Topline:
Ticket registration for the 2028 Olympic Games is officially open. Fans have until March 18 to join the ticket draw, and tickets will go on sale in April, starting with a pre-sale for locals.
Background: After registration for the ticket raffle opened at 7a.m. today, some people reported long wait times to register, and others still had questions about the process after signing up.
Read on ... for answers to your questions on getting tickets.
This story will be updated. Check back for details.
Ticket registration for the 2028 Olympic Games is officially open. Fans have until March 18 to join the ticket draw, and tickets will go on sale in April, starting with a pre-sale for locals.
After registration for the ticket raffle opened at 7a.m. Wednesday, some reported long wait times to register, and others still had questions about the process after signing up.
Here are answers to some of your questions.
When will I learn if I was selected for a time slot to buy tickets?
You'll get an email between March 31 and April 7 if you win a slot.
How many tickets can I buy?
You can buy up to 12 tickets.
Do kids need tickets?
Yes. Kids of any age will need their own ticket.
The locals pre-sale is for people living in certain zip codes. How will Olympics organizers verify that the people purchasing the tickets are locals?
LA28 asks locals to register using their ZIP code and then use the same billing ZIP code when actually purchasing tickets.
Will I be able to buy multiple tickets for one event?
Yes. LA28 says in its FAQ that you can transfer tickets to other "named ticket holders."
Can I buy group tickets?
Yes. Groups of 50 people or more can fill out an interest form to purchase group tickets.
When I buy tickets, can I select my seat?
You will be able to choose a "seat category" but not a specific seat, according to LA28. Its website says that your seat will be assigned to you later on.
Will people be able to re-sell their tickets?
Yes. According to LA28, there will be an "Official Secondary Market." The organization didn't provide any additional details.
Will each ticket drop have tickets for all sports?
Yes. According to LA28, tickets for every Olympic sport will be on sale in each drop.
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The long-running debate over where to build a final resting place in Irvine for military veterans couldn’t get past the roadblock that has vexed it for years on Tuesday — where to put it?
The opposing viewpoints: Councilmember James Mai proposed asking officials to develop a plan for a municipal columbarium, including eligibility preference given to Irvine residents or those with strong ties to the city and those who served at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. He asked staff to consider locations across the city for the structure, including Bill Barber Memorial Park, Northwood Memorial Park and adjacent to the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum. But he also explicitly called for a 125-acre plot of land that used to be part of the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro to be excluded.
The land, also known as the ARDA site, is now part of Great Park, but has long been lobbied for as a location for a veterans cemetery.
Mayor Larry Agran strongly opposed Mai’s proposed exclusion of the ARDA site, calling the idea “offensive.” Instead, he reiterated his longstanding call for a veterans cemetery at the location.
The council eventually voted 4-3 to table the proposal.
The long-running debate over where to build a final resting place in Irvine for military veterans couldn’t get past the roadblock that has vexed it for years on Tuesday — where to put it?
After about two hours of discussion, the Irvine City Council voted to table the topic after disagreement over even the parameters of how to go about finding a location for a columbarium, or a structure to inter urns carrying ashes, for veterans with ties to the city.
Councilmember James Mai proposed asking officials to develop a plan for a municipal columbarium, including eligibility preference given to Irvine residents or those with strong ties to the city and those who served at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. He asked staff to consider locations across the city for the structure, including Bill Barber Memorial Park, Northwood Memorial Park and adjacent to the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum. But he also explicitly called for a 125-acre plot of land that used to be part of the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro to be excluded.
The land, also known as the ARDA site, is now part of Great Park, but has long been lobbied for as a location for a veterans cemetery.
Mayor Larry Agran strongly opposed Mai’s proposed exclusion of the ARDA site, calling the idea “offensive.” Instead, he reiterated his longstanding call for a veterans cemetery at the location.
The council eventually voted 4-3 to table the proposal.
Orange County is home to an estimated 130,000 veterans, but the nearest cemetery dedicated to military personnel is the Riverside National Cemetery more than 40 miles away.
It isn’t the first time a final resting place for veterans has stalled in front of the Irvine City Council. Last year, plans for a veterans cemetery or columbarium were shut down on two separate occasions.
For veterans in Irvine, the cemetery represents a broken promise.
When the marine base was shuttered in 1999, Irvine’s population was just over 130,000 and the Great Park idea was nonexistent.
Orange County lobbied for an airport. But for veterans and their families, the former marine base seemed like the perfect resting place where they could receive their last rites for service to their country — and some are still holding on to that hope with a staunch ally in Agran.
