday that people in the Los Angeles area can use the company's network to text loved ones, contact 911, and receive emergency alerts.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday announced that he's doubling the number of California National Guard personnel on the ground to 1,680 members.

"The men and women of the California National Guard are working day and night to help Los Angeles residents during their greatest time of need," he said in a statement.

Here's a look at the latest happenings in the main fires spreading throughout the area:

Palisades Fire

The Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades area north of Santa Monica was the first fire to strike the region on Tuesday morning. It has spread to over 21,500 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Around 11% of the fire is contained, it says.

Five people have died in the Palisades fire, according to the medical examiner's office.

Los Angeles City's Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said at a press briefing earlier this week that the Palisades Fire had damaged or destroyed over 5,300 structures.

Crowley would not confirm reports that the fire started in a resident's garden, saying the origin is still under investigation.

Some celebrities have lost homes in the blaze, including Paris Hilton and Billy Crystal.

On Thursday, a drone hit the wing of one of two Super Scooper planes fighting the wildfires, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said at a Friday press conference. He said the plane was under urgent repairs and set to be flying again by Monday. "If you fly a drone at one of these brush fires all aerial operations will be shut down," he said.

Eaton Fire

The second-largest fire in Los Angeles County is the Eaton Fire, which started on Tuesday evening in the Pasadena-Altadena area at the foothills of the Angeles National Forest.

Eight people have died in the Eaton fire, Los Angeles County Sheriff Commander Tania E. Plunkett said at a press conference on Saturday afternoon.

The blaze has spread to over 14,100 acres, Marrone said at the Saturday conference, adding that over 7,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed and 15% of the fire is contained.

The cause of the fire remains "unknown," Marrone previously said.

Hurst Fire

The Hurst Fire, which began late on Tuesday night in the northern part of the San Fernando Valley, spread to 799 acres and is 76% contained, per Cal Fire.

In an X post on Thursday afternoon, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the mandatory evacuation order for the Hurst Fire had been lifted.

Kenneth Fire

On Thursday, a small brush fire erupted at the Victory Trailhead near the border of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Marrone said that the fire had been stopped. It burned just over 1,000 acres, but no structures were reported damaged. It is 80% contained, per Cal Fire.

A mandatory evacuation order was issued for several neighborhoods near the fire.

LAPD said it had detained a possible arson suspect but could not confirm any connection to the fire.

An evacuation notice intended for residents impacted by the Kenneth Fire was mistakenly sent out across LA County due to a "technical error," County Supervisor Janice Hahn said in an X post.

Sunset Fire and others

The Sunset Fire broke out in the Runyon Canyon area of the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday evening, quickly spreading to scorch over 40 acres and threaten major LA landmarks.

As of Thursday morning, firefighters were able to stop the fire's forward progress, Crowley said.

All evacuation orders related to the Sunset Fire were lifted as of 7:30 a.m. Thursday, she added.

A large structure fire consumed two large homes in the Studio City area but firefighters were able to stop its forward growth at just one acre and prevent another brushfire, Crowley said.

Yet another fire, the Lidia Fire, started Wednesday afternoon in Acton near the Antelope Valley, about 20 miles northeast of the San Fernando Valley. It consumed 395 acres but is now 100% contained, according to CalFire.

The Woodley Fire, which began Wednesday morning in the southern part of the San Fernando Valley, has been suppressed and there are no current threats, Crowley said.

Patrols were monitoring the area for any flare-ups, she added.

Events canceled and landmarks closed as smoke chokes LA

Major and minor events alike have been canceled or postponed across the Los Angeles area as the city battles the fires.

The 30th Annual Critics Choice Awards, set for Sunday night, were rescheduled for January 26. A National Hockey League game between the Los Angeles Kings and the Calgary Flames, scheduled for Wednesday night at Crypto.com arena, was postponed. The LA Lakers rescheduled Thursday night's game.

Music venues across the city were also canceling or postponing their shows, including The Troubadour, The Wiltern, The Echo, the Kia Forum, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and others.

Flights into and out of LAX, Hollywood Burbank Airport, Ontario International Airport, and Santa Ana's John Wayne Airport were also experiencing delays and cancellations. LAX, however, remains open.

The fires are also shuttering tourist destinations in and around Los Angeles, which attracts nearly 50 million visitors a year.

The fires forced some Los Angeles-area landmarks to close, including the Hollywood sign, the Los Angeles Zoo, the Broad Museum, the Norton Simon Museum, the Getty Villa and Getty Center, Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal CityWalk, and the Griffith Observatory.

Airbnb told CNN that it would be allowing refunds for bookings in areas affected by the wildfires, following a viral social media post from a customer who said the company refused to offer her a refund.

California already struggled with an insurance crisis

The devastating fires this week will likely only worsen California's ongoing insurance crisis, where many homebuyers already struggle to get approved for loans, home insurance, and fire insurance — even in areas outside the typical risk zones.

In recent years, some insurance companies, like State Farm, have stopped accepting new home insurance policies in the state entirely, as wildfire risks have only increased.

Experts told Business Insider that prices are likely to continue rising for those who can still get insurance.

"I've seen numbers go up 200%, 300%, even 500% in a year," Nick Ramirez, the owner of a California insurance agency, told BI.

And as the fires' estimated damages already climb into the billions of dollars, some homeowners will have to rebuild without the help of insurance payouts.

