International
LA fire victims fear new housing crisis
Michael Storc and his family had just survived a devastating wildfire.
Now they have to face a daunting new challenge that he had hoped to never experience again – the Los Angeles housing market.
After losing the Altadena home that he owned in the Eaton fire, he was scouring for a new place to rent, and having little luck.
“What’s available is not nice at all and the rents have gone up a lot,” Mr Storc told the BBC. “I told my teenage daughter we had to accept we would live somewhere not very nice.”
The Los Angeles area already has one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country. And with thousands now displaced by the Palisades and Eaton fires, Angelenos are anxious that the sudden surge in demand could make rents and home prices soar even higher.
California has an anti-price gouging law that prevents landlords from raising rents more than 10% after the governor declares an emergency. It applies to both existing and tenants and new leases.
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LA brain surgeon saves street from fires
Many Los Angeles County buildings are also covered by rent stabilisation laws, which prevent landlords from raising the rent for existing tenants above a certain percentage even in normal circumstances.
“It is illegal. You cannot do it,” California attorney general Rob Bonta said at a Saturday press conference. “It is a crime punishable by up to a year in jail and fines.”
Not everyone was certain that the law would be completely enforceable, however.
“We’re aware of that but my question is, how is that being regulated? And who’s monitoring that?” said Jessica Heredia, a realtor based in the high-end Brentwood neighbourhood for the last 20 years.
International
‘Hell on earth’: China deportation looms for Uyghurs held in Thailand
Niluper says she has been living in agony.
A Uyghur refugee, she has spent the past decade hoping her husband would join her and their three sons in Turkey, where they now live.
The family was detained in Thailand in 2014 after fleeing increasing repression in their hometown in China’s Xinjiang province. She and the children were allowed to leave Thailand a year later. But her husband remained in detention, along with 47 other Uyghur men.
Niluper – not her real name – now fears she and her children may never see him again.
Ten days ago, she learned that Thai officials had tried to persuade the detainees to sign forms consenting to be sent back to China. When they realised what was in the forms, they refused to sign them.
The Thai government has denied having any immediate plans to send them back. But human rights groups believe they could be deported at any time.
“I don’t know how to explain this to my sons,” Niluper told the BBC on a video call from Turkey. Her sons, she says, keep asking about their father. The youngest has never met him.
“I don’t know how to digest this. I’m living in constant pain, constant fear that at any moment I may get the news from Thailand that my husband has been deported.”
International
Antisemitic crimes may be funded overseas, say Australian police
Australia’s federal police have said they are investigating whether “overseas actors or individuals” are paying criminals to carry out antisemitic crimes in the country.
There has been a spate of such incidents in recent months, the latest of which saw a childcare centre in Sydney set alight and sprayed with anti-Jewish graffiti. No-one was injured.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called a snap cabinet meeting in response, where officials agreed to set up a national database to track antisemitic incidents.
Thus far, the federal police taskforce, set up in December to investigate such incidents, received more than 166 reports of antisemitic crimes.
“We are looking into whether overseas actors or individuals have paid local criminals in Australia to carry out some of these crimes in our suburbs,” Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Reece Kershaw said, adding that it was possible that cryptocurrency was involved.
The digital currency can take longer to identify, Mr Kershaw said.
The commissioner said police were also investigating whether young people were carrying out these crimes and whether they had been radicalised online.
However, Mr Kershaw cautioned, “intelligence is not the same as evidence” and more charges were expected soon.
Last week, a man from Sydney became the first person to be charged by the federal taskforce, dubbed Special Operation Avalite, over alleged death threats he made towards a Jewish organisation.
Albanese said Tuesday’s incident at a childcare centre in the eastern Sydney suburb of Maroubra was “as cowardly as it is disgusting” and described it as a “hate crime”.
“This was an attack targeted at the Jewish community. And it is a crime that concerns us all because it is also an attack on the nation and society we have built together,” he wrote on social media.
International
South Korea president denies ordering arrest of lawmakers
South Korea’s suspended president Yoon Suk Yeol has made his first appearance at his impeachment trial, where he denied ordering the arrest of lawmakers during his attempt to impose martial law.
Parliament voted to impeach Yoon last month, and last week the Constitutional Court began a trial to decide whether to permanently remove him from office.
Yoon is also facing a separate criminal investigation into whether he led an insurrection. He has been detained since last week.
Security was tight on Tuesday as Yoon was transported by van from the detention centre, where he is being held, to the Constitutional Court.
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