Category: News

After the crystal ball drops on New Year’s Eve in New York City, it will rise again, sparkling in red, white, and blue to usher in 2026 and kick off months of celebrations for the nation’s upcoming 250th birthday.

The patriotic touches at this year’s Times Square gathering, including a second confetti drop, will offer an early glimpse of what’s ahead: hundreds of events and programs, big and small, planned nationwide to mark the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

“I’m telling you right now, whatever you’re imagining, it’s going to be much more than that,” said America250 Chair Rosie Rios, who oversees the bipartisan commission created by Congress in 2016 to organize the semiquincentennial anniversary. “It’s going to be one for the ages, the most inspirational celebration this country and maybe the world has ever seen.”

Rios and her group worked with the Times Square Alliance business district and One Times Square, the building from which the ball is dropped, to make the changes to this year’s ceremonies. They’re also planning a second ball drop event on July 3, the eve of the nation’s birthday, “in the same beautiful style that Times Square knows how to do it,” Rios said.

It will mark the first time in 120 years there will be a ball drop in Times Square that doesn’t occur on New Year’s Eve, she said.

A New Year’s Eve ball was first dropped in Times Square in 1907. Built by a young immigrant metalworker named Jacob Starr, the 700-pound, 5-foot-diameter ball was made of iron and wood and featured 100 25-watt light bulbs. Last year, the Constellation Ball, the ninth and largest version, was unveiled. It measures about 12 feet in diameter and weighs nearly 12,000 pounds.

The only years when no ball drop occurred were 1942 and 1943, when the city instituted a nightly “dimout” during World War II to protect itself from attacks. Crowds instead celebrated the new year with a moment of silence followed by chimes rung from the base of One Times Square.

This year, the stroke of midnight will also mark the official launch of America Gives, a national service initiative created by America250. Organizers hope to make 2026 the largest year of volunteer hours ever aggregated in the country.

On the following day, America250 will participate in the New Years Day Rose Parade in Pasadena, Calif., with a float themed “Soaring Onward Together for 250 Years.” It will feature three larger-than-life bald eagles representing the country’s past, present, and future.

“We want to ring in this new year from sea to shining sea. What better way to think about it than going from New York to California,” Rios said. “This has to be community-driven, this has be grassroots. We’re going from Guam to Alaska, from Fairbanks to Philadelphia, and everything in between.”

President Donald Trump has also announced the “Freedom 250” initiative to coordinate additional events for the 250th anniversary.

Rios said she sees the wide range of celebrations and programs planned for the coming months, from large fireworks displays and statewide potluck suppers to student contests and citizen oral histories, as an opportunity to unite a politically divided nation.

“If we can find something for everyone … having those menus of options that people can pick and choose how they want to participate,” she said. “That’s how we’re going to get to engaging 350 million Americans.”

KABUL, Afghanistan — For 10 hours a day, Rahimullah sells socks from his cart in eastern Kabul, earning about $4.5 to $6 per day. It’s a pittance, but it’s all he has to feed his family of five.

Rahimullah, who like many Afghans goes by only one name, is one of millions of Afghans who rely on humanitarian aid, both from the Afghan authorities and from international charity organizations, for survival. An estimated 22.9 million people — nearly half the population — required aid in 2025, the International Committee for the Red Cross said in an article on its website Monday.

But severe cuts in international aid — including the halting of U.S. aid to programs such as food distribution run by the United Nations’ World Food Program — have severed this lifeline.

More than 17 million people in Afghanistan now face crisis levels of hunger in the winter, the World Food Program warned last week, 3 million more than were at risk more than a year ago.

The slashing in aid has come as Afghanistan is battered by a struggling economy, recurrent droughts, two deadly earthquakes, and the mass influx of Afghan refugees expelled from countries such as Iran and Pakistan. The resulting multiple shocks have severely pressured resources, including of housing and food.