• Major fires in the Los Angeles area have leveled entire communities.
• Satellite images show flames wreaking havoc on houses, businesses, and other structures.
• At least 10 people have died, and the fires have destroyed about 10,000 structures.

Widespread fires have besieged the Los Angeles area for four days. At least 10 people have died and more than 150,000 have been ordered to evacuate their homes.

As of Friday afternoon, six separate fires were still burning in parts of the city and its surrounding areas, but firefighters were making progress during a reprieve from powerful winds.

Satellite and aerial images provided to Business Insider by Maxar Technologies and Nearmap show the trail of destruction the fires have left in Altadena, Pasadena, Malibu, and Pacific Palisades, some of the most heavily affected areas.

The Palisades and Eaton Fires

These two blazes spread for days with firefighters unable to stop their growth.

As of Friday at noon Pacific Time, the Palisades fire had consumed more than 20,400 acres and was 8% contained, and the Eaton Fire had burned more than 13,600 acres with 3% containment, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Together, they've destroyed about 10,000 structures, the agency estimates.

Entire neighborhoods burned to the ground

Charred, leveled communities like this are emerging in the paths of both fires.

A windstorm quickly spread the fires

Pacific Palisades, a neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles County, was the first to be devastated. The fire there broke out on Tuesday morning.

The blaze spread so far, so quickly in part because of a windstorm that the National Weather Service called "life-threatening and destructive."

Gusts up to 100 mph carried burning embers far into residential areas, igniting spot fires that grew into an urban conflagration.

In the above image, you can see where some of those spot fires began far from the initial brush fire.

Some of the world's most expensive homes burned

The Palisades Fire alone has become the most destructive fire ever to hit Los Angeles County, CNN reported Wednesday, citing Cal Fire data. Fire experts suspect it could be the costliest in California history, maybe even in US history.

The Altadena neighborhood also burned

These satellite images show houses burned down in the Altadena neighborhood, one of the areas most affected by the Eaton Fire.

The neighborhood was virtually destroyed

Houses and buildings on East Altadena Drive are glowing orange with flame and shrouded in smoke in this image from Wednesday.

Flying over the area after the flames subsided, the ABC7 helicopter pilot Scott Reiff said, "it looks basically like it was carpet-bombed."

In Pasadena, idyllic streets turned to ash

When houses are built this close together, one burning building can easily ignite its neighbors. A house fire burns much hotter than a forest fire because of the materials that are burning, according to Louis Gritzo, the chief science officer at the commercial property insurance company FM.

Many homes didn't stand a chance. They were under siege from "the high heat release from one burning structure combined with a continual ember attack," Gritzo said.

The road to Malibu burned

The Pacific Coast Highway and Tuna Canyon Road, which connects Malibu and Topanga, were covered in smoke Wednesday as fires burned through.

Many of the homes along the PCH have been incinerated.

Malibu did, too

The true scale of devastation and loss of life may not become clear for many days.

Fire conditions may continue for days

A red flag warning for critical fire weather is set to continue in Los Angeles and Ventura counties through 6 p.m. Friday.

The National Weather Service expects about 18 hours of reprieve before another round of "gusty" winds late Saturday into Sunday, with a stronger wind event possible Monday night through Wednesday.

"We're not out of the woods yet," said Courtney Carpenter, a warning-coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service.

Correction: January 9, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of a warning-coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service. She's Courtney Carpenter, not Courtney Carpen.

• Firestorms in Los Angeles have burned nearly 27,000 acres, destroying homes and killing five people.
• One of the biggest blazes, the Palisades Fire, could be the costliest in US history.
• The fires have spread so fast in part because of a windstorm and flood-drought whiplash.

All was well in Los Angeles at around 10 a.m. on Tuesday.

Less than 24 hours later, 2,925 acres of the Pacific Palisades were ablaze in what is being called the worst wildfire in Southern California since 2011. It has grown by orders of magnitude since.

Several more blazes have ignited in the area, with one, the Eaton Fire, engulfing another 10,600 acres.

Firefighters had not contained the fires as of early Thursday morning, the Los Angeles Fire Department said. On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNN that five people were dead, and "likely more."

More than 1,000 structures have burned and the fires could get even worse.

California is no stranger to fires, but this situation is different and especially dangerous for a few reasons.

An 'urban firestorm' that could be the costliest in history

Few brush fires in California history have intruded into such vast areas of dense, urban housing.

The UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain called it an "urban firestorm" as he assessed live images of the developing Eaton Fire on Tuesday morning.

Perhaps the best historical comparison is the 1991 Tunnel Fire, which raged through more than 1,500 acres of Oakland, but it was smaller than either of the two giant blazes in Los Angeles. It killed 25 people and injured 150, and ranks as the third-deadliest and third-most-destructive fire in California history.

The true toll of this week's fires won't be clear until later.

Swain said that he and several colleagues have estimated that the Palisades Fire could be the costliest on record in the US because of the number of structures burning and the fact that those homes are some of the most expensive in the world.

"We are looking at what is, I think, likely to become the costliest wildfire disaster in California, if not national history, along with a number of other superlatives," Swain said.

A historic windstorm spread the fire fast

A powerful windstorm buffeted the flames throughout Tuesday and into Wednesday morning, with gusts of wind reaching up to 90 miles an hour, according to the National Weather Service.

During a 2 ½ hour period overnight, the Palisades Fire's size more than doubled, per the fire service's reports.

