Wind-fueled Wildfires Impact Southern California | January 9, 2025

[Music] [Applause] what's up sunshine I'm kyi wire and I hope you all are safe and well it is a really tough day especially for all of our viewers in Southern California the wildfires there are some of the worst we've seen so please know that we are thinking of you and hope that all will be okay it is Thursday January 9th let's get to your news we do start with the wildfires three devastating fires springing up overnight raging across the nation's most populous County scenes there are just terrible homes and businesses have been burned at rapid

rates the largest fire in Pacific Palisades forced tens of thousands of people to flee under evacuation orders tens of thousands more have fled due to two other fires raging in the county the Hurst fire North of San Fernando and the Eaton fire in Altadena the fires sprang up so quickly Flames jumped over highways many people had to abandon cars on the roads near Malibu and Santa Monica fire officials had to use a bulldozer to move those vehicles to get to the fires at a Pasadena Care Home workers raced to evacuate elderly residents with a blaze

just one block away the fires have burned thousands of acres and firefighters still aren't able to contain them crews are on the ground and in the air working to put out the flames but dry conditions and super strong winds are supercharging the fires wind gusts are hitting hurricane Force at times with reports of telephone polls being knocked over without containment the Palisades fire has blazed at the rate of about five football fields per minute both the smoke and fire from The Blaze are so intense they can be seen from satellite images from space more than

200,000 homes and buildings are without power in the county and 19 of LA County's 80 school districts have announced closures or remote learning the out-of control Flames sprang up on residents so fast and our team on the ground there wrapping up reporting learned just how quickly the virus had spread our Natasha Chen captured her team's scary escape to safety oh my god there were flames on both sides of the highway there were Embers flying over the the lanes of the highway so as we're driving behind this emergency vehicle I'm hearing an explosion on my right

there are uh houses on fire right up against the road on the left and so at this point I'm just holding my breath and I can feel the heat from inside the car just watching The Embers fly across the windshield we get put on a lot of kind of risky assignments and and in this situation we have to make a calculated risk for the best way to leave and thankfully we got out of there and we got a real look at just the level of Destruction and really the fear that a lot of those residents

might be feeling if they're looking at those images on the news if they've evacuated I I can't imagine they're they're wondering if their house is is the next one on fire if they have anything to go home to 10c trivia what European territory is the largest island in the world that is not a continent Sardinia Greenland Iceland or reunion your answer is Greenland an autonomous territory of Denmark that's more than three times the size of Texas the largest island that is a continent is Australia if you've been hearing a lot about Greenland lately you are

not the only one last month president-elect Donald Trump called for the US to buy the Arctic Island he brought that up in his first term as president as well now his son Donald Trump Jr visited Greenland this week raising questions about what exactly his father's plans might be for the island CNN's Fred plin explains why president-elect Trump is interested in buying the autonomous territory whose capital city nuke is closer to New York than it is to Denmark's Capital Copenhagen and what strategic importance it might bring the US Donald Trump wants Greenland the president-elect has called

acquiring the autonomous Arctic territory which is of course part of the Kingdom of Denmark a strategic necessity for the United States now he sent his son Don Jr to Greenland even though its leaders say that that is just a private visit in a social media post Donald Trump has said I am hearing the people of Greenland are Maga he has also vowed to both cherish and protect Greenland in what he calls a very vicious world now all this could make strategic sense for the United States Greenland is situated in a very important place right between

North America and Europe the US also has some pretty important military assets there as well like the Thula airbase and a missile defense radar but there is something else the Chinese have been increasing their footprint in Greenland a lot of that through possible mineral deals however the big problem that Donald Trump faces is that neither Greenland nor Denmark want Greenland to become part of the United States Donald Trump has floated the United States buying Greenland in his first term in office but even back then both Greenland and Denmark have said that island is not and

will not be for sale in fact the Kingdom of Denmark has now increased the presence of Greenland on the coat of arms of the country clearly indicating that the Danes want to hold on to their Arctic territory now to major changes happening at meta removing fact Checkers from its platforms Facebook and Instagram and replacing them with user contributed Community notes similar to those implemented on X the content review changes are a major reversal in how meta handles keeping false and misleading claims off its platforms and will significantly change the way that posts videos and other

content are moderated online CNN's CLA Duffy breaks down the changes for us and explains what factors went into these changes So Meta is rolling back some of its content moderation practices in particular it is getting rid of its thirdparty fact Checkers which the company started its Partnerships with in the wake of concerns that foreign actors were manipulating the platform using them to spread disinformation and so Discord among American voters around elections but now the company is getting rid of those fact Checkers and it will instead rely on user generated context labels that will be added

to posts there called Community notes this is something that Elon Musk has done on X since he took over two years ago and Joel Kaplan who is one of meta's top Republican Executives he recently took over as its top policy executive he announced these changes on Fox news this morning let's listen to how he described the system so somebody can write a note and then the way it works is uh different uh different people on the platform can sort of vote on that note and if you get people who usually disagree who all say yeah

that sounds right then that note gets put on the on the post and people see it X has been doing it for a while uh we think it's working really well and and we're going to adopt that system now meta says that this is an effort to address mistakes that its content moderation systems have made that they have been too restricted Ive and meta said it has censored some voices and you know this is Mark Zuckerberg says this is an effort to increase free expression but I think it also looks pretty clearly like an effort

to appeal to the Republican voices including Trump who have accused the company of censoring conservative [Applause] voices today's store getting a 10 out of 10 a one-month-old whose hippon brings happiness because she just might be the cutest thing we see all today a baby hippo needed a name so her home Zoo took a poll and more than 116,000 votes came in from 165 countries from around the world here's what voters chose the Metro Richmond Zoo in Virginia announced the name of a baby pygmy hippo girl that was born in December the name was decided by

a poll with more than 116,000 fans worldwide casting a vote and the winning name is Poppy the flowery name received 52.8% of the vote and is a nod to her mom's name Iris that little CF can hypnotize with those eyes that's a cutie patootie right there shout out to our neighbors to the north today Alberta Canada the Trojans of Westwood Community High School in Fort McMurray rise up and St Benedict's Episcopal School in Smyrna Georgia Mr flemister and all the Stingers you rock I see you Austin I'm Coy wire happy Friday Eve everyone see you

right back here tomorrow for the best day of the week Fray [Music] n [Music]