A federal jury in New York found Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov guilty of plotting to assassinate reporter Masih Alinejad in July 2022. They face decades in prison.

Prosecutors said Iran’s government funded the plot and targeted Ms Alinejad over her campaigns against the mandatory wearing of headscarves for Iranian women.

Iran’s government, which has been accused in several plots targeting Ms Alinejad, has called such allegations “ridiculous and baseless”.

The two men, who prosecutors said were Russian mobsters, were found guilty on charges that included murder for hire, firearms possession and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The Manhattan jury returned their verdict after deliberating for just over three hours following a two-week trial.

Prosecutors said Iran attempted several times over the years to silence and threaten Ms Alinejad, including a failed kidnap plot that led to the arrest of four Iranian intelligence officials in 2021.

When those efforts failed, they put a $500,000 (£385,793) bounty out for her killing, the US government said.

After the verdict, Ms Alinejad, who worked for Voice of America after leaving Iran in 2009, said she was “bombarded with emotions”.

“I have cried, I have laughed, I have even danced. Because today is not just about my survival; it is about the defeat and humiliation of a regime that believes it can silence its critics with bullets,” said Ms Alinejad, who was not in court, in a statement.

“They failed. I am still here. And I will keep fighting until every criminal in that regime faces their reckoning.”

Cheaper labour and better tax breaks have lured producers away from the City of Angels for years. The wildfires, which killed at least 29 people and destroyed thousands of homes, have only added to this existential crisis.

Now, many here are calling on the state – and studios and streaming services – to boost local production.

“The best thing the studios could do for fire relief is to bring work back for the rank and file LA film workers,” says Mark Worthington, a production designer whose home burned down in Altadena.

“That’s what we want.”

Mr Worthington had already been struggling to cope with the city’s downturn, noting he hadn’t set foot on an LA set in two years. Covid, labour strikes, and the inevitable end of the streaming boom had led many producers to try and save costs by skipping town – sometimes leaving the country altogether.

Productions in the US decreased 26% last year compared to pre-strike levels in 2022, according to ProdPro, which tracks global production. In Australia and New Zealand, production was up 14% and in the UK it was up nearly 1%, with Canada up 2.8%.

The loss clearly stings. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a band synonymous with Los Angeles, with many love songs to the City of Angels. But a biopic about the band is being filmed in Atlanta, Georgia – which has become a major production hub due to its lucrative tax breaks – not LA.

Before the fires, “Survive until ’25” had become a kind of mantra for Mr Worthington and other filmmakers who hoped for a turnaround of fortune. Instead, their city went up in flames.

“It’s crushing in terms of how you see yourself as a creative individual and just as a person, and then on top of that to have these fires,” Mr Worthington says. “This is adding a horrible other thing to pile on top of all the other difficulties and our own work situation over the last couple years.”

Hollywood’s studios and streaming services have donated more than $70m (£56m) to fire relief efforts and have turned the glitzy awards season parties and red carpets typical this time of year into major fundraisers.

Many say these efforts are not enough and that Hollywood’s biggest companies need to commit to filming in LA.

But studios don’t often make business decisions based on the greater good of workers in one city – ultimately, they care about the bottom line. The reality is LA is expensive and the vast majority of industry jobs here are union protected – so they come with high salaries and expensive health care and pensions.

Studios are, however, very responsive to A-list actors.

Megastar Vin Diesel helped ensure Universal Pictures would finish filming the latest Fast and Furious movie in Los Angeles.

“LA really, really, really needs production to help rebuild,” Diesel said in an Instagram post.

“Los Angeles is where Fast and Furious started filming 25 years ago… and now Fast will finally return home.”

Nearly 20,000 people – including actors Keanu Reeves, Zooey Deschanel and Kevin Bacon – have signed a “Stay in LA” petition urging the state’s leaders to temporarily remove caps on production tax incentives for LA County.

It’s part of a grassroots campaign started by director Sarah Adina Smith and other filmmakers who want California to use its emergency powers to boost tax incentives for the next three years to make filming in LA more affordable and help heal Los Angeles. They also want studios to commit to making 10% more productions in Los Angeles.

“We need to bring production back to LA and get LA working again if we want to rebuild,” says Ms Smith.

Before the fires, California Gov Newsom had already proposed to more than double the tax credit the state offers to producers of films and TV shows that shoot in California – changing the annual credit from $330m to $750m, but that must be approved by the state legislature and might not come into effect until the summer.

He says the incentives are good for the economy and that California’s programme has generated more than $26bn in economic activity and supported more than 197,000 cast and crew jobs across the state.

If passed, the subsidy would be the most generous offered by any US state except Georgia, which doesn’t have a cap on the amount it gives to productions per year. Stay in LA wants the cap lifted now.