The winds were so powerful on Tuesday evening that water- and retardant-dropping aircraft could not fly.

It's a phenomenon that scientists have warned about: a deadly combination of high winds and dry, open land — such as the brushland now being swept by flames in Los Angeles — amounting to fires that move faster than emergency responders can keep up with.

"It's certainly unusual how fast it's grown," Douglas Kelley, a researcher at the UK's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, told Business Insider. "It's definitely a lot faster than I guess a lot of people were expecting in the area at the time."

A study published in Science in October found that while only about 3% of US fires over a nearly two-decade period could be considered "fast fires," they caused disproportionate damage.

"The most destructive and deadly wildfires in US history were also fast," wrote the study's authors, led by University of Colorado Boulder's Jennifer Balch.

Between 2001 and 2020, fast fires accounted for 78% of fire-destroyed buildings and a full 61% of suppression costs — or $18.9 billion, the scientists wrote. And they are getting more frequent, the study said.

The windstorm was bad luck. But the other primary factor in the fires' rapid explosions — the fuel — is strongly linked to the climate crisis.

Weather whiplash made abundant fire fuel

Southern California has experienced heavy rainfall and flooding the past two winters — which is a huge part of the problem.

Abundant rainfall spurred an explosion of grasses and brush, the primary fire fuel in Southern California. Then, with very little rainfall in the past few months, all that vegetation was flash-dried.

Kelley said those dry conditions made the Palisades especially susceptible to a fast-spreading fire.

This is part of a growing phenomenon that Swain calls "hydroclimate whiplash," or weather whiplash. As global temperatures rise, many parts of the world, especially California, are seeing more violent swings between extreme wet and extreme dry conditions.

The same confluence of weather whiplash and extreme winds was behind the Camp Fire, Swain said. That November 2018 blaze in Paradise, California, was the deadliest and most destructive in the state's history, destroying 18,804 structures and killing 85 people.

• A Ukrainian F-16 pilot may have pulled off a feat no one flying the jet has achieved before.
• Ukraine's Air Force Command said the pilots took out six Russian cruise missiles in a single flight.
• Colonel Yuriy Ihnat said it was the first time this had been recorded in the jet's history.

Ukraine said one of its F-16 pilots achieved a feat nobody flying the jet has managed before.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Ukraine's Air Force Command said a pilot flying an F-16 took out six Russian cruise missiles during a single flight, using air-to-air missiles and an aircraft cannon.

This occurred during a "mass" missile and drone attack in December, it said.

On December 13, Russia fired almost 200 drones, Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missiles, and 94 cruise missiles at Ukraine.

The pilot's main target was the cruise missiles, according to the post.

He used all four air-to-air missiles on board the F-16, two of which were short-range, forcing the jet to fly closer to the missiles — an "extremely dangerous" task, it said.

The pilot then struck two other missiles flying close to each other using an air cannon.

Business Insider was not able to verify the report.

Intercepting "such important targets is not an easy task for a pilot, but who, if not Ukrainian pilots, has the most experience in the world of winged missiles?" Colonel Yuriy Ihnat, head of the Ukrainian Air Force Command's public relations service, said.

Since the start of its full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia has frequently launched large missile attacks on Ukraine, aimed at overwhelming Ukraine's air defense systems and hitting targets behind the front lines.

The pilot, who had recently undergone retraining for F-16s in the US, said in the post that Ukrainian F-16 pilots had never used an aviation cannon to shoot down targets.

However, he said he applied the lessons he learned in the US.

"I must have set a record that day," he said, adding, "I am convinced that this experience will be useful to colleagues."

Colonel Ihnat described it as the first-ever documented case.

He said that "based on objective control, we have one hundred percent confirmation that for the first time in history in anti-air combat, an American fighter F-16 shoots down six winged missiles."

• Ukraine says it's designed a new type of river drone to target Russian vessels.
• The Black Widow 2 is also able to perform reconnaissance operations, it said.
• Ukraine's military requested it to combat Russian forces and supply runs on the Dnipro River.

Ukraine says it has developed a new type of drone to target Russian vessels deployed on Ukrainian rivers.

Hard Cat, a Kyiv-based drone manufacturer, told Business Insider that the uncrewed river drone, the Black Widow 2, can take out surface targets, including small boats.

It can also carry out reconnaissance and patrolling operations, providing real-time situational awareness, it said, with a maximum speed of almost 25 miles an hour and a communication range of up to 6.2 miles.

And unlike sea drones, which operate in wider bodies of water, the one-meter-long drone's "compact size and high maneuverability allow it to operate effectively" in narrow waterways and river areas.

Drones have been a hallmark of the war in Ukraine, with both sides using them to attack, surveil, and target more accurately.

Ukraine has heavily targeted Russia's fleet in the Black Sea using sea drones, with notable effect.

Hard Cat unveiled the river drone's prototype at the Defense Tech Valley investment summit in Kyiv in October 2024.

It told BI the drone has now been successfully tested in rear-area conditions and is undergoing combat trials with two Ukrainian army brigades. It didn't say where those trials were taking place.

"Warfare on water is quite specific and comes with unique challenges, making such a small water drone potentially very useful," it added.

One of the developers, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, told BI that they began work on the drone in December 2023, at the request of the Ukrainian military, as a way to counter Russian motorboats used for personnel rotation, supply runs, and reconnaissance.

