Nicholas Norman managed to save his home using little more than buckets of water when towering flames ripped through his neighborhood in a suburb of Los Angeles. But now he’s facing a new danger: looters.After surviving the terror of a chaotic wind-driven fire, Norman was at his Altadena house when he saw two suspicious men in the hours before dawn on Thursday.”They were testing doors and looking in windows” of homes that had been evacuated, he told AFP.Norman, a teacher, said a police officer friend told him that looters had been arrested a few blocks away just hours earlier.So he decided to take matters into his own hands.”I did the classic American thing: I went and got my shotgun and I sat out there, and put a light on so they knew people were there,” he said.For Norman, the evening was reminiscent of the 1992 riots in Los Angeles, when the city’s streets erupted after Rodney King, a Black man, was beaten to death by white police officers.He said that night, his father had sat with a gun at the front door — his young son at his side — to protect the family “while streets were burning and people were shooting everywhere.”He said he never thought he would see something similar in sleepy Altadena, a place he moved eight years ago.The city, home to around 40,000 people, has been ravaged by one of the multiple wildfires that have torn through the area, razing over 9,000 buildings and killing five people.The destruction was cruelly random: in some places an entire street has vanished; in others a few houses remain, while blocks away just one property was damaged.But for those who count themselves lucky enough to have come through the tragedy, the thought of outsiders preying on their misery is almost too much to bear.”I didn’t save that damn house to have some idiot come and steal from me,” said Norman. “That’s not happening.””There’s the thievery, but it’s made worse by the cowardice.”Norman, who usually doesn’t even lock his car, said he will be back on his porch after sunset, and will make a few rounds of nearby streets to keep an eye out on empty houses.- Patrols -Around 20 people have been arrested in disaster zones since the first fires broke out on Tuesday, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said.He has pledged to beef up patrols and said his officers — who are soon to be backed up by California National Guard soldiers — will be proactively stopping anyone they see in an evacuation area.”When we have an evacuation order by law, if you remain in that area, you are guilty of a misdemeanor. If you commit certain crimes, it could jump up to a felony,” he said.”If you are in one of these areas and you do not belong there, you are going to be subject to arrest.”For Chris, an Altadena resident who did not want to give his full name, even the promise of more manpower was not enough.When he returned home on Thursday morning — a house he has just spent a year renovating — the padlock on his gate had been forced. “It’s clear evidence that somebody was here in the middle of the night,” he said.No one had managed to get in, but Chris spent much of Thursday hammering plywood over his windows and doors to give his property greater protection.”We’re boarding up, kind of getting things squared away, having neighborhood watches all because some morons are out there, preying on people,” he said.”It sucks. I’d rather be helping all my neighbors.”

Donald Trump will be sentenced Friday for covering up hush money payments to a porn star despite the US President-elect’s last-ditch efforts to frustrate a process that would make him the first felon in the White House.The judge has indicated, however, that Trump will not face prison — even though the 34 counts of falsifying business records on which he was convicted in May 2024 carry potential prison time. It is instead anticipated that he will receive the mildest criminal sanction available, an unconditional discharge — a relatively uncommon measure.Sentencing, which Trump is expected to attend virtually, will happen in the scruffy Manhattan courtroom that was the scene of the trial’s high drama, legal wrangling and vitriolic personal attacks by the divisive Republican.The trial saw Trump forced to look on as a string of witnesses testified that he had fraudulently covered up illicit payments to porn star Stormy Daniels in an effort to stop her disclosing their tryst ahead of the 2016 presidential election, which he ultimately won.Daniels gave toe-curling testimony that included details about her sexual encounter with Trump — which he has always denied — as well as his flirting and interest in the adult film industry.The judge intervened to stop more explicit testimony.Trump had made an eleventh-hour plea for a suspension of the criminal proceedings to the nation’s highest court after a New York State appeals court dismissed his effort to have the hearing delayed, and the state’s top court declined to act on the request.But the Supreme Court ruled that the sentencing could proceed.Prosecutors opposed the effort to stave off sentencing, 10 days before Trump is due to be sworn in for a second term, arguing it was wrong for the apex court to hear the case when the mogul still had avenues of appeal to pursue in New York.”This Court lacks jurisdiction over a state court’s management of an ongoing criminal trial when defendant has not exhausted his state-law remedies,” the prosecution told the Supreme Court Thursday.- Legal wrangling -His lawyers have used several legal maneuvers in an effort to fend off the sentencing, which the judge in the case, Juan Merchan, has already indicated in a filing will not result in jail time.Instead, experts expect Trump will receive an unconditional discharge, a measure without any sanctions or restriction that nonetheless upholds the jury’s guilty verdict — and Trump’s infamy as the first former president to be convicted of a felony.The 78-year-old Trump had potentially faced up to four years in prison.”He’s sticking his middle finger at the judge, the jury, the system of justice, and laughing,” said Pace University law professor and former prosecutor Bennett Gershman.Trump’s counsel had argued sentencing should be postponed while the Republican appeals his conviction, but New York state Associate Justice Ellen Gesmer rejected that on Tuesday.Trump’s lawyers additionally claimed the immunity from prosecution granted to a US president should be extended to a president-elect — Gesmer also brushed those arguments aside.His attorneys had further sought to have the case dismissed based on the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling last year, which stated former US presidents have sweeping immunity from prosecution for a range of official acts committed while in office.Trump was certified as the winner of the 2024 presidential election on Monday, four years after his supporters rioted at the US Capitol as he sought to overturn his 2020 defeat.