But in the years since the debates began, Irvine's population has more than doubled to more than 300,000 and Great Park has been transformed into a residential community for young families, with a $1 billion expansion underway that includes an amphitheater, retail and dining options. The area, residents say, has been transformed too much to also include a cemetery.
Also, the site eyed for a potential cemetery is near an elementary school and families — many of whom are immigrants — who live in the area say it’s bad luck.
There’s political support, including from state leadership, for a cemetery in Orange County. A bill approved in 2014, AB 1453, calls on the state to build and maintain a resting place for veterans in the area.
After efforts to build it at the former marine base stalled over and over again, a group of fed-up veterans finally took their plans to Anaheim’s Gypsum Canyon.
That location quickly won support from city, county, state and federal leaders.
Construction at the Anaheim site is set to begin this year. However, Agran is convinced that the cemetery will actually come to fruition in Irvine.
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The iconic Highway 1 in Big Sur reopened today – months ahead of schedule – after undergoing repairs from landslide damage. For the first time in three years, residents and visitors will be able to travel along the scenic 7-mile stretch of road between Carmel and Cambria.
Background: Back-to-back destructive landslides caused the coastline road to be closed for repairs since January 2023. The coastal road is no stranger to closures due to landslide damage. The U.S. Geological Survey identified 75 miles of the Big Sur coastline as one of the most landslide-prone areas in the western United States, officials said.
What we know: Caltrans removed about 6,000 cubic yards of mud and debris to clear the way for drivers using remote-controlled bulldozers and excavators. Crew members also installed steel bars into the hillside slopes to prevent future landslides.
Is the coast clear for drivers? For now, yes. But officials say winter storm conditions could lead to temporary closures along Highway 1 and other parts of the coastline. Some ongoing construction could also cause delays.
Officials say: Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that the reopening of the “vital corridor” brings much-needed relief to small businesses and families.
Dig deeper … into why Highway 1 is constantly at-risk of falling into the ocean.
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Mary Marfisee, an assistant professor of medicine at UCLA, is also the family medical services director at the Union Rescue Mission. She's coming up on 20 years tending to the more than 5,000 men, women and children who come through the doors of the shelter every year. The homeless women Marfisee works with face even more challenges than men due to a lack of services.
Why it matters: Union Rescue Mission's internal studies found that about 87% of women were not up to date with their preventative pap smear or mammogram health screenings. And when women from shelters do try to get preventative care, they're often faced with a variety of challenges.
Women's health services: In December, Marfisee launched the first phase of a new women's health initiative at the shelter. Alongside some medical student interns, she leads regular town halls to raise awareness about important screenings, including cervical and breast cancer check ups.
Standing on a busy street in Skid Row on a recent sunny day, Mary Marfisee tried to block out street noise as she popped her stethoscope into her ears. Dozens of people were milling about. Dogs barked. Music blared. A constant thrum of cars drove past.
But Marfisee is used to the commotion.
"I'm going to listen to your lungs and see if they're ok. Is that ok?" Marfisee asked Hermione, a nervous woman in her twenties who declined to give NPR her full name out of fear for her safety. She was pushing a stroller loaded with plastic bags, stuffed with her belongings.
Marfisee pressed the stethoscope onto the back of Hermione's oversized sweatshirt.
"Your lungs are tight," Marfisee said with concern after a few beats. "Are you having trouble breathing?" she asked.
Everything about Marfisee's approach is slow and deliberate. Before touching Hermione's arm, she hovers her hand over it and makes eye contact. Then, she lowers her hand gently. It's a deliberate, patient approach she's developed over her long career as a family medicine physician.
Hermione's worried expression relaxed. She explained that she has asthma and her inhaler was running low on medicine. She also lost her emergency EpiPen, she said. But when Marfisee offered information about a few nearby clinics that would be able to take her as a walk-in patient, Hermione turned it down.
"Maybe later. They have a bed for me at the Union Rescue Mission," Hermione said, and Marfisee's face bloomed into a smile.
That's because Marfisee, an assistant professor of medicine at UCLA, is also the family medical services director at the Union Rescue Mission. The Christian organization operates a four-story homeless shelter that is one of the oldest and largest homeless missions in Southern California. She told NPR she's coming up on 20 years tending to the more than 5,000 men, women and children who come through the doors of the shelter every year. Over that span, she's also become a recognizable figure throughout Skid Row on regular walking rounds of "street medicine" delivered to unhoused people where they are.
The interaction with Hermione is a classic example of what typically happens with her patients — both inside the mission or on city sidewalks, Marfisee said.
"Their top priority" is finding stable housing. "Their health is at the bottom of the list," she explained.
