NEW ORLEANS — A performer in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show was detained on the field and could face charges after unfurling a combination Sudan-Palestine flag with “Sudan” and “Gaza” written on it.

The NFL confirmed the person was part of the 400-member field cast. The New Orleans Police Department said in a statement that “law enforcement is working to determine applicable charges in this incident.”

“The individual will (be) banned for life from all NFL stadiums and events,” NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy said in an emailed statement.

The performer stood on a car used as a prop for Lamar’s performance and held up the flag. The NFL said “the individual hid the item on his person and unveiled it late in the show” and that “no one involved with the production was aware of the individual’s intent.”

Roc Nation, the entertainment company which produced the show, said that the act “was neither planned nor part of the production and was never in any rehearsal.”

The show continued without interruption, and it did not seem as though the person was shown on the broadcast of Lamar’s performance.

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/nfl

NEW ORLEANS — Clark Hunt was not quite 5 years old when he settled into his seat in Tulane Stadium beside his parents to watch the Kansas City Chiefs, the franchise his father had founded in the brazen days of the American Football League, as they played the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV.

Hunt doesn’t remember the game itself. But once in a while, photos will surface that he has never seen before.

“I do have a photo of me sitting with my parents in the stands, right? I think they were benches. It sort of looked like a corner,” said Hunt, now 59, who assumed control of the Chiefs when his father, the visionary Lamar Hunt, died in December 2006.

“I guess that shows you how things have changed,” Hunt said.

Indeed, it’s a safe bet that Hunt and the rest of his family will have comfortable seats in a luxury suite when the Chiefs face the Eagles on Sunday at the Superdome.

Led by Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, and with a celebrity fan base that includes Taylor Swift and Caitlin Clark, the Chiefs were chasing an unprecedented third consecutive Lombardi Trophy.

The fact was not lost on Hunt that they were trying to make history in the same city where they won their first Super Bowl with a 23-7 victory over the Vikings on Jan. 11, 1970.

In fact, Hunt seemed to view the coincidence as something closer to kismet, a point that he underscored by pointing out that the Chiefs spent this week practicing at Tulane University.

“I hate to say I don’t have any memories from that Super Bowl,” he said, “but getting to go to Tulane where we’re training and being literally a stone’s throw from the old stadium where we won Super Bowl IV is really special.

“I always think about my parents Super Bowl week,” Hunt added, “There’s no way not to. But this one is going to be special.”

There’s an argument to be made that nobody had a greater influence on the big game than Lamar Hunt.

The oil magnate was part of the “Foolish Club” that founded the AFL, back when they were being kept out of the NFL, and he was instrumental in the merger years later that ultimately brought the two professional football leagues together.

In a letter to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, Hunt mused about the pending title game, saying: “I have kiddingly called it the ‘Super Bowl,’ which obviously can be approved upon.” He was inspired by the must-have Christmas gift of the year that his wife, Norma, had gotten Clark Hunt and the rest of the kids: the Super Ball, made by toy company Wham-O.

Lamar Hunt regularly attended the Super Bowl, though he never saw his Chiefs play in it again. They wouldn’t make it back until Andy Reid arrived in town, and Mahomes and Kelce helped Kansas City beat the 49ers in February 2020 — five full decades after they triumphed over the “Purple People Eaters” and the rest of the Vikings at Tulane Stadium.

Norma Hunt continued to attend the Super Bowl until her death in June 2023. At the time, she was one of four people — and the only woman — who had attended every game, beginning with the Chiefs’ loss to the Packers on Jan. 15, 1967.

The Chiefs are back Sunday for the fifth time in six years. And they are chasing a three-peat against the Eagles, the team Kansas City beat a couple of years ago in Glendale, Arizona, to win the first of its back-to-back championships.

“I would say every Chiefs fan is spoiled, and that includes me, right? Because it has been such a special five or six years,” Hunt told a small group of local reporters this week. “And I think we know we’re spoiled because of the journey that it took to get to this point, and the five decades we went without getting back to the Super Bowl.”

