AJ Dybantsa is the No. 1 pick on a big NBA draft night for freshman stars and Michigan’s champions

 

NBA commissioner Adam Silver shakes hands with AJ Dybantsa after he is drafted first overall by the Washington Wizards in the 2026 NBA Draft in New York.

Arturo Holmes/Getty Images

New YorkAP —  

AJ Dybantsa is on his way to Washington and ready to start working as soon as he gets there.

That’s not until Wednesday. Tuesday was a night for the NBA’s No. 1 draft pick to party.

“Obviously this night is just a celebration of all the hard work I’ve done in the past, and so now I’m going to celebrate,” Dybantsa said.

So were a record number of one-and-done college stars who followed him, a trio of national champions from Michigan and fans of both New York teams on what sounded like an even more festive NBA draft than usual.

The Wizards started it by selecting Dybantsa, a forward who led the nation in scoring in his one season at BYU. He averaged 25.5 points, highlighted by a 43-point effort that broke BYU’s freshman scoring record, and was the first of a record-tying eight straight college freshman taken to begin the draft.

Read More

A fire at a cold-storage warehouse in Los Angeles has been burning for days. Here’s what we know

 

Smoke from a dayslong fire filled the sky Sunday at a nearly 500,000-square-foot warehouse in Los Angeles.

Jae C. Hong/AP

The thick, noxious smoke billowing out of a Los Angeles warehouse has been a fixture of the city’s skyline for almost a week as crews race to contain a fire at a cold-storage facility holding 85 million pounds of frozen food.

As of Monday afternoon, significant progress has been made on the containing the blaze, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said, and the threat of hazardous chemicals have been mitigated.

“I expect that they will continue to make progress on this fire and get to its conclusion in the next few days,” Derek Chapman, deputy fire chief with the Los Angeles Fire Department, said during a press briefing Monday.

“The smell of smoke has reached most of the city, and we encourage everyone to limit exposure as much as possible,” the Los Angeles Fire Department said over the weekend.

Here’s what we know:

What caused this disaster, and when did it start?

“Lineage does not own the building or its rooftop solar array,” said Lineage, the company that leases and operates the warehouse. “We are the tenant-operator of the warehouse building and lease the roof to a third-party solar company, which is responsible for operating and maintaining the array.”

“We believe the fire originated on the roof on Wednesday while the company’s subcontractors were servicing the solar array,” Lineage said.

According to its website, Lineage is a “worldwide leader in cold storage and logistics.”

In 2024, a Lineage facility in Washington state caught fire and smoldered for two months, Northwest Public Broadcasting reported. Nearby residents in Finley have reported an array of health problems.

Heavy smoke billows from a cold-storage warehouse Saturday in Los Angeles, three days after a fire started at the facility.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

The Los Angeles Fire Department has not released an official cause for the blaze, which started around 2:35 p.m. Wednesday at 1400 S. Los Palos St. There, crews discovered flames shooting out from the roof and quickly “engaged in offensive suppression,” LAFD said.

But 15 minutes into their efforts, a suspected ammonia leak forced firefighters to act defensively.

Ammonia is used in some refrigeration systems to keep buildings cold, Lineage said.

“We can confirm that no measurable ammonia concentrations have been recorded in the community since the fire began,” the company said. “We also proactively took steps to pump out the ammonia and transport it offsite, removing the possibility of ammonia posing a risk to the community.”

As of Monday afternoon, the threat of hazardous chemicals has been mitigated, Chapman said.

The Los Angeles City Fire Department on Sunday night began applying about 6,000 gallons of water per minute to the building, allowing crews to get a foothold on the fire, Chapman said.

What makes this fire so hard to fight?
“The sheer size of this structure … largely prevented effective ground access,” the fire department said. “Though not typically deployed in structure fires due to safety concerns, LAFD helicopters performed water drops to knock down the bulk of the flames.”

Read More

LA Mayor Bass declares emergency to secure resources to help fight warehouse fire

 

The sky is filled with smoke from a warehouse fire in Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 17, 2026.

Jae C. Hong/AP

Los AngelesAP —  

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declared an emergency Saturday to ensure the city gets the resources it needs to fight a large warehouse fire that has sent large plumes of smoke into the air.

