Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Gilead bolsters cancer portfolio with $21 billion acquisition of Immunomedics

(Reuters) – Gilead Sciences Inc will acquire biotech company Immunomedics Inc for $21 billion, a move that will strengthen its cancer portfolio by gaining access to a promising drug, the two companies said in a joint statement on Sunday.

The deal will give Gilead access to Immunomedics’ breast cancer treatment drug Trodelvy, which was granted an accelerated FDA approval in April for an aggressive and tough to treat type of breast cancer.

Gilead said it would issue a tender offer to buy all the outstanding shares of Immunomedics for $88 per share, representing a premium of about 108% over their last closing price of $42.25 on Friday.

“This acquisition represents significant progress in Gilead’s work to build a strong and diverse oncology portfolio,” Gilead Chief Executive Officer Daniel O’Day said in a statement. “Trodelvy is an approved, transformational medicine for a form of cancer that is particularly challenging to treat. We will now continue to explore its potential to treat many other types of cancer.”

Immunomedics is also on track to file for regulatory approval for Trodelvy in Europe in the first half of 2021, according to the statement.

The deal – and a separate transaction between Merck & Co and Seattle Genetics’s announced on Monday – was a sign of renewed confidence in an approach in oncology to pair antibodies with toxic agents to fight cancer.

Immunomedics’ Trodelvy is a so-called antibody-drug conjugates, or ADC, a class described by researchers as “guided missiles” that zero in on tumors to release cytotoxins that deliver up to 10,000 times the potency of standard chemotherapy, while minimizing damage to healthy tissue.

Merck, for its part, struck a deal with Seattle Genetics worth up to $4.2 billion, comprising stock purchases, an upfront payment and milestone rewards, to collaborate with the partner on two ADCs against breast cancer and other tumors.

In previous landmark deals for the field, AstraZeneca last year committed up to $7 billion for rights to Daiichi Sankyo’s Enhertu, another breast-cancer targeted ADC. It followed up in July with a deal worth up to $6 billion for DS-1062, another ADC developed by the Japanese drugmaker.

Trodelvy targets triple-negative breast cancer that has spread to other organs. Both aggressive and tough to treat, those tumor types account for 15-20% of breast cancers, lacking three genetic characteristics for which there are more treatment options.

Cancer immunotherapy Tecentriq by Gilead CEO O’Day’s former employer Roche has emerged as a new treatment option for this patient group.

Gilead’s offer will be funded with $15 billion in cash on hand, and through $6 billion in newly issued debt, according to the drugmaker.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2020, the companies said.

The acquisition of Immunomedics is the latest of the several Gilead inked this year with the aim of expanding its oncology portfolio.

It bought a 49.9% stake in cancer drug developer Pionyr Immunotherapeutics in June for $275 million, just months after paying $4.9 billion for Forty Seven Inc, maker of an experimental treatment that targets blood cancer.

(Reporting by Ann Maria Shibu in Bengaluru and Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; Editing by Peter Cooney, Diane Craft and Susan Fenton)

Pompeo says Trump administration eager for end to Gulf rift

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pressed on Monday for a solution to the three-year rift between the Gulf state of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, saying the Trump administration was eager to see it resolved.

Speaking at a State Department meeting with Qatari Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, Pompeo said it was important to concentrate on countering Iranian activity in the Middle East.

“To keep our focus on this work and to close the door to increased Iranian meddling, it’s past time to find a solution to the Gulf rift,” Pompeo said.

“The Trump administration is eager to see this dispute resolved and to reopen Qatar’s air and land borders currently blocked by other Gulf states. I look forward to progress on this issue.”

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic and trade links with Qatar in June 2017, accusing it of backing terrorism. Qatar denies the charge and has accused its neighbors of seeking to curtail its sovereignty.

Kuwait and the United States have tried to mediate the rift, which has undermined Washington’s efforts to confront Iran, which is struggling for regional supremacy with Saudi Arabia.

The boycotting nations have set 13 demands for lifting the boycott, including closing Al Jazeera television, shuttering a Turkish military base, reducing ties with Iran and cutting links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The State Department’s top diplomat for the Middle East, David Schenker, said last week there could be some progress within weeks in resolving the rift, citing signs of “flexibility” in negotiations.