President Donald Trump has also said he plans to make Hollywood great again with the help of actors Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone, who have been tapped to be “special ambassadors” for “troubled Hollywood”.

It’s not yet clear what they have in mind – they did not agree to an interview – but several executives said the instability caused by the Trump administration’s trade wars make risk-averse Hollywood studios nervous. The Canadian dollar recently hit 22-year lows making Canada even more attractive to Hollywood.

On a rainy day more than a month after the fires, Mr Worthington, the production designer, and his partner Mindy Elliott, a film editor, inspected the remains of their home, wishing they’d taken some of their art when they evacuated. They marvelled that a cactus was regrowing next to where their SUV had melted.

“If only we’d had this rain in January,” says Ms Elliott.

Although he is critical that the tax breaks amount to “corporate welfare” for behemoth companies, Mr Worthington says they are a necessary evil if LA wants to compete – both Australia and the UK now have more lucrative tax breaks than California.

Ms Smith, the co-founder of Stay in LA, likens the decline of Hollywood productions to the fall of Detroit, whose once formidable automotive industry collapsed, leaving much of the city desolate and impoverished.

“Once you ruin that infrastructure and that legacy, it’s not so easy to build it back again,” she says. “If we let Hollywood die, it could be for good.”

Others think it’s naïve to think that any incentives will usher in a new Golden Age of Hollywood.

Pointing out the melted remains of what used to be his piano and his drum set in the music studio of his incinerated Topanga Canyon home, composer Matthew Ferraro wipes away tears for what he and his wife have lost.

His once spectacular hilltop home is now rubble and ash and Ferraro says he’s still in shock, consumed with thoughts of where he will sleep on Tuesday, rather than his future in LA.

“I think it’s wishful thinking for people who are still in love with, like yesteryear’s dream of Hollywood, but that’s just not how it works anymore,” says Ferraro, who composed music for The Incredibles and The Minority Report among others.

About a mile away, Jamie Morse’s home also burned. Topanga Canyon has always attracted artists, musicians and dreamers – and Morse had just quit her sensible day job to devote 2025 to making it in Hollywood, working fulltime on her comedic writing and performing.

She laughs when asked about the terrible timing – and says she’s grieving along with everyone else in LA, but remains hopeful.

“Whether they’re performers or studio execs – people love this city,” says Ms Morse, who now sleeps at friends’ homes or in her car with her dog between comedy gigs or classes with her improv troupe, The Groundlings.

Ms Morse wishes she’d taken more sentimental things when she evacuated with her dog, like a Toronto Blue Jays T-shirt which reminded her of her grandfather and her native Canada. But she’s astonished that some of her notebooks and journals survived with some of her comedy writing intact.

“Where an entire stone table is, is in pieces, is like, absolutely decimated, melted,” she said. “But pieces of paper survived… It’s truly unbelievable.”

Does she think it’s fate? A sign that she is meant to make it in Hollywood?

“I’m choosing to believe that this is a sign,” she says, adding that there will be “beautiful, creative things to come out of this very, very crappy time.”

The number deployed – now 939 – are part of a long-running volunteer programme led by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

Their numbers have steadily increased since Tuesday, the day the deadly fires began spreading uncontrollably through Los Angeles.

Over 10,000 structures have been destroyed and 37,000 acres burned, as thousands of emergency workers descend on the Los Angeles area to fight the flames.

At least 11 people have been killed in the wildfires, officials said.

The incarcerated firefighters have been drawn from among the 35 conservation fire camps run by the state, minimum-security facilities where inmates serve their time and receive training. Two of the camps are for incarcerated women.

The 900-plus incarcerated firefighters in use account for roughly half of the 1,870 prisoner-firefighters in the scheme.

In the field, they can be seen in prison-orange jumpsuits embedded alongside members of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).

The incarcerated firefighters have been working “around the clock cutting fire lines and removing fuel from behind structures to slow fire spread”, CDCR told the BBC in an emailed statement.

The programme, which dates back to 1946, has divided critics, who see it as exploitative, and supporters, who say it is rehabilitative.

The state pays inmates a daily wage between $5.80 and $10.24 (£4.75 and £8.38), and an additional $1 per day when assigned to active emergencies.

Those wages are a fraction of the salaries received by citizen firefighters in California, who can earn upwards of $100,000 annually.

“You’re getting pennies compared to the other folks that’s alongside of you. You’re just cheap labour,” Royal Ramey, a former incarcerated firefighter and co-founder of the non-profit Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program (FFRP), told the BBC.

“And if you do pass away while fighting fires, you don’t get any benefits from that,” he continued.

“You’re not gonna get no award. You’re not gonna be recognised as a wildland firefighter,” he said, adding that he would remember in the field that he had already signed his own death certificate.

Still, Mr Ramey said the low pay is more than a California prisoner would otherwise earn performing jobs in the state penitentiaries.

