A vicious overnight wildfire is now threatening homes just a few miles from the scene of the deadly mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, California, that claimed 12 lives and devastated the local community on Wednesday night. Two wind-driven brush fires erupted in Ventura County late Thursday and are reportedly threatening as many as 1,000 homes. One blaze, dubbed the Woolsey Fire, had grown to more than 7,500 acres with zero percent containment Friday morning. The second fire burning in the Santa Rosa Valley east of Camarillo, near Thousand Oaks, is a short distance from the Borderline Bar & Grill, where 12 people were gunned down Wednesday night. Ventura County officials estimated that blaze at about 7,000 acres—Cal Fire tweeted an approximation of about 10,000 acres.

It’s a bit of symbolism that’s almost too on the nose—but leaders from around the world will meet in France on Saturday for a meeting on global cooperation, without Donald Trump. The president will fly in for the centennial commemoration of the end of World War I, but will skip the Paris Peace Forum hosted by French leader Emmanuel Macron. He’ll reportedly hold a one-on-one with Macron and attend ceremonies and meals with other leaders—including Russian President Vladimir Putin—but he’ll leave before the global cooperation meeting, organized by Macron as the focal point of the gathering. Trump declared in August that he would attend the ceremonies after he said Washington municipal authorities had given a “ridiculously high” cost for a military parade he had wanted to stage on Nov. 11. The aim of the forum is to avoid war by promoting global cooperation.

A Russian man mentored as a political operative by Paul Manafort is coming under renewed scrutiny from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into interference in the 2016 presidential election, The Guardian reports. Konstantin Kilimnik, 48, is said to have ties to the Kremlin’s intelligence services and has already been charged by Mueller with witness tampering. But Mueller is reportedly digging deeper into Kilimnik’s actions before the election with assistance from three Kilimnik associates forced to assist him as part of their plea deals: Manafort, his former deputy Rick Gates, and lobbyist Sam Patten. Nick Akerman, a former assistant special Watergate prosecutor, said: “If there’s anybody who might provide a connection between the campaign and the Russian government, it could be Kilimnik.” Kilimnik reportedly used a jet owned by sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska for a trip to New York to meet Manafort in early August 2016. He was reportedly working with Manafort as early as 2004.

Former first lady Michelle Obama has said she will “never forgive” Donald Trump for stoking far-right “birtherism” theories about then-President Obama during his campaign. In her new memoir, Becoming, Obama writes that she was shocked when Trump became president and tried to “block it all out,” according to The Washington Post. The former first lady says she reserved special disdain for Trump for his claims that Barack Obama was not born a U.S. citizen. “The whole [birther] thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed. But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks,” she wrote. “What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls? Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk,” she said.

Brighten your smile, and your day, with a toothbrush that works harder at keeping your teeth clean and breath fresh. At just $49.99, this sonic toothbrush puts out 40,000 strokes per minute with a battery life of 20 days worth of brushes (if you're brushing the recommended twice-a-day). But the best feature is definitely the UV sanitizer that kills 99 percent of germs and bacteria that collect on brush heads. Bet you're gonna think twice next time you brush your teeth with your old toothbrush. The Platinum Sonic Toothbrush also has a two-minute auto-timer, which means you can get reach the ADA-recommended time for better brushing without having to count down the seconds in your head. The set comes with the Sonic Toothbrush base, two Elite Sonic Toothbrush heads, the UV travel charging case, plus the cable and adapter to keep your new brush fully-charged.

Scouted is internet shopping with a pulse. Follow us on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter for even more recommendations and exclusive content. Please note that if you buy something featured in one of our posts, The Daily Beast may collect a share of sales.

A man has been shot dead by police after he stabbed three people—one fatally—and set fire to a car in Melbourne, Australia, in what is being treated as a terrorist attack. Witnesses said they heard a loud explosion and saw a car burst into flames. The suspect then stabbed three people and police officers were “confronted by a man brandishing a knife and threatening them,” Superintendent David Clayton said. He was shot in the chest and died at a hospital half an hour later. “What we know so far about the individual... from what we know, we are treating this as a terrorism incident,” said Graham Ashton, chief commissioner of Victoria Police. He didn’t identify the suspect, but said he was known to police “in respect to relatives that he has that are persons of interest to us.” The attacker had “barbecue-style gas cylinders” inside the car, according to police, but Ashton denied social-media reports that the attacker yelled “Allahu Akbar.” Terrifying video footage showed the suspect confronting police.

