LOS ANGELES >> Six weeks after the start of the most destructive wildfire in city history, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass ousted the fire chief Friday amid a public rift over preparations for a potential blaze and finger-pointing between the chief and City Hall over responsibility for the devastation.

Bass, a first-term Democrat, said she is removing Chief Kristin Crowley immediately. “Los Angeles needs to move forward. This is a new day,” she told reporters at City Hall.

While Bass initially praised Crowley in the early hours of firefighting, she said she later learned an additional 1,000 firefighters could have been deployed the day the blaze ignited. Additionally, she said Crowley rebuffed a request to prepare a report on the fires that is a critical part of investigations into what happened and why.

“One thousand firefighters who could have been on the job fighting the fires were sent home” on Crowley’s watch, Bass said.

The Palisades Fire began during heavy winds Jan. 7, destroying or damaging nearly 8,000 homes, businesses and other structures and killing at least 12 people in the affluent LA neighborhood. Another wind-whipped fire started the same day in suburban Altadena, a community to the east, killing at least 17 people and destroying or damaging more than 10,000 homes and other buildings.

Bass has been facing criticism for being in Africa as part of a presidential delegation on the day the fire started, even though weather reports had warned of dangerous wind and wildfire conditions in the days before she left.

Speaking at City Hall, Bass said Crowley never notified her of the looming danger before she departed, even though that was standard practice since she took office in December 2022.

“She has my cellphone. She knows she can call me 24/7,” Bass said. “That did not happen this time.”

At City Hall, Bass was pressed again on how she could have been unaware of the fire risk before leaving the country, given widespread media coverage about intensifying winds and tinder-dry conditions. She didn’t appear to respond directly.

Pope Francis to remain hospitalized

A week after entering the hospital, Pope Francis is still not out of danger and must remain in hospital for at least the entire coming week, his doctors said on Friday.

The medical condition of the 88-year-old head of the Catholic Church remains complex, said the attending physician, Sergio Alfieri, at a press conference at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome.

He did not provide additional details, but said what’s important is that the pope is improving.

Alfieri emphasized that Francis’ life is not in danger. The Pope is suffering from pneumonia.

The head of 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide has been treated at the hospital since Friday last week, when he was admitted with a bronchitis diagnosis.

A few days ago, doctors diagnosed him with pneumonia in both lungs. Francis has been in poor health for a long time. Concern for him has been widespread worldwide since he was admitted to hospital exactly a week ago.

Proud Boys leader arrested at Capitol

Former Proud Boys national leader Enrique Tarrio was arrested on Friday near the U.S. Capitol on a charge that he assaulted a woman who was protesting a gathering attended by Tarrio and others who received presidential pardons for crimes stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in the nation’s capital.

Capitol police said officers saw Tarrio strike the protester’s cellphone and arm after the woman placed the phone close to his face as they walked near the Capitol. Tarrio had just left a news conference that had ended “without incident,” police said.

“The woman told our officers that she wanted to be a complainant, and the man was arrested for the simple assault,” police said in a statement.

An attorney who represented Tarrio in his Capitol riot case didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Tarrio, of Miami, was serving a 22-year sentence — the longest among hundreds of Capitol riot cases — when President Donald Trump granted clemency last month to all 1,500-plus people charged in the Jan. 6 attack.

Man convicted in Salman Rushdie attack

A jury in western New York on Friday found a New Jersey man guilty of attempted murder in the stabbing of author Salman Rushdie, which left him partially blind.

The conviction of the man, Hadi Matar, 27, followed harrowing testimony from Rushdie, 77, who told jurors that he had been struck by his attacker’s dark, ferocious eyes. He testified that at first he believed he was being punched, but then he realized he had “a very large quantity of blood pouring out” onto his clothes.

Rushdie had been scheduled to deliver a talk at the Chautauqua Institution amphitheater in August 2022 about how the United States has been an asylum for writers and other artists who were in exile.

Shortly before his talk was set to begin, a man wearing dark clothing and a face mask rushed onto the stage and began stabbing Rushdie.

Matar on Friday was also found guilty of assault for injuring Ralph Henry Reese, one of the founders of a project that offers refuge for writers. Reese had been onstage to moderate the talk.

Matar, who is scheduled to be sentenced April 23, faces up to 32 years in prison. He also faces federal terrorism-related charges.