This is the 11th time that New Orleans has played host to the big game, tying Miami for the most of any city. The French Quarter had been packed all week with fans wearing Chiefs red and Eagles green, creating a kaleidoscope of Christmas colors stretching from Jackson Square to Canal Street, and bubbling all the way up to the Superdome.

The home of the Saints, and the de facto replacement for Tulane Stadium, is hosting the game for the eighth time.

“I don’t think any of us really could have dreamed it being like this, and having the success we’ve had,” Clark Hunt said. “My dad would have loved it because in his heart, he was a fan — him and my mom were fans, first and foremost. And he would love it for our fans, because that was always a focus of his.”

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

NEW YORK — Eugene Levy’s trademark eyebrows fly off for Little Caesars. A tongue dances to Shania Twain to promote Nestle’s Coffee Mate Cold Foam. And Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal reunite at Katz’s Deli in an ad for Hellmann’s.

A frenzied mix of silliness and celebrities is hitting the airwaves and the internet, and that means one thing: it is Super Bowl ad time again.

Veteran advertisers are using tried-and-true tactics like celebrity cameos, humor and cute animals to win over watchers. Meanwhile, first-time and newer advertisers are courting outrageousness and using stunts to try to stand out in the battle to capture the attention of the more than 120 million viewers expected to tune into Sunday’s game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs on Fox.

Super Bowl viewers are a unique audience because they’re as primed to watch the ads as they are the game.

“This is a societal moment where we come together as a country,” said Kimberly Whitler, marketing professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. “We may be on different sides, you know, of the gridiron or the field. But we come together.”

With 80-plus ad spots divvied up among the 50-something advertisers during the game, it’s tough to make sure viewers remember your brand message. And with a few ad spots going for a record $8 million for 30 seconds this year, the stakes have never been higher.

But the price tag is worth it, advertisers say. Rachel Jaiven, head of Haagen-Dazs marketing, said the brand decided to make its first-ever appearance in the game due to the size of the viewership and its association with snacking.

“We know at the Super Bowl these days that everyone watches, it’s a wide audience,” Jaiven said. The brand’s ad shows stars from the “Fast & Furious” franchise enjoying an ice cream bar. “We thought it was time for us to tell our story, remind people what they love about Haagen-Dazs and of course, have them stock up on Haagen-Dazs in their freezer.”

In order to garner more publicity, many advertisers release their ads ahead of the game. Of the ads that have already been released, here’s a sampling of the approaches advertisers are taking during the big game this year.

Hellmann’s

Hellmann’s ad made a splash ahead of the game by reuniting Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal’s “When Harry Met Sally” characters at Katz’s Deli enjoying a sandwich with Hellmann’s. Sydney Sweeney joins to utter the famous line “I’ll have what she’s having.”

Meta

Chris Pratt and Chris Hemsworth wear Ray-Ban Meta AI-powered glasses while looking at art. Hemsworth accidently eats a banana in an art piece worth $6.2 million, and Kris Jenner appears to scold them.

Michelob Ultra

Actors Catherine O’Hara and Willem Dafoe star as pickleball players hustling younger players to win Michelob Ultras.

Stella Artois

Soccer star David Beckham learns he has a twin named Dave Beckham who turns out to be Matt Damon. They don’t have much in common but both drink Stella Artois.

Uber Eats

Matthew McConaughey explains a conspiracy theory that football was invented to sell food, with cameos by Martha Stewart, Greta Gerwig, Charli XCX, Kevin Bacon and YouTuber Sean Evans.

Coors Light

Adorable sloths undergo mishaps because they’re slow, like a kitchen fire and running into a glass door; they have a “Case of the Mondays,” like many people sluggish at work the day after the Super Bowl.

Little Caesars

Actor Eugene Levy’s eyebrows fly off and fly around after he tries the pizza chain’s Crazy Puffs in what is strangely not the only ad with flying facial hair in it (see Pringles).

Nestle Coffee Mate

The first-time advertiser goes for silly humor in an ad that shows a man’s tongue dancing, and even doing a flip, to a song sung by Shania Twain to represent how good Nestle Coffee Mate Cold Foam tastes.

Pringles

Actor Nick Offerman, Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid and L.A. Clippers’ James Harden watch their famous mustaches fly away to help deliver Pringles.

