As it does every year, the Library of Congress has selected a collection of films to be preserved in the National Film Registry, and for 2021, Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi, the Disney/Pixar film Wall-E, and the first of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring made the cut.
Every film protected by the Library of Congress has been singled out, “for their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage.”
Other films singled out this year include Richard Pryor‘s landmark 1979 stand-up special Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, the 1984 horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street, and 1997’s Selena, starring Jennifer Lopez as the murdered Tejano singing sensation Selena Quintanilla.
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced the new registrants, which vary from animated works to films that, “took on racially-motivated violence against people of color decades ago.”
According to the National Film Registry, 1983’s Return of the Jedi, the last of George Lucas‘ original Star Wars trilogy, drew the most votes via the annual online nominations process. Fellowship was also well represented by fans of Peter Jackson‘s Oscar-winning Tolkien trilogy.
Turner Classic Movies will screen a selection of this year’s entries as part of a television special Friday, Dec. 17, starting at 8 p.m. ET.
Here are the 25 films selected for the 2021 National Film Registry in chronological order:
1. Ringling Brothers Parade Film (1902)
2. Jubilo (1919)
3. The Flying Ace (1926)
4. Hellbound Train (1930)
5. Flowers and Trees (1932)
6. Strangers on a Train (1951)
7. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
8. Evergreen (1965)
9. Requiem-29 (1970)
10. The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971)
11. Pink Flamingos (1972)
12. Sounder (1972)
13. The Long Goodbye (1973)
14. Cooley High (1975)
15. Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1979)
16. Chicana (1979)
17. The Wobblies (1979)
18. Star Wars Episode VI — Return of the Jedi (1983)
19. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
20. Stop Making Sense (1984)
21. Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1987)
22. The Watermelon Woman (1996)
23. Selena (1997)
24. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
25. WALL•E (2008)
(WASHINGTON) — Maryam Jami, 23, an attorney in Herat, Afghanistan, who calls herself a “mini-human rights activist,” still dreams of obtaining her Masters of Law in the United States as a Fulbright scholar next year, pinning the program as both a venue to her own dreams and a tool for a better future for Afghanistan.
But she and roughly 100 other semi-finalists in the country now taken over by the Taliban have been left in limbo since the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops and unofficial pause of the prestigious program run by the U.S. State Department.
“For me, the Fulbright was just my dream — and my actual path to my dreams,” Jami told ABC News in a video call from her home in Herat. “Sometimes I feel that I’m going to be depressed because it’s really — it’s just getting really too tough for me… I just feel that I’m running out of time.”
Jami planned on studying comparative and international law and taking that training after one year back to Afghanistan to help aid women and refugees. Instead, she’s confined to her small home in Herat with her mother, father, and three younger sisters, unable to go out for coffee or tea, her family fearful of fighters in the street, and confined to watching movies inside while she frantically applies to other scholarships after having turned down multiple offers to evacuate in August, she says, holding out hope for the Fulbright Program.
She used to spend her days prepping for her twice-delayed interview with State Department officials. Now, she says she can no longer look at her notes.
“Before the fall of Kabul, I used to check those papers and check those questions, get prepared for them every day,” she said. “I just feel that a long time has passed since that time, which I was preparing for this program, and I feel so old. I feel that my dreams are shattered and buried and I cannot continue working for them.”
But, Jami added, she tries to keep hope, as might be expected of a Fulbright leader.
“Still, I’m trying to keep my energy and not get disappointed, because if we are intending to be future leaders of our community and our country, we have to be positive in also negative situations. And we just have to keep our hope that better, better days are coming and the best is yet to come,” Jami told ABC News.
The timeline of the 2022 Fulbright Foreign Student Program was disrupted first by COVID-19 and then, again, with the end of America’s longest war and diplomatic presence in the country now on the brink of economic collapse and famine. More than half of Afghanistan experiences severe food insecurity with 72% of the country living below the poverty line even before the fall of Kabul, but with international aid being cut off since the Taliban took control, the situation is even more severe.
Jami, who says the State Department promised another update to her cohort by Dec. 15, fears their opportunity to study in the U.S. — and create a better future for their home country — will soon be vanquished.
“We are reviewing the significant safety, logistical, and programmatic constraints which must be overcome to successfully implement the 2022-23 Fulbright Program,” a State Department spokesperson told ABC News. “We are committed to remaining in communication with the semi-finalist group about the status of the program, understanding they must pursue the choices that make the most sense for themselves and their families.”
