Dec. 26 (UPI) — A red, white and blue glass ball will drop on July 3 in New York City’s Times Square to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday in a first for the city.
The event will mark the first time that Times Square has hosted a second ball drop after the ad-hoc America250 committee announced the decision on Friday, The Hill reported.
“One Times Square has long been a place where the world comes together to celebrate pivotal moments — from the end of World War II to the moon landing,” said Michael Phillips, who leads the company that owns One Times Square.
“We’re proud to serve as the starting point of this historic year, showcasing the nation’s celebration on a global stage.”
The committee said it will connect the traditional New Year’s ball drop with the July 3 event.
The Times Square ball to be used in the New Year’s celebration will drop at midnight on New Year’s Day in its traditional manner.
It then will be illuminated with red, white and blue lights and rise again to above a “2026” sign, where it will drop a ton of red, white and blue confetti at 12:04 a.m. EST, according to the New York Post.
A “dynamic pyro finale” will close out the New Year’s Day event as “America the Beautiful” plays.
The same ball will return to Times Square on July 3 to honor the 250th anniversary of the United States and the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence, which gave birth to the country.
“To ring in the 4th of July, starting with the same type of festivities that you would normally see on New Year’s Eve — what better way to represent this global impact that we as a country have and the responsibility that comes with that?” America250 chairwoman Rosie Rios told The Post.
“It’s going to be huge,” she added, “and it’s going to be beyond anyone’s expectations.”
The America250 committee also is sponsoring a contest for youth in grades 3 through 12 to earn an opportunity to visit “some of the nation’s most iconic historic and cultural landmarks” while participating in “America’s Field Trip.”
Students will share their perspectives on what the United States means to them in essays, and 250 will be selected to participate in the field trip or opt for a cash prize.
President Donald Trump holds a signed executive order reclassifying marijuana from a schedule I to a schedule III controlled substance in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday. Photo by Aaron Schwartz/UPI | License Photo
EUGENE, Ore. — Perhaps it was James Madison going for it twice on fourth down on its first drive of the game.
Or, maybe it was coach Bob Chesney calling for a wide receiver pass on the Dukes’ second series of the evening. Even 12th-ranked James Madison successfully pulling off a fake punt could have adequately explained what the scoreboard failed to convey.
It was clear that the fifth-ranked Oregon Ducks were in a different class than their visitors in a 51-34 win in a College Football Playoff first round matchup Saturday at Autzen Stadium. Oregon led 48-13 midway through the third quarter before the Dukes added three late touchdowns to make the final score appear closer than the game really was.
“I think the scoreboard itself, every time we got down there we kind of shot ourselves in the foot,” said Chesney, who takes over as UCLA’s head coach after the JMU loss. “If we did not do that, if we did not end with 13 penalties, is this a little bit of a different game? Maybe. But at the same point in time, that’s a tough offense to stop, and I think it’s tough for a lot of teams in the entire country to stop.”
With James Madison’s loss, Group of Five teams fell to 0-4 all-time in CFP games. No. 17 Tulane fell 41-10 to No. 6 Mississippi on Saturday, too, while Penn State beat Boise State 31-14 in last year’s Fiesta Bowl. Alabama topped Cincinnati 27-6 in a 2022 CFP semifinal at the Cotton Bowl.
Following their loss to Ole Miss, Green Wave head coach Jon Sumrall brushed aside any notion of his team not belonging among the last 12 standing.
“We’re our conference champion and the rules are what they were, and I think there should be access for at least one G5 team moving forward,” Sumrall said. “I do. I think you should have given the American champion an opportunity before the ACC champion this year because we beat the ACC champion. So Duke won the ACC Championship; we beat them.”
To Sumrall’s point, Tulane beat a pair of Power Four teams in Northwestern and Duke, but those schools combined to go 14-11 in 2025.
James Madison, meanwhile, lost to its only Power Four opponent this season, with Louisville beating it 28-14 in a game in which the Dukes mustered just 263 yards of total offense. Most of the season, James Madison ran with the ball with ease against its opponents, rushing for over 300 yards in a game five times and over 200 yards in a game nine times.
But on Saturday, the Dukes mostly abandoned the run after quickly falling behind, and instead often turned to Sun Belt player of the year and quarterback Alonza Barnett III, who attempted a career-high 48 passes in the contest. Even so, Barnett was confident his team belonged in the CFP over other Power Four schools.
