Thousands of firefighters in California made some progress against several large-scale blazes that have turned close to 200,000 acres (80,940 hectares) into an ashen wasteland, destroyed expensive homes, and killed eight fire personnel and civilians in the most populous US state.

The worst blaze, northern California’s Carr Fire, has killed six people since Thursday, including a 70-year-old woman and her two great-grandchildren aged four and five. They perished when flames swallowed their home in Redding.

Local media identified the victims as Melody Bledsoe and the children, Emily Roberts and James Roberts, nicknamed “Junior.”

“I talked to Junior on the phone ’til he died,” Melody’s husband Ed Bledsoe told CNN, recounting the last words of the boy, his sister, and Bledsoe’s wife.

“He said ‘Come and get me, the fire’s comin’ in the back door. Come on, grandpa,'” Bledsoe said, his voice choking.

But he couldn’t get there in time to save them.

“I’ve been a lifelong resident of this community, and I’ve never seen a fire with such destruction here in this area ever before,” Shasta County Supervisor Leonard Moty said of the Carr Fire.

Alyce Macken said she had only minutes to flee with her husband Ted from the flames sweeping closer to her home in Redding. A sheriff’s officer pounded on the door and gave them 15 minutes to leave, Macken told AFP.

“We were out in 10 minutes. I was shaking, it just went by really fast,” the retiree said.

Macken told AFP that she met other panic-stricken neighbors at a nearby shopping center — and watched from afar as her home went up in flames.

“It was almost like a tornado with fire in it and it came over the hill and it wiped out our house, it wiped out our next door neighbor’s home,” she said.

About 38,000 people had been evacuated in Shasta County due to the Carr Fire, officials said, though some evacuation orders have been lifted.

Over the weekend, US President Donald Trump approved California’s request for federal help to fight the blaze and assist evacuees.

A thick smoke haze covered a large part of northern California, severely limiting visibility and contributing to breathing problems.

According to the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), 12,000 firefighters from as far away as Florida and New Jersey have deployed across the state.

Firefighter killed by tree

A firefighter identified as Brian Hughes died on Sunday while battling the Ferguson Fire near Yosemite National Park, a major tourist attraction partially closed because of the fire.

Hughes “was struck and killed by a tree” while fighting the blaze, the Sequoia and Kings National Parks Service said.

Another firefighter died days earlier working at the fire around Yosemite.

Much of that blaze is in steep, rugged terrain with little or no access roads, officials said.

The remains of a person who ignored Carr Fire evacuation orders was found in a burned-out residence on Sunday, said Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko.

Two fire personnel were killed late last week battling the Carr blaze.

Seven other people were reported missing, Sheriff Bosenko said, adding that 600 National Guard soldiers had been deployed for support duties such as roadblocks.

Police have reported cases of looting from areas emptied of residents — but then there was also the case of the missing python.

Sandra Dodge-Streich, an evacuee forced to move four times, warned that a 14-foot long albino python she owned was lost at her latest stop in south Redding.

“She is part of our store family and Reptile Exhibit. Please don’t be afraid of her — she is lost and scared!” Dodge-Streich, the owner of Redding Reptiles, said on Facebook.

Feeling ‘optimistic’

The Carr Fire covers almost 99,000 acres and is 20 percent contained, according to Cal Fire, the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

“Firefighters worked through the night to build control lines,” and will now work to mitigate potential spot fires, Cal Fire said in a morning update.

Cal Fire incident manager Bret Gouvea earlier told reporters “we’re feeling a lot more optimistic… as we’re starting to make up some ground instead of being on the defensive.”

But current conditions are perfect for fanning the flames: very hot, with little wind or humidity.

In southern California, where thousands fled the deliberately-set Cranston Fire, Cal Fire said crews had stopped flames from reaching Idyllwild town and the blaze was more than 50 percent contained by Monday.

Last year was California’s deadliest ever for wildfires, with more than 40 fatalities.

The report on sexual exploitation and abuse in the sector, produced by the International Development Committee scrutiny panel of MPs, said self-regulation had completely failed to deal with the issue.

