A new Iranian general has stepped out of the shadows to lead the country’s expeditionary Quds Force, becoming responsible for Tehran’s proxies across the Mideast as the Islamic Republic threatens the U.S. with “harsh revenge” for killing its previous head, Qassem Soleimani.
The Quds Force is part of the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary organization that answers only to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Guard oversees Iran’s ballistic missile program, has its naval forces shadow the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf and includes an all-volunteer Basij force.
Like his predecessor, a young Esmail Ghaani faced the carnage of Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s and later joined the newly founded Quds, or Jerusalem, Force.
While much still remains unknown about Ghaani, 62, Western sanctions suggest he’s long been in a position of power in the organization. And likely one of his first duties will be to oversee whatever revenge Iran intends to seek for the U.S. airstrike early Friday that killed his longtime friend Soleimani.
“We are children of war,” Ghaani once said of his relationship with Soleimani, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency. “We are comrades on the battlefield and we have become friends in battle.”
The Guard has seen its influence grow ever-stronger both militarily and politically in recent decades. Iran’s conventional military was decimated by the execution of its old officer class during the 1979 Islamic Revolution and later by sanctions.
A key driver of that influence comes from the elite Quds Force, which works across the region with allied groups to offer an asymmetrical threat to counter the advanced weaponry wielded by the U.S. and its regional allies. Those partners include Iraqi militiamen, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
In announcing Ghaani as Soleimani’s replacement, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the new leader “one of the most prominent commanders” in service to Iran.
The Quds Force “will be unchanged from the time of his predecessor,” Khamenei said, according to IRNA.
Soleimani long has been the face of the Quds Force. His fame surged after American officials began blaming him for deadly roadside bombs targeting U.S. troops in Iraq. Images of him, long a feature of hard-line Instagram accounts and mobile phone lockscreens, now plaster billboards calling for Iran to avenge his death.
But while Soleimani’s exploits in Iraq and Syria launched a thousand analyses, Ghaani has remained much more in the shadows of the organization. He has only occasionally come up in the Western or even Iranian media. But his personal story broadly mirrors that of Soleimani.
Born Aug. 8, 1957 in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, Ghaani grew up during the last decade of monarchy. He joined the Guard a year after the 1979 revolution. Like Soleimani, he first deployed to put down the Kurdish uprising in Iran that followed the shah’s downfall.
Iraq then invaded Iran, launching an eight-year war that would see 1 million people killed. Many of the dead were lightly armed members of the Guard, some of whom were young boys killed in human-wave assaults on Iraqi positions.
Volunteers “were seeing that all of them are being killed, but when we ordered them to go, would not hesitate,” Ghaani later recounted. “The commander is looking to his soldiers as his children, and in the soldier’s point of view, it seems that he received an order from god and he must to do that.”
He survived the war to join the Quds Force shortly after its creation. He worked with Soleimani, as well as led counterintelligence efforts at the Guard. Western analysts believe while Soleimani focused on nations to Iran’s west, Ghaani’s remit was those to the east like Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, Iranian state media has not elaborated on his time in the Guard.
In 2012, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Ghaani, describing him as having authority over “financial disbursements” to proxies affiliated to the Quds Force. The sanctions particularly tied Ghaani to an intercepted shipment of weapons seized at a port in 2010 in Nigeria’s most-populous city, Lagos.
Authorities then broke into 13 shipping containers labeled as carrying “packages of glass wool and pallets of stone.” They instead found 107 mm Katyusha rockets, rifle rounds and other weapons. The Katyusha remains a favored weapon of Iranian proxy forces, including Iraqi militias and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
An Iranian and his Nigerian partner later received five-year prison sentences over the shipment, which appeared bound for Gambia, then under the rule of dictator Yahya Jammeh. Israeli officials had claimed the rockets would be shipped onto militants in the Gaza Strip, while Nigerian authorities alleged that local politicians could use the arms in upcoming elections.
Also in 2012, Ghaani drew criticism from the U.S. State Department after reportedly saying that “if the Islamic Republic was not present in Syria, the massacre of people would have happened on a much larger scale.” That comment came just after gunmen backing Syrian President Bashar Assad killed over 100 people in Houla in the country’s Homs province.
“Over the weekend we had the deputy head of the Quds Force saying publicly that they were proud of the role that they had played in training and assisting the Syrian forces — and look what this has wrought,” then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nunland said at the time.
In January 2015, Ghaani indirectly said that Iran sends missiles and weapons to Palestinians to fight Israel.
“The U.S. and Israel are too small to consider themselves in line with Iran’s military power,” Ghaani said at the time. “This power has now appeared alongside the oppressed people of Palestine and Gaza in the form of missiles and weapons.”
Now, Ghaani is firmly in control of the Quds Force. While Iran’s leaders say they have a plan to avenge Soleimani’s death, no plan has been announced as the country prepares for funerals for the general starting Sunday.
Whatever that plan is, Ghaani likely will be involved.
“If there were no Islamic Republic, the U.S. would have burned the whole region,” Ghaani once said.