“I believe people saw that we were meant to be on this level. When you look at the Power Four teams and whatever, the destiny is really — the ball is in your court. You control your own destiny,” Barnett said. “Most of those teams that didn’t make it, they controlled their own destiny, and we handled what we could handle and we didn’t give into outside noise.”
Among Group of Five schools, James Madison did fare the best of any of them on offense in the CFP. The other three programs scored a combined 30 points in their respective playoff games, a total James Madison eclipsed against the nation’s eighth-ranked scoring defense.
But where the Dukes fell flat was slowing down the Ducks’ ninth-ranked scoring offense. Oregon ran the ball with ease, averaging more than 7.7 yards per attempt against James Madison’s run defense that entered the contest allowing the second-fewest yards per game in the country.
As has often been the case in matchups between Power Four and Group of Five teams, the greatest discrepancies existed in the trenches. To a man, James Madison could not adequately match up with Oregon, just as Tulane couldn’t with Ole Miss and many other Group of Five programs before them both failed to do.
“I think there were moments today where I feel like we could play with them,” Chesney said. “ And I think that today, the complimentary football, and us playing in the way we needed to just did not exist.”
ZOE Ball has bid her final farewells to her BBC Radio 2 show today.
The radio presenter, 55, announced she would be leaving her beloved Saturday show earlier this month, with today being her final time on air.
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Zoe Ball is leaving her BBC Radio 2 Saturday showCredit: BBCRadio presenter Zoe outside BBC Broadcasting House ahead of her final showCredit: PAZoe was greeted by fans outside the studio before going on airCredit: PA
She was greeted by fans outside Broadcasting house before taking to the airwaves.
It comes just a year after Zoe stepped down from her breakfast programme on the same station, after hosting it for six year.
Though Zoe won’t be completely absent from the airwaves – continuing to host specials on the station less frequently.
Presenter Romesh Ranganathan today handed over to Zoe before her show kicked off at 1pm.
Romesh compared Zoe leaving to a “death in the family” and shared heartfelt messages from fans, before adding: “It’s your last show! I’m gonna miss seeing you every Saturday.
“How are you feeling?”
Zoe replied: “It’s my last Saturday show … I’m feeling like everybody else is feeling at this time of year …
He said: “Is it true you’re leaving your Saturday show because of …”
He then quipped: “Sally on traffic, it’s that, let’s put that down now.”
Zoe played along and said: “Sally and I have been in love with each other for a long time and we’ve decided we can’t possibly work in the same building anymore because the magnetism is too much.”
Zoe’s announcement comes after she was included in the BBC’s “Golden Ten” shortlist of presenters tested for the perfect on-screen partnership to replace Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly.
The news has sparked excitement that Ball could be in the running to replace Tess and Claudia as Strictly Come Dancing host.
The 55-year-old is a frontrunner to host Strictly after previously presenting It Takes TwoCredit: GettyClaudia and Tess revealed in October the bombshell news they were leavingCredit: PAZoe happily stopped for snaps with fans outside Broadcasting HouseCredit: PAZoe has quit her Saturday afternoons slotCredit: Instagram/@bbcradio2
SEATTLE — In a matter of minutes, the home of the Seattle Seahawks went from a painfully quiet Lumen “Library” to a rollicking madhouse that sent seismologists scrambling for their ground-motion sensors.
Call it the Sheesh-Quake Game.
In a historic comeback, the Seahawks dug their way out of a 16-point, fourth-quarter ditch to beat the Rams in overtime, 38-37.
Oh, the visitors will agonize over some of the bizarre calls, some deserving of further explanation from the NFL. An ineligible-man-downfield call that wiped out a Rams touchdown when they were a yard away from the end zone? That had people scratching their heads. Then there was that do-or-die two-point conversion that seemingly fell incomplete… but later was reversed. More on that in a moment.
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Gary Klein breaks down what went wrong for the Rams in their 38-37 loss to the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field on Thursday night.
When the Rams wincingly rewind the video of the collapse, they’ll be peering through the cracks in their fingers.
You’ve heard of a no-look pass? This was a no-look finish.
As soothing wins go, this was a warm bubble bath for the Seahawks, who secured a playoff berth and assumed the driver’s seat in the race for the NFC’s No. 1 seed.
“You hear people late in the year have losses, and you hear people come up here and say, like, ‘Man, this is going to be a good thing for us,’” said Seahawks receiver Cooper Kupp, a onetime Rams hero. “It’s much better to be up here right now saying this is going to be a good thing for us.”
Kupp atoned for his first-half fumble with a successful two-point conversion in the fourth quarter — the first of three in a row for the Seahawks — and a 21-yard reception on the winning drive in overtime.
