The Lynx held their season-ending media access on Tuesday, and Napheesa Collier wasted little time in getting things off her chest.

The star forward opened with a prepared statement criticizing the WNBA not only for the state of its on-court officiating — a trenchant topic during this postseason — but for its lack of transparency and accountability, starting with Commissioner Cathy Engelbert.

“We have the best players in the world. We have the best fans in the world,” Collier said. “But right now, we have the worst leadership in the world.”

Asked if she and other players were aware of Collier’s prepared words beforehand, teammate Alanna Smith said, “Yes, and we back everything that Phee said.”

The WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement expires on Oct. 31, two years earlier than the original terms because the players opted out of the deal in 2024. Although interest in the league and its many star players is at an all-time high — ESPN said 2025 was its most watched regular season — many players are still playing overseas to supplement their income.

Asked if she believes WNBA players have the leverage to turn down a CBA they don’t like, Collier was clear.

“I think we have the most power that we’ve ever had in the history of women’s sports, in the history of our specific sport,” she said. “All this money that they’re talking about is nonexistent without the players. We hold all the cards. So, yes, I do think we have the power to do that.

“Does anyone want to do that? No. We love the sport, want to play, we want to get paid, but we have to stand on our principles and we have to stand for what is right, and that’s something that we’re not going to budge on.”

Smith agreed, saying players would “exercise that power, and that right” if they don’t get a deal they believe is fair.

Collier’s voice is a strong one. A five-time all-star, she was the 2025 All-Star Game MVP, and finished second to Las Vegas’ A’ja Wilson for the 2025 league MVP. She is former defensive player of the year and was league’s second-leading scorer in the regular season (22.6 ppg.) behind. Wilson.

She is respected throughout the league and deeply embedded in the players’ CBA negotiations.

Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, who had her own run-in with the league after criticizing officiating in Game 3 of the semifinals, declined to address Collier’s comments but said, “Obviously, Phee’s voice is a really important one.”

Wearing a walking boot on the injured left ankle that knocked her out of Minnesota’s last game of the season — a Game 4 loss in Phoenix in the Western Conference semifinals — Collier was most critical of Engelbert, the WNBA’s commissioner since 2019.

Collier recounted a conversation with Engelbert about rookie contracts, specifically how they pertain to a player like Caitlin Clark, already a star while playing at Iowa. “Without the platform that the WNBA gives her,” Collier said she was told, “she wouldn’t make anything.”

In the same conversation, Collier said, Engelbert told her that WNBA players should be “on their knees” thanking her for the media rights deal she negotiated.

“That’s the mentality driving our league from the top,” Collier said. “We go to battle every day to protect a shield that doesn’t value us. The league believes it succeeds despite its players, not because of them.”

A message to the WNBA asking for comment has been sent to the league.

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Amid all of the good news about star forward Kirill Kaprizov’s contract extension, the Minnesota Wild revealed an injury update, which has been all too common of late: Veteran forward Mats Zuccarello, who has missed all of training camp, is expected to be unavailable for the next seven to eight weeks with a lower-body injury.

Zuccarello, who turned 38 on Sept. 1, was skating informally with teammates when he suffered the injury. He missed 13 games last season with a lower-body injury that required surgery after getting hit by a teammate’s shot in front of the Wild net during a November home game versus Montreal.

“Coming into camp, we knew that he wasn’t going to be ready. Now we have an exact timeline of his return,” Wild coach John Hynes said following the team’s Tuesday morning skate.

The coach also admitted some ramped-up competition for Zuccarello’s spot on the team’s first or second line, mentioning veterans such as Marcus Johansson and Marcus Foligno and younger players such as Liam Ohgren and Danila Yurov who could potentially fill in during Zuccarello’s absence.

Zuccarello finished fourth on the team offensively last season, notching 19 goals and 35 assists in 69 games. He had a goal and two assists in six playoff games.

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One by one, a series of residents and community advocates connected to St. Paul’s Midway took a seat before the city’s legislative hearing officer on Tuesday morning to plead, in no uncertain terms, that City Hall order the demolition of what they described as the neighborhood’s most eyesore property — the shuttered CVS pharmacy store at Snelling and University avenues.

The building, erected between 2005 and 2007, has drawn loiterers, break-ins, litter and other signs of vagrancy and neglect since CVS permanently closed the location in April 2022. With a rooftop HVAC unit stripped bare by vandals and the exterior fenced and boarded, the site has become an unfortunate anchor to what was once one of St. Paul’s most prominent business corridors, said speaker after speaker, and a disincentive to move to or invest in the surrounding community.

