Tens of thousands of people ordered to flee their homes as wildfires tore through Los Angeles were told Thursday they would not be allowed back for at least a week, with fears over electrocution, landslides and exposure to toxic materials. Frustration is mounting among evacuees, who are angry over rules that prevent them from returning — even to homes that survived the deadly blazes.”There was a group chat where everyone was complaining, getting mad, saying, ‘why do they keep on locking us out of our homes?'” Ronnen Miz told local broadcaster KTLA.But with 40,000 acres (16,000 hectares) burned in two ferocious fires, the situation is just too dangerous, officials said.Electricity, gas and sewage lines are wrecked, there is toxic waste everywhere, and there is a growing threat of hazardous mudslides or landslips, officials said at a news conference.”It’s going to be a while,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna. “I’m going to say at minimum, at least another week, and that’s an estimate, but I believe it’s going to be longer than that.”According to the latest coroner’s tally, at least 27 people have died in wind-driven fires that ripped through the upmarket enclave of Pacific Palisades and the more mixed community of Altadena.Luna said search teams were continuing to comb the rubble looking for victims, with the number of dead expected to rise.Authorities were also holding people back from some areas “because we believe there may be deceased victims” he said. – Destabilized hillsides -Teams from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began inspections Thursday as they work to remove pesticides, fuel and lithium batteries from the wreckage before any debris clean-up can take place.Los Angeles County Director of Public Works Mark Pestrella said apparently unaffected structures could be hit by landslides, and any substantial rain could be dangerous.”In the event that we have major rain, we do expect that all of the street areas and all the communities will be impacted by debris flows that could be hazardous to human health.”Hillsides have been destabilized by the fires, and by the huge volumes of water that firefighters used in a bid to tame them.Photographs from the Pacific Palisades area showed one home — undamaged by the fire — that appeared to have broken in two after the flames were extinguished when part of a hillside collapsed.- Pam Shriver -US tennis great Pam Shriver revealed on Thursday a cache of major trophies from her illustrious career were stolen after she evacuated from the fire.Shriver, 62, packed five US Open trophies, five French Open plates, five Wimbledon trophies and one Australian Open trophy into her car as she fled her Brentwood home and headed to a hotel on Friday.Some time later, she found the car — and its irreplaceable contents — had been stolen.”It’s really sad on so many levels that when people are at their lowest and in their most difficult times, people are doing things like this,” Shriver told ESPN.- Hotspots -Gusting winds that have rattled the region for more than a week, spreading the fire over a wide area, had subsided Thursday, giving firefighters a much-needed boost as they mopped up hotspots.The work of battalions from all over the United States was being bolstered by crews of inmates, who toil alongside regular firefighters to cut containment lines and clear brush.Jacob Castro, who has served 29 years for his crimes, said he was grateful for the chance to help out in the fire effort and repay his debt to society.”It’s the first thing I’ve done in my life that I’m proud of,” he told AFP.”I love doing this, helping the community by making up for the bad decisions I made in life,” said Castro, who has a coveted spot in one of the fire training camps operated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.”It’s a chance to redeem myself.”

Her voice tinged with anger, an American mother worried about what the future holds for her teenage daughter, just one of dozens of girls targeted in yet another AI-enabled pornography scandal that has rocked a US school.The controversy that engulfed the Lancaster Country Day School in Pennsylvania last year highlights a new normal for pupils and educators struggling to keep up with a boom in cheap, easily available artificial intelligence tools that have facilitated hyperrealistic deepfakes. One parent, who spoke to AFP on the condition of anonymity, said her 14-year-old daughter came to her “hysterically crying” last summer after finding AI-generated nude pictures of her circulating among her peers.”What are the ramifications to her long term?” the mother said, voicing fears that the manipulated images could resurface when her daughter applies to college, starts dating, or enters the job market.”You can’t tell that they are fake.”Multiple charges — including sexual abuse of children and possession of child pornography — were filed last month against two teenage boys who authorities allege created the images.Investigators uncovered 347 images and videos affecting a total of 60 victims, most of them female students at the private school, on the messaging app Discord.All but one was younger than 18.- ‘Troubling’ -The scandal is the latest in a wave of similar incidents in schools across US states — from California to New Jersey — leading to a warning from the FBI last year that such child sexual abuse material, including realistic AI-generated images, was illegal.”The rise of generative AI has collided with a long-standing problem in schools: the act of sharing non-consensual intimate imagery,” said Alexandra Reeve Givens, chief executive of the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT).”In the digital age, kids desperately need support to navigate tech-enabled harassment.”A CDT survey of public schools last September found that 15 percent of students and 11 percent of teachers knew of at least one “deepfake that depicts an individual associated with their school in a sexually explicit or intimate manner.”Such non-consensual imagery can lead to harassment, bullying or blackmail, sometimes causing devastating mental health consequences.The mother who spoke to AFP said she knows of victims who had avoided school, had trouble eating or required medical attention and counseling to cope with the ordeal.She said she and other parents brought into a detective’s office to scrutinize the deepfakes were shocked to find printed out images stacked a “foot and a half” high.”I had to see pictures of my daughter,” she said.”If someone looked, they would think it’s real, so that’s even more damaging.”