9 Feb 2026

What happens if Super Bowl LX goes into overtime? Here’s how the NFL’s rules work.

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By Chuck Schilken, Los Angeles Times

The final quarter of the AFC divisional round playoff game between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs on Jan. 23, 2022, could not have been more exciting.

Three lead changes.

Five scoring drives.

A 36-36 tie at the end of regulation.

The overtime period, however, could not have been more disappointing.

One coin toss.

One touchdown drive.

Game over.

One of the most exciting playoff games in recent memory — a quarterback duel between Buffalo’s Josh Allen and Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes — ended abruptly in a 42-36 Chiefs win when Mahomes connected with Travis Kelce on an eight-yard touchdown pass.

Unlike the thrilling fourth quarter, Allen didn’t get a chance to respond because of the overtime rule the NFL had in place at the time.

Because of an adjustment to the rules, however, such a scenario will not take place when the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots play in Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

The previous system was basically a modified sudden death system that gave each team at least one chance to score — with one big exception.

If the team that first possessed the ball in overtime scored a touchdown on that drive, that team won. The game was over, with the other offense never getting a chance to take the field in overtime.

If the first team kicked a field goal, the other team got a possession to either win the game with a touchdown or tie it with a field goal. In the latter case, the game continued until someone scored.

Months after the 2022 Chiefs-Bills game, that rule was changed for the playoffs (and went into effect for the regular season in 2025). Now it’s basically a modified modified sudden-death system that gives both teams a chance to score.

If the first team scores a touchdown, the other team gets a possession to tie (and, therefore, extend) the game with a touchdown of its own. Everything else remains the same from the previous format.

A safety in overtime also ends the game.

©2026 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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9 Feb 2026

Venezuela Frees Key Opposition Figures as Government Courts U.S. Support

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Venezuela on Sunday freed a group of prominent opposition leaders, including Juan Pablo Guanipa and Perkins Rocha, according to statements from the country’s press union, the political opposition party, and relatives of the freed prisoners.

“After more than eight months of unjust imprisonment and more than a year and a half of being separated, our entire family will soon be able to embrace each other again,” Ramón Guanipa Linares, Guanipa’s son, wrote on social media.

Authorities released at least 35 political prisoners Sunday, according to the rights group Foro Penal, which last week said that more than 650 were detained.

The government made no official statement about the releases, but Venezuela’s de facto leader, Delcy Rodríguez, has said in recent days she would close El Helicoide, an infamous prison that rights groups have described as a torture center, and has announced plans for a mass amnesty law.

The highly anticipated release of prisoners has strengthened tentative hopes that Venezuela’s interim government may be moving away from the most repressive practices of its deposed president, Nicolás Maduro.

Since the United States captured Maduro last month, his former vice president, Rodríguez, has moved quickly to realign Venezuela with Washington.

Rodríguez has worked closely with the Trump administration, redirecting oil exports toward the United States and consolidating power domestically by dismissing officials seen as loyal to Maduro.

The prisoner release comes just days after Venezuelan security agents questioned two prominent businesspeople, Raúl Gorrín and Alex Saab, both of whom have ties to Maduro and have faced money laundering charges in the United States. Their overnight detention in the capital, Caracas, was seen as sign of a deepening cooperation between the two countries.

But it is still uncertain if Sunday’s prisoner release signals a broader opening of political freedom, and there is some skepticism about whether Rodríguez can be the person who dismantles the same authoritarian system that she benefited from.

Analysts say the true test will be whether former prisoners and exiled opponents are allowed to protest, organize politically and criticize the government without facing retaliation. The long-term goal is credible elections.

“It almost looks like they want to open up just enough to score points with Washington, but not enough to risk their grip on power,” said Geoff Ramsey, who studies Colombia and Venezuela at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research institute.

But others see the releases as a genuine shift by the interim government, after years in which members of the opposition endured being arrested, disappeared and tortured, or were forced to flee into exile.

“There is a clear political will on the part of the Rodríguez government to move away from an intransigent and intolerant stance toward the opposition,” said Colette Capriles, a political analyst at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas.

In an interview weeks before his detention in August 2024, Rocha expressed anguish for his colleagues who were detained. He said he was in a highly secure location but fully aware that authorities could be trying to locate him.

“Our last tool — the only one we have left at this moment — is to cling to our principles and convictions,” he said. “Never before have we realized so fully that this civic struggle truly goes all the way to the end.”

He expressed openness to a dialogue and agreement between the opposition and the Maduro government. Without it, he said, Venezuela would enter “a downward spiral — a spiral of illegitimate institutions — and the conflict will not end.”

On social media, María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s de facto opposition leader who remains in exile, welcomed the release of her “comrades in struggle” and the end to their “many months of captivity and injustice.”

They longed, Machado said, “to work side by side for the Venezuela we have dreamed of for years — and that we are now very close to building.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

9 Feb 2026

Theater review: Latte Da shifts to classic drama for an involving ‘Glass Menagerie’

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There are niches galore in the Twin Cities’ vibrant theater scene. For example, Children’s Theatre Company is designed for the youngest among us, while History Theatre focuses upon stories from the state’s past. And, if you’re in the mood for a musical, head out to Chanhassen Dinner Theatres if you want a conventional interpretation or to Theater Latte Da if you want something more inventive and imaginative.