At the time, Ukrainian troops were fighting to hold out on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, against Russian forces that vastly outnumbered them.

John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told BI that he expects Ukraine to use these new systems primarily on the Dnipro.

"They would probably be most useful in a defensive role, such as striking small vessels carrying Russian assault troops or supplies," he said, rather than working in conjunction with larger, longer-range naval drones to attack Russian ships in the Black Sea.

Basil Germond, an expert in international security at Lancaster University in the UK, made a similar assessment.

"It is important to understand that Russia not only operates big warships and submarines but also a wide array of small boats that support land operations at the tactical level, especially in the wet areas such as the Dnipro Estuary and other rivers," he said.

Germond added: "River drones are likely to contribute to operations against these sorts of assets."

• A UK-led coalition is using AI to track Russia's shadow fleet, the British Ministry of Defence said.
• The operation, involving 10 countries, comes after damage to major undersea cables in the Baltic.
• Finland said evidence suggests a Russia-linked ship dragged its anchor to sever the cables.

A UK-led coalition of European countries has deployed AI to track Russia's shadow fleet and detect possible threats to underwater cables, after suspected sabotage incidents in recent months.

On Monday, the UK's Ministry of Defence said that the Joint Expeditionary Force's operation, dubbed Nordic Warden, has been using AI to evaluate data from several sources, including the Automatic Identification System, which ships use to share their real-time locations.

In the event of a potential threat, it said the system would monitor the suspect vessel in real time and issue a warning, which will be communicated to both NATO allies and participating countries.

The UK's Defense Secretary John Healey said AI would allow them to monitor "large" sea areas using a "comparatively" small number of resources.

"Nordic Warden will help protect against both deliberate acts of sabotage as well as cases of extreme negligence which we have seen cause damage to underwater cable," Healey added.

The UK MOD didn't respond to a request for comment, but in its news release said that there were 22 areas of interest, including parts of the English Channel, the North Sea, the Kattegat Sea, and the Baltic Sea.

It said the operation's launch came after reported damage to a major undersea cable in the Baltic.

Over the past two months, several undersea cables in the Baltic Sea have been damaged, including the BCS East-West Interlink cable, the C-Lion1 telecommunications cable linking Finland and Germany, and the Estlink 2 electricity cable connecting Estonia and Finland.

Last week, Finnish officials said they found a 60-mile trail on the seabed that suggested the Eagle S — a Russia-linked tanker — could have been responsible for slicing a cluster of valuable data and power cables.

Edward Hunter Christie, a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and a former NATO official, told BI that AI will help NATO identify suspicious ships among the vast majority of legitimate commercial activity in the region.

Neither Russia's shadow fleet nor any other country for that matter, "even the Chinese," can afford to lose ship after ship trying to damage cables, he said, pointing to Finland's seizure of a Russian-linked vessel last week.

"Russia needs its shadow fleet," he added, "that's how it earns its oil export revenues."

• North Korea could get Russian satellite tech, the US Secretary of State has warned.
• The tech would be in exchange for it sending troops to fight Ukraine, Antony Blinken said on Monday.
• The US and its allies have accused Russia and North Korea of trading arms and military technology.

Russia could share satellite technology with North Korea in exchange for the troops it sent to fight Ukraine, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned.

Blinken said the US had reason to believe that "Moscow intends to share advanced space and satellite technology with Pyongyang," during a press conference in Seoul on Monday.

North Korea "is already receiving Russian military equipment and training," he added.

If confirmed, it would add to Russia's reported ongoing efforts to help North Korea advance its satellite launch program.

Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, has repeatedly tried and often failed to launch satellites into space. The country said it had successfully launched a military spy satellite in November 2023. The most recent failure was when a rocket exploded during the first stage of flight in May last year.

At the time, the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported, citing an unnamed senior defense official, that a "large number" of Russian technicians had entered North Korea to guide the country's space program ahead of the failed launch.

In September 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin promised Russia would help North Korea build satellites.

Having a satellite network would allow North Korea to identify targets to strike with its missiles and strengthen its ability to launch a preemptive strike against the US or its allies, giving them only a few minutes to respond.

However, "brazen acts of unprovoked military violence" are not in North Korea's best interest, said Marco Langbroek, a satellite tracker and lecturer in optical space situational awareness at The Netherlands' Delft Technical University.

"If anything, North Korea improving its intelligence position through a better reconnaissance satellite program with Russian help could help ease some of the North Korean paranoia regarding US and Allied activities in the region and avoid things getting out of hand by mistake," he added.

Russia and North Korea's relationship has come under scrutiny in the past year after both countries signed a strategic partnership agreement in June, which requires the countries to defend each other in the event of aggression.

The US and its allies had previously accused Moscow of sending raw materials, food, and technical expertise to Pyongyang in exchange for shipments of artillery ammunition and missiles that Ukraine has reported seeing on the battlefield.

North Korea has also sent thousands of troops to aid Russia in its fight against Ukraine, officials from South Korea, Ukraine, and the US have said.

Blinken suggested Russia-North Korea's relations could go deeper as Putin may be "close" to formally accepting North Korea's status as a nuclear power.

He also described North Korea's deployment of artillery, ammunition, and troops as one of the "biggest ongoing drivers" that enabled Russia's war against Ukraine.

