By Laura Paddison, CNN

(CNN) — When the Eaton fire swept through the Los Angeles neighborhood of Altadena last year, it claimed 19 lives and incinerated thousands of buildings — one of which was the home of Kaitlyn Trudeau’s grandfather. His house burned to the ground; he lost everything. But while he grappled with trauma, others saw dollar signs in the disaster.

In January 2025, as the LA wildfires raged, people placed bets on Polymarket, one of the leading prediction market platforms. They waged money on how how many acres the fires would consume, which locations the flames would reach and when they would be contained.

It was “pretty dystopian,” said Trudeau, a California-based climate scientist, who works at the non-profit Climate Central. “It’s not just easy to start a fire — now there’s potentially a financial incentive,” she told CNN this week, as she traveled to Altadena to see her grandfather’s house for the first time since it burned down.

Polymarket is part of a booming, multibillion-dollar industry, which allows people to bet on the outcome of almost any future event, from the results of football games and elections, to the number of social media posts Elon Musk makes.

Some prediction markets also allow people to bet on wildfires, as well as other climate change-fueled extreme weather events, and experts are sounding the alarm. They fear it risks incentivizing arson and, more generally, that it will distance people from the suffering fires bring.

“I worry that it encourages people to think about these events like they are video games, not real-world disasters,” Trudeau said.

Polymarket says its platform is a valuable source of information during disasters. “People turn to the news for commentary and they come to Polymarket for information,” a spokesperson said. “While we are not blind to the risks, removing these markets does not prevent a tragedy but makes the most accurate information less accessible to the people who need it most.”

People have been betting on the weather long before the dawn of the internet, said Lauren Ducat, a clinical and forensic psychologist based in Australia who studies firesetting. But the accessibility of online platforms has the potential to make these wagers “more pervasive and open them to larger markets,’ she said.

Polymarket says what it does is distinct from gambling. The company doesn’t use the term “bets,” instead people “trade on future event outcomes,” and users compete against each other not against the “house.”

The Polymarket team creates markets, with input from users, by formulating questions to which the answer is usually “yes” or “no.” Users buy shares in an outcome for between $0 and $1. If “yes” shares are trading at $0.65 each, for example, that means the market thinks there’s a 65% chance of that outcome happening. Shares in the correct outcome are paid out at $1 each.

Polymarket may be one of the biggest platforms of its kind, but it’s not alone. Another site called WyldFyre focuses on California fires and has the tagline: “You can’t predict fire. But you can trade on it.” It doesn’t use any form of real-world currency yet, but experts

By Jack Guy, CNN

London (CNN) — Bronze Age remains once thought to belong to a revered male metalworker are in fact female, new DNA analysis has found, calling into question long-held beliefs about ancient British society.

The 4,000-year-old skeleton, which became known as the Upton Lovell Shaman, was found in a barrow, a special type of burial mound reserved for high-status individuals, researcher Tom Booth, senior research scientist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, told CNN on Thursday.

When the burial in Upton Lovell, southern England, was first uncovered at the beginning of the 19th century, archaeologists found a “wide range of interesting grave goods,” including axes, a gold necklace and bone points, he said.

The axes had traces of gold on the edge of them, suggesting this person worked with gold and probably other metals such as copper and bronze, Booth said.

“They were buried with their tools in a special way because they were considered particularly eminent,” he added, with the number and variety of items making it a unique Bronze Age burial both in Britain and in Europe more widely.

“There’s no other burials that really compare in terms of the types of grave goods that are in there,” he said.

This association with high status, as well as a rudimentary analysis of the size of the bones, led archaeologists to conclude that the burial belonged to a man.

With no DNA testing available at the time, this conclusion persisted, until Booth and his colleagues studied the skeleton as part of a wider ongoing genome sequencing project.

Testing produced a female result, “which is not what we were anticipating,” Booth said.

“We’re overturning sort of two centuries of thought about this skeleton here, so we’d better be careful,” he said, adding that he tested two further samples of the skeleton to be sure.

“Both came back as female as well, so that essentially confirms that the skeleton was female, and this was probably a female metalworker, and specifically a gold worker, who had some kind of special status within their community in order to be not only afforded a burial underneath one of these round barrows, but also to be buried with this huge, unique diversity of grave goods as well,” Booth said.

The discovery also calls into question previous assumptions that female burials found with grave goods must have necessarily been the wives of important men, he said.

“This subverts the idea that women or females in these societies couldn’t be powerful in their own right and special in their own right,” he added.