With Trump’s facing re-election on Nov. 3, he is eager to show foreign policy successes in the Middle East, and last month the UAE agreed to normalize ties with Israel under a U.S.-brokered deal scheduled to be signed at a White House ceremony on Tuesday. Bahrain joined the UAE in agreeing to normalize relations with Israel on Friday.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Tom Brown)

Potential sign of alien life detected on inhospitable Venus

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists said on Monday they have detected in the harshly acidic clouds of Venus a gas called phosphine that indicates microbes may inhabit Earth’s inhospitable neighbor, a tantalizing sign of potential life beyond Earth.

The researchers did not discover actual life forms, but noted that on Earth phosphine is produced by bacteria thriving in oxygen-starved environments. The international scientific team first spotted the phosphine using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and confirmed it using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile.

“I was very surprised – stunned, in fact,” said astronomer Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in Wales, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The existence of extraterrestrial life long has been one of the paramount questions of science. Scientists have used probes and telescopes to seek “biosignatures” – indirect signs of life – on other planets and moons in our solar system and beyond.

“With what we currently know of Venus, the most plausible explanation for phosphine, as fantastical as it might sound, is life,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology molecular astrophysicist and study co-author Clara Sousa-Silva.

“I should emphasize that life, as an explanation for our discovery, should be, as always, the last resort,” Sousa-Silva added. “This is important because, if it is phosphine, and if it is life, it means that we are not alone. It also means that life itself must be very common, and there must be many other inhabited planets throughout our galaxy.”

Phosphine – a phosphorus atom with three hydrogen atoms attached – is highly toxic to people.

Earth-based telescopes like those used in this research help scientists study the chemistry and other characteristics of celestial objects.

Phosphine was seen at 20 parts-per-billion in the Venusian atmosphere, a trace concentration. Greaves said the researchers examined potential non-biological sources such as volcanism, meteorites, lightning and various types of chemical reactions, but none appeared viable. The research continues to either confirm the presence of life or find an alternative explanation.

Venus is Earth’s closest planetary neighbor. Similar in structure but slightly smaller than Earth, it is the second planet from the sun. Earth is the third. Venus is wrapped in a thick, toxic atmosphere that traps in heat. Surface temperatures reach a scorching 880 degrees Fahrenheit (471 degrees Celsius), hot enough to melt lead.

“I can only speculate on what life might survive on Venus, if indeed it is there. No life would be able to survive on the surface of Venus, because it is completely inhospitable, even for biochemistries completely different from ours,” Sousa-Silva said. “But a long time ago, Venus could have had life on its surface, before a runaway greenhouse effect left the majority of the planet completely uninhabitable.”

THE ACID TEST

Some scientists have suspected that the Venusian high clouds, with mild temperatures around 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius), could harbor aerial microbes that could endure extreme acidity. These clouds are around 90% sulfuric acid. Earth microbes could not survive that acidity.

“If it’s microorganisms, they would have access to some sunlight and water, and maybe live in liquid droplets to stop themselves dehydrating, but they would need some unknown mechanism to protect against corrosion by acid,” Greaves said.

On Earth, microorganisms in “anaerobic” environments – ecosystems that do not rely on oxygen – produce phosphine. These include sewage plants, swamps, rice fields, marshlands, lake sediments and the excrements and intestinal tracts of many animals. Phosphine also arises non-biologically in certain industrial settings.

To produce phosphine, Earth bacteria take up phosphate from minerals or biological material and add hydrogen.

“We have done our very best to explain this discovery without the need for a biological process. With our current knowledge of phosphine, and Venus, and geochemistry, we cannot explain the presence of phosphine in the clouds of Venus. That doesn’t mean it is life. It just means that some exotic process is producing phosphine, and our understanding of Venus needs work,” Clara Sousa-Silva said.

Venus should be hostile to phosphine. Its surface and atmosphere are rich in oxygen compounds that would rapidly react with and destroy phosphine.

