Firefighters struggle to stop California’s spreading wildfires

An oil spill in Southern California closed beaches and led authorities to cancel the last day of the Pacific Air Show. At least 126,000 gallons (98,420 liters) of oil spilled off the coast of Orange County.

A trove of leaked documents has revealed links between leaders and offshore tax havens. Officials in Pakistan and other countries are facing calls for investigation while Germany urged patience in fighting tax avoidance.

The massive oil spill from 480,000 liters leaking off the Orange County coast is slowly moving south, threatening marine-protected areas as well as popular beaches. On the coastline of South California, most beaches are closed, with efforts to clean areas impacted by the oil ongoing.

Following revelations by whistleblower Frances Haugen and a global outage, the US company faces renewed scrutiny. It could mark a tipping point and prompt lawmakers to get tough on the tech giant.

Blast and fire kill 16 at Russian chemicals plant

Facebook began this week by announcing more than $9 billion in quarterly profits, an increase of about 17 percent. The social media giant also announced that it now has close to three billion users. But all is not well on the Facebook front as Mark Zuckerberg’s platform has been facing a deluge of scathing reports.

Handing the win to pharmaceutical companies, the judge said the plaintiffs hadn't proven that deceptive marketing by the firms led to a rise in unnecessary opioid prescriptions.

African and Western nations have called for an urgent halt to fighting in Ethiopia as the conflict in Tigray marks one year. The US has sent a special envoy to the capital to push for cease-fire talks.

The council's 15 member countries released the statement as Tigrayan rebels threatened to capture the capital, Addis Ababa, a year into the fighting. Twitter also has disabled the trends section on Ethiopia.

At least 25 primary school children were killed when their thatched-roof classrooms caught fire in southern Niger on Monday the council of ministers said in a statement. Fourteen more children were injured, including five in a critical condition, the statement said. The school is in the town of Maradi, more than 600 km (370 miles) east of the capital Niamey. Classes have been suspended and three days of mourning declared in Maradi.

The Arizona Republican released a video featuring images of him violently killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword and then holding it to President Joe Biden's head. Democrats and the White Hose condemned the video.

Though discussions at COP26 are usually among national governments, the US state of California sent its own delegation to the UN climate conference in Glasgow. California is already feeling the effects of climate change and in recent years it has taken aggressive action to reduce greenhouse gases, with a target of 100 percent clean electricity by 2045. Our correspondents Valérie Defert, Pierrick Leurent and Ryan Thompson report from the Golden State.