Last year, in the aftermath of Los Angeles’s devastating wildfires, California Governor Gavin Newsom promised to speed up “critical” wildfire-prevention projects.

Newsom issued an emergency proclamation to “cut bureaucratic red tape” and “fast-track critical projects,” including brush clearance, forest thinning, prescribed burning, and other forms of fuels reduction.

“These are the forest management projects we need to protect our communities most vulnerable to wildfire,” Newsom said last spring. “[W]e’re going to get them done.”

We filed a public records request to discover whether Newsom is keeping his word. As of last month, the Newsom administration had fast-tracked fuels-reduction work on roughly 87,000 acres of land. But internal records we obtained from state fire authorities indicate that state-approved organizations had completed projects totaling about 781 acres—less than 1 percent.

These numbers are disastrous. The governor’s office insisted that these projects, which are part of the state’s larger wildfire-prevention efforts, were “critical” and would help “protect communities from catastrophic wildfire.” The documents we obtained, which concern the fast-tracked projects, reveal that the Newsom administration has failed to protect the state.

What has put so much of California at risk to burn? In part, the state’s environmental rules.

In 1991, I had the unique opportunity to host three foreign exchange students from the United Arab Emirates at my home in South Florida.

It was a fascinating window into a culture fundamentally different from our own.

Having previously served as a Peace Corps Volunteer and Instructor of Biology at the University of Liberia (1972–1975), I was intensely curious about the social frameworks that shaped different civilizations.

In West Africa, the traditional system of dispute settlement known as the palaver bears a distant resemblance to a filibuster. Both sides talk, negotiate, and marshal support. The larger and more influential the factions involved, the more likely the matter ultimately rises to a chief or clan elder for resolution.

One evening, discovery came through a casual conversation. One of the students mentioned he had three mothers. Fascinated by the logistics of a polygamous household, I asked what it was like growing up with so many siblings and mothers under one roof.

His answer was strikingly direct.

“It is simple. There is strength in numbers.”

He explained that in the traditional world from which his culture emerged, the group with the greatest numbers usually prevailed in conflict. Maintaining a large family was not merely family planning. It was protection, influence, and survival.

At the time, I viewed his answer as a remarkable piece of sociological insight—a window into an ancient, clan-based worldview. Thirty-five years later, I have come to see it differently.

The German ambassador to Egypt works out of a house that used to belong to a Jewish family. So does the Swiss ambassador. So does the American one. The homes were confiscated in 1956, when the Egyptian government declared, in a proclamation read aloud from the minarets of Cairo and Alexandria, that all Jews were Zionists and enemies of the state.

The families were given one suitcase. They signed documents “donating” everything else to the government. Then they left. The houses are still there; the families are not.

This is where the argument about Israel begins — not in Europe, but here.

There is a story told about Israel with remarkable confidence in universities, at the United Nations, in the opinion sections of newspapers that should know better. The story goes like this: European Jews, traumatized by European persecution, arrived in a land populated by indigenous Arabs and established, by force, a settler state. European guilt. European migration. European power. Colonialism wearing a Star of David.

The story requires you to ignore the majority of Israelis.

Ukraine's increasingly effective long-range drone campaign is piling pressure on Vladimir Putin, striking at the heart of Russia's oil industry, embarrassing the Kremlin on the world stage and compounding a growing list of military and economic setbacks.

The latest blow came on Wednesday when Ukraine staged a massive attack on a major oil port in St Petersburg just hours before the opening of Putin's flagship international investment summit.

The oil terminal on the Gulf of Finland is one of Russia's largest fuel storage and export facilities, handling 12.5 million tonnes of fuel annually.

The strike occurred shortly before the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, known as “Russia's Davos,” where Putin seeks to project economic strength and international relevance despite Western sanctions and the war in Ukraine.

The attack made a mockery of the forum's theme, “Pragmatic dialogue - the path to a stable future,” while also exposing glaring weaknesses in Russian air defences.

The facility is located just 12 miles from the forum venue, yet Moscow failed to prevent the strike.

It is the latest in a string of successful Ukrainian long-range attacks that have increasingly targeted the infrastructure underpinning Russia's war effort.