“The United States has a longstanding commitment to the Fulbright Program in Afghanistan, which has supported more than 950 Afghan Fulbright students since 2003, including 109 who began their studies in the United States this academic year,” the spokesperson added in response to specific concerns Jami posed to ABC News.
Left in limbo: ‘#SupportAfgFulbrightSemiFinalists2022’
The Fulbright Foreign Student Program, administered by the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, enables the brightest minds from abroad to study and conduct research in the U.S. with about 4,000 foreign students awarded the scholarship each year. Congress established the educational exchange program in 1946 with a goal of international relationship building by offering both grants to U.S. citizens to study or teach abroad and to non-U.S. citizens to study in the states.
Jami submitted her application for the 2022 class by the first deadline of Feb. 15, 2021, when American troops were still in the country and it wasn’t clear the Taliban would swiftly rise to power by the end of the summer. When she learned she was a semi-finalist for the highly competitive program back in April, she first called her mother in apparent disbelief.
“I really felt so happy because I was not believing that it was me achieving this,” she recalled to ABC News. “I just remember that my mother was in the kitchen, cooking something. I just called my mom and said, “Oh, Mom, I received the email. I’m selected. I’m a semi-finalist for the Fulbright Program!'”
“My mom said, ‘Wow, it’s such a big achievement,’ and she was really proud of me,” Jami said with a smile. “My friends were also so proud of me and then, whenever after that day, whenever I thought about or told them about life problems, my friends just told me, “Oh girl, you’re selected for the Fulbright Program and you’re still talking about your life problems?”
With an understanding that she would be accepted so long as she passed the final interview portion, Jami grew disheartened when her interview for June would be postponed due to COVID-19. Then in July, President Joe Biden announced the U.S. military mission would conclude in Afghanistan on Aug. 31, 2021. By August, when Jami expected to have her interview at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the Taliban had already taken over parts of her home city ahead of seizing the presidential palace on Aug. 15.
“After the fall of Kabul, we couldn’t get an update from the officials,” Jami told ABC News.
To that end, Jami joined a What’s App group with dozens of other semifinalists who launched a social media and email campaign to draw awareness to their plight. Using the hashtag, “SupportAfgFulbrightSemiFinalists2022,” Jami credits their efforts with getting the State Department’s attention after, she said, officials had gone silent on them.
“I think they felt that the kind of embarrassment when somebody is pointing at you in front of other people,” Jami said. “I think they wanted to make us silent for a while, but maybe we will receive good news on the 15th of December. Most of the people in the group think, though, maybe it is something just to keep us silent for a while.”
In the past, the State Department has canceled the Fulbright Program for certain cohorts for safety reasons. Typically, scholarships are rescinded and semi-finalists are asked to reapply if they want to pursue the Fulbright again.
Jami, who says she completed her program application when her home didn’t even have electricity, told ABC News there isn’t time to wait another year. Her TOEFL score, or “Test of English as a Foreign Language” expires next August, when she had hoped to begin her studies in the U.S.
“Actually, we don’t have time. We are getting so old. We are getting out of energy. We are getting tired. We are getting exhausted. We are already so tired. So the reconstruction of Afghanistan cannot wait. This is a project, in our minds, which cannot wait. Our dreams cannot wait. That is why education should not be conditioned to the politics because people are starving out there in Afghanistan,” she said.
The State Department told ABC News it’s committed to the cohort and working to review the safe and effective implementation of the program.
“We are committed to remaining in communication with the semi-finalist group about the status of the program while we review the significant safety, logistical, and programmatic constraints which must be overcome to successfully implement the 2022-23 Fulbright Program,” a spokesperson told ABC News.
Jami says despite the fact that officials have promised them an update by Dec. 15, she and other semi-finalists are pushing for a substantial and positive answer — “because just an answer is not enough,” she said.
“They must deem us as an exception, even if they are going to cut ties with the Taliban, cut relations with the Taliban forever because our application is completely pre-Taliban and we have nothing to do with the Taliban government. Not just us but the Afghan youth have nothing to do with the Taliban’s government or with the politics, so this is my message to the U.S. government and the U.S. Department of State,” she said.
“We really put too much effort into our applications and this program. We rejected most of the immigration offers, lots of other scholarships, just for the Fulbright Program. Because this is a different program. It’s obvious from its principle,” she added.
Principle of the program: ‘I belong to Afghanistan’
Jami, who graduated from Herat University with a law degree in 2019 and has worked with international aid organizations on legal and humanitarian needs of refugees, said she was attracted to the Fulbright Program because of its principle to return and work in one’s home country after completing studies in the U.S.