• Parts of the US are being battered by Winter Storm Blair, with states of emergency declared.
• The frigid conditions are impacting travel, with icy Midwest roads and flights and trains canceled.
• Snow hit Washington, DC, on Monday as the area prepares for the Trump administration transition.

Ice-storm warnings and unpleasantly cold conditions are expected to continue in much of the northern US.

The Arctic outbreak, dubbed Winter Storm Blair by the Weather Channel, has disrupted travel and resulted in at least five deaths.

The storm is bringing heavy snow to areas in the mid-Atlantic region that haven't seen such weather in a decade, the National Weather Service warned.

Heavy snowfall has occurred in places such as Kansas City, Missouri, where local media reported 10 inches of snow on Sunday night, and Louisville, Kentucky, which saw its largest single-day snowfall in about 25 years.

On Tuesday, snow is expected to dwindle in most of the areas blanketed by it as the storm moves south.

Two people have died in a weather-related crash in Wichita, Kansas, a Missouri public works employee was fatally injured during snow removal operations, and a person in Houston, Texas, died due to cold weather, NBC reported on Monday afternoon.

As of 3 a.m. ET Tuesday, about 207,063 utility customers were without power across Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, Illinois, and Missouri, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks power outages across the US. That was down from about 254,000 customers on Monday afternoon.

Travel delays and cancellations

More than 2,900 flights were canceled and over 9,300 flights within, into, or out of the US were delayed on Monday, according to FlightAware.

More than half of Monday flights were canceled at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, while the nearby Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport saw 125 flights, or 43% of those scheduled Monday, canceled.

Chicago O'Hare and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airports are leading the country in delays.

Amtrak, the US national rail operator, also announced a series of cancellations in the Northeast and the Midwest on Monday.

The numbers of impacted flights are expected to continue to rise.

Airlines including American, Delta, Southwest, and United have said they're waiving change fees for flights impacted by the storm.

Meanwhile, freezing temperatures led to icy roads and dangerous driving conditions in the Midwest on Sunday. The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported 436 crashes and 1,788 stranded motorists by 3 p.m. on Monday.

Heavy snow and cold to continue

The NWS Weather Prediction Center said Monday that the adverse weather would move toward the mid-Atlantic throughout the day, bringing up to 12 inches of snow and dangerously cold temperatures.

Snow — possibly mixed with sleet and freezing rain — reached about 8 inches in Washington, DC, where preparations are underway for Donald Trump's incoming administration.

Additional cold weather warnings have also been issued in Baltimore, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis, with officials warning to limit travel in the impacted areas, The Weather Channel reported.

The Baltimore-Washington National Weather Service said on Monday afternoon that heavy snow would continue through 11 p.m., dropping up to 3 more inches before the snow system exits the area.

On Monday night, it predicted light snow to continue into the night with an extra 1 to 2 inches near urban areas and in the mountains, and low temperatures in the single digits in the west to upper teens elsewhere.

In an X post in the early hours of Tuesday, the mayor of Washington, DC, Muriel Bowser, said more than 200 snow plows would work through the night, and that school would be closed Tuesday.

Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Arkansas have declared states of emergency, with Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey declaring a state of emergency for several counties.

In all, about half the US population is expected to experience freezing temperatures over the next week, Axios reported.

• China is readying forces that could seize Taiwan in a future attack, analysts and officials say.
• Any military operation is likely to rely partly on China's militarized police.
• The People's Armed Police has been training in a wide range of conditions, including water.

China is preparing its militarized police for kinds of combat that would play a key role in any invasion of Taiwan.

A September report from China Central Television shows what appears to be the People's Armed Police Force, or PAP, simulating attacks from inflatable boats.

Footage and pictures from Chinese state-run outlets show the extent of the combat training and battlefield simulation — blockade breakthroughs, grenade throwing, battlefield rescue, and group tactics in cold, hot, and high-altitude conditions.

This training indicates PAP soldiers "are getting ready" for a takeover of Taiwan, said Lyle Goldstein, director of Asia Engagement at the Defense Priorities think tank in Washington, DC.

Clandestine movement by water would be an essential capability to quell resistance in Taiwan's populated areas near the coast and rivers.

"From my observation, they train hard; they are well equipped and disciplined, and they're given stringent ideological training for the reason that they are probably, in my view, the primary reserve force for section invasion," Goldstein said.

"If they went forward with a full-up invasion, I think an amphibious assault is not just conceivable but is quite a possibility," he added.

Urban training

Since its founding in 1982, China's PAP has been firmly placed under the country's military.

These armed police are a shock force in China's vast state security apparatus. The force plays a key internal security role, mostly in law enforcement, counterterrorism, disaster response, and maritime rights protection.

Beijing also regularly uses them for propaganda. One likely goal of publicizing the recent training was to intimidate Taiwan and its backers.

Alessio Patalano, a professor of war and strategy in East Asia at King's College London, said the PAP's inclusion in any takeover of Taiwan would make sense given their urban training.

He told BI the PAP keeps "highly skilled" special forces at hand who are involved in surgical operations to capture strategic goals where mobility, speed, and familiarity with operating in urban areas are key.

PAP special forces maintained security at Beijing Olympic venues in 2008, conducted drills in Shenzhen near Hong Kong in 2019, and have engaged in multiple counter-terrorism operations in China's Xinjiang region over the years, according to Chinese state-run media.