“Something must be creating the phosphine on Venus as fast as it is being destroyed,” said study co-author Anita Richards, an astrophysicist associated with the University of Manchester in England.

While previous robotic spacecraft have visited Venus, a new probe may be needed to confirm life.

“Fortunately, Venus is right next door,” Sousa-Silva said. “So we can literally go and check.”

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Shooting of 27-year-old man under investigation in Pennsylvania

By Nathan Layne

(Reuters) – The mayor of Lancaster, Pennsylvania on Monday called for an overhaul of how the city responds to mental health situations after a police officer shot and killed a 27-year-old man who ran at him, allegedly threatening him with a knife.

The shooting on Sunday sparked sometimes-violent protests overnight, turning the city of about 60,000 people into the latest flashpoint in a summer of civil unrest across the United States over racism and use of force by the police.

The Lancaster City Bureau of Police released body camera footage which appeared to show Ricardo Munoz cursing, and running at the officer with a knife in his right hand. The officer shot and killed Munoz, who died at the scene.

Munoz was out on $1 million bail after being charged with aggravated assault last year, court records showed.

At a press conference on Monday, Lancaster Mayor Danene Sorace called on the governor and state legislators to work together to come up with better protocols for responding to 911 calls involving people who may have mental health issues.

She said the shooting highlighted a broader problem of poverty impacting as many as half of the city’s residents — a predicament exacerbated by budget cuts and the coronavirus pandemic and disproportionately impacting minority communities.

“We must fund housing, social services, and education equitably and adequately in this city,” she said. “Lancaster, if we care so deeply about loving our neighbor then let’s do it.”

The Lancaster police department said it had arrested 8 people early on Monday for arson and other crimes, with four of those detained from outside the county. Some protesters threw bricks at the police station and post office, the police said.

Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams said in a statement her office was investigating the shooting to determine whether there was a justified use of force.

She said a preliminary review showed “that the officer fired as a man, clearly armed with a knife, ran toward the officer in a threatening manner.”

(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

$100,000 reward offered in ambush shooting of two Los Angeles County deputies

(Reuters) – As the manhunt for the lone gunman who ambushed and shot two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies enters its third day, authorities are offering a $100,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest and conviction.

Video footage of the shooting showed a man walk up to a parked patrol car on Saturday evening at a transit station in the Compton community and fire a pistol into the passenger side of the squad car. The man then ran away.

Both deputies received critical head wounds, but both are expected to survive, police said. The deputies are described as a 31-year-old female officer who is a mother and a 24-year-old man, police said.

“We’ll see what the long-term impact is. We don’t know that yet, but they survived the worst,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva told reporters on Sunday.

“We would like to offer our sincerest appreciation for the overwhelming support being offered from all over the Nation,” he wrote on Twitter.

The reward was offered late Sunday by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

A few demonstrators gathered overnight Saturday outside St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood where the deputies were being treated, according to social media video and the sheriff’s department, blocking the entrance and chanting anti-police slogans.

Two people were later arrested, including a journalist who was later released.

The description of the shooter still remains vague.

“At this point we have a very, very generic description of a dark-skinned male and that came from one of the victims,” Captain Kent Wegener told a news conference Sunday.

President Donald Trump retweeted the video early on Sunday and wrote: “Animals that must be hit hard!”

Later, referring to the deputies, Trump tweeted: “If they die, fast trial death penalty for the killer. Only way to stop this!”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic rival in for Nov. 3 presidential election, called for the gunman to face “the full brunt of the law.”

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta)

Sea of Slush: Arctic sea ice lows mark a new polar climate regime

By Natalie Thomas and Cassandra Garrison

ARCTIC OCEAN (Reuters) – At the edge of the ice blanketing part of the Arctic Ocean, the ice on Monday looked sickly. Where thick sheets of ice once sat atop the water, now a layer of soft, spongy slush slid and bobbed atop the waves.

From the deck of a research ship under a bright, clear sky, “ice pilot” Paul Ruzycki mused over how quickly the region was changing since he began helping ships spot and navigate between icebergs in 1996.