“So this is the time that Afghanistan needs the prospective Fulbright Scholars the most,” Jami said, taking a serious tone.
She believes many of the 100 or so semifinalists have already evacuated the country or went silent due to a lack of hope. Jami told ABC News that she even left the What’s App group last month after the conversations shifted from their campaign to continue the program to participants asking advice on how to leave the country — though has been advised by former coworkers and friends to try and do the same.
“I belong to Afghanistan,” Jami said. “Whether the Taliban are governing Afghanistan or any other government, this homeland is mine and I am committed to serve here, serve its people especially in the time that they need me and people like me the most, and the time they’re at the poverty and homelessness is resonating in Afghanistan and people need someone who can help take their hand and we can do something for them.”
Determined to continue her campaign, Jami still holds out hope for the Fulbright Program so she is ready if the day finally comes that it’s her time to interview to become a finalist in the 2022 group.
“Education cannot wait,” she told ABC News. “And education — and the fate of the Afghan youth — should not be conditioned to political rivalries or political games.”
ABC News’ Conor Finnegan contributed to this report.
Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire/Corbis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Katy Perry’s mentioned that she’ll be offering NFTs — basically, unique digital collectibles — in connection with her upcoming Las Vegas residency PLAY. But to set the stage for that, she’s got her first set of NFTs going up for sale tomorrow. Unlike most NFT drops, though, this sale includes an actual, physical thing: the massive “Golden Lion” prop she rode into the stadium when she played the Super Bowl in 2015.
The “Golden Lion” is one of the items in the new NFT sale, called The Roar Package: Looking Back While Moving Forward. If you buy the “Golden Lion” NFT, you’ll then redeem it to receive delivery of the prop, which weighs 2200 pounds, and measures 22 feet long and 16 feet high.
On the cheaper side, for $100, you can purchase “Mirror Motivation,” an animated digital image of Katy hyping herself up in the mirror before she entered the stadium at the Super Bowl.
And for just $25, you can buy “Ignite the Light,” a digital image that shows a photo of the huge shooting star prop she rode on during the Super Bowl performance, and an animated graphic of it exploding into a firework.
You can pre-register now and fund your account to be ready to buy by visiting Katy.ThetaDrop.com.
This is all a buildup to the December 29 opening of PLAY. In a statement, Katy says, “The NFTs concept is new and exciting, so I’m thrilled my fans and I get to be early adopters in this new world.”
She adds, “In addition to the digital NFTs, these drops will include the opportunity to get tangible collectibles as well, so you can come away with some one of-a-kind, incredible pieces of pop culture history.”
Deadline reports that Dr. Mehmet Oz‘s long-running syndicated daytime series, The Dr. Oz Show, will end its run on January 14, following Oz’s announced candidacy for Senate in Pennsylvania. Fox stations in New York and Philadelphia will pull the shows from their schedules immediately. The Dr. Oz Show spinoff, The Good Dish — hosted by Oz’s daughter Daphne, along with Gail Simmons and Jamika Pessoa, will air in its place. The Dr. Oz Show, currently in its 13th season, has earned 10 Daytime Emmy Awards during its run…
Gotham Nights, a new series from the writing team behind Batwoman is in development at the CW network, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The drama, based on characters from DC Comics created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger, won’t be a Batwoman spinoff, however. Per the CW, Gotham Nights will follow Bruce Wayne’s rebellious son, who, in the wake of Bruce’s murder, forges an unlikely alliance with the children of Batman’s enemies when they are all framed for killing the Caped Crusader. With the Dark Knight gone, this renegade band of misfits become the city’s next generation of saviors, while fighting to clear their names…
On Monday, Apple TV+ dropped the season three trailer for the M. Night Shyamalan-produced thriller Servant. The series follows a grieving couple, played by Lauren Ambrose and Toby Kebbell, who bring a nanny with a mysterious background, played by Nell Tiger Free, into their home. Rupert Grint, of the Harry Potter films, also stars and GLOW‘s Sunita Mani joins the cast. Servant‘s third season picks up three months after the events of season two, with the Turners struggling to keep their family whole, while coming to terms with the costs of Jericho’s return. Servant’s 10-episode third season launches January 21, followed by one new episode weekly, every Friday…
Sherri Shepherd had to miss out on guest hosting The Wendy Williams Show Monday due to undergoing emergency surgery on Sunday.
In a statement shared with People, a rep for Shepherd said, “Due to appendicitis, Sherri Shepherd underwent an emergency surgery yesterday. The procedure was successful and Ms. Shepherd is doing fine and resting.”