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Wildfires are burning out of control in southeastern Australia.
Thousands of people have already fled their homes but some have waited too long.
The New South Wales Rural Fire Service has advised those who have not evacuated areas at risk that, “It is too late to leave.  Seek shelter as the fire approaches.”

Late Saturday evening, Victoria had 14 fires rated at emergency or evacuation warning levels, while New South Wales, home to more than 100  fires, had 11 emergency fires.
CNN reported that fire officials said Saturday three fires combined overnight in Victoria and are now larger than Manhattan in New York City.
Army reservists have been called in to assist the firefighters. Defense Minister Linda Reynolds said this is the first time the reservists have been called up to help combat fires “in living memory and, in fact, I believe for the first time in our nation’s history.”

Andy Gillham, the incident controller in the Victorian town of Bairnsdale, told Reuters that this has been an exceptional fire season.  
“In a normal year, we would start to see the fire season kick off in a big way around early January and we’re already up towards a million hectares of burnt country. This is a marathon event and we expect to be busy managing these fires for at least the next eight weeks,” he said.

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Africa could emerge as a venue for confrontation between the U.S. and Iran as Tehran threatens to retaliate after the U.S. airstrike that killed the Iranian Quds Force commander, General Qassem Soleimani.
Iran has sought to increase its influence in certain countries in Africa in recent years through activities such as arms sales, training fighters for combat in the Middle East and funding Shia sects. It also has significant trade relations with several countries, including South Africa.
Phillip Smyth, a Soref Fellow at The Washington Institute who studies Shia Islamist militarism, said that he does not necessarily expect the Iranians to strike immediately. He noted that they have historically been cautious and look for what he calls “plausible deniability” to avoid detection when they attack.
When they do strike, he said, it is possible they will look for a soft target in an unexpected location.
“The Iranians are going to want to show that they have influence on a global scale and they may look for low-hanging fruit or easier targets that they can go after,” Smyth said. “And that may very well occur in Africa. And it could very well occur in North America or Europe or in many other places,” he said.

FILE – Military officials stand near ammunitions seized from suspected members of Hezbollah after a raid of a building in Kano, Nigeria, May 30, 2013.Smyth said Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran, has recruited and trained Nigerians for years. A 2018 report by the Middle East Institute said Iran had instructed Hezbollah to increase its training of Nigerians and hoped to use Nigeria as a base of operations to launch attacks and “thwart Israeli and Western ambitions in the region.”
There have also been West African fighters who, after converting to Shia Islam, traveled and fought alongside Iranians in Syria. Iranians have similarly supported fighters from other parts of the world to join them in various conflicts.
“There are tens of thousands of fighters that the Iranians have mobilized and used for conflicts in Iraq, in Syria and in Yemen. They have a very strong alliance and kind of proxy relationship with Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis. So they have quite an extensive presence and they have continued to try and grow that presence,” Smyth said.
Terror cells
A June 2019 report by the British newspaper The Telegraph said that Iranians were setting up terror cells in Africa under Soleimani’s direction. The paper reported that Iranian cells may be active in Sudan, Chad, Ghana, Niger, The Gambia and the Central African Republic.
However, Ryan Cummings, director of Signal Risk, an Africa-focused political and security risk management consultancy, said there is no evidence to date that Shia groups in Africa pose a threat to the U.S. or the West.
“Groups which have a distinct Shia theology — and which would place them in the orbit of Iran — have demonstrated no intent to carry out acts of violence against U.S./Western interests on the continent despite suggestions that they have embedded in these countries for several years,” he told VOA in a written statement.