The conservation camps and their “park, picnic-type feel” also offer additional perks like better food, he said, compared to California’s notoriously dangerous and overcrowded prisons.

“It’s a better living situation, definitely,” he said.

Camp participants can also earn time credits that help reduce their prison sentences, CDRC said.

Inmates convicted of crimes categorised as “serious” or “violent” felonies are not eligible to participate.

After incarcerated firefighters are released from prison – having been trained by the state – many try to get hired as citizen firefighters, but are denied, Mr Ramey said.

“There’s a stigma to it. When people think of firefighters they think of some clean-cut guy, a hero, not someone who’s been locked up,” he said.

He launched his nonprofit to help formerly incarcerated firefighters overcome the barriers and help fill the firefighter shortage California has faced for years.

There are currently five wildfires burning through billions of dollars worth of structures in the Los Angeles area, predicted to be one of the most expensive in history.

Strained for resources, the state has called on over 7,500 emergency personnel and first responders, including the state and National Guard and firefighters from as far away as Canada.

The fires have still been difficult to contain and continue to spread, with 35,000 acres from the two largest fires, Palisades and Eaton, already burned.

Ten people were taken to hospital with injuries, the Fullerton Police Department said in a post on X on Thursday afternoon. Eight others were treated for injuries and released at the scene.The single-engine Van’s RV-10 crashed at 14:15PST (20:15GMT), according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Officials have provided no further details about how the crash occurred. It is unclear whether the two people who died were workers or were on board the plane.

Police say they are evacuating buildings in the area, and are asking the public to stay away from the crash site.

Congressman Lou Correa, who represents the area of Orange County, about 25 miles (40km) south of Los Angeles, said that the building that was struck is a furniture manufacturing business.In a post on X, Correa said that at least a dozen of the victims are factory workers.

Aerial photos of the scene show parts of the plane inside the building. The crash also sparked a fire that was extinguished by fire crews.Security footage recorded from a building across the street shows a fiery explosion, according to local news outlets.

“People are just shaken over the situation,” witness Mark Anderson told KRCA-TV.

“It was just a large boom, and then one of the people went out and said, ‘Oh my gosh, the building’s on fire.'”

The area where the plane crashed is near the Fullerton Municipal Airport, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from Disneyland.

The plane appears to have been turning back to the airport shortly after takeoff, according to KRCA-TV.

Around 100 people were ultimately evacuated from the Michael Nicholas Designs furniture factory, according to the Orange County Register newspaper.

Juanita Ramirez, an employee, told the newspaper that she heard a loud bang before seeing a large ball of fire flying towards her.”It felt like a dream,” she said.This is the second plane to crash in the area in the past two months, according to CBS.

On 25 November, another plane crashed into a tree roughly one block away from this most recent crash. No major injuries were reported in that crash.

The twister flipped over several cars and brought down power lines in Scotts Valley, located around 55 miles (89km) south of San Francisco, police said.

The National Weather Service (NWS) said the tornado was categorised as an EF1, one of the weakest classifications, and that it lasted around five minutes.

Earlier on Saturday, residents of San Francisco had been issued a tornado warning for the first time ever as thunderstorms swept through the region.

In Scotts Valley, the tornado touched down at 13:39 local time (21:39 GMT) on Saturday, police said.

The local fire service said at least four people had been injured and at least two of them had been taken to hospital, CBS News reported.

Police closed a road overnight to allow for repair work to be done and debris cleared.

Wind speeds were estimated to have peaked at around 90mph (145km/h), the NWS said.

The weather agency also said the twister had been around 30 yards (27m) wide and travelled for a quarter of a mile (400m) before subsiding.

Earlier on Saturday, a tornado warning was issued to residents of San Francisco just before 06:00 local time (14:00 GMT).

The warning was for parts of downtown San Francisco and northern San Mateo County.

More than one million residents were woken in San Francisco and its suburbs to alerts on their mobile phones, warning them to “take shelter now”.

Winds of up to 60mph (96km/h) ripped through the area, the NWS said.

But a few minutes later, NWS Bay Area said the warning was over and the storm had moved out of the city’s downtown.

The city last saw a tornado in 2005, though that struck without any clear radar signature, so no warning was issued in that case, NWS meteorologist Roger Glass told AP news agency.

Nearby San Mateo County was last issued a tornado warning in 2011.The warning came after a powerful storm passed through overnight – trees were toppled and there were major power cuts.

As of Sunday, more than 50,000 customers were still without power along the northern and central California coast, according to the PowerOutage website.

NWS Bay Area warned that residents should steer clear of the seaside over the weekend, with a coastal flood advisory in place until Monday.

San Francisco’s tornado alert came just a week after the city saw its first ever tsunami warning.

The brief advisory was issued for northern California and southern Oregon following a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that hit off the northern coast of the state.

It was later rescinded, and no injuries were reported.