Dove

Dove highlights the problem of low body confidence in young girls and depicts a young girl running down the sidewalk to H.E.R.’s version of “Born to Run.”

Foundation to Combat Antisemitism

Patriot owner Robert Kraft has an ad in the game for the second year in a row. Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady voice reasons why people hate each other in an effort to combat hate speech.

Hims and Hers

First-time advertiser Telehealth company Hims & Hers highlights the obesity epidemic and says weight loss drugs should be more affordable.

Novartis

First-time advertiser Novartis is focusing on breast cancer awareness in its ad featuring Wanda Sykes and Hailee Steinfeld.

Haagen-Dazs

The ice-cream brand reunites “Fast & Furious” stars Michelle Rodriguez, Vin Diesel and Ludacris, except this time, they’re going slow. They cruise down the Pacific Coast Highway in a Chevrolet Chevelle slowly so they can enjoy eating an ice cream bar.

Instacart

First-timer Instacart joins DoorDash and Uber Eats and a battle between food delivery services during the game. Instacart loads up its ad with tons of brand characters it hopes viewers recognize: from Mountain Dew’s “PuppyMonkeyBaby” character from a 2016 Super Bowl ad to the Jolly Green Giant and the Pillsbury Doughboy. The characters represent all the things you can get delivered from the food delivery service.

Totinos Pizza Rolls

In one of several ads featuring aliens, comedian Tim Robinson and actor Sam Richardson say goodbye to an alien who was living in their neighborhood. Cookware brand Hexclad and Doritos ads also feature aliens.

Not all advertisers release their ads early, so there are always plenty of surprises on game day. Only two auto brands, Stellantis’ Jeep and Ram, have announced Super Bowl ad plans, but they haven’t given any details on the ads.

Dunkin’ has secured the first ad spot after kickoff but is staying mum on details other than teasing that it will star Ben and Casey Affleck and Jeremy Strong. Canned water company Liquid Death will advertise for the first time with an ad created in-house. Duracell has teased that its ad will feature a “Duracell Scientist” but hasn’t given any other details.

Ad experts think it is unlikely that an A.I.-generated ad will debut during advertising’s biggest night after Coca-Cola’s holiday ad created with the help of A.I. technology drew some backlash. But if one did debut, it would be sure to make a splash.

NEW ORLEANS — As New Orleans prepares to host the Super Bowl next month, Louisiana authorities cleared homeless encampments around the stadium on Wednesday and relocated many to a temporary warehouse facility that costs millions of dollars to operate.

Gov. Jeff Landry framed the sweep — which city officials say undermines their efforts to address homelessness — as part of a move to secure New Orleans, especially in the aftermath of the New Year’s Day attack that killed 14 people.

The tough-on-crime Republican governor has talked about plans to improve Louisiana’s most popular city ahead of the Super Bowl at the Superdome. That has included a new Louisiana State Police troop dedicated to New Orleans, removing homeless encampments elsewhere in the city, and ensuring highways, sidewalks and transportation lines are clean and safe.

“It is in the best interest of every citizen’s safety and security to give the unhoused humane and safe shelter as we begin to welcome the world to the City of New Orleans for both Super Bowl LIX and Mardi Gras,” Landry said in a Monday statement.

Last week, the state’s Supreme Court overturned a restraining order that had barred the state police from clearing homeless encampments in New Orleans. Days after the ruling, “relocation notices” from the state appeared at one of the city’s largest homeless encampments beneath an underpass near the Superdome. The notice warned that “everyone must comply” and “failure to do so may result in enforcement actions or legal proceedings.”

On Wednesday morning state police converged on the encampment and told people to pack their possessions into boxes and that there were buses to take them to a “transitional center” miles away at a fenced-in warehouse owned by the Port of New Orleans.

People at the encampment were told that they did not have to go to the transitional center, but they were not allowed to remain in the area and were under threat of arrest, Mike Steele, a spokesperson for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, told The Associated Press.

Among those at the encampment was Ray Cooper, who scoured for his social security card amid scattered clothes, bicycles and tents. Cooper, 35, has lived mostly on the streets for the past few years and declined the state’s offer to bring him to the transitional center.