FILE – A woman prays for the victims at the memorial site in Nairobi, Kenya, Aug. 7, 2013, during events marking the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in the city.Profit motives
Much of Iran’s engagement on the continent is less ideological and more profit-driven. One favored outlet has been weapons smuggling. A 2013 Conflict Armament Research report found Iranian bullets in 14 locations across nine African countries. At the time, the group said Sudan was partnering with Iran to funnel the ammunition to African armed groups.
“There’s actually a whole issue over the past couple of years of Iranian ammunition winding up throughout Africa,” Smyth said. “I mean from east to west. And it was rather interesting how these weapons systems and also the ammunition was arriving there.”
Smyth added that, in some cases, weapons are sent to Somalia, packed in wooden ships known as dhows and then smuggled across the Red Sea to Houthi fighters in Yemen.
Iran has also sought to exert influence on the African continent through religion. One prominent example of this is the Shia sect the Islamic Movement in Nigeria and its controversial leader Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky. The group has been charged with inciting violence and El-Zakzaky has been imprisoned and formally accused by the Nigerian government of trying to form an “Islamic State in Nigeria” with the backing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Although Africa does not appear to be a focal point of the emerging conflict between Iran and the U.S., that could change. Smyth noted that al-Qaida linked groups historically sought to attack U.S. interests in Africa, viewing it as a more favorable operating environment for terror groups. This occurred in the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and a 2002 attack against an Israeli-owned hotel and a failed attempt to shoot down a passenger jet taking off from Mombassa, Kenya.
“People will look at the continent and say, ‘Can we smuggle weapons in, are there populations there that we can target, do they have lower security, how is the connection that goes back to, let’s say, the Israeli, or back to the Americans,’“ Smyth said.
He added that Iran will not want to damage its own trade and diplomatic relations in Africa but it will look for ways to make a loud and, possibly violent, statement.
“They don’t want to harm their other interests in the continent. However, I believe, if push came to shove, and if they really thought it would be a good place to get their revenge, they may actually pick the continent to do it on,” he said.

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Thousands of mourners gathered Saturday for a funeral procession through Baghdad for Iran’s top general and Iraqi militant leaders killed in a U.S. airstrike that has caused regional tensions to soar.
Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds force and mastermind of its regional security strategy, was killed in an airstrike early Friday near the Iraqi capital’s international airport.
Soleimani was the architect of Iran’s regional policy of mobilizing militias across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, including in the war against the Islamic State group. He was also blamed for attacks on U.S. troops and American allies going back to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Many of the mourners were dressed in black, and they carried Iraqi flags and the flags of Iran-backed militias that are fiercely loyal to Soleimani. They were also mourning Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a senior Iraqi militia commander who was killed in the same strike.