“Not so long ago, I heard that we had 100 years before the Arctic would be ice free in the summer,” he said. “Then I heard 75 years, 25 years, and just recently I heard 15 years. It’s accelerating.”

As if on cue, scientists on Monday said the vast and ancient ice sheet sitting atop Greenland had sloughed off a 113 square kilometer chunk of ice last month. The section of the Spalte Glacier at the northwest corner of the Arctic island had been cracking for several years before finally breaking free on Aug. 27, clearing the way inland ice loss to the sea, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland reported.

With climate change driving up Arctic temperatures, the once-solid sea ice cover has been shrinking to stark, new lows in recent years. This year’s minimum, still a few days from being declared, is expected to be the second-lowest expanse in four decades of record-keeping. The record low of 3.41 million square kilometers – reached in September 2012 after a late-season cyclonic storm broke up the remaining ice – is not much below what we see today.

“We haven’t gone back at all to anything from 30 to 40 years ago,” said climatologist Julienne Stroeve at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. And as climate change continues, scientists say the sea ice is unlikely to recover to past levels.

In fact, the long-frozen region is already shifting to an entirely new climate regime, marked by the escalating trends in ice melt, temperature rise and rainfall days, according to new research published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Those findings, climate scientist Laura Landrum said, were “unnerving.”

All three variables – sea ice, temperatures and rainfall – are now being measured well beyond the range of past observations. That makes the future of the Arctic more of a mystery.

“The new climate can’t be predicted by the previous climate,” Landrum explained. “The year-to-year variability, the change in many of these parameters, is moving outside the bounds of past fluctuations.”

Sea ice coverage minimums, in particular, are now about 31% lower than in the decade after 1979, when satellite observations began. The ice has also lost about two-thirds of its bulk, as much of the thicker ice layer built up over years has long since melted away. The current ice regime actually began about two decades ago, the study found.

This vanishing of sea ice also contributes to the region’s warming, as the icy white expanse is replaced by patches of dark water that absorb solar radiation rather than reflecting it back out of the atmosphere. The process, referred to as Arctic amplification, helps to explain why the Arctic has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the world over the last four decades.

The polar north will also likely see more days of rain rather than snow, which would further eat into the ice. For the new research, Landrum and her colleague Marika Holland at the National Center for Atmospheric Research analyzed sea ice, air temperature and precipitation data since 1950 to project climate scenarios up to the end of the century. They used computer simulations in the analysis and assumed the world’s release of greenhouse gas emissions would continue at a high trajectory.

Back in the Arctic Ocean aboard the Greenpeace Ship Arctic Sunrise research ship, biologist Kirsten Thompson of the University of Exeter said the new study was important in underlining “how fast and how profoundly the Arctic is changing.”

For Thompson, that means big change for the region’s wildlife, from polar bears and insects to the whales she focuses on studying. “All their distributions are changing,” Thompson said. “We might find in the Arctic there will be winners and losers,” as new species enter the region and out compete indigenous animals.

“Other species certainly will not be able to survive in the future.”

(Reporting by Natalie Thomas in the Arctic Ocean and Cassandra Garrison in Buenos Aires; Editing by Katy Daigle and Lisa Shumaker)

Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade to be reduced to television-only event

(Reuters) – Macy’s iconic Thanksgiving Day Parade will shift to a television-only special presentation, the company and the City of New York said on Monday.

The department store chain said staging for the parade’s elements would focus solely around the Herald Square area of Midtown Manhattan and would not use the traditional 2.5-mile parade route.

(Reporting by Praveen Paramasivam in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

Pandemic preparedness panel slams collective failure to heed warnings

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – A collective failure by political leaders to heed warnings and prepare for an infectious disease pandemic has transformed “a world at risk” to a “world in disorder,” according to a report on international epidemic preparedness.

“Financial and political investments in preparedness have been insufficient, and we are all paying the price,” said the report by The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB).

“It is not as if the world has lacked the opportunity to take these steps,” it said. “There have been numerous calls for action … yet none has generated the changes needed.”

The GPMB, co-convened by the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), is co-chaired by former WHO director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland.

