TV News LIES

The "ball" is dropping twice to ring in 2026.

Days ahead of the iconic Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball Drop in New York City, America250 announced a "post-midnight moment" to mark America's 250th anniversary.

Shortly after the ball makes its 60-second descent to signal the start of the new year, the ball will be relit with an America250 design above the illuminated "2026" numerals and be dropped again at approximately 12:04 a.m. ET.

America250 will build "anticipation" for the moment with a series of features over the course of the evening, including a reveal of the America250 Ball Design atop One Times Square during “The Star-Spangled Banner" beginning at 6:04 p.m. ET.

According to America250, the nonpartisan entity charged with organizing the celebration, the moment will also mark the start of a partnership that will include another Times Square Ball Drop on July 4.

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When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) set its sights on Chicago in September, Chicagoans sprang into action to protect their immigrant neighbors: teaching each other how to recognize and safely document ICE agents, setting up “know your rights” trainings, and distributing whistles en masse so people could loudly alert anyone in the vicinity when ICE was spotted.

In the months since, whistles have become a popular raid alert tool in other cities across the country – New Yorkers wear them around their necks to warn neighbors, the people of New Orleans blast them outside ICE facilities and Charlotte residents used them to ward off Customs and Border Protection officials. While strongly associated with Chicago, the tactic is actually one that city organizers learned in part from groups in Los Angeles. Its spread is illustrative of the many ways cities are helping inspire and equip one another in the face of often unlawful federal activities.

Rain Skau, a co-coordinator of the Fight Fascism campaign of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Los Angeles, said Angelenos began to use whistles to alert neighbors about ICE presence when agents first started hitting the city in June. Despite the federal government’s claims that these raids were targeting hardened criminals, Skau described one of the first raids at a Home Depot as mostly snatching women vending food in the parking lot, stuffing them into vans as meat sizzled on the grills they left behind.

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A third of Kyiv is without heating after a Russian drone and missile barrage on the Ukrainian capital cut off power supplies, leaving hundreds of thousands of people facing freezing temperatures.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Moscow had used nearly 500 drones and 40 missiles, including ballistic missiles, in the overnight attack. “The primary target is Kyiv – energy facilities and civilian infrastructure,” he said in a post on X.

The intense overnight strikes lasted 10 hours and killed one person and wounded two dozen others. They came as the Ukrainian leader headed to Florida for a face-to-face meeting on Sunday with Donald Trump, who has proposed a plan to end nearly four years of fighting that has killed tens of thousands.

Zelenskyy stopped in Canada, where he met the country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, who announced an additional $2.5bn (£1.85bn) of economic aid for Ukraine.

Carney condemned the “barbaric” overnight attack on Kyiv. He said: “We have the conditions, the possibility, for the just and lasting peace,” adding this requires a “willing Russia”.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth got an unexpected Christmas gift from President Donald Trump this year: Hegseth’s embattled chief of staff — who’d been doing the job in an acting capacity for eight months — will take the role permanently, according to two people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss personnel issues.

Hegseth reportedly tried to make Ricky Buria his official chief of staff beginning in the spring but was blocked by the White House presidential personnel office. Buria was a former junior military aide for Biden-era Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and donated to a Democrat in 2023, according to FEC records.

Pinch hitter: Buria replaced former Hegseth chief of staff Joe Kasper who left in the spring shortly after a wave of firings of Hegseth senior aides that Pentagon officials attributed to a leak investigation. Several of the aides contested the investigation and their subsequent dismissals. Besides being very close to Hegseth, Buria has also reportedly won over Hegseth’s wife Jennifer.

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Venture capitalist Finn Murphy believes world leaders could soon resort to deflecting sunlight into space if the Earth gets unbearably hot.

That’s why he’s invested more than $1 million in Stardust Solutions, a leading solar geoengineering firm that’s developing a system to reduce warming by enveloping the globe in reflective particles.

Murphy isn’t rooting for climate catastrophe. But with global temperatures soaring and the political will to limit climate change waning, Stardust “can be worth tens of billions of dollars,” he said.

“It would be definitely better if we lost all our money and this wasn’t necessary,” said Murphy, the 33-year-old founder of Nebular, a New York investment fund named for a vast cloud of space dust and gas.

Murphy is among a new wave of investors who are putting millions of dollars into emerging companies that aim to limit the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth — while also potentially destabilizing weather patterns, food supplies and global politics. He has a degree in mathematics and mechanical engineering and views global warming not just as a human and political tragedy, but as a technical challenge with profitable solutions.

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The president of the Kennedy Center has demanded $1m in damages and fiercely criticized a musician’s sudden decision to cancel a Christmas Eve performance at the venue days after the White House announced that Donald Trump’s name would be added to the facility.

“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment – explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure – is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution,” the venue’s president, Richard Grenell, wrote in a letter to musician Chuck Redd that was shared with the Associated Press.

In the letter, Grenell said he would seek $1m in damages “for this political stunt”.

Redd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A drummer and vibraphone player, Redd has presided over holiday Jazz Jams at the Kennedy Center since 2006, succeeding bassist William “Keter” Betts. In an email Wednesday to the Associated Press, Redd said he pulled out of the concert in the wake of the renaming.

“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd said. He added on Wednesday that the event has been a “very popular holiday tradition” and that he often featured at least one student musician.

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Somali officials and the African Union on Saturday blasted Israel for recognizing Somaliland as an independent state and allegedly undermining Somalia’s sovereignty.

“The federal government of Somalia warns that illegitimate actions of this nature seriously undermine regional peace and stability, exacerbate political and security tensions in the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, the Middle East and the wider region,” Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre’s office posted on social platform X, alongside a video statement.

Barre’s office called the recognition a “deliberate attack” on Somalia’s autonomy.

“Somalia makes it clear that it will not permit the establishment of any foreign military bases or arrangements on its territory that will throw Somalia into proxy conflicts or import regional and international hostilities into this region,” an official said in the video.

African Union Commission Chair  also rejected Israel’s recognition of Somaliland “with deep concern” and cited the Constitutive Act of the African Union in calling for Somali unity.

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Jaber al-Attar, a 51-year-old doctor living in northern Gaza, was elated when the news arrived of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, bringing an end to two years of relentless bombardment.

But just four weeks after it was announced, he received a phone call on his way to work at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat to say that his daughter, Maysaa, had been killed by Israeli drone fire as she sheltered in a tent.

“There is absolutely no safety; there is no hope for us to have any security,” he tells The Independent from the same tent in the Al-Atatra area of Beit Lahia, where he is living after being displaced. “I spent my life in hardship and misery.”

Jaber’s daughter is one of at least 410 Palestinians to be killed since the ceasefire came into effect on 10 October, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

During a victory lap speech in the Knesset, US president Donald Trump had promised “peace for all eternity”. But for Gazans, the nightmare has not ended: it is a ceasefire in name only.

In addition to the more than 400 Palestinians who have been killed, the health ministry says that 1,134 have been injured by Israeli shelling and gunfire. At least three Israeli troops have also been killed by Palestinian militants, while two people were killed on Friday in what police called a "rolling terror attack" in northern Israel.

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