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National Briefs

California fires razed 8,400 buildings, evacuees, check homes

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) — Some Northern California residents who fled their houses nearly two weeks ago as wildfires threatened them started returning home Friday to see what is still standing. Authorities raised the number of buildings destroyed by the fires to 8,400.

The residents of three neighborhoods in the hard-hit city of Santa Rosa were being allowed to see what remains of their houses. Many had fled in the middle of the night, and some trying to get out died.

Meanwhile, authorities increased their count of homes destroyed to 8,400 from fewer than 7,000 a day earlier as crews continued assessing fire damage.

Daniel Berlant, a spokesman with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said crews have almost finished their damage assessments.

“We’re getting back into the areas where homes are hard to access and hard to reach. That’s why these numbers are trickling in,” Berlant said.

The fires that broke out Oct. 8 north of San Francisco in California’s famed wine country and other nearby areas killed 42 people. One wildfire in Sonoma County killed 22 of them, making it the third deadliest fire in California’s history.

California’s insurance commissioner has said preliminary estimates of the wildfire losses exceed $1 billion and that the figure is expected to rise.

Report: 152 Afghan trainees have gone AWOL in US since 2005

WASHINGTON (AP) — At least 152 Afghans sent to the United States for military training during the course of the war against the Taliban have gone AWOL, and the problem, which worsened last year, is unlikely to improve soon, U.S. inspectors said Friday.

AWOL Afghans are considered a security risk in the U.S. because they have military training and are of fighting age, and relatively few are ever arrested or detained, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

The relatively high AWOL rate among Afghan trainees, particularly since 2015, also has undermined the combat readiness and morale of Afghan military and police units, the report said.

The AWOL rate among Afghans is far higher than for other foreign national trainees. Of 2,537 Afghan trainees brought to the U.S. since 2005, 152, or 6 percent, have gone absent without leave, the report said. The rate for trainees from all other countries in that period was less than 1 percent.

Nearly all the Afghans who fled since 2005 were officers. Most were what the military calls “company grade” officers, meaning they were at the rank of lieutenant or captain. The prevalence of this group to abandon training posts is “particularly alarming,” the report said, given the officers’ important role in maintaining the overall readiness of the Afghan military.

The Afghans have fled from posts across America, including Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, where they are required to take English-language training; Fort Rucker, Alabama; Fort Benning, Georgia; Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

3 arrested after shooting following white nationalist speech

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — A man who fired a shot at anti-Nazi protesters following a speech at the University of Florida by a white nationalist has been charged with attempted murder, police in Gainesville said Friday. Two men who allegedly urged him to shoot face the same charge.

A Gainesville Police Department report released on Friday said that Tyler Tenbrink, 28; William Fears, 30; and his brother, 28-year-old Colton Fears, all from Texas, were arrested on attempted homicide charges following an appearance on campus by white nationalist Richard Spencer.

Hours before the shooting, all three men had spoken with the media in support of Spencer’s speech and white nationalism.

The three were in a vehicle Thursday immediately after Spencer’s speech and began making Nazi salutes and shouting Hitler chants at a group of people holding anti-Nazi signs near a bus stop, Gainesville Police Officer Ben Tobias said.

One person in the group of about six people struck the back window of the men’s vehicle with a baton, police said.

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