“This is one of the oldest St. Paul intersections. This is on every Minnesota map,” said Nicole Brown, who can trace her family history in St. Paul back to 1895. Every summer, “2.5 million, at least, attend the Fair, and they see this. They talk about this. I work at the Fair.”

In addition to being surrounded by storefronts and housing, the site borders the Green Line light rail station and the A Line bus stops along Snelling, key transit connections that were once expected to inspire commerce. Instead, “my children have now taken opioid overdose classes and know when to call 911 instead of stepping around (prone loiterers) at this specific building,” Brown added.

Marcia Moermond, the city’s legislative hearing officer, said an order to abate nuisance building conditions was mailed to the property owner of record on Aug. 5, and it spelled out the need for a $5,000 performance deposit in advance of site improvements. Since then, after “almost two months, and no action on it,” Moermond said. “I don’t see movement right now.”

Uncertain ownership

An attorney representing CVS indicated the national pharmacy chain leases the site from a property owner, with whom CVS has had no recent contact. He indicated the company, which has had dealings with employees of the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections in the past, hopes to find another lessee for the site, which was fenced off within the past year. He said he had no other immediate information to share.

Property records show the site is owned by a limited liability corporation of ambiguous title (“Scp 2005 C21 045 Llc”) with a post office box in Spokane, Wash. The address, shared by dozens of companies, appears to be a “virtual post office box” — a service that allows companies to view scanned images of their mail or have their mail forwarded along to yet another address, further concealing their actual whereabouts.

“I’m not clear as to the actual relationship between CVS as the lessee and Scp 2005 C21 045 Llc in Spokane, Washington,” said Moermond, eliciting some wry chuckles from the audience.

Several speakers said they longed for the site to fall into local ownership and serve a community-driven purpose, such as affordable housing, a free clinic, grocery or some combination of all of the above. Even before CVS opened at the site, community groups like the now-defunct University United expressed concern that an out-of-state corporate retail chain building one story of commerce with faux upper levels would not serve as the highest and best use of the property.

“You get the community you plan for,” said Lily Eggers, who is active with the Hamline-Midway Street Corps, a working group of the Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America. “You get the community you build for.”

In community meetings, some skeptics have said the area already hosts an overconcentration of charitable efforts such as the new emergency overnight shelter at Central Baptist Church and housing for the recently homeless provided by Beacon Interfaith on Snelling Avenue.

Dr. Bill McGuire — owner of the Minnesota United soccer team, and a key player in development plans around Allianz Field — has said the CVS site needs to become market-rate housing or another tony use, which could help provide tax base for the city and customers for the surrounding businesses of Little Africa.

Key vote on Nov. 5

The St. Paul City Council is scheduled to consider the abatement order on Nov. 5, and Moermond said it was her immediate inclination to recommend at that time that the council order the property owner to remove the site rather than repair it. If approved by the council, the owner would then have 15 days to demolish the building, or it would fall to the city to put demolition out to bid and follow through with a hazardous materials inspection and utility disconnections, a process that could take several weeks.

If the city demolishes the building, the costs will be assessed to the property owner. If the owner were to simply walk away from the site, it will lapse into tax forfeiture and be transferred to Ramsey County. The city’s demolition costs would eventually be recouped through a land sale, which the county would oversee.

Pointing to tall grass and litter collecting in nearby vacant lots, some residents expressed concern that if the property owner simply sits on the lot without selling it, it would remain a dirt lot for the foreseeable future.

It’s also possible, said Moermond, that CVS or the property owner comes forward with formal plans to abate nuisance conditions at the site before the council convenes on Nov. 5. She said she planned to review any comments or plans submitted to the city on Oct. 28.

“The public record is still open and we could get a pile of paperwork from anybody on this,” said Moermond, noting any new information submitted to the city could impact her recommendation.

In addition to the $5,000 performance deposit, Moermond said the property owner will need to provide a complete abatement plan laying out future lighting, cameras, bids for trade labor improvements in particular parts of the building and other evidence of a detailed scope of work.

“I don’t have any of these things right now,” she said.

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By STEVEN GRATTAN, Associated Press

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Droughts have withered crops in Peru, fires have scorched the Amazon and hydroelectric dams in Ecuador have struggled to keep the lights on as rivers dry up. Scientists say the cause may lie high above the rainforest, where invisible “flying rivers” carry rain from the Atlantic Ocean across South America.

New analysis warns that relentless deforestation is disrupting that water flow and suggests that continuing tree loss will worsen droughts in the southwestern Amazon and could eventually trigger those regions to shift from rainforest to drier savanna — grassland with far fewer trees.

“These are the forces that actually create and sustain the Amazon rainforest,” said Matt Finer, a senior researcher with Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), which tracks deforestation and climate threats across the basin and carried out the analysis.

“If you break that pump by cutting down too much forest, the rains stop reaching where they need to go.”

What are flying rivers and how do they work?

Most of the Amazon’s rainfall starts over the Atlantic Ocean. Moist air is pushed inland by steady winds that blow west along the equator, known as the trade winds. The forest then acts like a pump, effectively relaying the water thousands of miles westward as the trees absorb water, then release it back into the air.

Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre was among the early researchers who calculated how much of the water vapor from the Atlantic would move through and eventually out of the Amazon basin. He and colleagues coined the “flying rivers” term at a 2006 scientific meeting, and interest grew as scientists warned that a weakening of the rivers could push the Amazon into a tipping point where rainforest would turn to savanna.

That’s important because the Amazon rainforest is a vast storehouse for the carbon dioxide that largely drives the world’s warming. Such a shift would devastate wildlife and Indigenous communities and threaten farming, water supplies and weather stability far beyond the region.

Warning signs in Peru and Bolivia

The analysis by Finer’s group found that southern Peru and northern Bolivia are especially vulnerable. During the dry season, flying rivers sweep across southern Brazil before reaching the Andes — precisely where deforestation is most intense. The loss of trees means less water vapor is carried westward, raising the risk of drought in iconic protected areas such as Peru’s Manu National Park.

“Peru can do everything right to protect a place like Manu,” Finer said. “But if deforestation keeps cutting into the pump in Brazil, the rains that sustain it may never arrive.”

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Nobre said as much as 50% of rainfall in the western Amazon near the Andes depends on the flying rivers.

Corine Vriesendorp, director of science at Conservacion Amazonica, based in Cusco, Peru, said the changes are already visible.

“The last two years have brought the driest conditions the Amazon has ever seen,” Vriesendorp said. “Ecological calendars that Indigenous communities use — when to plant, when to fish, when animals reproduce — are increasingly out of sync. Having less and more unpredictable rain will have an even bigger impact on their lives than climate change is already having.”

Farmers face failed harvests, Indigenous families struggle with disrupted fishing and hunting seasons and cities that rely on hydroelectric power see outages as the rivers that provide the power dry up.

Forest makes a fragile pump

MAAP researchers found that rainfall patterns depend on when and where the flying rivers cross the basin. In the wet season, their northern route flows mostly over intact forests in Guyana, Suriname and northern Brazil, keeping the system strong.

But in the dry season — when forests are already stressed by heat — the aerial rivers cut across southern Brazil, where deforestation fronts spread along highways and farms and there simply are fewer trees to help move the moisture along.

“It’s during the dry months, when the forest most needs water, that the flying rivers are most disrupted,” Finer said.

Finer pointed to roads that can accelerate deforestation, noting that the controversial BR-319 highway in Brazil — a project to pave a road through one of the last intact parts of the southern Amazon — could create an entirely new deforestation front.

The tipping point debate

For years, scientists have warned about the Amazon tipping toward savannah. Finer said the new study complicates that picture.

“It’s not a single, all-at-once collapse,” he said. “Certain areas, like the southwest Amazon, are more vulnerable and will feel the impacts first. And we’re already seeing early signs of rainfall reduction downwind of deforested areas.”

Nobre said the risks are stark. Amazon forests have already lost about 17% of their cover, mostly to cattle and soy. Those ecosystems recycle far less water.

“The dry season is now five weeks longer than it was 45 years ago, with 20 to 30% less rainfall,” he said. “If deforestation exceeds 20 to 25% and warming reaches 2 degrees Celsius, there’s no way to prevent the Amazon from reaching the tipping point.”

What can be done?

Protecting intact forests, supporting Indigenous land rights and restoring deforested areas are the clearest paths forward, researchers say.

“To avoid collapse we need zero deforestation, degradation and fires — immediately,” Nobre said. “And we must begin large-scale forest restoration, not less than half a million square kilometers. If we do that, and keep global warming below 2 degrees, we can still save the Amazon.”

Finer said governments should consider new conservation categories specifically designed to protect flying rivers — safeguarding not just land but the atmospheric flows that make the rainforest possible.

For Vriesendorp, that means regional cooperation. She praised Peru for creating vast parks and Indigenous reserves in the southeast, including Manu National Park. But, she said, “this can’t be solved by one country alone. Peru depends on Brazil, and Brazil depends on its neighbors. We need basin-wide solutions.”

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.