“The overall impression is one of complacency, verging on complicity,” the report said.

Lawmakers were investigating the aid sector following revelations earlier this year of a prostitution scandal in Haiti involving staff from the British charity Oxfam.

That triggered a flood of complaints across the sector.

The committee said the scale of the problem was impossible to define but there were suspicions that known cases so far were the tip of the iceberg.

“Sexual exploitation and abuse is happening and it is happening across organisations, countries and institutions. It is endemic, and it has been for a long time,” the parliamentary report said.

“The delivery of aid to people and communities in crisis has been subverted by sexual predators who exploit weakened systems of governance.”

In its conclusions, the report said the international aid sector’s response to tackling abuse had been “reactive, patchy and sluggish”.

It said there had been a collective failure of leadership and the aid sector was in “self-delusion” over its efforts to deal with the issue.

“Impunity for sexual exploitation and abuse is utterly unacceptable. The lack of accountability entirely undermines the notion of zero tolerance,” the MPs said.

The committee called for a global register of aid workers, to prevent sexual predators seeking to drift around the sector.

“Reactions driven by concern for reputational management” will “never bring about meaningful change,” the MPs said.

October conference

Britain is hosting an international safeguarding conference on October 18 aimed at striking a common front agreement across the sector.

Britain’s International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt said survivors needed to be put first.

“Until the sector is fully prepared to address the power imbalance, cultures, and behaviours that allow sexual abuse, exploitation and harassment to happen, we will never stamp it out,” she said.

Judith Brodie, who heads Bond, Britain’s network of international development non-governmental organisations, said the sector was working to end sex abuse.

“We as NGOs know that ‘business as usual’ is not going to cut it and change has started,” she said.

Oxfam chair of trustees Caroline Thomson said the report made for “incredibly painful reading.”

“We failed to protect vulnerable women in Haiti, and we accept we should have reported more clearly at the time — for that we are truly sorry,” she said.

Barely a week after warning Iran it would suffer untold “consequences,” Trump said he would meet the country’s leader Hassan Rouhani “any time” and without preconditions.

“I would meet with Iran if they wanted to meet,” Trump said at a joint White House press conference with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, “I don’t know if they are ready yet.”

“No preconditions,” he added.

“They want to meet, I’ll meet. Any time they want. Good for the country. Good for them. Good for us. And good for the world.”

White House and administration officials rushed to place caveats on the president’s seemingly open invitation.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered his own interpretation of the “no preconditions” offer, setting out three steps Iran must take before talks take place.

“The president wants to meet with folks to solve problems if the Iranians demonstrate a commitment to making fundamental changes in how they treat their own people, reduce their maligned behavior, can agree that it’s worthwhile to enter into a nuclear agreement that actually prevents proliferation,” he said.

“Then the president said he’s prepared to sit down and have a conversation with him.”

National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis said Trump was open to dialogue and even ending four decades of bitter animosity between the two countries, but only if Iran fundamentally changes.

“The United States is prepared to take actions to end sanctions, reestablish full diplomatic and commercial relations, permit Iran to have advanced technology and support the reintegration of the Iranian economy into the international economic system,” Marquis said.

“However, this relief is only possible if there are tangible, demonstrated and sustained shifts in Tehran’s policies. Until then, the sting of sanctions will only grow more painful if the regime does not change course.”

Trump’s offer comes after a provocative warning a week ago from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who said the US should not “play with the lion’s tail” and warned that any conflict with Iran would be the “mother of all wars.”

Trump responded with an all-caps tirade on Twitter: “NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.”

“WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!” he added.

The US is regularly suspected of backing the idea of regime change, but analysts read the tweets as simply a way for Trump to pivot after a week of dire headlines over his much-maligned summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

In May, Trump — who has made Iran his public enemy number one — announced the US withdrawal from what he called a “defective” multinational nuclear deal with Tehran, and moved to reinstate punishing sanctions.

The 2015 agreement came in response to fears that Iran was developing a nuclear bomb. Washington’s European allies maintain their support for the deal and have vowed to stay in it, though their businesses fear US penalties.