Woman’s scheme left three men dead

LAS VEGAS >> A woman used online dating apps to lure at least four older men to meet her in person, then drugged them with sedatives and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in a “sinister” romance scheme, FBI officials in Las Vegas said Friday.

Three of the men died, authorities said, and she has been charged in one of their deaths.

Aurora Phelps, 43, who is in custody in Mexico, faces 21 counts including wire fraud, identity theft and one count of kidnapping resulting in death, Sue Fahami, the acting United States attorney for the District of Nevada, said at a news conference.

“This is a romance scam on steroids,” said Spencer Evans, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas division.

One of the four victims, who were targeted in 2021 and 2022, awoke from a coma after Phelps gave him prescription sedatives over the course of a week, Evans added.

In one instance Phelps is alleged to have kidnapped a victim by heavily sedating him and taking him across the U.S.-Mexico border in a wheelchair and then to a Mexico City hotel room, where he was later found dead.

After incapacitating her victims, Evans said, Phelps stole their cars, withdrew money from their bank accounts, used their credit cards to purchase luxury items and gold and even tried to access social security and retirement accounts.

12 students die in Brazil bus collision

A bus carrying university students and a truck collided on a highway in southeastern Brazil, killing 12 passengers and injuring 21 others, authorities said Friday.

The truck driver, who was also injured, tried to flee the scene of the crash late Thursday night on a highway near Nuporanga, a city about 230 miles from the state’s capital, but was caught and hospitalized. He was later charged with attempting to flee the scene, involuntary homicide and bodily harm.

All of the dead were students from the University of Franca, officials said. The injured were taken to hospitals in the region.

L.A. D.A. opposing new Menendez trial

The Los Angeles district attorney said Friday he opposes a new trial for Lyle and Erik Menendez in the 1989 killing of their parents but hasn’t made up his mind on whether to support a resentencing bid that could lead to their freedom after nearly 30 years in prison.

The brothers were found guilty in the 1989 murders of their entertainment executive father, Jose, and their mother, Kitty Menendez, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. They began their latest bid for freedom in recent years after their attorneys said new evidence of their father’s sexual abuse emerged, and they have the support of most of their extended family.

District Attorney Nathan Hochman said Friday he has filed an informal response urging the Los Angeles County Superior Court to reject a habeas petition filed by the brothers’ attorneys in 2023 that seeks a reexamination of their case that centers in part the allegations that Jose Menendez sexually abused Erik Menendez.

In a lengthy press conference, Hochman cast doubt on the evidence of abuse and said it was not pertinent to the case.

“Sexual abuse in this situation may have been a motivation for Erik and Lyle to do what they did, but it does not constitute self-defense,” Hochman said.

Fourth person killed in western avalanche

SILVERTON, Colo. >> A snowboarder was killed in an avalanche in the mountains of southwestern Colorado on Thursday, the fourth person to die in an avalanche in the U.S. West this week after a string of winter storms.

Sarah Steinwand, 41, of Crested Butte, Colorado, was caught in the debris of the avalanche in the backcountry near Silverton, but a man who was skiing with the snowboarder escaped the snow slide, the Colorado Avalanche Information Center said.

Staff from a nearby backcountry hut noticed the avalanche, alerted rescuers and helped the skier dig Steinwand out of the debris, it said.

Three people died in avalanches Monday — one person near Lake Tahoe in California and two backcountry skiers in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains.

Suspect arrested in Berlin stabbing

BERLIN >> Police arrested a man suspected in a stabbing attack Friday at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial that left a Spanish tourist seriously injured, police said.

There was no immediate indication of a motive for the attack, which comes two days before Germans vote in a national election on Sunday.

Police arrested the man, handcuffing him and holding him on the ground. Nath said police seized the attack weapon and would interrogate the suspect as the investigation continued.

Police spokesman Florian Nath told a news conference that the attack happened at 6 p.m. “probably with a knife. Maybe with something else.” Nearly three hours later, a male suspect approached officers who had surrounded the memorial grounds. “He had blood on his hands and this made him very suspicious,” Nath said.

The victim was identified as a 30-year-old Spanish man, who was taken to a hospital.

The attack took place at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a field of 2,700 gray concrete slabs near the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of Berlin, which honors the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust under the direction of Nazi Germany.

-- From news service reports