“That just turned me off — we’re going to a warehouse? I’m not a UPS package or anything like that, I’m a human,” said Cooper.

The temporary center has the capacity to house 200 people. As of Wednesday evening, 131 people were staying there, said Bart Farmer, the president of Workforce Group, a company that specializes in post-disaster assistance and is operating the site.

The center includes three meals a day, bedding, showers, toilets, refrigeration for medication and veterinary care for their pets, according to the relocation notice. The site is estimated to cost the state $16.2 million to operate over a 90-day period, according to a proposal crafted by the Workforce Group and obtained by the AP.

Critics argue the relocations to the center are a band-aid solution. In a letter sent to the governor from 12 community organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, the groups expressed “serious reservations about the effectiveness, cost-efficiency and long-term impact of this approach.”

“Evidence-based best practices for ending homelessness are centered on permanent housing with supportive services,” said Martha Kegel, who leads UNITY, an agency which partners with the city on efforts to house and support its homeless population.

Part of Landry’s homeless strategy, announced on Monday, states that housing and services will be prioritized for “citizens that have jobs” and that people “who have means will be given bus or train tickets out of state.” While details surrounding the plan are still unclear, Steele said that relocations out of state would be voluntary.

Landry’s approach clashes with the City of New Orleans’ plans to close these same encampments by first providing long-term housing to people living in them. The city said it has requested $6 million from the state to assist in these efforts and that state-led sweeps cause “delays” in providing housing and services to the approximately 1,500 homeless people in the city.

Candice Allison, 63, who said she had been homeless since Hurricane Ida destroyed her trailer in 2021, sorted through a mass of clothes and other items she hoped to salvage on Wednesday, fearing authorities would return to confiscate her possessions.

“I’ve been doing this all night, I haven’t ate, I haven’t slept, I’m exhausted,” Allison said.

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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on X: @jack_brook96

NEW ORLEANS — The second-guessing began before the bodies had been cleared from the debris of the deadly Bourbon Street truck attack.

A law firm signed up survivors of what it called a “predictable and preventable” tragedy. Politicians parried blame for the latest mass-casualty event in New Orleans’ infamous adult playground. And investigations targeted the ill-fated removal of the street’s bollards, steel columns designed to restrict vehicle access.

But as the city seeks to recover and beefs up security ahead of next month’s Super Bowl and Carnival season, law enforcement and community leaders are confronting an existential question as old as the entertainment district: Can Bourbon Street be protected in a way that preserves its unique, round-the-clock revelry?

“Once we start to hear what it’s actually going to take to secure the French Quarter and the Mardi Gras parade routes, I don’t know if this city is going to have an appetite for all that,” said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who is president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission watchdog group.

“If we try to make New Orleans as secure as an airport, people aren’t going to like it,” he said. “This isn’t Disney World.”

Shock and grief have given way to finger-pointing over whether additional security could have stopped — or mitigated — the Islamic State group-inspired attack, which killed 14 people when Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a pickup through a New Year’s crowd.

In the difficult days since, proposals for new safety measures have ranged from banning vehicular traffic in the French Quarter to turning the historic neighborhood into a state park.

Many locals who depend on tourism agree that something has to give.

“It’s just too wide open. It’s too trustworthy down here,” said Bryan Casey, 53, a native New Orleanian who has worked on Bourbon Street since the late 1990s and waits tables at Galatoire’s, an upscale restaurant that opened in 1905. Casey and his colleagues wiped blood off the wall after the attack as bodies lay mangled in front of the establishment.

Bourbon Street should have been made into a pedestrian mall long ago, Casey said: “There’s people watching and they’re going to get you, so you got to be careful.”

Much of the immediate focus has centered on the absence of the bollards, which had stopped working reliably and were being replaced ahead of the Super Bowl.

City leaders have been criticized for the timing of that project and failing to implement a suitable replacement during their repair. A lawsuit filed Thursday on behalf of victims alleged the city “had years of opportunities” to patch up vulnerabilities.