“I ended the Iran deal. It was a ridiculous deal,” Trump said.

“If we could work something out that’s meaningful, not the waste of paper that the other deal was, I would certainly be willing to meet.”

Trump said he and Conte had agreed that the “brutal regime in Iran must never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon. Never.”

“We encourage all nations to pressure Iran to end the full range of its malign activities,” the US leader added.

‘I believe in meeting’

Trump has repeatedly shown a willingness to cast traditional diplomatic protocol aside and meet with leaders shunned by other administrations, including North Korean’s Kim Jong Un.

“I believe in meeting,” Trump said.

“Speaking to other people, especially when you are talking about potentials of war and death, and famine and lots of other things, you meet.”

On July 23, Pompeo said Washington was not afraid to sanction top-ranking leaders of the “nightmare” Iranian regime.

Pompeo also said that Washington wants all countries to reduce their imports of Iranian oil “as close to zero as possible” by November 4, or face American sanctions.

“There’s more to come,” Pompeo said of US financial penalties.

Members of Asean have been at loggerheads with China over the territorial rights in the South China Sea. Tensions and clashes have occurred in recent years after China began militarisation of the sea, notably in the Spratly Islands.

Some ministers – at their recent annual meeting in Singapore – raised concerns about the issue, notably the militarisation, Thailand’s Asean Affairs Departments director-general Suriya Chindawongse said.

The Philippines and Vietnam are at the forefront of the conflict and have occasionally faced up to their giant neighbour. In 2013 the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague ruled in favour of the Philippines, rejecting China’s claim of historical rights over the territories in the sea. Beijing dismissed the ruling, but showed an intention to solve the issue with Manila on a bilateral basis.

Asean and China signed a non-binding Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) in 2002 but the document failed to prevent conflict and tension. Both sides are in the process of drawing up a code of conduct (COC) as a legally binding instrument to control the behaviour of countries in the contentious sea.

No tangible results

While Beijing wants to see the effective and full implementation of the DOC, significant progress to establish negotiation ground-rules for the COC has been made in recent years.

“For the first time both sides have agreed to have a single negotiation text,” Suriya said, noting that previously every stakeholder had their own text for negotiation.

He said that the process would take time to reach a conclusion and the COC is not an instrument to settle the territorial dispute. That issue would be settled on a bilateral basis.

Since the COC has not yet materialised, China and Asean countries will continue to fully and effectively implement the DOC and endeavour to reach a COC at an early date, said China’s Ambassador to Asean, Huang Xilian.

“We also hope that countries outside the region could play a constructive role in this process and contribute to peace and stability in the region,” Huang said in an interview with The Nation.

The Chinese diplomat appeared to be referring to the United States, which closely monitors militarisation in the area and has called for continued freedom of navigation.

Implementing the DOC while negotiating the COC is an effective platform to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea through enhanced dialogue and cooperation, Huang said.

“It is a testament that China and Asean have the wisdom and ability to draft rules and properly manage the disputes for the sake of peace and stability in the South China Sea,” Huang said.

With such spirit, maritime cooperation in the region is possible and could yield a good result, he said. To prevent incidents and manage the situation, China and Asean issued the Joint Statement on the Application of the Code of Unplanned Encounters at Sea and launched a hotline for senior officials of both sides to respond to maritime emergencies.

To strengthen maritime rescues, China and Asean have begun building a hotline platform for maritime search and rescue and plan to hold the first ever large-scale joint exercise on maritime search and rescue, he said.

“These measures have played important roles in maintaining safety and stability in the sea, and formed a sound interaction … as the two simultaneously rotating wheels,” Huang said.

China plans to conduct more maritime cooperation programs with Asean. They include the first China-Asean joint maritime drill, the China-Asean marine information technology cooperative research project, a workshop on cooperation on coastal ecosystem health assessment and conservation strategy in the South China Sea, a workshop on ocean acidification training, training on satellite remote sensing of the marine ecological environment, and a workshop on safety of navigation and communication on the South China Sea, he said.