Booth also underlined that the fact that the woman found in Upton Lovell was taller than average for the time — closer in height to the average Bronze Age man, at around 5 foot 4 inches — meant it was plausible for previous research to conclude that she was male.

The fact that she died at around 45 years of age and was postmenopausal also made it more difficult to ascertain her sex from bone analysis alone, Booth explained, as female bones start to appear more like their male equivalents with age.

As for the fact that the individual was named the Upton Lovell Shaman, due to the suggestion that her grave goods were connected with rituals and mysticism, Booth believes metal working itself would have held a ritualistic quality because of its importance in Europe-wide Bronze Age trading networks.

“It kind of shows the importance of metalworking as this sort of intrinsic thing that’s linked to the ritual lives of people and the economic lives of people to some extent as well,” he said.

“This metalworker would have been very much embedded within that kind of network of trade and metalworking and exchange,” Booth added.

The results form part of a new free exhibition at the Francis Crick Institute named “We Go Way Back,” which opened Thursda

By Hanna Park, Dalia Faheid, CNN

(CNN) — Disastrous flash flooding has hit southern Texas after days of torrential rain, leaving at least two people dead and hundreds of people rescued across the same region struck by last July’s catastrophic floods.

Get your forecast in the CNN Weather app

More than 230 rescues have been made so far, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday afternoon, adding more than 85 boats, 20 aircraft and 200 high-profile vehicles have been deployed to assist the response.

One of those who died was a man swept away in a recreational vehicle, Abbott said Thursday. John Mark Steward, 65, died after being carried off in his mobile home in Kerrville, his wife told The San Antonio Express-News. CNN has not been able to confirm Steward’s death with authorities.

A 74-year-old man, whose identity has not been released, also died while driving near Uvalde, police said. A Department of Public Safety crew spotted his vehicle bobbing in floodwater about four miles north of the city around 10:30 a.m. local time and later confirmed his death, the Uvalde Police Department said Thursday.

About a year’s worth of rain has fallen in parts of southern Texas this week, but the forecast is now improving in the hardest-hit areas. Isolated showers remain possible, but the threat of additional significant rainfall has, for the most part, ended.

Today’s flash flood threat will instead focus on areas farther west from San Angelo and Junction to El Paso, all of which have not seen nearly as much rain this week. Flash flood warnings were ongoing in the area Thursday morning.

‘The priority was to get out’

The National Weather Service early Thursday issued a flash flood emergency – its highest alert – for Kerrville, Ingram and Hunt, among the communities hit hardest a year ago by devastating floods that killed at least 130 people, including 25 girls and two counselors.

Authorities warned that “a large and deadly flood wave” was moving down the Guadalupe River, before it crested at 37.94 feet in Center Point Thursday morning – a height slightly below last year’s flood. A river gauge in Comfort found levels rose 25 feet in a single hour.

More than 80 people were evacuated from riverside campgrounds before floodwater reached dangerous levels, the governor said.

In Comfort, a group of 42 relatives who had gathered for their family’s 40th annual reunion fled a riverside hotel on Thursday morning, CNN affiliate KENS reported.

“We grabbed just what we needed and what we could get right away,” Amy Thogmartin, who had traveled from Brooklyn, told KENS. “But the priority was to get out. And we’re glad we

Por Emma Tucker, CNN

Dos agentes del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE, por sus siglas en inglés) dejaron a un hombre en el suelo con un brazo esposado mientras se alejaban del intento de arresto en un aeropuerto de Las Vegas cuando los transeúntes los confrontaron, según la policía y funcionarios federales.

La policía retiró la esposas de la muñeca del hombre y notificó a ICE después de que una verificación de registros no encontrara órdenes de arresto pendientes en su contra, informó el Departamento de Policía Metropolitana de Las Vegas.

Una investigación determinó que los agentes de ICE “intentaron detener al individuo pero se alejaron del arresto”, indicó el departamento.

El hombre fue identificado por el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional como Phu Nguyen, de 57 años, quien se encontraba en EE.UU. con una visa vencida, según el DHS.

Después de que “una multitud de agitadores anti-ICE rodeó a los agentes”, detuvieron el arresto para “desescalar la situación y por la seguridad de los agentes”, comentó el DHS.

Nguyen, ciudadano de Australia nacido en Vietnam, fue puesto bajo custodia al día siguiente en el Aeropuerto Internacional de Los Ángeles, informó la agencia.

Su visa era legalmente válida por dos años y había vencido en 2015, indicó el DHS.