"To that extent, whether in decapitation scenarios or early stages of operations to seize key port and airport infrastructures, the use of PAP should be regarded as a viable, if not preferable, option," Patalano said.

A supporting role

It's unlikely that the PAP would participate in the first stages of any island landing.

"That is the purview of the PLA," said Joel Wuthnow, a senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at the National Defense University in DC. The PLA is China's main military — the People's Liberation Army.

He said that the PAP would instead initially participate in operations to firm up internal security in mainland China, including suppressing signs of social unrest, protecting critical infrastructure, and clearing out national highways to facilitate the delivery of supplies to regions near Taiwan.

Any attempt to seize Taiwan, a self-ruled island of 23 million that Beijing views as a breakaway province, would require warships, armored vehicles, and heavy firepower, to answer Taiwan's advanced missiles, tanks, and F-16 fighter jets.

However, if PLA's operations in Taiwan didn't go according to plan, and it faced a protracted campaign, Wuthnow said the PAP's Special Operation Forces could be mobilized to institute military governance through missions in urban areas like Taipei.

Another aspect of the PAP's response could involve China's Coast Guard, which it oversees.

The coast guard is already "very much" on the front lines of China's "coercive" campaign against Taiwan, Wuthnow said, and its role seems to be increasing.

Meanwhile, Taiwan's mountainous terrain, as well as its few major land routes and numerous river crossings, would make it difficult for any invading forces to move.

"If the population of Taiwan were not compliant with a PRC-led occupation authority, the period where the PRC would need to rely on their own police might be quite prolonged," said Philip Shetler-Jones, a senior research fellow in the International Security team at the UK's Royal United Services Institute, using the acronym for the People's Republic of China.

The more PAP forces can take over the "public order" task, the more it frees up combat troops, he added.

An imminent invasion

Military experts and defense officials see signs — like China's rapid modernization of its armed forces over the past two decades and drills around Taiwan — that suggest that China could take action within a few years.

But the form of that action is a matter of debate, from a blockade to a full-scale invasion.

During a 2021 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Adm. Phil Davidson, then the US Indo-Pacific commander, said Taiwan was "clearly" one of China's "ambitions" and that he believed the threat would be "manifest" within the next six years.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping said in October, as part of the country's anniversary celebrations, that reunification with Taiwan was "where the greater national interest lies, and it is what the people desire."

"The wheel of history will not be stopped by any individual or any force," he added.

Goldstein of Defense Priorities, who described himself as a bit of an outlier, said he believes China is ready to take over Taiwan now "if they choose to," and that the PAP's Special Operation Forces would likely play a significant role.

They "will be in very high demand in a Taiwan scenario," he said.

He added that China regards Taiwan as internal security. "So, for them, the use of these forces is entirely legitimate."

• An Azerbaijan Airlines flight crashed after sustaining damage over Russia, killing 38.
• The plane was likely hit by Russian air defense before the crash, BI reported Thursday.
• Several airlines are canceling flights to Russia, citing passenger safety and risks.

Airlines are avoiding Russian airspace after an Azerbaijan Airlines flight crashed on Wednesday, killing 38 passengers.

The Embraer 190 jet was bound for Russia from Azerbaijan — but veered off course after sustaining some kind of damage over Russia.

It managed to reach Aktau airport in Kazakhstan before crash-landing. 29 passengers survived.

The reason for the crash remains unknown. Business Insider reported Thursday, citing reports from Euronews and The New York Times, that Azerbaijani investigators believed Russia shot the plane down, a view supported by many analysts.

Several airlines suspended flights to Russia since the crash.

Azerbaijan Airlines said it would suspend flights to 10 Russian cities starting Saturday, citing "physical and technical external interference."

"The suspension will remain in effect until the completion of the final investigation," it said.

El Al, Israel's flagship carrier, said in a Telegram post on Thursday that it was suspending all flights on the Tel Aviv-Moscow route for this week due to the events in Russia's airspace.

It said it would carry out a new assessment next week on whether the route would be resumed.

Flydubai, an Emirati low-cost carrier, said it would suspend flights from Sochi in Russia until January 2 inclusive and from Mineralnye Vody until January 3, the Association of Tour Operators of Russia reported on Friday.

Qazaq Air, a Kazakh air carrier, said it was temporarily suspending flights from Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, to Yekaterinburg, Russia, from Saturday until January 27, 2025.

Western airlines generally have not operated in Russia's airspace since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, meaning they have no services to divert or cancel.

Peter Frankopan, an expert on Russian and Balkans history at Oxford University, told Business Insider that if Moscow is determined to be at fault, it will "make people nervous about ever flying over Russian airspace."

"That has significance during the war and after it is over — including for Russian revenues from overflights," he said, referring to fees paid to countries for the right to cross their airspace.

According to a Reuters analysis, Russia had spent over $12 billion in state subsidies and loans as of December 2023 to sustain its civil aviation industry since Western sanctions took effect.

• An Azerbaijan Airlines flight crashed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, killing 38.
• An oxygen tank exploded before the crash, Kazakhstan's transport minister said.
• The plane was likely hit by Russian air defense before the crash, BI reported Thursday.

An oxygen tank on the Azerbaijan Airlines flight exploded before the plane crash, Kazakhstan's transport minister said.

It adds a little more detail to the series of events leading to the fiery crash landing of the Embraer 190 on Christmas Day that killed 38.

The minister, Marat Karabayev, did not say definitively that the oxygen-tank explosion was a direct cause of the crash.

