World Information Tuesday

California firefighters brace
for new heat wave
 Los Angeles



Weary California firefighters braced on Sunday for another heat wave in the next few days as they battled to bring two major blazes threatening towns along the central coast under control.
Residents in more than 2,600 homes in the path of a 9,367 acre fire in the Santa Barbara area were still under evacuation orders. Families who live in another 850 houses were warned to be ready to leave at short notice, county officials said.
Cooler weather on Saturday helped fire crews make some headway against a six-day old fire raging in rugged terrain near the small town of Goleta, about eight miles from Santa Barbara.
But with the fire only 28 per cent contained, temperatures rose and humidity dropped on Sunday ahead of what forecasters warned would be another heat wave ahead with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees F in many areas.
‘Any time temperatures increase and relative humidity goes down, the fuels get drier and you have a more combustible situation. There is a lot of concern for firefighter safety,’ said Karen McKinley, spokeswoman for the National Forest Service.
‘We’ve got increased temperatures and increased winds today. Canyons and passes tend to channel winds, so what could happen is that the winds could channel the fire down San Marco pass and that would hit Goleta and Santa Barbara,’ she said.
The blaze near Goleta is one of more than 1,700 to hit central and northern California since June 21, destroying at least 69 homes, charring 520,000 acres and killing one firefighter, the California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, said on Saturday.
Most were caused by lightning strikes and have been contained, but about 330 are still burning.
Further north, a fire raging along the spectacular Big Sur coast, about 140 miles south of San Francisco, continued to threaten nearly 1,700 homes. Flames have consumed more than 72,000 acres in the past two weeks and mandatory evacuations are in effect.



Madonna denies affair,
divorce rumours
Agence France-Presse . Los Angeles


Madonna on Sunday took the rare step of issuing a formal denial of reports linking her to US baseball star Alex Rodriguez and speculation she was to divorce British director Guy Ritchie.
In an exclusive statement released to celebrity magazine People, Madonna poured
scorn on suggestions she was in a romantic relationship with New York Yankees star Rodriguez.
The 49-year-old pop icon also scotched speculation that she was seeking a divorce from ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ director Ritchie after seven years of marriage.
‘My husband and I are not planning on getting a divorce,’ Madonna was quoted as saying in the People statement.
The singer insisted she only knew Rodriguez because they shared the same manager, Guy Oseary.
‘I brought my kids to a Yankee game. I am not romantically involved in any way with Alex Rodriguez,’ Madonna said.
Rodriguez’s wife Cynthia, who recently gave birth to the couple’s second child, was reported to have left the slugger last week, citing Madonna as the cause of her marital breakdown, and alleging Madonna wooed Rodriguez to Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism.