The Brief

Since the game’s launch about a decade ago, you might be among the hundreds of millions of people who’ve taken to the streets to catch an elusive Detective Pikachu, a Snorlax, a Mewtwo or some other rare Pokémon.

At Arizona State University’s branch in downtown L.A., students are learning how to use the technology behind Pokémon Go, in concert with other tools, to create 3D models that document the aftermath of L.A. County’s recent wildfires.

The Eaton and Palisades fires wrought incalculable loss. Some people lost loved ones. Thousands lost their homes and places of worship. And many lost priceless mementos.

Which means the ASU initiative has two purposes: Its models can be used by wildfire survivors to make their insurance claims, and “on a public information level, [they allow us to] fully grasp the destruction and what it means for these communities,” said Ashley Buschhorn, a graduate student in the school’s Narrative and Emerging Media program.

Using personal experience to guide the project

The project is led by program director Nonny de la Peña, who’s largely considered a pioneer in virtual and augmented reality.

Professor Nonny de la Peña speaks to students in the Masters in Narrative and Emerging Media program at Arizona State University Center Broadway in Los Angeles, CA on March 27, 2025.

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During the pandemic, de la Peña stored all her work materials in her home studio — including her computers, storage drives and other essentials. She also put up photos of her children to brighten up the place. Two years ago, the battery of her electric bicycle exploded and burned that studio to the ground. In an instant, everything was gone.

But when de la Peña sifted through the rubble, she found that a few things had survived: an old love letter from her husband, charred but still legible; and, “bizarrely,” a card addressed to her son. It was signed by Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. “The Force will be with you always,” it read.

As news of the 2025 fires’ devastation made headlines, de la Peña recalled an ongoing fight she’d had with her insurance company after her studio burned down. At one point, the company tried to deny a sofa she listed in her claim. But de la Peña had a photo of its remains, so she was able to get compensated.

Because of this experience, de la Peña knew that having records of the aftermath would “be important in ways that people can't imagine.”

She also knew that having a record could bring closure, once fire victims began “to piece together memories and process what's happened to them.”

Before officials lifted the evacuation orders, de la Peña and her students headed out to the affected areas.

Sifting through the rubble  

Clad in hazmat gear, the team flashed their press passes to get past police lines in Altadena and Pacific Palisades. As they made their way through the streets, they avoided debris and were careful not to step on protruding nails.

The four-camera rig used to capture images converted into 3D scenes using a technique called "Gaussian splatting."

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The team members carried a rig with four cameras: one at the top of the pole, one at the bottom, and two on the sides. Buschhorn explained that the rig is meant to help capture images of the same place from different angles, simultaneously.

The images they captured were fed to their phones, then organized using artificial intelligence. De la Peña and her students stitched thousands of these images together to create the 3D models.

The process relies on two software companies in particular, Polycam and Snaniverse, she said. Snaniverse is owned by Niantic Inc. — the same company that created Pokémon GO.

That may “seem kind of odd,” de la Peña added, “but it all stems from the idea that the world isn't flat, so we shouldn't be representing it flat.”

The team captured images of intersections, landmarks, homes, cars, and many small objects, including dolls, bicycles and figurines that residents used to decorate their yards and gardens.

Nonny de la Peña, director of the Narrative and Emerging Media program at Arizona State University's Los Angeles Campus.

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Ashley Buschhorn, a graduate student in the Narrative and Emerging Media program at ASU in Los Angeles, teaches fellow students how to use a four-camera-rig to create 3D scenes using a technique called "Guassian splatting."

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For de la Peña, it was especially tough to walk through the affected areas, where at least 30 of her friends have lost their homes. This includes her son’s cello teacher, whose home her family visited every weekend for six years. It also includes the home of a friend who threw de la Peña a baby shower, along with the house in Altadena where, just over a year ago, de la Peña kissed her late friend goodbye.

When they first started creating the 3D models, de la Peña added, a lot of people still could not enter the area, “so we could provide them imagery of their homes when nobody else could.”

Training to go in the field 

Buschhorn, the graduate student, has gained enough experience to teach others how to use the camera equipment and software.

In late March, she walked fellow students through best practices for capturing quality images, under de la Peña’s supervision. They also gave students guidance on how to avoid disasters when they’re out in the field.

Ashley Buschhorn, a graduate student in the Narrative and Emerging Media program at ASU in Los Angeles, teaches fellow students.