He also did not say why it exploded. Analysts have blamed Russia, saying it likely fired an air-defense missile at the plane by mistake.

The plane was bound for Russia from Azerbaijan — but veered off course after sustaining some kind of damage, crossing the Caspian Sea to crash-land at the airport in Aktau, Kazakhstan.

At a press briefing Thursday, Karabayev said Kazakh authorities heard of the disaster from a Russian air-traffic controller. They said an oxygen cylinder had exploded in the passenger cabin of the aircraft, and that some passengers were losing consciousness.

Karabayev said this triggered an emergency response in Aktau. Rescuers were quickly on the scene and managed to rescue 29 of the 67 passengers.

The plane departed from Baku, Azerbaijan, early Wednesday, heading for Grozny, Russia.

Business Insider reported Thursday, citing reports from Euronews and The New York Times, that Azerbaijani investigators believed Russia shot the plane down.

Those sources pointed to a Russian Pantsir-S air-defense system.

Russia has said the plane diverted after a bird strike, and denied playing a role — an explanation analysts were swift to dismiss.

Osprey Flight Solutions, an aviation security firm, said in an alert sent to its clients and shared with BI that the flight was "likely shot down by a Russian military air-defense system of unspecified type/variant over the North Caucasus Federal District."

Kazakhstan's transport ministry didn't immediately respond to a request for comments.

• Russia's economy will be under significant strain next year, economists told Business Insider.
• High inflation, slowing economic growth, energy prices, and sanctions could hurt its war machine.
• One expert told BI that stagnation was similar to the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1980s.

Russia's economy is likely entering a year of pain in 2025.

Since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin has restructured its economy to prioritize its war efforts, imposing export bans, tapping its national wealth fund, and strengthening trade with non-Western countries.

But unprecedented defense spending, labor shortages, and Western sanctions have come at a cost, and some believe the country is reaching the limits of its capacity.

Economists told Business Insider that while they don't expect Russia's economy to collapse, they said it would face a tough 2025 if it keeps on fighting in Ukraine.

Persisting inflation

"Russia has set in motion processes that will continue to eat out its economy from within," Roman Sheremeta, an associate professor of economics at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, told BI.

He said that if the war continues, "it will put a significant strain on the already bleeding Russian budget."

Russia has increasingly boosted its defense spending to sustain its war efforts, from $59 billion in 2022 to $109 billion in 2023, and $126.8 billion set aside in 2025, when defense will make up 32.5% of Russia's federal budget, up from 28.3% this year.

While soaring defense spending has fueled Russia's economy in recent years, it has also contributed to rising inflation, which Russian President Vladimir Putin said could hit 9.5% in 2025.

To rein this in, the country's central bank raised its key interest rate from 19% to 21% in October, a record high, which has eaten into companies' profit margins.

The bank was expected to raise the rate again in December, but held off, though it may need to increase it next year.

"The main question is how high the inflation will be and how the slowing down will materialize," Alexander Kolyandr, a financial analyst and non-resident senior scholar at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told BI.

Putin has acknowledged that inflation is at "a relatively high level." Speaking at an investment forum in Moscow earlier this month, he urged his government and the central bank to curb it.

TsMAKP, a Russian think tank, warned last month that Russia's failure to tame inflation was driving the country toward stagflation, a scenario in which growth is low and inflation high, and which is harder to escape than a recession.

"The overall trend is pretty grim," said Kolyandr. "I would say it's overall stagnation akin to what the Soviet Union had at the beginning of the 1980s."

The Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991.

Slowing economic growth

Russia is expected to experience lower-than-expected economic growth in 2025. In its October World Economic Outlook, the IMF dropped its GDP growth estimate for Russia from 1.5% to 1.3%.

"Overall growth will be quite slow," Iikka Korhonen, the head of research at the Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies, told BI.

However, he said the Kremlin will make sure that military production has enough resources.

But "many sectors will most likely contract," he said.

US sanctions on Gazprombank and other financial institutions in November caused the ruble to plummet, according to The Wall Street Journal, which also said that companies were slashing expansion plans.

It reported that more than 200 shopping centers in Russia are under threat of bankruptcy due to rising debt burdens and almost a third of Russian freight haulers say they fear bankruptcy in 2025.

Russia's largest mobile operator, MTS, also blamed an almost 90% drop in Q3 net profits on costs related to interest payments.

"The elites are fighting for survival, and while they remain loyal to Putin, they are increasingly discontent," Alexandra Prokopenko, a former Russian central bank official and now a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, told the Journal.

In fact, in recent months, Russian CEOs and business leaders have increased their vitriol against interest-rate hikes and Western sanctions.

Sergei Chemezov, CEO of defense conglomerate Roste, told Russian senators in late October that sky-high interest rates were leaving companies struggling to turn a profit.

Oil and gas prices

While Russia's share of oil and gas revenues has fluctuated in recent years, and dropped in 2023, Russia expects it to account for about 27% of the country's total budget revenue in 2025.

"As long as Russia can sell as much crude oil as it is now selling with the current prices, they will have enough tax revenue for the war well into 2025," Korhonen said.

Earlier this month, Russian state-owned oil firm Rosneft agreed to a 10-year, $13 billion deal to supply crude oil to India, Reuters reported, citing three sources familiar with the deal.