A picture by Iraq’s Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force, Jan. 4, 2020, shows Iraq Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, center, arriving for the funeral of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Baghdad.Airstrike condemned
The procession began at the Imam Kadhim shrine in Baghdad, one of the most revered sites in Shiite Islam. Mourners marched in the streets alongside militia vehicles in a solemn procession.
Iraq, which is closely allied with both Washington and Tehran, condemned the airstrike that killed Soleimani and called it an attack on its national sovereignty. Parliament is to meet for an emergency session Sunday, and the government has come under mounting pressure to expel the 5,200 American troops based in the country, who are there to help prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group.
The U.S. has ordered all of its citizens to leave Iraq and has closed its embassy in Baghdad, where Iran-backed militiamen and their supporters staged two days of violent protests earlier this week in which they breached the compound. 
No one was hurt in the protests, which came in response to U.S. airstrikes that killed 25 Iran-backed militiamen in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. said the strikes were in response to a rocket attack that killed a U.S. contractor in northern Iraq, which Washington blamed on the militias.
Iran nuclear deal
The killing of Soleimani comes after months of rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran stemming from Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal and restore crippling sanctions. 
The administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign has led Iran to openly abandon commitments under the deal. The U.S. has also blamed Iran for a wave of increasingly provocative attacks in the region, including the sabotage of oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and an attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure in September that temporarily halved its production.
‘Revenge is on the way’
In Iran on Saturday, every major newspaper and state-controlled TV broadcast focused on Soleimani’s death, with even reformist newspapers like Aftab-e Yazd warning that “revenge is on the way.”
In the hard-line Kayhan newspaper, editor-in-chief Hossein Shariatmadari wrote Saturday that Iran shouldn’t hesitate to retaliate. He criticized an earlier statement by the country’s Supreme National Security Council saying an attack would come at the “right place and right time.”
“America and its allies are sitting in a glass room and are vulnerable on every side, so we can say for sure that all the preparations are ready for harsh revenge on terrorist America,” wrote Shariatmadari, who was appointed by Khamenei.
The “glass room” comment may refer to the United Arab Emirates, home to the skyscraper-studded city Dubai, which Kayhan previously has warned was a target for Iranian-backed forces. The UAE also hosts some 5,000 American troops at Abu Dhabi’s Al-Dhafra Air Base. Dubai’s Jebel Ali port is the U.S. Navy’s busiest port of call outside of the U.S.

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Hong Kong authorities activated a newly created “serious response” level Saturday as fears spread about a mysterious infectious disease that may have been brought back by visitors to a mainland Chinese city.
Five possible cases have been reported of a viral pneumonia that has also infected at least 44 people in Wuhan, an inland city west of Shanghai and about 900 kilometers (570 miles) north of Hong Kong.
The outbreak, which emerged last month, has revived memories of the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic that started in southern China and killed more than 700 people in the mainland, Hong Kong and elsewhere.
Serious response level
The serious response level indicates a moderate impact on Hong Kong’s population of 7.5 million people. It is the second highest in a three-tier system that is part of a new government plan launched Saturday to respond to infectious diseases of unknown cause.

A health surveillance officer with temperature scanner waits for passengers at the Hong Kong International Airport, Jan. 4, 2020. Hong Kong authorities activated a new response protocol Saturday as fears spread about a mysterious infectious disease.The city’s health department added an additional thermal imaging system at Hong Kong’s airport Friday to check the body temperature of arriving passengers. More staff have been assigned for temperature checks at the West Kowloon high-speed rail station that connects Hong Kong to the mainland.
City leader Carrie Lam, on a visit to the train station Friday to review the health surveillance measures, urged any travelers who develop respiratory symptoms to wear surgical masks, seek medical attention and let doctors know where they have been. The Wuhan health commission said 11 of the 44 people diagnosed with the pneumonia were in critical condition as of Friday. All were being treated in isolation and 121 others who had been in close contact with them were under observation. 
Seafood market
Most of the cases have been traced to the South China Seafood City food market in the suburbs of sprawling Wuhan, where offerings reportedly include wild animals that can carry viruses dangerous to humans. The commission said the market has been disinfected.
The most common symptom has been fever, with shortness of breath and lung infections in a small number of cases, the commission said. There have been no clear indications of human-to-human transmission of the disease.
The latest cases in Hong Kong are two women, ages 12 and 41, who had been to Wuhan in the past 14 days but did not appear to have visited the food market, the Hospital Authority said. They were in stable condition and being treated in isolation at Princess Margaret Hospital. 
Besides SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, Hong Kong has also been hit by bird flu in 1997 and swine flu in 2009. 

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U.S. efforts to deal with Iran in the coming days could divert its attention from Pyongyang, meanwhile the killing of Iran’s top military general by the U.S. could prompt North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to reassess how willing the U.S. is to use force, experts said.
“North Korea may get put on the back burner,” said Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, as the Trump administration becomes occupied with possible Iranian retaliations in the Middle East.
The U.S. killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani Friday with an airstrike at the Baghdad airport. Soleimani was the commander of Iran’s Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the chief strategist of Iran’s military influence in the Middle East and the architect of major operations of Iranian forces over the past two decades. 