“The city and county have opened spaces for families seeking relief from the smoke, and we will continue working around the clock and doing everything possible to put this fire out completely,” Bass said in a news release announcing the emergency declaration.

The fire at a privately owned cold-storage warehouse in the city’s Boyle Heights neighborhood started Wednesday, prompting shelter-in-place orders in the area because of the risk of hazardous air. Residents were told to close all windows, doors and vents, turn off air conditioning and bring people and pets to an inside room.

Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Jaime Moore said in a news conference that they have taken care of the hazardous materials portion of the blaze and now they are working on the biohazard challenges.

“We have 85 million pounds of frozen food inside of this facility and the way the building has been laid out, it’s very difficult for us to get in there because there’s zero visibility inside,” Moore said. “Our firefighters are not able to just go in there and start moving pallets.”

Read More

Los Angeles schools superintendent resigns after FBI search and months on paid leave

 

Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, on January 15.

David Ryder/Reuters

LOS ANGELESAP —  

The superintendent of Los Angeles public schools has resigned four months after he was put on paid leave during a federal investigation, saying he wants students to learn “without distraction.”

Alberto Carvalho’s resignation letter dated Sunday made no direct mention of the Feb. 25 search of his home and the LA Unified School District’s headquarters. Two days after the FBI served the search warrants, the district’s Board of Education voted unanimously to place Carvalho on leave pending the outcome of the investigation.

Authorities have not provided details of the nature of the investigation involving the district, which serves more than 500,000 students. The investigation appears to relate to a contract the school district had with an education technology company whose leader was later indicted for fraud. The company, AllHere, had a contract with the district to create an AI chatbot.

Before becoming the Los Angeles superintendent in 2022, Carvalho had spent his entire education career in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, where he drew national praise for improving graduation rates and academic achievement among Black and Hispanic students. While advocating for Miami’s immigrant students, he spoke openly about his own struggles as a young recent arrival from Portugal working in restaurants and construction while homeless at times.

Related article

Read More

Students learn less when they use tech. So why do schools keep giving kids devices?

 

A parent recently told me she’s struggling to get her otherwise well-behaved and academically successful daughter to attend class. Her daughter is regularly late or absent, she complained, and her mom fears her daughter might not graduate high school and have her college admission rescinded.

What’s going on? Her mom, who encourages making mindful choices about technology at home, thinks using technology at school is leaving her daughter stressed and exhausted. Human beings have evolved to interact with one another, use our bodies and be outdoors — not stare at screens all day, she pointed out.

She’s just one of the many parents telling me they’re concerned about what screens in schools are doing to their kids. The vast majority of US public schools — 88% — now issue devices to every student, according to a 2025 National Center for Education Statistics survey. My own town’s public schools use a lot of technology, and I’m worried about my daughters, too.

That’s why I wasn’t surprised by the results of an otherwise baffling new study, which found students putting away their phones didn’t seem to meaningfully improve learning outcomes.

I suspect that’s because schools are giving students other forms of technology to replace their personal devices, despite a wide body of evidence showing that educational technology generally makes it harder for students to learn.

Kids perform worse on computers

Students who use computers more perform worse academically, neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath documented in his book, “The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning — And How To Help Them Thrive Again.” These results show up in numerous reliable international standardized tests, Horvath explained in congressional testimony.

Recently, public school officials in my town held a session in which they encouraged parents to get their kids off screens at home. It’s good advice, and I share it when I speak to parents across the country to offer tips and tricks about how to responsibly manage their kids’ screen time. But the problem is that those same (probably well-meaning) school officials are letting our kids use technology at school.

Read More

CNN Poll of Polls: Trump approval

 

Presidential job approval ratings are one of the few metrics consistently and similarly measured in nearly all major public polls. An average of recent polls can often paint a more reliable picture of how the public views the president than a single poll can. The CNN Poll of Polls tracks President Donald Trump’s average approval and disapproval ratings in national polls. It includes the most recent results on this question which meet CNN’s standards for reporting and which measure the views of all US adults. The CNN Poll of Polls does not have a margin of sampling error.

Read More

Federal judge blocks state bans on buying soda and candy with food stamps

 

Bags of candy are displayed on a store's shelves on April 21, in Miami.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from allowing five states to ban the purchase of sugary drinks and candy with food stamps.