“If you find a way to get a win when you do turn the ball over three times, you do end up down 16 points, or whatever it was, in the fourth quarter, just finding ways to win games when the odds are against you and things aren’t going right — finding a way to fight back — it’s going to be a good thing for us,” Kupp said. “A good thing for us to draw on.”
The Rams are sifting through the debris of a different lesson. It was a reminder that this charmed season, with Matthew Stafford in line to win his first Most Valuable Player honor, can come crashing down at any moment. There’s no more smooth glide path to Santa Clara for the Super Bowl.
As good as it was for most of the game, picking off Sam Darnold twice and sacking him four times, the Rams defense failed to hold up when it counted most. Shades of the three-point loss at Carolina.
Darnold will have a story to tell. He exorcised a lot of demons. The Rams sacked him nine times in the playoffs last season when Darnold was playing for Minnesota, and intercepted six of his passes in two games this season.
“It’s not great when you have interceptions and turnovers, you want to limit that,” said Darnold, the former USC star. “But all you can do is fight back. For us, I was just going to continue to plug away.”
Darnold came through when it counted, completing five passes on the winning drive, then finding the obscure tight end Eric Saubert — his fourth option — wide open in the end zone on the triumphant conversion.
Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold looks to pass against the Rams in the first half Thursday.
(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)
The second of the three conversions was the game’s most controversial moment. The Seahawks needed it to forge a 30-30 tie with a little more than six minutes remaining in regulation.
Darnold fired a quick screen pass to his left, trying to get the ball to Zach Charbonnet. Rams defender Jared Verse jumped the route and knocked down the pass. Everyone thought the play was dead, including Charbonnet, who casually jogged across the goal line and picked up the ball as it lay in the end zone.
That proved critical because officials — after what seemed like an eternity — ruled that Darnold had thrown a backward pass and the ball was live when Charbonnet picked it up. Therefore, a fumble recovery and successful conversion, tying the game.
Asked later if it felt like a backward pass, Darnold had a half-smile and said, “Um, yeah. It felt like I threw it kind of right on the side. I’m glad Charbs picked it up, and that turned out to be a game-changing play.”
Was that designed to be a backward pass?
“It just happened to be backwards,” he said. “It wasn’t necessarily talked about. We were just trying to get it in down there on the goal line.”
The Seahawks were lined up to kick off when officials announced that, upon review, the previous play was successful. Suddenly, the most improbable of come-from-victories was within reach.
Earlier in the fourth quarter, when the home team was trailing, 30-14, the Amazon Prime crew had to do some vamping to keep viewers engaged. Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit told some Kurt Warner stories from the “Greatest Show on Turf” days. Hey, it had to be more interesting than this game.
Michaels delivered an obscure stat: When leading by 15 points or more in the fourth quarter, the Rams were 323-1.
Informed of that, Seahawks running back Cam Akers — once shown the door by the Rams — had a wry response.
“Now, they’ve lost two,” he said.
Celebration in one locker room. Silence in another.
Joe Root avoids being given out for one after review shows an edge behind drops just short of Australian wicketkeeper Alex Carey, with England 42-3, still 329 runs behind Australia’s first innings score of 371 on day two of the third Ashes Test in Adelaide.
The Chargers quarterback had passed for 139 yards and ran for 66 more in a 22-19 win just a week after undergoing surgery to stabilize a fracture in his non-throwing hand. Now, after one of the biggest wins of the season, he was hoping to receive good news about his injury despite being sacked a career-worst seven times.
The scans showed his hand was swollen, but it had improved since surgery, Herbert said. The results provided him with a sense of optimism heading into the Chargers’ AFC West showdown against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium.
“I think compared to the days after surgery, I think it’s a lot better now,” Herbert said. “I think it was just sore. I think having played on it, using it, and kind of falling on it too, I think that kind of helped, and was some of the reason why it was sore.”
Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh described Herbert’s performance against the Eagles as “the most competitive thing” he ever saw. Herbert, however, gave a negative self-assessment — he threw an interception and lost the ball once on two fumbles. For Herbert, it wasn’t good enough for a Chargers team vying to reach the Super Bowl for the first time in more than three decades.
Offensive coordinator Greg Roman, who praised Herbert’s grit after the win over the Eagles, was proud to hear Herbert taking responsibility for his mistakes.
“First of all, I love that,” Roman said. “That tells me everything I need to know about that individual. … A great leader, setting a great example there. But on the flip side, he did what he had to do to win that game. He’s smart enough to recognize that that’s not how he wants to win every game, and he will adjust accordingly.”