“Nguyen se negó a salir en violación de las leyes de nuestra nación. Recibirá el debido proceso completo y permanecerá bajo custodia de ICE a la espera del resultado de sus procedimientos de expulsión”, apuntó el DHS.

Nguyen se encuentra actualmente detenido en el Centro de Procesamiento de ICE de Adelanto, según los registros de la agencia.

CNN está trabajando para determinar si cuenta con representación legal.

Cuando se le preguntó sobre el intento de arresto de Nguyen por parte de agentes federales en el aeropuerto, el Departamento de Aviación del Condado de Clark manifestó que reconoce “que incidentes como este pueden plantear preguntas y preocupaciones entre el público viajero”.

“Trabajamos estrechamente con nuestros socios federales de aplicación de la ley para apoyar la operación segura y protegida del aeropuerto”, subrayó el comunicado.

CNN se ha puesto en contacto con la TSA para solicitar comentarios sobre el incidente.

Este incidente trasciende después de la muerte en menos de una semana de dos inmigrantes por disparos de agentes de ICE.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo en Houston y de Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero en Biddeford, Maine, perdieron la vida a manos de funcionarios federales durante controles de tráfico.

Dichos controles se han convertido en una herramienta fundamental para los agentes que intentaban cumplir el objetivo de la administración Trump de realizar alrededor de 2.000 detenciones al día.

La reacción de rechazo fue inmediata en forma de una serie de manifestaciones contra ICE a nivel nacional. Ciudadanos de Houston, Nueva York, Boston y diversas localidades de Maine salieron a las calles para exigir justicia para las víctimas y la retirada de los agentes federales de sus estados.

El DHS primero suspendió y luego restableció los controles de tráfico de ICE, mientras busca frenar los tiroteos y las críticas.

El presidente Donald Trump se enfureció por la pausa en la mayoría de los controles de vehículos realizados por ICE y por las críticas de su propia base electoral, según dos fuentes familiarizadas con el asunto.

Voces del movim

By Samantha Delouya, CNN

(CNN) — For years, buying a home in need of work was seen as a more affordable path to homeownership and building wealth. Home makeover shows dominated TV, house-flipping became a booming business, and first-time buyers embraced the idea of trading sweat equity for a lower purchase price.

But lately, fixer-uppers have been falling out of favor.

This year, they are selling at a 14% discount compared to similar move-in-ready homes – the steepest discount Zillow has recorded in years. That’s nearly double from last year, when fixer-uppers sold for 7.3% less than comparable move-in-ready properties.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, by contrast, homes described as “fixers,” “needs work,” “TLC” or having “good bones” were more likely to sell than comparable listings, according to Zillow.

For many Americans, the math behind buying a fixer-upper no longer pencils out. Tariffs, inflation and a shortage of construction workers have made home improvement projects significantly more expensive — and often more time-consuming — over the past few years.

Dozens of first-time homebuyers who purchased aging homes in need of work expressed a common theme to CNN: High home prices and elevated mortgage rates had already stretched their budgets thin, leaving little money for the renovations needed to make their homes livable.

Juli St. George, a real estate agent in Atlanta, told CNN she has noticed a shift in her clients in recent years.

“The Chip and Joanna Gaines era has passed,” St. George said, referring to popular television personalities who rose to fame through the HGTV show “Fixer Upper.”

“Before, people were looking for grandma’s house where they get to make it their own and save up every quarter and make a new addition to their house,” she added. “It’s not happening anymore.”

(HGTV is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company.)

When Molly and Matt Dodge bought their first home in Arlington, Vermont, this year, they knew it needed work. But they fell in love with the space, just over an acre, with enough bedrooms so that their two kids no longer needed to share.

Contractors quoted between $30,000 and $50,000 to replace their septic system, and thousands more to address the home’s growing list of problems, including: leaks, mold, ant infestations and carpenter bees. The couple has already spent about $10,000 on do-it-yourself repairs.

Months into their renovation process, Matt and Molly Dodge’s optimism has faded.

“We currently wish we built instead of bought,” Molly Dodge wrote to CNN last week in a moment of frustration.

Fixer-uppers are falling out of favor

For much of the 2010s, fixer-uppers offered a relatively straightforward path to building wealth: Buy a home at a discount, invest in renovations and watch rising home values offset the costs. But that calculation has changed.

Tariffs on building materials such as lumber and steel, along with the inflation surge that began in 2022, have driven up the cost of renovations. Meanwhile, a persistent shortage of construction workers has pushed labor costs even higher and slowed projects.

In a 2025 survey b