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As soon as this year’s Super Bowl matchup was set, workers at the Wilson Sporting Goods football factory jumped into action. The factory in the rural village of Ada, Ohio, makes the game balls used by every NFL team along with many of the nations top college programs and high schools. But this time of year it’s all about the Super Bowl. The Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs will face off for the Lombardi Trophy for the second time in three years on Feb. 9 in New Orleans. Heres a look at the footballs, by the numbers: How many balls are made for the big game? The two teams will each get a shipment of 108, plus a dozen more for the kickers, all stamped with the Super Bowl logo and team names. Some of the balls will be for practices, while the best ones will be set aside by the quarterbacks. About 50 of those will be bagged and locked away for each team until it’s time for kickoff. How are NFL footballs different from other footballs? Wilson makes five different sizes for players of all levels, from the pros to youth leagues. Some have different patterns. NFL balls are notable for the lack of a stripe on the ends. They’re also embedded with a chip that tracks the ball’s position on the field, how far it travels and its trajectory. How long does it take to make a football? Normally it takes three days from start to finish. But the first batch of footballs must be sent to the Super Bowl teams Monday, within about 18 hours, so they have enough time to break them in for practices and the game. That’s why the workers start production right away the night of the conference title games. How are they made? It’s a 20-step process, most of it by hand, from cutting out the four leather panels that are sewn together with 250 stitches to putting in the laces. For NFL footballs, the work goes to the factory’s most experienced and skilled workers. Certain parts of the process require a handmade feel, said Kevin Murphy, general manager of Wilson Team Sports. It’s like making a beautiful, sculpted pair of shoes. How do they become game ready? Throughout production the balls are weighed, measured and inspected for flaws. Once finished, they’re checked again. By the time they’re packaged and ready for shipping, each one will have been touched by about 50 workers. How many does the factory normally produce? It churns out roughly 500,000 footballs each year, or about 2,500 per day. NFL teams go through several hundred during a season. For the Super Bowl, Wilson will make between 10,000-20,000 commemorative balls that will be sold by retailers nationwide and at the game site. If there’s high demand, the factory will keep producing the souvenir balls well after. How long has Wilson made footballs for the NFL? Since 1941, Wilson has made every football used by the league. Its factory in Ada has been making the official game balls since 1955. This year the company opened a new plant in the village that allows for more production and a museum. Fans can tour the factory, too. John Seewer, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Tech stocks have erased virtually all their 2025 gains after Chinese startup DeepSeek raised concerns about the competitiveness of the artificial intelligence field with its release of a free, open-source AI tool that founders claim was created for just $6 million. The reaction from all corners has been extreme. Hackers, seemingly, have launched large-scale malicious attacks on the companys service, causing it to temporarily limit user registrations. Nvidia investors are dumping that companys stock, with shares falling more than 16% and the price hitting a point it hasnt seen since last September. Analysts, though, are a bit more sanguine about the news for the most part. Wedbushs Dan Ives acknowledged that DeepSeeks lower startup costs and reported use of reduced capacity chips from Nvidia was a shot across the bow at the U.S. tech world, but said the sell-off was a golden buying opportunity for investorsand the threat to other AI companies was overstated. DeepSeek impressed the tech community with this LLM [large language model] . . . but this is not launching 100x the capacity/algorithms that is needed to even consider this a competitive threat [to other AI companies] in our view, Ives wrote. Ives wasnt alone calling this a good chance for investors to jump into the AI space. This could be the entry point in AI stocks, Nvidia in particular, many have been waiting for, TD Cowen analyst Joshua Buchalter wrote in a note. JPMorgan, meanwhile, reminded investors that it was inevitable the heavy spending on AI would eventually be reined in, pointing to the investment cycle in Cloud technology in years past as an historical example. JPMorgan analyst Samik Chatterjee wrote that he saw the DeepSeek news “largely [as] a reminder to investors of the likelihood of an optimization phase for investments . . . to reach the best trade-off between efficiency and performance. Bring out the bears There were, of course, analysts who used the DeepSeek news to ding both Nvidia and AI firms. Another JPMorgan analyst Sandeep Deshpande issued a separate note, writing that Deepseeks highly efficient and lower resource-intensive AI model has shown such significant innovation and success is posing thoughts to investors that the AI investment cycle may be overhyped, and a more efficient future is possible. (Analysts from the same firm sometimes contradict each other, as they hold different opinions.) Jefferies Group analyst Edison Lee, meanwhile, wrote reevaluating computing power needs could cause 2026 AI [capital expenditures] to fall (or not grow). Long-term bullishness Some analysts noted that while DeepSeek might have launched an LLM for less and using technology thats not as advanced as what U.S.-based AI companies are using, it still faces one insurmountable problem: Its a Chinese companyand that could limit its widespread adoption. In an inevitably more restrictive environment, U.S. access to more advanced chips is an advantage. Thus, we dont expect leading AI companies would move away from more advanced GPUs, wrote Citi analyst Atif Malik. Ives may have summed it up best, saying that while creating a chatbot is one thing, its not the same as creating a robust AI system. No U.S. [major corporation] is going to use Chinese startup DeepSeek to launch their AI infrastructure and use cases, he wrote. At the end of the day there is only one chip company in the world launching autonomous, robotics, and broader AI use cases and that is Nvidia. Launching a competitive LLM model for consumer use cases is one thinglaunching broader AI infrastructure is a whole other ball game and nothing with DeepSeek makes us believe anything different.
