On a night when it seemed like young stars in their primes were laying down a statement of intent, a moment when the changing of the guard in world soccer seemed at hand, Lionel Messi sent a message in Kansas City. To be the man, you’ve gotta beat the man. And in this game, on this stage, in this sport, Messi is still The Man 20 years after he first stepped into the World Cup limelight.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/16/sport/lionel-messi-world-cup-hat-trick
The winners of the James Beard Awards — often called “the Oscars of the food world” — were announced Monday, with the award for Best New Restaurant going to Lei, a winebar in New York’s Chinatown. Michael Tusk of Quince in San Francisco was named Outstanding Chef at the award ceremony, which took place at the historic Lyric Opera in Chicago before an audience of about 2,000 chefs, restaurant owners and culinary figures. The Outstanding Restaurateur award was won by Dana Street, who owns Fore Street, Scales and other restaurants in Portland, Maine, while the southern Thai eatery Kalaya, in Philadelphia, was named the Outstanding Restaurant.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/15/travel/james-beard-award-winners-2026
Whether found in a respected museum or a billionaire’s mansion, it is likely that any given Khmer sculpture in the West was, at some point, ripped from an ancient temple complex and trafficked out of Cambodia. There is also a reasonable chance it passed through the hands of a British man called Douglas Latchford. To his customers, the antiquities dealer was a respectable figure — a trusted vendor, prominent (albeit largely self-taught) art scholar and author of multiple books on sculpture from the Khmer Empire, a civilization that prospered in what is now Cambodia and other parts of Southeast Asia between the 9th and 15th centuries. From the 1960s until his death in 2020, Latchford supplied collectors with ornate friezes, temple carvings and statues of Hindu gods, Buddhas and bodhisattvas. That these deities were sometimes missing limbs or crudely severed at the ankles, or were still covered in dirt when he photographed them, barely raised eyebrows until the end of his life. When they did, the well-connected dealer usually had paperwork or cover stories to assuage buyers’ concerns. But in his later years, as US authorities began investigating artifacts spirited out of Cambodia during the country’s civil war and genocidal Khmer Rouge era that followed, the evidence against Latchford mounted.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/17/style/cambodia-douglas-latchford-khmer-looting
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has criticized the “reckless” crew of a Russian warship that fired warning shots at a yacht in the English Channel, an incident a British sailor on board described as “completely unnecessary.” Speaking at the G7 summit in France on Wednesday, Starmer called the incident involving the Russian navy frigate Admiral Grigorovich “deeply concerning.” “That shouldn’t have happened. It is reckless, and the couple on the yacht must’ve been terrified,” added Starmer.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/16/uk/russian-warship-warning-shots-latam-intl
A crew of military service members and government contractors were among the eight people killed when a B-52 Stratofortress crashed shortly after takeoff Monday in Southern California. The mammoth military plane took off at 11:20 a.m. on a routine test mission from Edwards Air Force Base, the storied desert base about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles. The plane was carrying eight people, though it typically flies with a crew of five, and was supporting a program to modernize the aging fleet. The Air Force released the names of all eight victims Wednesday, after notifying their relatives: Col. Gregory Watson, 53; Lt. Col. Gabriel Estrella, 40; retired Lt. Col. Miles Middleton, 50; Maj. Alexander Davis, 34; Maj. Robert Dee, 40; Maj. Brad Hovey, 35; Christopher Rischar, 41; and Jeromy Smith, 32.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/17/us/b52-crash-victims