As a result, small problems, such as infections, cuts or chronic health issues often fester and become much more serious, she said.
Los Angeles' Skid Row is an epicenter of the homelessness crisis — not just in California, but also the nation. According to a 2025 Los Angeles Homeless Services report, an estimated 43,695 city residents were homeless at the time of an annual count of the homeless population in February. Less than half — 16,723 — live in shelters while the rest are unsheltered.
Meanwhile, a 2024 study on homelessness in Los Angeles from the nonprofit research organization RAND found that Skid Row's unsheltered population continues to skew older and female. Data also shows that this group of women has significantly lower physical and mental health than those who are sheltered, due to factors such as lack of insurance and transportation. That's particularly true for basic services such as gynecological and prenatal care.
The homeless women Marfisee works with face even more challenges than men due to a lack of services, she said.
"There are clinics on Skid Row for general health services but nothing specifically set up to address women's health needs."
Union Rescue Mission's internal studies found that about 87% of women were not up to date with their preventative pap smear or mammogram health screenings.
And when women from shelters do try to get preventative care, they're often faced with a variety of challenges. Marfisee recounted one instance in which a patient who had a family history of breast cancer was trying to schedule a mammogram. After hours of calls, Marfisee said, the earliest appointment her team was able to schedule was nine months out. Then, there were more obstacles.
"She had to come in with her proof of Medicare. Well, she not only didn't have her medical card, she'd moved from address to address, didn't even have an I.D. anymore. So we had to start that whole process," Marfisee said.
Another of her patients, a woman who had suffered from lower abdominal pains for decades, faced similar setbacks. When she wasn't in crisis mode — moving from one place to another, and in and out of shelters — the woman went from clinic to clinic seeking help, Marfisee said. But finding the root cause was difficult without consistent care from a doctor to see the case through.
It wasn't until Marfisee and her staff conducted an hours-long history that they learned she had had an IUD placed 32 years prior.
"We could correlate the pain to the birth of her daughter, who was 32 years old, and who was also [living at URM] with her," Marfisee said.
The team scoured their contacts and arranged an emergency appointment for the woman at a county hospital. That's where they confirmed that the forgotten IUD, which can last from 3 to 10 years, had never been removed and was "incarcerated into [her] lower uterine wall," Marfisee said.
She described it as a devastating and eye-opening moment that propelled her into action.
"We felt like we were doing Band-Aid women's health," Marfisee said. "We would just treat an infection or treat a problem, but not really get to the screening issues."
It lit a fire in Marfisee to provide more resources for the 150 or so women who find themselves living at the shelter at any given time. Marfisee began contacting other clinics in the area but soon realized that they were not equipped to offer those services either.
"But I'm great at research," she boasted — and dogged, too.
In December she launched the first phase of a new women's health initiative at the shelter. Alongside some medical student interns, she leads regular town halls to raise awareness about important screenings, including cervical and breast cancer check ups. They encourage the women who attend to ask questions and talk about their own health.
But it's the next phase of the initiative that Marfisee believes will make the greatest difference in these women's lives. URM has partnered with a local hospital to bring a mobile health van to the shelter twice a month. That will allow Marfisee and other volunteer physicians to offer free pap smears and mammograms to the shelter's residents. She estimates they'll be able to provide up to 100 breast exams per visit.
"One of the things that [people who work with homeless women] always say is that these women are so resilient. And I understand why they say that," she said. "But I started to rethink that because they are not really able to take care of their gynecological health needs on their own. They can't really self-treat. They need to be told that this lump that they may have been palpating in the breast is something significant."
The van could be life saving, Marfisee said. Studies show that homeless women die from breast cancer at nearly twice the rate of the general population, largely due to a lack of access to adequate care and the fact that they are more likely to be diagnosed at a later, more advanced stage of the disease.
Unfortunately, she said, the plan to provide mobile health to these women hit a few red-tape and logistical snags, and is three months behind schedule; the van driver's schedule is booked up and the shelter needs to figure out how they'll be dumping any medical waste.
Marfisee, a self-described optimist, estimates they'll overcome the challenges and begin screening patients by February.
"No matter what it takes, we'll get it done. We just have to," she said.
Back out on the street, in a small, neglected park about a block away from URM, Marfisee turns onto San Julian Street, which she calls "one of the roughest streets in the city."
There are more than a dozen adults at the park, in various states of alertness; some are in groups, others are alone. One of them is an older woman in a wheelchair. Her hands are gnarled, frozen in what looks to be a painful position.
She's got a scowl on her face as Marfisee and her students approach. But after a few minutes she warms up to them. They go over their set of screening questions: Any aches and pains? Skin issues? Cuts or bruises?