The decision is a major setback for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement, known as MAHA, which is focused on minimizing the consumption of ultraprocessed foods to reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes.

Kennedy has worked closely with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who has granted waiver requests by nearly two dozen states to restrict food purchases in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the formal name for food stamps. Not all of the bans have gone into effect yet.

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in the District of Columbia ruled that the US Department of Agriculture lacked the authority to approve state waivers in pilot projects in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia.

In their waivers, the states sought to change the federal definition of food to one that restricted certain products. The bans differed somewhat in each state, with all limiting the purchase of sugary drinks, such as soda and energy beverages, and some also restricting candy. The limits applied to all SNAP recipients, with no exceptions allowed.

The five food stamp enrollees who brought the suit argued they need to buy the restricted items for their health and wellness — describing some of the drinks as necessary to address Type 1 diabetes, kidney issues and lack of energy.

Jackson pointed out that her decision is not intended as a comment on whether the bans are a good idea.

“The federal defendants and the states may have a genuine desire to improve the health of SNAP households by encouraging healthy choices at the store, and they can take lawful steps to meet those goals,” Jackson wrote. “But what they cannot do is violate the law and their own regulations along the way.”

The judge noted the authority the USDA is relying on allows the agency to enact pilot projects to test the efficiency of the SNAP program but does not include improving the health and diet of recipients.

Rollins vowed that the administration will continue the MAHA fight.

“An activist judge just blocked our commonsense restriction on using SNAP benefits for soda and junk,” she posted on X on Tuesday. “SNAP is for food — not sugar bombs fueling obesity, diabetes, and skyrocketing healthcare costs for low-income families. Taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize junk food and drinks at the expense of American health.”

CNN has reached out to HHS for comment.

One of the law firms that brought the case said the ruling “is a major step in restoring essential food assistance to the millions of families that rely on SNAP nationwide.”

Read More

Can the World Cup transform this Midwestern city into a global tourist hub?

 

A detailed view of a ball on the pitch at Arrowhead Stadium ahead of the 2026 World Cup at Kansas City Stadium on May 11, 2026 in Kansas City, Missouri.

Jay Biggerstaff/Getty Images

Kansas City is betting big.

Betting almost $200 million, in fact, that hosting the World Cup will transform this Midwestern hub into a global tourist destination. It’s a heady proposition. Already, the tournament has been dubbed the “World Cup of Chaos” over immigration fights and exorbitant ticket prices. Kansas City’s gamble is that it can break through all of that – and convince people to keep coming back.

“You’re putting yourself on the international stage,” Victor Matheson, a professor at The College of the Holy Cross and an expert on sports economics, told CNN. “But do we really think people from Japan and Uzbekistan and Cape Verde are saying, ‘hey, I’m going on my once-in-a-lifetime trip to the United States, and I’m going to take it to Kansas City’?”

Local officials say this is their shot. Kansas City has never hosted something this grand and may never again.

Organizers project more than $653 million in direct economic impacts through retail, food and drink, hospitality and more, said Jenny Wilson, vice president of tourism development at Visit KC. Organizers expect over 650,000 visitors, enough to swallow the city’s population of about 520,000.

World Cup signage greets travelers at the Kansas City airport ahead of the 2026 World Cup on May 5, 2026 in Kansas City, Missouri.

Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Kansas City propped up transit lines to the airport, stadium and downtown fan festival. Homeowners rented out their spaces. An Uber spokesperson said the company is adding more drivers as officials plan for the city’s six matches, which begin Tuesday.

But Kansas City is the underdog. Compared to the 16 hosts across North America, there aren’t many direct flights overseas, and flights aren’t cheap. Fans may not stay for longer vacations – Matheson is flying to Kansas City from Boston for a game and staying for just 36 hours.

And Kansas City is competing with the likes of Mexico City, Los Angeles and Miami, which can pay off their considerable World Cup tabs year-round with other events and entertainment.

“What does a win for a city mean?” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas told CNN. “When should a city invest in these sorts of things? Hopefully this World Cup gives us the chance to test some of these.”

Great expectations

The multibillion-dollar World Cup relies on hosts to pay for infrastructure, transportation, staffing and security. City, state and federal funds paid for Kansas City’s efforts.

Read More