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“Make sure all your batteries are charged [and] SD cards are cleared,” Buschhorn warned. “Always bring a hard drive and computer with you. ... These files start to get large pretty quickly.”

During that day’s lesson, de la Peña briefly interjected to emphasize the importance of getting images from every angle.

“If you wanted to paint [a] table red,” she said, by way of example, “you'd have to get the paint everywhere.”

The software, Buschhorn added, is “trying to identify the different textures, the lighting, the color — and all of those form together to then create your 3D model.”

Buschhorn moved from Austin to Los Angeles for undergrad.

“To see the place that I have grown and developed so much in the past couple years hurting so much” was devastating, they said.

She was glad to have the skills to create a record of the wildfires’ impact, to help communities as they rebuild.

The World Cup is coming to Los Angeles in 2026. Could the Women's World Cup come here too?

On Friday, FIFA released the bid books for the 2031 Women’s World Cup.

The U.S. Soccer Federation submitted a joint bid with Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica. It was the only bid that made the deadline.

If approved, several cities across the four countries would host the global football tournament.

Forty venues have in the U.S. have been proposed as potential sites for 2031 games, with some right here in southern California.

Football’s coming back?

Four Los Angeles stadiums are part of the bid.

• Rose Bowl
• Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
• Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson
• SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Show me the money

The bid projected that the 2031 tournament would bring in $4 billion in total revenue — four times more than $1 billion projected to be made from the upcoming 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil.

Organizers expect to generate revenue from across six main sources including: ticket revenues, hospitality, concessions, fan festivals, broadcast, and marketing opportunities.

Ticket prices are projected to start at $35 for the opening rounds seats, and between $120 and $600 for later matches

Wait and see

FIFA is expected to formally confirm the bid at their next congress on April 30th in Vancouver.

The evaluation process will focus on, according to FIFA, “the event vision and key metrics, infrastructure, services, commercial considerations, and sustainability and human rights.”

The venues where games will be held won't be decided for at least a few more years.

California ag giant the Wonderful Company suffered a setback on Tuesday in its bid to overturn a new farmworker unionization law when an appeals court tossed its lawsuit against state labor regulators.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the 5th District Court of Appeal in Fresno leaves in place a controversial new law backed by the United Farm Workers that was meant to boost organizing in a heavily immigrant workforce. The law allows farmworkers to signal their support for union representation using a signed card, bypassing the traditional in-person, secret-ballot election usually held on the employer’s property.

The Wonderful Company — owner of the Wonderful Pistachios brand and Fiji Water, Pom pomegranate juices and Halos oranges —filed suit against the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board last year trying to overturn the law, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in 2023.

The suit, alleging the law is unconstitutional, came after the United Farm Workers filed a petition with enough signatures to represent 600-odd workers at the company’s grape nursery in Wasco.

In a contentious public dispute, the company accused union organizers of tricking workers into signing cards supporting unionization and provided over 100 employees’ signatures attesting to being deceived; in turn, the union accused the company of illegally intimidating workers into withdrawing their support. Regulators at the agricultural labor board filed charges against Wonderful after investigating the claims.

All of those allegations were being heard before the labor board last spring when Wonderful took the matter to court, arguing the new law deprived the company of due process. A Kern County judge initially halted the board proceedings, but the appeals court allowed them to continue last fall. After weeks of hearings this year, the labor board has yet to issue a decision on whether UFW can represent Wonderful employees.

In the meantime, the company has shuttered the Wasco nursery and donated it to UC Davis, making the question of an actual union at the worksite moot.

In the new ruling, the appeals court judges issued a sharp rebuke of the company for suing over the unionization instead of waiting for the labor board decision.

“Wonderful filed this petition notwithstanding approximately 50 years of unbroken precedent finding an employer may not directly challenge a union certification decision in court except in extraordinarily and exceedingly rare circumstances, which Wonderful does not meaningfully attempt to show are present here,” wrote Justice Rosendo Peña.

Elizabeth Strater, a United Farm Workers vice president, said the decision affirms that “every farm worker in California has rights under the law, and those rights need to be protected.”

But Wonderful Company General Counsel Craig Cooper dismissed the ruling as only a matter of timing: “the decision explicitly does not address the merits of Wonderful Nurseries’ constitutional challenge.”