- ‘Exploitation’ -The alleged perpetrators, whose names have not been released, are accused of lifting pictures from social media, altering them using an AI application and sharing them on Discord.The mother told AFP the fakes of her daughter were primarily altered from public photos on the school’s Instagram page as well as a screenshot of a FaceTime call.A simple online search throws up dozens of apps and websites that allow users to create “deepnudes,” digitally removing clothing, or superimpose selected faces onto pornographic images.”Although results may not be as realistic or compelling as a professional rendition, these services mean that no technical skills are needed to produce deepfake content,” Roberta Duffield, director of intelligence at Blackbird.AI, told AFP.Only a handful of US states have passed laws to deal with sexually explicit deepfakes, including Pennsylvania at the end of last year. The top leadership at the Pennsylvania school stepped aside after parents of the victims filed a lawsuit accusing the administration of failing to report the activity when they were first alerted to it in late 2023.Researchers say schools are ill-equipped to tackle the threat of AI technology evolving at a rapid pace, in part because the law is still playing catchup.”Underage girls are increasingly subject to deepfake exploitation from their friends, colleagues, school classmates,” said Duffield.”Education authorities must urgently develop clear, comprehensive policies regarding the use of AI and digital technologies.”

On one side of the street lie the ashes of ruined houses, lost to the huge blazes that defeated Los Angeles firefighters when hydrants ran dry.On the other side, a small village of shops is still intact, watched over by tanker trucks and an army of private firemen.More than a week after enormous blazes spread unchecked through swathes of America’s second largest metropolis, questions are being asked about how some of the city’s super-rich seem to have survived almost unscathed.”All I can say is that we got hired and we have been ordered to stay here. I’m not allowed to tell you more than that.” a man in a yellow and green uniform told AFP in front of the commercial development.The men, along with their pick-up trucks with Oregon license plates, were stationed at property owned by billionaire developer Rick Caruso.Their presence — protecting stores hawking luxury brands like Yves Saint-Laurent, Isabel Marant and Erewhon — jars in a city where more than two dozen people have died and thousands of people have lost their homes.”It sucks that there’s a lot of politics involved,” says another of the men. “We just want to do the job and help however we can.”Caruso, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, did not respond to AFP requests for comment. But in Pacific Palisades, a haunt of Hollywood celebrities and the ultra-rich, he is not the only one apparently using his wealth to protect his property.Other private firefighters stand guard in front of some of the untouched princely villas that dot the hillsides.- ‘Will pay any amount’ -The sector made headlines in 2018 when Kim Kardashian and her then-husband Kanye West hired private firefighters to protect their lavish pad in the affluent community of Hidden Hills, north of the city.The profiles of the two distinct areas that were hit by last week’s blazes — wealthy Pacific Palisades and the more mixed Altadena — have already served to put a spotlight on economic divisions in the United States.The disparity was further highlighted in the immediate aftermath of the fires when real estate developer Keith Wasserman attracted an avalanche of criticism after a social media post.”Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home?” he wrote in the now-deleted post.”Need to act fast here. All neighbors houses burning. Will pay any amount.”Such services can cost between $2,000 and $15,000 per day, US media has reported, citing local companies.But even for those with the means, calling on private firefighters is not always simple — most firms are contracted by cities, government departments or insurance companies.In California, a law passed in 2018 limits how they can operate.They are not allowed to use flashing lights or badges similar to those of public firefighters, and are required to coordinate with them.Since this legislation came into force some companies have refused to serve individuals.- Whose water? -Private or public, firefighters all have the same mission: “protecting our community,” said Jake Heflin, a firefighter from the publicly funded Long Beach Fire Department.”If it’s done correctly and done in partnership and in concert together, it can be very effective,” Heflin said.But it can also create problems.Taxpayer-funded services should not have to focus “resources on taking care of them, because either they’re ill-equipped or ill-prepared and they’ve gotten themselves into a difficult situation,” he said.Firefighters “want to have those conversations well ahead of the event.”How much coordination there was before the catastrophe in Pacific Palisades, where hydrants ran dry and some houses were effectively left to burn, is unclear.For Jeff Ridgway, a 67-year-old Pacific Palisades resident who resorted to scooping buckets out of a swimming pool when the mains supply petered out, that is a key question.”It will be very interesting to know if they used these fire hydrants,” Ridgway told AFP.”I really hope they brought their own water.”