Burning debris is seen on a road near the Baghdad International Airport that Iraqi paramilitary groups said was caused by three rockets hitting the airport, Jan. 3, 2020. (Iraqi Security Cell/Reuters)President Donald Trump authorized the attack amid rising tensions between Washington and Tehran. Soleimani “killed or badly wounded thousands of Americans over an extended period of time, and was plotting to kill many more” Trump said via Twitter Friday.
The U.S. and Iran have been competing to exert influence in the Middle East and tension between the two has been growing over Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. withdrawal from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
On Friday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for retaliations against the United States. Soleimani’s death is expected to have an effect across the region.
US attention
Iran could take the U.S.’s attention away from North Korea as Pyongyang seeks to raise tensions on the Korean Peninsula, said David Maxwell, a former U.S. Special Forces colonel who served on the Combined Forces Command of the U.S and South Korea.
“Kim is not going to be happy with all the attention focused on Iran when he was trying to execute a large-scale information and influence campaign against the U.S. and the international community to get sanctions lifted,” he said.
This week, Kim vowed to “actively push forward the project for developing strategic weapons.” North Korea’s aim to develop weapons is believed to be for escalating threats on the Korean Peninsula to increase leverage over the U.S. to extract sanctions relief.
North Korea has been demanding that the U.S. lift sanctions since Kim met with Trump at their Hanoi Summit last February. The summit broke down when Trump rejected Kim’s proposal for partial denuclearization in exchange for sanctions relief.
While the talks remained stalled, North Korea has conducted 13 missile tests since May in an effort to pressure the U.S. to lift sanctions.
Change of thinking
Experts said the U.S. killing of the Iranian general could change North Korea’s thinking about the U.S. ability to use force.
“The attack tells adversaries like North Korea to reassess [its] assumptions about U.S. actions moving up the escalatory ladder,” said Ken Gause, director of the adversary analytics program at CNA.
“Trump, more so than previous presidents,” he added, “is not averse to doing decapitation strikes and focused assassinations.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper Thursday said the U.S. could use a military option on North Korea if necessary.
“We think the best path forward, with regard to North Korea, is a political agreement that denuclearizes the peninsula,” Esper said in an interview with Fox News. “But that said, we remain, from a military perspective, ready to fight tonight, as need be.”
The Pentagon recently released a photo of U.S. and South Korean special forces conducting drills simulating raids on North Korean facilities aimed at taking out its top officials. 
“It will be interesting to speculate if [Kim] thinks something like this [the U.S. killing of the Iranian general] could happen to him or if his paranoia would lead him to think that Trump is somehow sending him a message,” Maxwell said.
“We should look for [North Korea’s] responses in the coming days,” he added.
This story was originated on VOA’s Korean Service.

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un recently indicated the road to denuclearization has come to an end, but experts say he left a door open for diplomacy with the U.S. in his statements Wednesday.
“Kim Jong Un’s speech suggests that the DPRK [North Korea] is no longer interested in holding out the possibility of even an illusory commitment to denuclearization,” said Evans Revere, a former State Department official during the George W. Bush administration, which also negotiated with North Korea.
Kim said, “If the U.S. persists in its hostile policy toward the DPRK, there will never be the denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and the DPRK will steadily develop necessary and prerequisite strategic weapons for the security of the state.”
Revere said Kim’s stance on denuclearization was “the latest manifestation” of what North Korea has been saying for years.
Earlier in December, North Korea’s U.N. ambassador, Kim Song, said denuclearization was off the table. 

This file picture taken and released on July 4, 2017 by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (2nd R) inspecting the test-fire of the intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14.Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said, “Kim is setting the stage for a strategic choice to be a full-fledged nuclear state, which is Pyongyang’s longtime goal, 40 years in the works, and then blame the U.S. for its hostile policy.”
Manning said North Korea might continue “the facade of diplomacy” while perfecting its missiles and nuclear arsenal and that denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang were unlikely to make progress.
“At this point, after 25 years of diplomatic efforts, it is delusional to keep saying there is one last chance,’” Manning said.  “I see no evidence Kim has any intention of dismantling his nuclear weapons program.”
North Korea promised it would denuclearize in hopes of obtaining sanctions relief at the start of talks with the U.S. in 2018.  At the failed Hanoi summit held in February 2019, Kim proposed partial denuclearization in exchange for eliminating sanctions.

