GUADALUPE, Calif. (KEYT) - The Guadalupe Union School District (GUSD) officially opened its Early Learning Center (ELC) on Wednesday morning, welcoming about 100 students to a facility that's been in the works for several years.

"It absolutely is a very significant day for the for the City of Guadalupe," said GUSD Superintendent Emilio Handall. "They've never had a place like this. They've ever had a campus designed specifically for their three and four-year-olds. We have other federal programs in the area, but this school sponsored design space is something that they've never had before."

The new campus is located to the new Guadalupe Junior High School, which just opened earlier at the beginning of the current school year in August.

Spread out over five acres in the Pasadera housing community, the ELC features eight classrooms created for both preschool and transitional kindergarten students.

"It gives them a space that's specifically designed for them with a play area that's age appropriate with classrooms that allows them to learn at their most optimal level," said Handall. "It's just a space where children will feel more comfortable and more engaged. Students will be learning how to play with each other. They'll be learning how to communicate their needs. They'll be learning how to collaborate with other students. They'll be learning how to regulate their emotions along with the academic piece, learning their letters, numbers, colors and what have you."

The cost of the new campus was about $10 million with funding coming to the district through a variety of sources.

"Without the tremendous support of the Guadalupe community, these much-needed and much-anticipated facilities would not have been possible," said Handall. "The citizens of Guadalupe overwhelmingly approved four bond measures in the span of six years. First passing Measures M &N in 2016, and then Measure V &W in 2022. The schools represent incredible opportunities for the children of Guadalupe and the generosity of its citizens."

On Wednesday afternoon, GUSD will hold a ribbon cutting ceremony at 3:30 p.m. to officially celebrate the opening of the new campus.

The event will be held at the ELC, which is located 375 Arroyo Seco Road in Guadalupe, and is open to the public.

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By René Marsh, Piper Hudspeth Blackburn, CNN

(CNN) — As the Smithsonian faced a deadline to comply with the White House’s request for extensive documents about its museum exhibitions, Lonnie Bunch III, the historian who leads the institution, has been treading a careful line between maintaining independence and complying with the Trump administration’s demands.

On Tuesday, the Smithsonian handed over additional materials the White House had pushed for in December, when officials asked for curatorial manuals, proposals for future exhibitions, and in-depth information about the Smithsonian’s programming for the US’ 250th anniversary, among other things.

In an email to Smithsonian staff sent Tuesday, seen by CNN, Bunch informed employees that the materials that were handed over included “digital photographs of labels, placards, and other text on public display in several galleries.”

“We will continue to provide responsive information on a rolling basis. As a public service institution, we are committed to being transparent and open,” he wrote.

Mark Paoletta, general counsel for the White House Office of Management and Budget, confirmed the handover “per the White House’s letter requesting additional materials on exhibits” and said the documents are now being reviewed.

“We will continue to engage with the Smithsonian upon our review,” he said.

The world’s largest museum organization now finds itself in a rare and consequential test. The Smithsonian is legally structured to be independent but financially reliant on an administration seeking unprecedented insight into its operations and potential influence over its content.

How Bunch, a historian and curator who is well-respected throughout the museum world, navigates the administration’s attempts to wrest more control over the Smithsonian’s content could set a precedent for how far political power can reach into the nation’s most prominent cultural institutions.

According to a source close to the internal conversations, the administration’s attempts for more oversight and how to respond to it has dominated high-level discussions between Bunch and the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, the 17-member panel that governs the institution.

Members of the board include Chief Justice John Roberts, Vice President JD Vance, Republican and Democratic members of Congress, and members of the public who are mostly former business executives and nonprofit board members.

According to the source familiar with internal conversations, government officials on the board are divided along party lines over whether the Trump administration should be reviewing, weighing in on, and attempting to influence museum content.

There is unanimity among the citizen members that the Smithsonian should remain independent and not be influenced by the administration, the source said.

Six of the nine public regents’ terms end this year, giving Trump a chance to expand his influence on the board before the midterm elections shake up Congress. New board members are appointed via congressional joint resolutions that the president must sign into law. Trump, in an executive order last year, directed Vance to seek the appointment of members that aligned with his priorities for the institution.

Roughly two-thirds of the Smithsonian’s funding comes from the federal government, and the administration has signaled that it would withhold money if the institution did not comply with its review.

Still, Bunch remains deeply devoted to ensuring that the Smithsonian presents an accurate portrayal of history and maintains its independence from politics, the source told CNN.

“There is a clear desire in the Smithsonian to try not to have bias in its exhibits sometime

By Lisa Eadicicco, CNN

(CNN) — Verizon said some of its wireless services were down Wednesday, leaving many customers without access to voice and data services.

Downdetector, a website that tracks user-submitted reports of outages among popular online services, estimates tens of thousands of users were impacted.