View this cheat in a browser to see this embedded tweet.

In a final act on his way out the door, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions signed a memorandum restricting the ability of federal law enforcement to use court agreements to enact changes in local police departments accused of civil rights violations or abuse. Sessions reportedly signed a memorandum to that effect Wednesday, before President Trump fired him and announced Matthew Whitaker as the new acting attorney general. The memorandum severely restricts so-called consent decrees, agreements that were used frequently under former President Obama to combat police abuses. Sessions had sharply criticized the use of such agreements shortly after taking office, claiming they hamper police morale. Under his memorandum, such agreements will now face three new obstacles. They’ll have to be approved by top political appointees rather than career lawyers; evidence of additional violations beyond unconstitutional activity will be required; and the agreements will have to have a specific end date.

A federal judge on Thursday blocked construction of TransCanada’s $8 billion Keystone XL Pipeline, handing a major victory to environmentalists and dealing a blow to the Trump administration. U.S. District Judge Brian Morris in Montana overturned a permit for the 1,179-mile pipeline’s construction granted by the Trump White House last year, saying the justification given for approving the project was inadequate. Morris took particular issue with the administration’s apparent disregard for climate concerns and criticized the State Department, which analyzed the project, for failing to take into consideration the effect of possible oil spills and the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions. “An agency cannot simply disregard contrary or inconvenient factual determinations that it made in the past, any more than it can ignore inconvenient facts when it writes on a blank slate,” Morris wrote. The ruling comes after TransCanada began delivering pipe to Montana in preparation to begin construction in 2019. Critics have long argued that an oil spill could taint the water system used by Native American tribes and harm wildlife in Montana, where the pipeline would cover about 250 miles, and potentially contaminate a massive aquifer beneath the Midwest. Construction of the pipeline, which would be used to transport petroleum from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast, was rejected under the Obama administration in 2015.

Matthew Whitaker, President Trump’s new acting attorney general, not only served on the advisory board of a company shut down by the Federal Trade Commission for allegedly duping investors, but also apparently used his credentials as a former U.S. attorney to try to silence at least one complainant who threatened to alert the Better Business Bureau to the company’s practices, The Washington Post reports. The company, World Patent Marketing, was shut down by a federal court this year and ordered to pay a $25 million settlement after the FTC found that it had deceived investors by promising to patent their inventions and then pocketed their money instead. While there is no evidence to suggest Whitaker—a member of the company’s advisory board who featured prominently in marketing materials—knew of the alleged fraud scheme, former clients of the company have expressed disgust that he is now serving as acting attorney general. “It’s so offensive. It’s like a stab in the back,” Ryan Masti, who lost $77,000 to the company, told the Post. Masti said Whitaker’s reputation as a former U.S. attorney was part of “how they sold you” on investing and said he’d been told Whitaker personally reviewed his idea. An August 2015 email included in court documents and cited by the Post also shows Whitaker apparently taking part in an intimidation campaign that former customers say the company unleashed on anyone asking for a refund or questioning what was being done with the funds they invested. In response to a complainant who’d threatened to go to the Better Business Bureau, Whitaker reportedly wrote, “Your emails and message from today seem to be an apparent attempt at possible blackmail or extortion… I am assuming you understand that there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you.” He also noted that he was a former U.S. attorney.

A Northern California wildfire exploded to more than 20,000 acres on Thursday, forcing at least 30,000 people to flee, sparking frantic rescue efforts, and reportedly leaving dozens missing. The so-called Camp Fire is burning in multiple parts of Paradise, a town near the foothills of Sacramento that a spokeswoman for the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said late Thursday had suffered “complete devastation.” Fire officials said several hundred homes had burned. “We were engulfed in flames,” Butte County Supervisor Doug Teeter told the Chronicle. “I don’t know what we are coming back to after this. Probably a moonscape. As we drove out, homes were burnt to the ground,” he said. The Butte County Sheriff's Office said it had received reports of multiple fatalities but could not yet confirm any deaths. Dozens of people were also reported missing by friends and family members who turned to social media for help in their search efforts. As of Thursday night, the fire had no containment, and additional evacuations were ordered as the flames approached the city of Chico. Acting Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency for Butte County, making the state eligible for federal assistance to fight the fire. In Southern California, the “Hill Fire” grew to 8,000 to 10,000 acres on Thursday. The Ventura County Star reports the fire caused mandatory evacuations for the Camarillo Springs area, and jumped Highway 101.