However, Center for European Policy Analysis' Kolyandr said he believes Russia's revenue outlook is "over-optimistic," since "global oil prices might be lower than the government thinks."

Traders expect global oil prices to fall from a projected $80 a barrel in 2024 to between $65 and $71 in 2025, due to sluggish demand, production from non-OPEC+ countries, and a shift toward cleaner energies.

While G7 countries have set a $60 price cap on Russian oil since December 2022, Russia has partly evaded the cap by using a shadow fleet, redirecting oil exports to countries like China and India, and inflating ancillary costs to obscure purchase prices.

But the tightening of Western sanctions could further reduce Russia's oil and gas revenues.

Reserves

Russia's economic performance in 2025 will ultimately come down to the availability of resources, said Korhonen.

"There will be a deficit, but it can initially be financed from the National Welfare Fund," he said.

Russia's National Warfare Fund has assets amounting to about $131.1 billion as of October, while the central bank has about $614.4 billion in international reserves.

Kolyandr, meanwhile, said that "whether Russia is going to face any crisis in 2025" would depend on everything that will happen in 2025, including oil prices, sanctions, President-elect Donald Trump's trade policies, and the Russian labor market.

"The Russian economy will continue to fall," said Weatherhead School of Management's Sheremeta, "which will restrict Russia's ability to wage war."

But he added: "Much will depend on the Western support of Ukraine."

• Multiple prohibited items were found in a woman's bag at Los Angeles International Airport, per the TSA.
• A TSA officer flagged the bag after spotting the items in an X-ray image.
• Jason Pantages, LAX TSA Federal Security Director, said the incident was "extremely concerning."

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said one of its officers found fireworks, knives, and other prohibited items in a woman's carry-on bag as she attempted to catch a flight at Los Angeles International Airport earlier this month.

In a recent press release, the TSA said one of its officers flagged the bag after spotting the items in an X-ray image.

"When the bag was opened with the passenger present, the TSA officer was shocked at its contents," the TSA said.

The bag, which belonged to a female passenger set to travel to Philadelphia, contained 82 consumer-grade fireworks, three knives, two replica firearms, and one canister of pepper spray, it added.

The incident occurred at LAX's Terminal 4 at around 10 p.m. local time on December 15.

The TSA said it informed the Los Angeles World Airport (LAWA) police department and that officers went to the security checkpoint and interrogated the traveler while a bomb squad confiscated the fireworks.

Jason Pantages, LAX TSA Federal Security Director, described the find as "extremely concerning."

"This traveler should have followed TSA's tried and true advice - unpack your bag before you pack it to ensure you don't bring any prohibited items to the security checkpoint," he said. "We are in the midst of the holiday travel season when security checkpoints will be busy everywhere."

The TSA reminded travelers that fireworks are not allowed on board an aircraft in carry-on or checked luggage and that knives and replica firearms should travel in checked baggage.

It also said that one four-ounce container of pepper spray is permitted in checked luggage as long as it has a safety mechanism to avoid "accidental discharge."

It comes as airports across the US brace for a busy festive season.

More than 3.2 million people are expected to pass through Los Angeles International Airport during the holidays, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The TSA, meanwhile, said it expected to screen nearly 40 million people from December 19 to January 2, up 6.2% from last year. It forecasts the busiest days as December 20, 27, and 30.

TSA and LAWA didn't immediately respond to requests for comments made outside working hours.

• A Russian-flagged cargo vessel has sunk in the Mediterranean Sea, per Russia's foreign ministry.
• The Ursa Major ship went down after an explosion in the engine room, the ministry said.
• It comes after Ukraine said Moscow had sent four ships to Russian military bases in Syria.

A Russian-flagged cargo vessel has sunk in the Mediterranean Sea after an explosion in its engine room, Russia's foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

Fourteen crew members were rescued, but two were missing, the ministry's situation and crisis unit said in a Telegram post.

The ministry said the vessel, the Ursa Major, was owned by SK-YUG LLC, a Russian shipping company also known as SC South that has been sanctioned by the US.

Spain's Maritime Rescue agency told Business Insider that it had received a distress alert call from the Ursa Major last night.

It said the ship was 57 nautical miles off the coast of Almeria in southern Spain in bad weather conditions. This prompted the maritime rescue centers of Almeria, Cartagena, and Madrid to coordinate a rescue effort, it added.

The 14 people rescued were transferred to the Spanish port city of Cartagena, the agency said, adding that another Russian ship later arrived in the area and took over the rescue operations.

Ship tracking data said the 466-foot Ursa Major, built in 2009, last departed from St. Petersburg on December 11.

It comes after Ukraine's intelligence directorate reported on Monday that a Russian cargo ship called Sparta had broken down near Portugal after the engine failed.

The GUR said the ship had been sent to evacuate Russian weapons and equipment from Syria.

The crew was able to fix the vessel, and it continued on through the Strait of Gibraltar, the GUR said.

It remains unclear whether the Sparta and the Ursa Major are the same ship. Maritime tracking data shows that the Ursa Major was previously named Sparta III.

Moscow has operated two military facilities in Syria, the Hmeimin airbase and the Tartus naval base. Both have been crucial for projecting Russia's influence across the Middle East and Africa.

The fall of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar Assad earlier this month has called the future of the bases into question.

Ukraine's GUR said earlier this month that Russia had deployed four ships to help evacuate equipment in Syria, including ships named the Sparta and Sparta II.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.