After an Afghan national was named as being behind a shooting in Washington, D.C., that left one member of the National Guard dead and another in critical condition, the Trump administration says it is halting all asylum decisions.

Joseph Edlow, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), said Friday night that the agency is pausing decisions "until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible."

"The safety of the American people always comes first," Edlow wrote on X.

The decision follows President Trump's promise of a sharp crackdown on immigration from countries he described as "third world."

Writing on social media on Thursday night, Trump railed against immigrants from impoverished nations, accusing them of being a burden on the nation's welfare system and "preying" on natural-born citizens.

"I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover," he wrote on Truth Social.

"Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation."

The Trump administration is already deporting some immigrants, either to their countries of origin or to third countries, many of which are paid to receive them. Venezuelans were deported from the U.S. to El Salvador, a number of migrants were sent to Eswatini and South Sudan, and Rwanda has agreed to accept deportees.

Edlow wrote on social media Thursday that he had been directed to conduct "a full scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern."

He did not say which countries this would entail, and the USCIS did not respond to an NPR request for comment. But a June White House proclamation placed a travel ban on 12 countries of concern.

A makeshift memorial of flowers and American flags stands outside the Farragut West Metro station on Nov. 28, 2025 in Washington, DC.

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These included many African nations suffering from conflict and terrorism such as Chad, Sudan and Somalia — as well as other countries, such as Afghanistan. Another 7 countries were slapped with partial restrictions.

In a statement to CNN, the Department of Homeland Security said it had already halted all immigration requests stemming from Afghanistan and was in the process of reviewing "all" asylum cases approved under former President Biden.

The department did not respond to an NPR request for comment.

History of anti-immigrant sentiment

The president's latest comments against immigration was sparked by the revelation that the alleged shooter was identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal — a 29-year-old Afghan national who had worked with the CIA to fight the Taliban in his native country and was admitted into the United States in 2021 as a result of his service. In a Thanksgiving Day call with servicemembers, Trump described the shooting as a terrorist attack and the shooter as a "savage monster."

He blamed the Biden administration for Lakanwal's entry to the United States and for a general failure of the immigration system.

"For the most part, we don't want 'em," he said, referring broadly to immigration seekers as gang members, mentally ill and previously incarcerated.

Trump ran both successful White House campaigns on a pledge to crack down on illegal immigration, targeting at various points migrants from countries including Mexico and Somalia.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday after the Thanksgiving call, Trump widened his attack to focus not just on the alleged shooter but to rail against immigration to the U.S. and immigrants in general.

When asked by a reporter about the fact that as a former CIA asset, Lakanwal had been vetted, Trump repeatedly berated the reporter as "stupid."

People detained earlier in the day are taken to a parking lot on the far north side of the city before being transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on Oct. 31, 2025, in Chicago, Ill.

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Asked by another reporter whether he blamed all Afghans for the alleged actions of one, Trump said: "No, but there's a lot of problems with Afghans."

Trump then turned his attention to immigrants from Somalia, who he has repeatedly accused of being gang-affiliated and "taking over" Minnesota — home to the nation's largest Somali community.

Questioned about what Somalis had to do with the D.C. shooting, Trump said: "Nothing." But, he added, "Somalians have caused a lot of trouble." .

Later on social media, he described "Somalian gangs" in Minnesota as "roving the streets looking for 'prey' as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone."

Officials for the United Nations on Friday criticized Trump's call for sweeping halts to immigration seekers.

"They are entitled to protection under international law, and that should be given due process," U.N. human rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence told reporters in Geneva.

Copyright 2025 NPR

Alex and Elvia Huerta of Evil Cooks have released the El Sereno Food Passport, a $10 booklet to promote local restaurants.

The first edition of the booklet features 18 local restaurants, each offering its own little perk when you visit and get your passport stamped. Customers can either get free snacks or drinks or get a discount.

At Tirzah’s Mexi-Terranean, you can either get 15% off your order or a free esquite when you show your passport.

Evil Cooks is so metal, they make black octopus tacos. They have also experimented with gansito tamales. This Halloween, they collaborated with Amiga Amore, a Mexitalian eatery, to create a special “witches menu” that included huitlacoche, aguachile negro and lamb shank in fig mole.

Get the passport

Pick up a passport:

• Evil Cooks, 3333 N. Eastern Ave., Los Angeles
• Lil East Coffee, 2734 N. Eastern Ave., Los Angeles