U.S. President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Panmunjom, South Korea, June 30, 2019.President Donald Trump rejected the offer in Hanoi, and Pyongyang has responded with multiple missile launches since May in what many observers see as an effort to pressure the U.S. to soften its stance.
Now, Kim is signaling he no longer hopes to obtain sanctions relief from the U.S.
Even so, Bruce Klingner, former CIA deputy division chief of Korea and current senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said Kim was clinging to hopes that sanctions would disappear.
Klingner said Kim “left the door to negotiations open the tiniest of cracks” by stating that North Korea’s denuclearization and weapons development were “contingent on a dramatically altered U.S. policy.”
North Korea views internationally imposed sanctions as hostile acts. It also views joint military drills the U.S. holds annually with South Korea as a threat. Kim voiced opposition to both sanctions and joint exercises in his statements.
“Under such conditions” of continued joint drills and sanctions, Kim said, North Korea will drop a self-imposed moratorium placed on its nuclear and long-range missiles.
“There is no ground for us to get unilaterally bound to the commitment any longer,” Kim said.
Klingner expects North Korea will continue to take provocative actions in hopes of extracting concessions from the U.S.
“Pyongyang will go up the escalation ladder, either incrementally or immediately, but in a manner to maximize impact and diplomatic leverage,” he said.  “The Trump administration should ratchet up pressure on North Korea and foreign enablers of its prohibited nuclear and missile programs.”

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SYDNEY/MELBOURNE — Australian firefighters were set for a dangerous day Saturday as fires in the states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria were expected to burn out of control in temperatures above 40C (104F) and shifting, strong winds that will fan and spread the flames.
Authorities have said conditions could be worse than New Year’s Eve, when out-of-control fires forced thousands of residents and summer holidaymakers to seek refuge on beaches as the flames burned massive tracts of bushland.
“It’s going to be a long and difficult day for everybody,” NSW Rural Fire Services Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told reporters.
More than 100 fires were burning in NSW Saturday and more than half were not contained, Fitzsimmons said, adding that winds that will shift throughout the day will spread the blazes.

Fire Spread Prediction for Sat 4 Jan 2020Dangerous fires in Shoalhaven, South Coast, Snowy Mountains & areas surrounding Greater Sydney. You should not be in potential spread areas or potential ember attack areas on Saturday. #nswrfs#nswfirespic.twitter.com/Ry14FXgPR2
— NSW RFS (@NSWRFS) January 3, 2020
“We know the fires we’ve got already … but what we need to be vigilant about today as well is the prospect of any new fires that might start under these hot, dry, windy conditions,” he said.
In Victoria, where a state of disaster has been declared, there were evacuation recommendations for six fires, emergency warnings for six others and dozens still burning.
“We still have those dynamic and dangerous conditions, the low humidity, the strong winds, and what underpins that, the state is tinder dry. It is really, really dry at the moment,” Andrew Crisp, Victoria’s Emergency Management Commissioner, told reporters.
Authorities had urged people in areas covered by the state of disaster to evacuate, and said Saturday that tens of thousands of an estimated 100,000 people had left.
“But there are still significant populations in those areas,” said Graham Ashton, chief commissioner of Victoria Police. Those who stayed needed to monitor emergency announcements and fire tracking apps, he said.