U.N. appeals for help

Tom Fletcher, the U.N. humanitarian chief, told the Security Council in mid-December that the situation was compounded by “overlapping shocks,” including the recent earthquakes and increasing restrictions on humanitarian aid access and staff.

While Fletcher said nearly 22 million Afghans will need U.N. assistance in 2026, his organization will focus on 3.9 million facing the most urgent need of lifesaving help due to reduced donor contributions.

Fletcher said this winter was “the first in years with almost no international food distribution.”

“As a result, only about 1 million of the most vulnerable people have received food assistance during the lean season in 2025,” compared to 5.6 million last year, he said.

The year has been devastating for U.N. humanitarian organizations, which have had to cut thousands of jobs and spending in the wake of aid cuts.

“We are grateful to all of you who have continued to support Afghanistan. But as we look towards 2026, we risk a further contraction of life-saving help — at a time when food insecurity, health needs, strain on basic services, and protection risks are all rising,” Fletcher said.

Returning refugees

The return of millions of refugees has added pressure on an already teetering system. Minister of Refugees and Repatriation Affairs Abdul Kabir said Sunday that 7.1 million Afghan refugees had returned to the country over the last four years, according to a statement on the ministry website.

Rahimullah, 29, was one of them. The former Afghan Army soldier fled to neighboring Pakistan after the Taliban seized power in 2021. He was deported back to Afghanistan two years later, and initially received aid in the form of cash as well as food.

“The assistance was helping me a lot,” he said. But without it, “now I don’t have enough money to live on. God forbid, if I were to face a serious illness or any other problem, it would be very difficult for me to handle because I don’t have any extra money for expenses.”

The massive influx of former refugees has also sent rents skyrocketing. Rahimullah’s landlord has nearly doubled the rent of his tiny two-room home, with walls made half of concrete and half of mud and a homemade mud stove for cooking. Instead of 4,500 afghanis (about $67), he now wants 8,000 afghanis (about $120) — a sum Rahimullah cannot afford. So he, his wife, daughter, and two young sons will have to move next month. They don’t know where to.

Before the Taliban takeover, Rahimullah had a decent salary and his wife worked as a teacher. But the new government’s draconian restrictions on women and girls mean women are barred from nearly all jobs, and his wife is unemployed.

“Now the situation is such that even if we find money for flour, we don’t have it for oil, and even if we find it for oil, we can’t pay the rent. And then there is the extra electricity bill,” Rahimullah said.

Harsh winters compound misery

In Afghanistan’s northern province of Badakhshan, Sherin Gul is desperate. In 2023, her family of 12 got supplies of flour, oil, rice, beans, pulses, salt, and biscuits. It was a lifesaver.

But it only lasted six months. Now, there is nothing. Her husband is old and weak and cannot work, she said. With 10 children, seven girls and three boys between the ages of 7 and 27, the burden of providing for the family has fallen on her 23-year-old son — the only one old enough to work. But even he only finds occasional jobs.

“There are 12 of us … and one person working cannot cover the expenses,” she said. “We are in great trouble.”

Sometimes neighbors take pity on them and give them food. Often, they all go hungry.

“There have been times when we have nothing to eat at night, and my little children have fallen asleep without food,” Gul said. “I have only given them green tea and they have fallen asleep crying.”

Before the Taliban takeover, Gul worked as a cleaner, earning just about enough to feed her family. But the ban on women working has left her unemployed, and she said she developed a nervous disorder and is often sick.

Compounding their misery is the harsh cold of the northern Afghan winter, when snow halts construction work where her son can sometimes find jobs. And there is the added expense of firewood and charcoal.

“If this situation continues like this, we may face severe hunger,” Gul said. “And then it will be very difficult for us to survive in this cold weather.”

BANGKOK — Thailand and Cambodia signed a ceasefire agreement on Saturday to end weeks of fighting along their border over competing territorial claims.

