California Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked Congress to approve nearly $40 billion in aid to help the Los Angeles area recover from January’s devastating wildfires, which he said could become the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

Newsom sent a letter Friday asking for support from lawmakers including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the House Appropriations Committee chair.

“Los Angeles is one of the most economically productive places on the globe, but it can only rebound and flourish with support from the federal government as it recovers from this unprecedented disaster,” Newsom wrote.

Estimates of the total economic loss from the firestorm have been estimated to surpass $250 billion — with real estate losses from the Palisades and Eaton fires predicted to potentially top $30 billion, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis. More than 16,200 structures were destroyed as flames ripped through Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Pasadena and Altadena.

Newsom vowed that the funding would be used to rebuild homes, infrastructure, businesses, schools, churches and health care facilities, while supporting the needs of people affected by the devastation.

“Make no mistake, Los Angeles will use this money wisely,” Newsom wrote.

Harris brings message to NAACP gathering

Former Vice President Kamala Harris stepped on the NAACP Image Awards stage Saturday night with a sobering message, calling the civil rights organization a pillar of the Black community and urging people to stay resilient and hold onto their faith during the tenure of President Donald Trump.

“While we have no illusions about what we are up against in this chapter in our American story, this chapter will be written not simply by whoever occupies the oval office nor by the wealthiest among us,” Harris said after receiving the NAACP’s Chairman’s Award. “The American story will be written by you. Written by us. By we the people.”

The 56th annual Image Awards kicked off Saturday at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in the Los Angeles area.

Harris, defeated by Trump in last year’s presidential election, was the first woman and the first person of color to serve as vice president. She had previously been a U.S. senator from California and the state’s attorney general.

In her first major public appearance since leaving office, Harris did not reference her election loss or Trump’s actions since entering the Oval Office, although Trump mocked her earlier in the day at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Colorado skier is latest avalanche fatality

One person was killed in an avalanche in central Colorado on Saturday, marking just the latest fatality stemming from avalanches in the western U.S. this season.

Authorities in Grand County responded Saturday to what they described as a skier-triggered avalanche in a steep area known as “The Fingers” above Berthoud Pass. It was the second reported avalanche in the county that day. A few people were caught in the other slide but were uninjured.

Saturday’s avalanche death is the third in Colorado this winter and the second fatality in less than a week in that state, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. A Crested Butte snowboarder was killed Feb. 20 in a slide west of Silverton.

Elsewhere, three people died in avalanches Feb. 17 — one person near Lake Tahoe and two backcountry skiers in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains.

On Feb. 8, a well-known outdoor guide was caught in an avalanche in Utah and was killed. In California, Mammoth Mountain confirmed Saturday in a social media post that a member of the ski patrol there died from injuries sustained in an avalanche last week.

Sudanese militias aim for parallel government

The Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group fighting Sudan’s military in the country’s calamitous civil war, signed a political charter with its allies late Saturday that aimed to establish a parallel Sudanese government in areas under their control.

The paramilitaries said the agreement, which was signed in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, would pave the way for peace after nearly two years of a war that has killed thousands of people and set off a devastating famine. Critics called it an audacious gambit by a group that the United States has accused of genocide, and warned that the charter could further splinter Sudan.

The charter’s signatories included the deputy leader of the SPLM-N, a secular-minded rebel group that stayed out of the war until last week. Now it is firmly aligned with the Rapid Support Forces, more often referred to as the RSF.

The most immediate effect, though, was diplomatic. Triumphant appearances by RSF leaders — many of them accused of war crimes and under U.S. sanctions — in Kenya’s capital last week set off a bitter public row between the two countries. Sudan’s military-led government accused Kenya of “disgraceful” behavior that it said was “tantamount to an act of hostility” and withdrew its ambassador in protest.

4 arrested in deadly stabbing in France

Four people were in custody Sunday after a deadly stabbing in eastern France that authorities linked to Islamic extremism, according to the national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office.

A Portuguese man was killed in the Saturday attack in the city of Mulhouse, near the border with Germany. Seven police officers were wounded, including a parking control agent hospitalized with grave injuries, the prosecutor’s office said.

Those detained include the suspected assailant, a 37-year-old Algerian man identified by prosecutors as Brahim A. The interior minister described him as an Islamic extremist with a schizophrenic profile. Two of the suspect’s family members and a person who lodged him were also detained.

Frozen shakes linked to nursing home illness

Frozen shakes sold to nursing homes, hospitals and other institutions have been recalled after the drinks were tied to a yearslong deadly listeria outbreak, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday.

Since 2018, at least 11 people have died from the outbreak and dozens have been hospitalized, the FDA said, but previous investigations had not been able to find a source of the bacteria.

In 37 of the 38 known cases, the patients were hospitalized; 34 of those infected were in long-term care facilities or had been hospitalized before becoming sick with listeria.

Cases have been reported in 21 states. Since January 2024, there have been 20 cases, and the outbreak is ongoing, the FDA said.

The FDA said Friday that the outbreak had been linked to Lyons ReadyCare and Sysco Imperial frozen shakes, which are made to supplement meals.

‘Captain America’ loses box office superpowers

“Captain America: Brave New World” soared on opening weekend, but crash-landed in its second go-around with audiences.

“Brave New World,” the latest sign that the Marvel machine isn’t quite what it used to be, remained No. 1 at the box office in its second frame with $28.2 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday. But after a debut of $100 million over four days and $88 million over three days, that meant a steep drop of 68%.

While blockbusters often see significant slides in their second weekends, only two previous MCU titles have fallen off so fast: 2023’s “The Marvels,” which fell 78%, and 2023’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” which dropped 70%.

The Anthony Mackie-led “Captain America” installment has been slammed by critics, and audiences also have graded it poorly, with a “B-” CinemaScore. “Brave New World,” which fans had hoped would right the Marvel ship, has been largely met as another example of a once impenetrable brand struggling to recapture its pre-“Avengers: Endgame” aura of invincibility.

‘Pee-wee’s’ Miss Yvonne dies at 78

Lynne Marie Stewart, who played Pee-wee Herman’s perky, bouffant-wigged neighbor, Miss Yvonne, in the 1980s children’s television series “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” and the sweet, timorous mother of one of the main characters in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” died Friday in Los Angeles. She was 78.

The cause of death was cancer, said her manager, Bette Smith. Her doctors found a tumor shortly after Stewart finished filming a movie called “The Dink,” a comedy starring Jake Johnson and Ben Stiller, in December, Smith said.

Stewart played a variety of characters in a career that spanned six decades, and had nearly 150 credits as a screen, stage and voice actress starting in 1971, according to IMDb, the entertainment database.

But she was perhaps best known for her role as Miss Yvonne, or the “most beautiful woman in Puppetland,” in “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” which ran for five seasons on Saturday mornings on CBS.

— News service reports