The woman's responses are quiet and mostly monosyllabic, but after a few minutes, she reaches out and takes Marfisee's hands into her own.
She's Marfisee's last street patient of the day. Heading back toward URM, Marfisee makes a note.
"Let's keep her in mind and make a note of where she hangs out, so we can follow up with her," she said.
Marfisee headed into the shelter where she'd jump right into seeing other patients. Maybe, she hoped, that might include Hermione.
Copyright 2026 NPR
Topline:
On Wednesday afternoon, a four-person astronaut crew is set to strap into a SpaceX capsule and undock from the International Space Station.
Why now: The members of NASA's Crew-11 mission are coming home about a month early because one of the crew has a health condition worrisome enough that the space agency decided the person needed to get thoroughly checked out on the ground.
When will it happen? NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, along with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and an astronaut from Japan named Kimiya Yui, are expected to splash down off the coast of California early Thursday morning.
Read on... for more about the crew's return home.
On Wednesday afternoon, a four-person astronaut crew is set to strap into a SpaceX capsule and undock from the International Space Station.
The members of NASA's Crew-11 mission are coming home about a month early because one of the crew has a health condition worrisome enough that the space agency decided the person needed to get thoroughly checked out on the ground.
NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, along with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and an astronaut from Japan named Kimiya Yui, are expected to splash down off the coast of California early Thursday morning.
This is the first medical evacuation of the International Space Station in its 25-year history. Officials have stressed that it's not an emergency evacuation, as the astronaut's condition is stable. The identity of the astronaut and the nature of the problem have not been released for privacy reasons.
During a change-of-command ceremony beamed down from the orbiting outpost on Monday, all seven people on board the International Space Station spoke on camera, and none appeared obviously ill.
"Our timing of this departure is unexpected, but what was not surprising to me was how well this crew came together as a family to help each other and just take care of each other," said Cardman, "and this includes very much our teams on the ground."
"We are all OK. Everyone on board is stable, safe, and well cared for," Fincke wrote in a social media post, saying that coming home early was "the right call, even if it's a bit bittersweet."
Another NASA astronaut, Chris Williams, and two Russian cosmonauts will remain on board the station. A replacement four-person crew is scheduled to launch in a SpaceX capsule in February.
NASA trains crews for medical emergencies and even has considered what to do if an astronaut dies in orbit.
Previously, space station officials had predicted that they might have to bring an astronaut home early for health reasons as often as once every three years or so during the lifetime of the orbiting outpost.
"And we've not had one to date," James Polk, NASA's chief health and medical officer, noted in a press briefing.
The first public sign of the current medical issue came on Jan. 7 when NASA abruptly called off the first planned spacewalk of the year, saying the agency was "monitoring a medical concern with a crew member that arose Wednesday afternoon aboard the orbital complex." The next day, the agency announced plans to bring its Crew-11 team back early.
Polk said this situation was serious enough that the team wanted to do a full diagnostic workup on the astronaut, "and the best way to complete that work is on the ground, where we have the full suite of medical testing hardware."
It's not the first time that teams back on Earth have had to triage medical conditions in space, given that the station has been continuously inhabited for a quarter-century and astronauts can suffer from the usual routine ailments that affect mortal humans — as well as physical issues associated with unusual movements of body fluids because of microgravity.
"We've had a host of different things that we've treated on orbit," Polk said, listing health troubles like toothaches and ear pain.
They've even dealt with problems like a blood clot in an astronaut's jugular vein that was discovered accidentally, during a research study on blood circulation in space.
In that case, NASA consulted with Stephan Moll, an expert on blood clots and bleeding disorders at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He says a clot in this vein is uncommon on the ground, to say nothing about space, and there were a lot of unknowns; untreated, it might just resolve on its own, or it might progress to more serious complications.
Fortunately, for reasons Moll says he can't disclose, the station happened to have an injectable anti-clotting drug on board, which the astronaut took until pills could be sent up on a resupply mission.
Injecting the drug in space wasn't easy, however, as microgravity turned the liquid in the vial into floating drops that had to be hunted down with the needle. "In space, it took about 20 minutes for the astronaut, initially, to fill one syringe," he says, so it was quite cumbersome but doable.
Moll says he was really struck by the professionalism of the whole NASA team in working through this conundrum. "I was so impressed how detailed-oriented and thoughtful people are, not just assuming things," he says.
And he remembers getting a call on his home phone from the orbiting astronaut, up on the station, who wanted to talk things over with him directly.
"They're just in a different environment, but it comes down to the same concerns that other patients have," says Moll. "They're just normal people up there."
Copyright 2026 NPR