The agreement took effect at noon and calls for a halt in military movements and airspace violation for military purposes.

Only Thailand has carried out airstrikes, hitting sites in Cambodia as recently as Saturday morning, according to the Cambodian Defense Ministry.

The deal also calls for Thailand, after the ceasefire has held for 72 hours, to repatriate 18 Cambodian soldiers it has held as prisoners since earlier fighting in July. Their release has been a major demand of the Cambodian side.

Within hours of the signing, Thailand’s Foreign Ministry protested to Cambodia that a Thai soldier sustained a permanent disability when he stepped on an anti-personnel land mine it charged had been laid by Cambodian forces.

Defense ministers met at the border

The agreement was signed by the countries’ defense ministers, Cambodia’s Tea Seiha and Thailand’s Nattaphon Narkphanit, at a border checkpoint. It followed three days of lower-level talks by military officials.

It declares that the sides are committed to an earlier ceasefire that ended five days of fighting in July and follow-up agreements.

The original July ceasefire was brokered by Malaysia and pushed through by pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, who threatened to withhold trade privileges unless Thailand and Cambodia agreed. It was formalized in more detail in October at a regional meeting in Malaysia that Trump attended.

Despite those deals, the countries carried on a bitter propaganda war and minor cross-border violence continued, escalating in early December to widespread heavy fighting.

On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed the ceasefire announcement and urged Cambodia and Thailand to fully honor it and the terms of the peace accord reached earlier in Malaysia.

Civilians bore the brunt of the fighting

Thailand has lost 26 soldiers and one civilian as a direct result of the combat since Dec. 7, according to officials. Thailand has also reported 44 civilian deaths.

Cambodia hasn’t issued an official figure on military casualties, but says that 30 civilians have been killed and 90 injured. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated on both sides of the border.

“Today’s ceasefire also paves the way for the displaced people who are living in the border areas to be able to return to their homes, work in the fields, and even allow their children to be able to return to schools and resume their studies,” Cambodia’s Seiha told reporters after the signing.

Each side blamed the other for initiating the fighting and claimed to be acting in self-defense.

The agreement also calls on both sides to adhere to international agreements against deploying land mines, a major concern of Thailand.

Thai soldiers along the border have been wounded in at least 10 incidents this year by what Thailand says were newly planted Cambodian mines. Cambodia says the mines were left over from decades of civil war that ended in the late 1990s.

Following the latest injury on Saturday, Thailand’s Foreign Ministry noted that the new agreement “includes key provisions on joint humanitarian demining operations to ensure the safety of military personnel and civilians in the border areas as soon as possible.”

Another clause says the two sides “agree to refrain from disseminating false information or fake news.”

The agreement calls for a resumption of previous measures to demarcate the border. The sides also agreed to cooperate in suppressing transnational crimes. That’s primarily a reference to online scams perpetrated by organized crime that have bilked victims around the world of billions of dollars each year. Cambodia is a center for such criminal enterprises.

Malaysia’s leader hails agreement

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who was instrumental in putting together the original ceasefire, said the new agreement “reflects a shared recognition that restraint is required, above all in the interest of civilians.”

Many clauses similar to those in Saturday’s agreement were included in October’s ceasefire document, and were open to various interpretations and generally honored only in part. These included provisions concerning land mines and the Cambodian prisoners.

The fragility of the new agreement was underlined by Thailand’s Defense Ministry spokesperson Surasant Kongsiri in a news briefing after Saturday’s signing. He said that the safe return of civilians to their homes would indicate the situation had stabilized enough to allow the repatriation of the captured Cambodian soldiers.

“However, if the ceasefire does not materialize, this would indicate a lack of sincerity on the Cambodian side to create sure peace,” he said. “Therefore, the 72- hour ceasefire beginning today is not an act of trust nor unconditional acceptance but a time frame to tangibly prove whether Cambodia can truly cease the use of weapons, provocations, and threats in the area.”