Verizon acknowledged the issue in a post on the social media platform X on Wednesday.

“We are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers. Our engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly. We understand how important reliable connectivity is and apologize for the inconvenience,” the statement said.

Verizon said in a statement to CNN that its engineers are addressing the service interruptions and that its teams “remain fully deployed and are focused on the issue.”

“We understand the impact this has on your day and remain committed to resolving this as quickly as possible,” Verizon said in its statement.

The outage is one of several high-profile tech outages in the past year that have interrupted daily life for thousands, including an Amazon Web Services issue that took down most of the web in October. In 2024, a widespread AT&T outage left customers across the United States without service and prompted a Federal Communications Commission investigation.

At its peak around 12:45 pm ET on Wednesday, Downdetector received more than 180,000 Verizon-related issue reports. Some users on social media reported their phones being stuck in SOS mode, or losing access to service. The issue reports began to escalate around noon ET and have been declining throughout the afternoon.

Users also reported problems with AT&T and T-Mobile service on Downdetector, although spokespeople for both networks said their services are operating normally. Customers may experience service issues when trying to contact those on Verizon.

“T-Mobile’s network is keeping our customers connected, and we’ve confirmed that our network is operating normally and as expected,” T-Mobile said in a comment to CNN. “However, due to Verizon’s reported outage, our customers may not be able to reach someone with Verizon service at this time.”

This story is developing and will be updated with additional details.

The-CNN-Wire
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By Don Riddell, CNN

(CNN) — There’s not much you can do when you’re watching your clothes spin round and around, waiting for the laundry to wash and dry. But when Lily Zhang was seven years old, she spent that laundry time learning about another kind of spin, and with it she launched a career – not that she knew it at the time.

Her dad was a math professor at Stanford in California and there was a table tennis table in the launderette; that’s where her remarkable journey began.

“My parents are both from China,” the table tennis Olympian told CNN Sports. “It’s kind of the national sport there, everyone plays. It was really just a fun little game; I had no idea where it would lead me.”

A visit to the local table tennis club really opened her eyes to the possibilities, the technique, strategy and intensity of it really captured her imagination.

“I just fell in love with the game,” she explained, “I dove in headfirst.”

Asked if she felt as though she had a natural talent for table tennis, she chuckled, “I mean, I don’t want to brag, but yeah. I do think I had a natural affinity to the sport.”

She’s humble in person, but Zhang has every reason to brag. At the age of 12, she was playing for the under-15 US national team, by 12 she had made the senior team and just four years later she traveled to London, the youngest table tennis player at the 2012 Olympics. Her success was so rapid that she admits it was overwhelming.

“I remember multiple times in the Games thinking, like, ‘Why am I here?’” she recalled. “During the opening ceremonies, I remember it was Serena Williams to my right and Kobe Bryant to my left, it was so surreal.”

If Zhang felt overwhelmed in London, she was much more comfortable around players her own age at the 2014 Youth Olympics in China, where she won a bronze medal, becoming the first American table tennis player ever to make the podium at any Olympic-level event. But despite her success, she says table tennis wasn’t really the grand plan.

“In the US, it’s pretty customary for kids to stop playing once they reach university age, so I think my initial plan or vision was to just make the Olympics, get that on my college resumé and then focus on education,” she said.

Nonetheless, she returned to the 2016 Olympics in Rio, and no matter how hard she has tried, she just couldn’t let the sport go; the details of her story are reminiscent of Al Pacino’s famous line in The Godfather Part III: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

“I’ve quit multiple times in my career,” she explained. “I’ve pretty much quit after every Olympics I’ve attended, but there’s something about the sport just kept calling my name and I still feel like I have some unfinished business. Table tennis is something that I really, really love and it feels ingrained in my identity.”

In fact, she identifies so much with the game that she took her partner, Jessie Xiao, to a table tennis bar on their first date in San Francisco and challenged her to a game, without revealing that she was an Olympic player.

“Looking back, it was a cringy move, but at the end of the day, it worked!” she said.

In an attempt to level the playing field, Zhang at least played with her iPhone, instead of a bat.

After graduating from university, Zhang moved to Germany to become a professional player and she has since played in two more Olympic tournaments, Tokyo and Paris, where in 2024 she made it to a career-best round of 16. It was also in Paris where a clip of the US basketball star Anthony Edwards challenging Zhang to a game of table tennis went viral.

The exchange has just been featured more fully in “Serious Business with Anthony Edwards” on Amazon Prime, in which Zhang is so confident of victory that she gifts him a 10-point start in a first to 11-point game.

It was around the Pa

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) - Local wildlife are facing an unexpected threat: glue traps.

So far this year, rescuers have treated 35 animals — including birds, bats, and lizards — caught in these sticky devices.

Since 2019, 142 animals have needed care after getting trapped.

Experts are urging safer, more humane alternatives to protect unintended victims.

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