The statement continued, “She is absolutely devastated that she will not be able to guest host The Wendy Williams Show today, but she is following doctors orders and expected to make a full recovery. Thank you all for understanding and respecting her privacy.”
Michael Rapaport took over the hosting duties and addressed Shepherd’s absence during the show saying, “Sherri was supposed to host today, unfortunately, she had appendicitis.”
“She’s fine, she is fine, she had to go to the hospital last night for some emergency surgery,” he said. “She’s feeling fine today and she is resting. Get well soon Sherri, everybody loves you!”
Shepherd also took to social media to thank Rapaport for stepping in.
“If you watched the @WendyWilliams show today, you saw the news about my emergency surgery,” she wrote. “Thanks to @MichaelRapaport for stepping in for me at the last minute! And while I’m mad I didn’t meet WWE’s Naomi aka @trinity_fatu in person yet, Jeffrey did!”
Shepherd, who is scheduled to guest host again in late January, is just one to the guests hosts scheduled for The Wendy Williams Show while its original hosts Wendy Williams, focuses on her ongoing health issues.
In a statement last month, Williams said, “HOW YOU DOIN’? I MISS YOU ALL! As everyone knows, my health has been a hot topic. I’m making progress but it’s just one of those things that’s taking longer than we expected.”
(OXFORD, Mich.) — Oxford Community Schools announced it is closing its middle school Tuesday due to a social media threat.
The news comes days after the school district in Oxford, Michigan, decided to reopen its high school following last month’s deadly shooting.
“Today, December 13, we received an image from social media that included a specific threat directed at our middle school,” Oxford Community Schools said in a statement posted on its website Monday evening. “We immediately notified law enforcement, who are investigating.”
The school district said that out of an abundance of caution, it is canceling classes in all of the buildings on Tuesday.
“We plan to do a full security check of all our buildings while our security experts and law enforcement conduct their investigation,” the school district said. “Please talk to your students and remind them that all threats at Oxford Community Schools will be taken seriously, investigated by law enforcement, and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
Further details about the threat were not released.
The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office said it is working to determine the credibility of the threat to Oxford Middle School but confirmed that it was violent in nature.
“Dozens of threats have been made all across Oakland County in multiple school districts,” Oakland County Undersheriff Mike McCabe told ABC News in an email Tuesday. “It is out of control.”
Four students were killed and seven people were injured at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, after a gunman opened fire. Both the alleged gunman — a 15-year-old student — and his parents have since been arrested and charged.
As middle schoolers stay home on Tuesday, the suspect’s parents are scheduled to appear in court on charges of involuntary manslaughter.
Oxford Community Schools closed its schools after the fatal shooting. Once the school district reopened classroom doors, it did so with various rules in place, such as no backpacks allowed. It also placed law enforcement, private security, trained trauma specialists and additional staff in each building.
Oxford Community Schools superintendent Tim Throne said in a statement last Thursday that every school would also have trained therapy dogs through the rest of the school year.
At the time, Thorne also said that the district was monitoring “all outgoing content from students and staff” and would immediately raise “any concerning images, links to websites and shared items from Google Drive for our technology safety and security team.”
Threats can be reported anonymously to the State of Michigan’s Okay2Say tip line at 8-555-OK2SAY or OKAY2SAY@mi.gov.
(NEW YORK) — One year ago, on Dec. 14, 2020, Sandra Lindsay, an intensive care nurse from Northwell Health, became the first American to roll up her sleeve and receive a COVID-19 vaccine, following the green light from federal authorities.
“That day, when that needle pierced my arm, all I felt was this huge boulder, this weight just roll off my shoulders. I’m always optimistic, but my light got even brighter that day,” Lindsay told ABC News.
Lindsay’s image rapidly circulated across the country, a symbolic representation of the light at the end of the tunnel after the pandemic had forced families apart, shuttered businesses and schools and confined millions of Americans to their homes.
“I just felt hopeful for myself, for the entire country, for the world — that yes, the day that we’ve waited so long for healing is coming,” Lindsay said.
The country’s unprecedented creation and rollout of the vaccine was once considered a nearly impossible feat, given that vaccine development is often a long and arduous process, requiring years of regulatory and manufacturing hurdles to be overcome before it can be made available to the general public.
However, leaning on years of prior research on vaccine technology and with support from the federal government, the process was expedited, allowing for emergency authorization of the shots less than a year after work began.