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E-Commerce
While it may feel as if American politics is run by octogenarians, members of Congress are, in general, younger than they used to be, according to a new analysis from Pew Research Center. For the first time, baby boomers are no longer the largest generation in the House; Gen X now makes up the biggest slice at 41%. (Boomers are, however, still the majority in the Senate.) !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r
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E-Commerce
A dispute over deportation flights from the United States to Colombia entered its second day on Monday, with the U.S. backing down on a threat to impose steep tariffs on Colombian goods after the South American nation agreed to accept flights of deported migrants from the U.S. But while Colombia has avoided tariffs that would have a devastating effect on its economy, visa restrictions that were issued on Sunday by the U.S. State Department are still in place. On Monday, dozens of Colombians arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota and were handed letters by local staff that said their appointments had been canceled due to the Colombian governments refusal to accept repatriation flights of Colombian nationals. In Colombia, it can take up to two years to get a visa appointment at the U.S embassy in Bogotá, which has also been handling visa requests from neighboring Venezuela for several years. Visa applicants who turned up at the embassy on Monday said they were frustrated with the new restrictions, which mean they will likely have to wait several more months for a new appointment. President Petro did not represent our interests, said Elio Camelo, a U.S. visa seeker from the city of Cali who had traveled to Bogota for his appointment. There is a lot of uncertainty now over what will happen next, said Mauricio Manrique, who had his Monday morning appointment cancelled. He had travelled from Popayan, 600 km (372 miles) south of Bogota, for his appointment. Tensions between Colombia and the United States escalated Sunday after President Gustavo Petro wrote an early morning message on X saying he would not allow two U.S. Air Force planes carrying Colombian deportees to land in the country. He had previously authorized the flights. Petro also shared a video that showed another group of deportees reportedly arriving in Brazil with shackles on their legs. He said Colombia would only accept deportation flights when the United States had established protocols that ensured the dignified treatment of expelled migrants. U.S. President Donald Trump responded with a post of his own on Truth Social, in which he called for 25% emergency tariffs on Colombian exports to the United States, and also said that the U.S. visas of Colombian government officials would be revoked, while goods coming from the South American country would face enhanced customs inspections. Meanwhile, the State Department said Sunday it would stop issuing visas to Colombian nationals until deportation flights resumed. Tensions decreased Sunday night following negotiations between the countries, with the White House saying in a statement that Colombia had allowed the resumption of deportation flights and agreed to all of President Trumps terms, including the arrival of deportees on military flights. In the past, most Colombians removed from the United States had been arriving on charter flights organized by U.S. government contractors. The White House said tariffs on Colombian exports would be put on hold, but added that visa restrictions on Colombian officials and enhanced custom inspections would remain until the first planeload of Colombian deportees is successfully returned. The State Department has not responded to requests for comment on the resumption of visa appointments. Last year, more than 1.6 million Colombians traveled to the U.S. legally, according to a report by the Ministry of Commerce. The report said the United States was the top destination for Colombians traveling abroad. Manuel Rueda, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
A small business is cashing in on President Donald Trumps tariffs with a new viral product: stickers of Donald Trump pointing with the caption I did that. A TikTok post from Atomic Cactus Stickers, with 231.9K views, encouraged viewers to buy the stickers through the apps shop and place them everywhere from grocery stores to gas pumps. The merch starts at $5 for a five-pack, up to $80 for a pack of 200. They need to go everywhere just like the Biden ones, one user commented. Another added, print these on eggshell stickers please. One comment read: I hope you have tons in stock. Youre going to need billions and billions for everything that inflates. This isnt the first time stickers like this have been spotted. In August 2021, alt-right provocateur Jack Posobiec shared a photo on X showing a gas pump adorned with a sticker of a grinning Joe Biden pointing at the meter, which read $97.60 for 29 gallons. I did that! the sticker read. These merch stickers became a staple in the campaign to pin blame on Biden for everything from inflation to rising gas prices. By late 2021, as gas prices climbed, the stickers began cropping up on pumps across the country, much to the annoyance of gas station employees tasked with scraping them off. Hundreds of vendors sold the merch online, with variations including Kamala Harris stickers proclaiming And I Helped! or Donald Trump stickers declaring I Can Fix That. Now, its Trumps turn in the sticker-based hot seat. While the president has not yet imposed the tariffs he promised on the campaign trail, they are reportedly coming February 1 and will lead to “massive amounts of money” entering the US Treasury. “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens,” Trump said during his inauguration speech. “Tariffs are going to make us rich as hell,” he continued. “It’s going to bring our country’s businesses back.” The president has pledged import duties of 25% on Canada and Mexico, as well as 10% on global imports and 60% on Chinese goods. Imported goods are a key driver of the American economy, totaling $2.9 trillion in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. China, Canada and Mexico account for over 40% of that volume. Economists have now warned that these tariffs could stoke inflation, forcing the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates, and costs will largely fall on American consumers. The left-leaning Center for American Progress has estimated that Trumps trade plans could cost the typical household an extra $1,500 annually. Stickers in hand, people are ready to hold Trump accountable.
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E-Commerce
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