The board’s 2019 report, released a few months before the novel coronavirus emerged in China, said there was a real threat of “a rapidly spreading pandemic due to a lethal respiratory pathogen” and warned such an event could kill millions and wreak havoc on the global economy.

This year’s report – entitled “A World in Disorder” – said world leaders had never before “been so clearly forewarned of the dangers of a devastating pandemic”, and yet they had failed to take adequate action.

“Tragically and catastrophically, we have seen our worst fears realized,” Brundtland told a media briefing on Monday. “The impact of COVID-19 is even worse than we anticipated.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed “a collective failure to take pandemic prevention, preparedness and response seriously and prioritize it accordingly,” the report said.

“Pathogens thrive in disruption and disorder. COVID-19 has proven the point.”

The report noted that despite calling a year ago for heads of government to commit and invest in pandemic preparedness, for health systems to be strengthened and for financial risk planning to take seriously the threat of a devastating pandemic, little progress had been made on any of these.

A lack of leadership, it said, was exacerbating the current pandemic. “Failure to learn the lessons of COVID-19 or to act on them with the necessary resources and commitment will mean that the next pandemic, which is sure to come, will be even more damaging,” it said.

Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity and a member of the monitoring board, urged leaders not to repeat the same mistakes. “This needs more than warm words of solidarity,” he said. “This needs a moment of visionary, historic, political and financial leadership.”

(Reporting by Kate Kelland, Editing by William Maclean and Alex Richardson)

Sally strengthens to hurricane, bears down on U.S. Gulf Coast

By Jennifer Hiller

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Louisiana and Mississippi residents were under evacuation orders on Monday as Hurricane Sally churned across the Gulf of Mexico, strengthening to a hurricane ahead of expected landfall on Tuesday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

The second storm in less than a month to threaten the region, Sally was headed toward a slow-motion landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Residents from Louisiana to Florida were told to expect heavy rain, storm surge and high winds.

Sally is the 18th named storm in the Atlantic this year and will be the eighth of tropical storm or hurricane strength to hit the United States – something “very rare if not a record,” said Dan Kottlowski, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.

Mississippi and Louisiana issued mandatory evacuation orders to residents of low-lying areas, and Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards appealed for a federal disaster declaration and advised people living in Sally’s path to flee.

“We have to make sure that everything is tied down and out of the way so it doesn’t float away or become airborne,” said Steve Forstall, a Bay St. Louis port employee. In the coastal town, located roughly 50 miles (80 km) northeast of New Orleans, water from the bay was spilling onto the beach roadway early on Monday. Workers were seen boarding up homes and securing items like trash cans that can become projectiles in high winds.

The U.S. Coast Guard was limiting traffic from the Port of New Orleans, while energy companies slowed or cut refinery output and scrambled to pull workers from offshore oil and gas production platforms.

At 1 p.m. CDT (1800 GMT), Sally was 125 miles (210 km) east-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River, packing sustained winds of 90 miles (145 km) per hour, according to the NHC.

It said the storm’s advance would slow in the next two days, dumping 8 to 16-inches on the coast and causing widespread river flooding.

Residents of southwest Louisiana are still clearing debris and tens of thousands of homes are without power after Hurricane Laura left a trail of destruction. Sally’s path remains east of that hard-hit area.

Damage from Sally is expected to reach $2 billion to $3 billion, but could exceed that if the storm’s heaviest rainfall happens over land instead of in the Gulf, said Chuck Watson of Enki Research, which models and tracks tropical storms.

(Reporting by Jennifer Hiller and Gary McWilliams; additional reporting by Catherine Koppel in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Dan Grebler)

‘All gone:’ Residents return to burned-out Oregon towns as many West Coast wildfires keep burning

By Adrees Latif and Patrick Fallon

TALENT, Ore. (Reuters) – Search-and-rescue teams, with dogs in tow, were deployed across the blackened ruins of southern Oregon towns on Sunday as smoldering wildfires still ravaged U.S. Pacific Coast states after causing widespread destruction.

A blitz of wildfires across Oregon, California and Washington has destroyed thousands of homes and a half dozen small towns this summer, scorching more than 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) and killing more than two dozen people since early August.