A view of a property burned by the Currowan Fire in Conjola Park, NSW, Australia, Jan. 2, 2020.Loss of life
There have been 10 deaths from the fires in NSW and Victoria so far this week, about half the total toll for the current fire season. Twenty-one people remain unaccounted for in Victoria, down from 28 reported Friday.
The focus Saturday is preventing more loss of life, authorities said.
To that end, national parks were closed and people were strongly urged earlier this week to evacuate large parts of NSW’s south coast and Victoria’s north eastern regions, magnets for holidaymakers at the peak of Australia’s summer school holidays.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian speaks to the media at Rural Fire Service Headquarters in Sydney, Australia, Jan. 4, 2020.State of emergency
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has declared a weeklong state of emergency.
“All of the major road networks in NSW are still open, but we can’t guarantee that beyond the next few hours. So, there are still windows for people to get out if they wish to do so,” she said.
The Australian Navy ship HMAS Sycamore delivered the first load of evacuees from the isolated town of Mallacoota on Victoria’s east coast to near Melbourne, with a second vessel carrying around 900 people to dock late Saturday.
The town was cut off on New Year’s Eve by fires, and about 4,000 people were stranded on the beach. Road access is still blocked and heavy smoke has limited air access, leaving sea transport as the only reliable route out.

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United Methodist Church leaders from around the world and across ideological divides unveiled a plan Friday for a new conservative denomination that would split from the rest of the church to try to resolve a yearslong dispute over gay marriage and gay clergy. 
Members of the 13 million-person denomination have been at odds for years over the issue, with members in the United States leading the call for full inclusion for LGBTQ people. 
At a specially called meeting last Feburary in St. Louis, delegates voted 438-384 for a proposal called the Traditional Plan, which affirmed bans on LGBTQ-inclusive practices. A majority of U.S.-based delegates opposed the plan, but they were outvoted by U.S. conservatives teamed with most of the delegates from Methodist strongholds in Africa and the Philippines. 
Battle to continue
Methodists in favor of allowing gay clergy and gay marriage vowed to continue fighting. Meanwhile, the Wesleyan Covenant Association, representing traditional Methodist practice, had already been preparing for a possible separation. 
The Reverend Keith Boyette, president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association and one of 16 people on the mediation team that developed and signed the separation proposal, said he was “very hopeful” the plan would be approved at the denomination’s General Conference this year. 

FILE – Participants react to the defeat of a proposal that would have allowed LGBT clergy and same-sex marriage within the United Methodist Church at the denomination’s 2019 general conference in St. Louis, Feb. 26, 2019.This is the first time that “respected leaders of groups from every constituency“ have come together to form a plan, he said. “And this is the first time that bishops of the church have signed on to an agreement like this.” 
Boyette stressed that while the churches remaining in the United Methodist Church would keep the denomination’s name, both the new church and the post-separation Methodist Church would be different from the current Methodist Church. 
‘Not a leaving’
“This is not a leaving, but a restructuring of the United Methodist Church through separation,” he said. 
The proposal, called “A Protocol of Reconciliation & Grace Through Separation,” envisions an amicable separation in which conservative churches forming a new denomination would retain their assets. The new denomination also would receive $25 million. 
“The undersigned, in recognition of the regional contexts and divergent points of view within the global United Methodist Church, propose separation as a faithful step with the possibility of continued cooperation around matters of shared interest, enabling each of us to authentically live out our faith,” the proposal states. 

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Stocks fell broadly on Wall Street and oil prices surged Friday after a U.S military strike killed a top Iranian general in Iraq. 
The killing rattled global markets and knocked U.S. stock indexes off their recent all-time highs. The selling also put the benchmark S&P 500 index on track to snap a five-week winning streak. 
Financial stocks were among the biggest decliners as investors bought up U.S. government bonds, sending their yields lower. Technology stocks, health care companies and airlines also took heavy losses. 
Several energy stocks rose as the price of U.S. oil headed higher. Defense contractors also notched gains. 
Benchmark U.S. crude climbed $1.87, or 3.1%, to settle at $63.05 per barrel. It had been up 3.6% earlier in the day. Brent crude, used to price international oils, rose $2.35, or 3.5%, to close at $68.60 per barrel. 
The selling followed a broad decline in markets overseas following news that General Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, was killed in an air attack at Baghdad International Airport early Friday. 
President Donald Trump said the attack was ordered because Soleimani was plotting to kill many Americans. The strike marked a major escalation in the conflict between Washington and Iran, as Iran vowed “harsh retaliation“ for the killing of the senior military leader. 
Gold on the rise
The price of gold, which investors buy in times of uncertainty as a safe haven of value, rose $24.70, or 1.6%, to $1,549.20 per ounce. 
The S&P 500 was down 0.6% at midafternoon. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 222 points, or 0.8%, to 28,645. The index briefly dropped 368 points. 
The Nasdaq dropped 0.7% and the Russell 2000 index of smaller company stocks gave up 0.4%. 
Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 1.79% from 1.88% late Thursday, a big move. Lower bond yields bring down the interest rates that banks charge for mortgages and other consumer loans, making them less profitable. That prompted a sell-off in bank shares. JPMorgan slid 1.1%, Bank of America dropped 2% and Citigroup lost 1.6%. 
Airlines slumped as oil prices rose. American Airlines Group dropped 4.5%, United Airlines Holdings slid 1.9% and Delta Air Lines lost 1.8%. 
Heightened tensions with Iran helped lift the stocks of defense contractors. Northrop Grumman climbed 5.4% Raytheon rose 1.6% and Lockheed Martin gained 3.5%. 
Energy companies made gains as oil prices surged over concerns that a U.S.-Iran conflict could disrupt global supplies. Occidental Petroleum rose 2.2% and Hess gained 2.6%. 