But a half dozen current and former law enforcement officials in Louisiana described the bollard issue as a red herring, saying that even if they had been functioning they may not have prevented the attack given how hell-bent Jabbar appeared on creating carnage.

The broader safety conundrum is more complex, they said, given the quarter’s dense, alcohol-fueled crowds and structural challenges inherent to an early 18th-century neighborhood built for horse-drawn buggies. Policing here is even more complicated in a city with notoriously high crime, a chronic shortage of officers and a new state law allowing permit-less concealed carry of firearms.

“I don’t know of another place that has the same challenges for protecting people,” said Ronnie Jones, a public safety consultant who served in the Louisiana State Police for 32 years, including as deputy superintendent.

“A lot of people in public safety don’t want to talk about it, but we just can’t guarantee that everybody going to the French Quarter is going to be safe,” Jones said. “There’s a tradeoff here, and we’ve never, ever, found that balance.”

The city’s newly hired security consultant, William J. Bratton, a former New York City police commissioner, said he recognizes the importance of maintaining a festive atmosphere during carnival even as he works with city police to bolster security over the next few months.

“One of the things I talked about is developing security provisions that don’t change Mardi Gras, don’t change the flavor of it, the excitement of it and the nature of it,” Bratton said at a news conference this week. “To develop security protocols that don’t become so intrusive, so disruptive.”

The New Year’s attack was far from the first deadly vehicle incident on Bourbon Street.

In 1972, one person died and 18 were injured when a teenager fleeing police in a stolen car crashed through metal barricades and sped down the thoroughfare at 70 mph (about 113 kph). Ten years later a man smashed through steel barricades and careened down nearly seven blocks, injuring at least 11. And in 1995, an intoxicated 63-year-old man drove a beer van through a crowd attending a St. Patrick’s Day parade, killing one and injuring 38.

More recent Bourbon Street tragedies have involved gun violence, including multiple fatal shootings last year. In 2014, a mass shooting killed a 21-year-old woman and wounded nine others, including a bystander shot through her cheek. Two years later a person was killed and nine others were wounded in a shooting.

Many of those incidents prompted similar calls for change and accountability, raising questions about civil liberties and what, if anything, the city is willing to sacrifice in the name of public safety. City, state and federal law enforcement officials have offered varying solutions that critics have said were mere stopgaps, likening them to putting Band-Aids on a wound that has never quite healed.

“I was part of those conversations when we were looking to create a very robust security package, including metal detectors and infrared technology that could alert if something metal was in someone’s clothing — none of that ever materialized,” said Michael Harrison, a former head of New Orleans police who later became commissioner in Baltimore. “There are ways to prevent ramming attacks. There’s not yet a way to prevent people from walking on Bourbon Street and doing bad things.”

Pedicab driver Jody “Cajun Queen” Boudreaux, 65, said Bourbon Street has always embodied New Orleans’ laissez-faire charm and she is not sure whether the city has the will to shore up its lax security.

“We’re a target, clearly. They know we have holes, they know we are all scrambling and they also know that our vibe is ‘Laissez les bons temps rouler’” she said, invoking the famous Cajun French saying that means, “Let the good times roll.” “I think it can be balanced, I truly do.”

Andrew Monteverde, co-vice president of the New Orleans Firefighters Association, said first responders and law enforcement deal with a raft of emergencies, from extinguishing fires to saving people in cardiac arrest. The more that limited resources are dedicated to one part of the city, he added, the less is available to deal for elsewhere.

“Could you possibly make the French Quarter so secure that you couldn’t even spit on the sidewalk?” he said. “Maybe, but then what would you trade off?”

At The Beach on Bourbon Street, where workers screen clubgoers at every entrance with handheld metal detectors, general manager Woody Ryder has become inured to the frequent shootings after working there for seven years. “There’s crazy people out there,” he said.

But the recent attack has made him uneasy. Ryder and his staff are still recovering from witnessing what he and others likened to a “war zone.”

“The city has already failed us,” he said. “I’m hesitant as soon as I turn on Bourbon Street.”

___ Mustian reported from New York, and Cline from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Associated Press reporter Michael Kunzelman in Washington contributed.