Tracy Koa, a high school teacher, returned to Talent, Oregon, on Saturday after evacuating with her partner, Dave Tanksle, and 13-year-old daughter to find her house and neighborhood reduced to heaps of ash and rubble.

“We knew that it was gone,” Koa said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “But then you pull up, and the devastation of just every home, you think of every family and every situation and every burnt-down car, and there are just no words for it.”

Crews in Jackson County, Oregon, where Talent is located, were hoping to venture into rural areas where the Almeda Fire has abated slightly with slowing winds, sending up thick plumes of smoke as the embers burned. From Medford through the neighboring communities of Phoenix and Talent, an apocalyptic scene of charred residential subdivisions and trailer parks stretched for miles along Highway 99.

Community donation centers popped up around Jackson County over the weekend, including one in the parking lot of Home Depot in Phoenix, where farmers brought a pickup truck bed full of watermelons and people brought water and other supplies.

Farther north in Clackamas County, Dane Valentine, 28, showed a Reuters journalist the remains of his house.

“This is my home,” he said. “Yep. All gone.”

Down the road, a woman with a Trump 2020 sign on her home, pointed a shotgun at the journalist and shouted at him to leave.

“You’re the reason they’re setting fires up here,” she said, perhaps referring to false rumors that left-wing activists had sparked the wildfires.

After four days of brutally hot, windy weather, the weekend brought calmer winds blowing inland from the Pacific Ocean, and cooler, moister conditions that helped crews make headway against blazes that had burned unchecked last week.

Still, emergency officials worried that the shifting weather might not be enough to quell the fires.

“We’re concerned that the incoming front is not going to provide a lot of rain here in the Medford region and it’s going to bring increased winds,” Bureau of Land Management spokesman Kyle Sullivan told Reuters in a telephone interview on Sunday.

At least 10 people have been killed in Oregon, according to the office of emergency management. Oregon Governor Kate Brown has said dozens of people remain missing across three counties.

There were 34 active fires burning in Oregon as of Sunday morning, according to the state’s office of emergency management website.

CLIMATE CHANGE ‘WAKE-UP CALL’

Thick smoke and ash from the fires have darkened skies over the Pacific Northwest since Labor Day last Monday, creating some of the world’s worst air-quality levels and driving residents indoors. Satellite images showed the smoke was wafting inland in an easterly direction, the Bureau of Land Management said on Twitter on Sunday.

Drought conditions, extreme temperatures and high winds in Oregon created the “perfect firestorm” for the blazes to grow, Brown told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

“This is a wake-up call for all of us that we’ve got to do everything in our power to tackle climate change,” the Democratic governor said.

President Donald Trump was scheduled to travel to California and meet with federal and state officials on Monday. He has said that Western governors bear some of the blame for intense fire seasons in recent years, as opposed to warming temperatures, and has accused them of poor forest management.

In California, evacuations were ordered for the northern tip of the San Gabriel Valley suburb of Arcadia as the Bobcat Fire threatened communities.

At Wilderness Park in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, firefighters prepared to stave off the blaze as it worked its way downhill.

Steep terrain and dry hills that have not burned for 60 years are providing fuel for the blaze, which started over the Labor Day weekend.

As the smoke that has been clogging the air and blocking heat from the sun begins to lift, firefighters expect the weather to heat up and fire activity could increase, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.

All told in California, nearly 17,000 firefighters were battling 29 major wildfires on Sunday, Cal Fire said.

Improving weather conditions had helped them gain a measure of containment over blazes in many parts of the state, and some evacuated residents in Madera County near where the massive Creek Fire was burning, were allowed to go back home.

More than 4,000 homes and other structures have been incinerated in California alone over the past three weeks. About 3 million acres (1.2 million hectares) of land have been burned in the state, according to Cal Fire.

(Reporting by Adrees Latif in Ashland, Oregon, and Patrick Fallon in Arcadia, California; Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein, Gabriella Borter, Dan Whitcomb, Doina Chiacu, Shannon Stapleton and Aishwarya Nair; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Nick Zieminski and Peter Cooney)