Joe Biden wanted to go down in history as the man who saved America from Donald Trump. Instead he may be remembered for handing Trump a second term in the White House.In years to come Biden, 82, may be judged more kindly. The Democrat steered a divided country out of the Covid-19 pandemic and the chaos of Trump’s first four years, before pushing through an impressive raft of legislation.But Biden’s single term will now be bookended by his rival’s presidencies. And it will be defined by a single fateful decision — to defy mounting concerns about his age and run for reelection in 2024.For many the defining image of the 46th US president will be a haunted-looking Biden lost for words in the disastrous debate against Trump that eventually forced him out of the race.His replacement as Democratic candidate, his Vice President Kamala Harris, was left with an almost impossible task to prevent Trump’s return.If Biden insisted until the end that he could have beaten his Republican nemesis, he still admitted that it may take a while to restore his reputation.”It will take time to feel the full impact of all we have done together, but the seeds are planted,” he said in his farewell address.- Historic challenges -Biden’s inauguration in January 2021 was a remarkable comeback for an often underestimated politician who spent a lifetime battling both political odds and personal tragedy.But he was an unlikely savior.Biden was America’s oldest elected president at the time — until Trump’s election in 2024 — and arguably more famous for his gaffes and for being Barack Obama’s vice president.And he faced historic challenges. The country was reeling from the January 6, 2021 Capitol assault by Trump supporters protesting his election defeat, while the US economy was shattered by Covid.But Biden quickly forced a massive pandemic recovery scheme and a huge green investment plan through Congress as he sought to rebuild American industry and infrastructure.In Harris he appointed the first Black, South Asian and female vice president.Western allies welcomed his commitment to the alliances Trump had trashed.Perhaps Biden’s proudest achievement was supporting Ukraine against Russia’s 2022 invasion — and his top secret trip to Kyiv in 2023.- ‘Get back up’ -But Biden’s popularity suffered an early blow with the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 — and never really recovered. His approval rating was just 36 percent in a final CNN poll.His pandemic stimulus sent inflation soaring, part of the reason Americans punished Harris at the polls. His lax border policies led to a record crossings of illegal immigrants, which Trump pounced on.While he claimed a late boost to his legacy with a Gaza ceasefire deal, he angered many with his unstinting support for Israel’s war on Hamas despite a soaring death toll.Despite it all, Biden believed he was the only person who could beat Trump again.Fond of folksy tales about his upbringing as a child with a stutter from a blue-collar, Irish Catholic background in Pennsylvania, he would often quote his father’s mantra: “When you get knocked down, you get back up.” He had battled through the tragedy of a car crash that killed his wife and baby daughter in 1972, just days after he’d been elected a US senator at the age of 29 — then rebuilt his life with the help of his second wife, First Lady Jill Biden.Then there was the death of his older son Beau from brain cancer in 2015, and the drug and legal problems of his younger son Hunter, to whom he controversially issued a pardon.- ‘Magic of America’ -But age was a battle he couldn’t win. Trump dubbed Biden “Sleepy Joe” and every stumble — on the stairs of Air Force One, off his bike — was relentlessly replayed on social media. Republican attacks — and Democratic doubts — mounted after Biden reneged on his promise to be a bridge to a new generation and announced in 2023 that he’d seek reelection.The White House insisted there was no problem and increasingly shielded Biden from unscripted public appearances — until it was too late.In his final days in office, Biden provided the smooth transition that Trump denied him. He invited Trump to the White House and the two rivals engaged in unprecedented cooperation on the Gaza deal.Yet he also had a parting shot for Trump, warning in his farewell speech of a dangerous “oligarchy taking shape in America.”And if Biden’s 50-year-political career ended in disappointment, he saw a bright side.”Only in America do we believe anything is possible, like a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings… sitting behind this desk in the Oval Office as president,” he said.”That’s the magic of America.”