But Latte Da is playing against type this month by presenting a classic American drama, Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie.” Yes, the company’s artistic director, Justin Lucero, incorporates music into his staging, but Katharine Horowitz’s score consists mostly of atmospheric tones, some of it produced by fingers running around the rims of glassware.

Amy Eckberg (Laura) and Brandon Brooks (Jim) in Theater Latte Da’s production of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie,” a departure from the company’s custom of producing almost exclusively musicals. The show runs through March 1, 2026 at the Ritz Theater in Minneapolis. (Dan Norman / Theater Latte Da)

Yet the artistic decision that sets this version of Williams’ oft-produced play apart is a design that incorporates video cameras into the action and casts large-scale projections of the actors in closeup across the wall behind them. While it can be jarring to be addressed by an expansive disembodied mouth or peered at by an enormous set of eyes, it makes for a far more intimate experience. And that proves valuable in a play about vulnerability, establishing connections and severing them.

“The Glass Menagerie” is the play that put Tennessee Williams on the map, catapulting him to fame upon its Broadway premiere in 1945. It takes us to a St. Louis apartment shared by aging southern belle Amanda and her young adult children, Laura and Tom, the latter holding a warehouse job that makes him the household’s chief breadwinner. Laura is a painfully shy recluse who finds comfort in her collection of glass animals, but the extroverted Amanda is determined to marry her off.

It stands as one of American theater’s great character studies, as Williams crafted four memorable individuals and set them off into clashes and connecting conversations. It’s a talky script, but one that allows its actors to show off their skills in producing layered portrayals.

And Latte Da’s staging features four exceptionally well-rendered performances. The video elements serve Dustin Bronson well. As Tom, he acts as our narrator and the chief force of fury as he seeks to burst free from his family bonds. And the closeups allow for some wistfulness and conflicted feelings to more clearly emerge. Yet no camera is needed when his eruptions occur, for his rage and desperation can be felt all the way to the back of the cozy Ritz Theater.

Meanwhile, Norah Long is simply magnificent as his mother and chief antagonist. Long brilliantly captures Amanda’s unique blend of charm, eccentricity and anxious inner tumult, most memorably during a fire escape exchange with Tom in which she seems to transform into the playful romantic of her youth. Like most of Williams’ heroines, Amanda enthusiastically embraces her delusions, and Long makes her a fascinating woman to watch.

Dustin Bronson (Tom), Amy Eckberg (Laura) and Norah Long (Amanda) in Theater Latte Da’s production of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie,” a departure from the company’s custom of producing almost exclusively musicals. The show runs through March 1, 2026 at the Ritz Theater in Minneapolis. (Dan Norman / Theater Latte Da)

The video projections also bring audiences into closer contact with Amy Eckberg’s Laura, helping us see glimpses of the butterfly that struggles to emerge from its cocoon. And Brandon Brooks ably inhabits the “gentleman caller” who comes to dinner, in addition to creating the soundscape that gives this strong staging its eerie, haunted mood.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

Theater Latte Da’s ‘The Glass Menagerie’

When: Through March 1

Where: Ritz Theater, 345 13th Ave. NE, Mpls.

Tickets: $75.75-$21.75, available at 612-339-3003 or latteda.org

Capsule: Video enhances the intimacy of a classic drama.

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9 Feb 2026

Green Day Condemns ICE as Part of Super Bowl Festivities

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The pop-punk band Green Day performed a relatively uncontroversial medley of its hits at the opening ceremony before Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara, California, on Sunday.

But two days before that performance, during another Super Bowl weekend event, Green Day’s frontman, Billie Joe Armstrong, took to the microphone to call on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to quit their jobs.

“This goes out to all the ICE agents out, wherever you are,” Armstrong said from the stage of the FanDuel Party in San Francisco on Friday, before using expletives while telling agents to quit their jobs.

Sooner or later, he added, referring to top administration officials, “Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, JD Vance, Donald Trump, they’re going to drop you like” a bad habit, again punctuating his remarks with expletives. “Come on this side of the line.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.

Green Day has long been a sharp critic of President Donald Trump and his policies.

In 2016, the band led a “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA” chant while performing at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles. During concerts, Armstrong and bandmates have frequently changed the lyrics of their hit song “American Idiot” from “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” to “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda.” In 2023, the band released the protest song “The American Dream is Killing Me.”

Last month, Trump bashed Green Day as a musical selection for the Super Bowl’s festivities. “I’m anti-them,” he told The New York Post. “I think it’s a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred. Terrible.” (The president has likewise disparaged Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican artist who will headline the Super Bowl’s halftime show. He said recently that he would not attend the game, saying of Bad Bunny’s selection, “All it does is sow hatred.”)

Green Day is hardly the only act to use a Super Bowl appearance to make a political statement. Brandi Carlile, the gay singer-songwriter who performed “America the Beautiful” before the game, told Variety on Saturday that queer representation mattered in the current political moment.

“The through line to being queer and being a representative of a marginalized community, and being put on the largest stage in America to acknowledge the fraught and tender hope that this country is based on,” she said, “it’s something you don’t say no to. You do it.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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