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VOA Persian spoke to State Department Spokesperson Morgan Ortagus on Friday about the U.S. airstrike that killed one of Iran’s most powerful generals, Qassem Soleimani. Below is a transcription of the interview.
Q: What was the cost-benefit analysis that went into this decision?
A: This is obviously a decision that’s a very tough decision for any president to make. But I think when President [Donald] Trump and his national security team, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, got together, they looked at a lot of different pieces.

President Donald Trump delivers remarks on Iran, at his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Fla., Jan. 3, 2020.It’s never just one thing, but you start to look at the number of attacks that we’ve seen by the Iranians against the Americans in the past week. We saw one American killed and several of our service members injured in Iraq. We’ve also had at least 11 attacks, at least 11 in just the past two months — attacks on American facilities in the region by Iran or their proxies.
And finally but not exclusively, when you combine that with the intelligence that the U.S. received, the president was faced with a difficult decision, which is, is America safer with Qassem Soleimani dead or alive? And the president decided that the world was safer with him dead.
Q: Was there any concern that this decision could lead to a full-fledged war?
A: President Trump has always said that he does not want war, that he seeks peace with Iran, peace in the Middle East. And in fact, we took this decision in order to de-escalate and to defend ourselves. 
So what we are seeking is for Iran to behave like a normal nation.
For Iran to stop being the largest state sponsor of terrorism, and for Iran to stop arming and training and funding their proxies to attack and kill, in an attempt to kill Americans, our allies, our friends, our interests in the region.

FILE – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivers remarks at the State Department in Washington, Dec. 19, 2019.Secretary Pompeo has been very clear with Qassem Soleimani and the Iranian regime, even going back since he was CIA director in this administration. This administration has made clear that any attack on America, whether it was from Iran directly or from any of their proxies, these types of attacks on America would be met with a swift and a decisive response.
So we have exercised the maximum restraint possible despite repeated provocations and attacks from the regime and through their proxies. And finally enough was enough.
Q: Pompeo said this morning that  he hopes the Iranian people see this as a step toward freedom. How could this be?
A: Sure, so we have been standing with the Iranian people as many of them have been risking their lives to protest a corrupt regime, to protest a regime that is killing and jailing innocent Iranians just because they want to protest for a better life, for an end to endemic corruption, for an end to a government that is not transparent, that is not accountable to the Iranian people.
So we stand with the Iranian people. We know they want a brighter future. We know that they want to choose their future. And we believe that the whole world should stand behind the innocent Iranians that are being persecuted by their own government.
No one was affected by the brutality and the terrorism of Qassem Soleimani more than the Iranian people themselves.
Q: Were any allies informed of the decision BEFORE the operation? … Iraqi government?
A: I’ll leave it up to President Trump to let people know who he decided to inform and who he didn’t. I will note that our allies have to be constantly on guard in the region, because of the daily threat from the Iranian regime.
The Iranian regime has been terrorizing the Middle East for 40 years. They’ve been the aggressor for 40 years. And finally this president, President Donald J. Trump, said “enough is enough.”
 

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