Chargers center Bradley Bozeman, who has snapped the ball to Lamar Jackson, Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold and Bryce Young over his nine-year NFL career, said Herbert is one of one.
“He’s the best quarterback — no shot to any quarterback ever played with — but he’s the best quarterback ever,” said Bozeman, who joined the Chargers before the start of the 2024 season. “He’s committed to what he does. He’s tough as a damn nail.”
That toughness could prove to be too much for the Chiefs. A Chargers (9-4) win on Sunday (in combination with several other factors) could potentially eliminate Kansas City (6-7) from postseason contention for the first time since 2014.
Although the Chargers are trying to sweep the Chiefs for the first time since 2013, safety Derwin James Jr. knows they can’t underestimate a Kansas City team that has won the last nine division crowns. James, second on the Chargers in tackles (70), is expecting all the challenges that come with facing Patrick Mahomes at Arrowhead Stadium in 20-degree weather.
“Every time you go out there, everybody’s gonna play desperate to win, because they just want to win,” James said. “We’re desperate, they’re desperate — so let’s go out there and play.”
Australia wicketkeeper Alex Carey said he thought he edged the ball when he was given not out on review during day one of the third Ashes Test against England.
After surviving on 72, Carey went on to make a fine 106 to help the hosts reach 326-8 at the close in Adelaide.
The technology showed a large spike when England called for a review in the 63rd over but the TV pictures showed it coming before the ball had reached the bat.
“I thought there was a feather or some sort of noise when it passed the bat,” said Carey.
“If I was given out I think I would have reviewed it, probably not confidently. It was a nice sound as it passed the bat.”
There has been debate about ‘Snicko’, the technology used in such situations in Australia, throughout the series after a number of inconclusive incidents.
In the first Test in Perth, England wicketkeeper Jamie Smith was given out caught behind on review despite a spike coming after the ball had passed his bat and glove.
That was explained as being because the technology used in Australia has a two-frame gap between the pictures and the sound wave.
Bowling coach David Saker suggested England may escalate this latest incident further with match referee Jeff Crowe.
“I don’t think we’ve done anything about it so far but after today, maybe that might go a bit further,” Saker said.
“There have been concerns about it for the whole series. We shouldn’t be talking about this after a day’s play, it should just be better than that. It is what it is.”
Carey is not new to Ashes controversy. He was the wicketkeeper who famously stumped Jonny Bairstow at Lord’s in the 2023 series, resulting in a febrile final day.
On his reprieve he added: “Snicko obviously didn’t line up. It is just the way cricket goes – sometimes you have a bit of luck.
“Maybe it went my way.”
Carey was also asked if he is a ‘walker’ – the tradition where some batters leave the field without waiting for a decision if they believe they have hit the ball.
Zoe Ball spent this weekend celebrating daughter Nelly’s 16th birthday with ex Norman CookCredit: InstagramNelly and her older brother Woody beamed for a snap taken by their mum ZoeCredit: InstagramThe party fittingly featured a DJ deck and giant balloons spelling out NellyCredit: Instagram
She is set to be replaced by Emma Willis, who says she is a “huge fan” of the show.
Speaking on air on Saturday, Zoe told listeners: “I have loved being betwixt my dear friends Romesh (Ranganathan) and Rylan (Clark), and you know, I love you all to bits, but I’m not disappearing completely.
“Obviously, it’ll be Christmas Crooners and I’m doing an eras show in the new year, more on that later.”
“I am thrilled to tell you that you will be in the safest of hands, because there is a super woman who is no stranger to you all, but this does mean that she will officially become a member of the Radio 2 family.”
Emma said she is excited to be taking on the role: “I’m a huge fan of Radio 2, so I’m absolutely chuffed to be joining the family – and it’s a real honour to follow in the huge footsteps Zoe leaves behind, who’s someone I admire and adore.”
The new host signed off: “I’m very much looking forward to spending my Saturday lunchtimes with the Radio 2 audience and I’ll happily be the filling to a Romesh and Rylan sandwich!”
The news comes as Zoe is one of the “Golden Ten” shortlist of presenters that BBC bosses have lined up to step into the shoes of Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly.
Zoe announced just hours before the bash that she is stepping down from her Radio 2 showCredit: PAShe is leaving behind fellow presenters and close friends such as Rylan ClarkCredit: BBCIt comes as Zoe is rumoured to be in the running to present Strictly Come Dancing
