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.”