“When the vaccine first became available a year ago, it seemed miraculous that a vaccine could be developed, rigorously tested in large clinical trials and ready to go in less than a year after the virus was identified,” Dr. Stephen Morse, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, told ABC News. “That’s an amazing accomplishment considering that we really didn’t have the infrastructure for a rapid national mass vaccination campaign when we started.”
Nevertheless, hundreds of millions of Americans are now inoculated — but tens of millions of others remain completely unvaccinated, an ongoing hurdle that experts say will likely result in the loss of tens of thousands of more lives.
Millions vaccinated but hundreds of thousands still lost to COVID-19
Nearly two years after the vaccine companies first raced to study the virus genome, around 600 million vaccine doses have been distributed and more than 200 million Americans — about 61% of the population — have been fully vaccinated.
“Overall, I think that the vaccine rollout has been a major success over the past year,” Dr. Cindy Prins, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Florida, said. “This took a lot of effort and flexibility, with public health professionals in different states tailoring the rollout to the needs of their own populations. … Looking back, I’m really in awe of what the U.S. has achieved in the past year.”
Pfizer, along with its partner BioNTech, was the first company to receive U.S. regulatory emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine. Reflecting on the one-year anniversary of the rollout, Pfizer CEO and Chairman Albert Bourla told ABC News he feels proud of what the company has accomplished over the last two years.
“I’m proud and proud for the people at Pfizer. I’m proud for everything that we’re able to do. They [made] the impossible possible, in the way that they manufactured, they brought the treatment, they brought the vaccine,” Bourla said, later adding, “We have the tools to control the situation and go back to our normal way of life.”
However, the road to vaccinate the country has not been easy.
Even with the Trump administration’s multi-billion dollar initiative, Operation Warp Speed, created to speed up the development, manufacturing and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, as well as a subsequent push from the Biden White House to acquire vaccines and get Americans vaccinated, there have been inconsistent ebbs and flows of interest in the shots.
Over the last year, an average 1.3 million shots — including first, second and third doses — have been administered every day. Comparatively, an average of more than 1,300 lives have been reported lost to the virus each day.
When the first COVID-19 vaccines were administered last December, many hoped the shots would herald a return to normalcy. However, even with vaccines, the U.S. continues to lose thousands of lives every week.
The one-year vaccine anniversary coincides with yet another pandemic sobering milestone: 800,000 Americans reported lost to the virus. Since the first shots went into arms a year ago, approximately half a million Americans have died of the virus.
Of those lost in the last year, just shy of half — 230,000 — have died since mid-April of 2021, when President Joe Biden announced that the vaccine was widely available to every American over the age of 18.
“Since the unvaccinated are most likely to get serious disease and end up in the hospital, vaccination is lifesaving,” Morse said. “This week, we will reach 800,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. At least a quarter of these deaths, and probably more, were preventable and didn’t have to happen if these people had been vaccinated.”
According to federal data compiled in September 2021, unvaccinated individuals had a 5.8 times greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19 and a 14 times greater risk of dying from it, as compared to vaccinated individuals.
Vaccine hesitancy an ongoing obstacle
Across the country, the issue of vaccine hesitancy remains an ongoing obstacle in the country’s fight against COVID-19.
About 93 million Americans remain completely unvaccinated, including 73 million Americans who are currently over the age of 5, and thus, eligible for a shot.
“I think we were unprepared for the ferocity of the negative response and how many were adamantly opposed,” Morse said.
According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released earlier this month, one in four adults remain unvaccinated, with about 14% saying they will “definitely not” get vaccinated. An additional 3% said they will only get the shot if they are required to do so for work, school or other activities.
In addition, despite the fact that all children above the age of 5 are now eligible to receive a shot, millions of youth remain unvaccinated.
About two-thirds of parents of elementary school-aged children are either holding off on getting their younger children vaccinated or refuse to do so, according to another recent KFF poll, conducted before the discovery of omicron.
Coronavirus infections among children continue to surge, currently accounting for about a quarter of all new cases.
“The challenge with having so many people remain unvaccinated is that the virus will circulate most efficiently among those people,” Prins said.
Issues of access still a roadblock for many Americans
Minority communities in the U.S. have faced disproportionate hardships in the pandemic. According to federal data, adjusted for age and population, the likelihood of death because of COVID-19 for Black, Latino and Native American people is approximately two to three times that of white people.
Vaccination rates among Black and brown Americans have notably improved since the first months of the pandemic, though some groups are still lagging behind in the rollout.
Despite representing 12.4% of the U.S. population, Black Americans currently account for 10.1% of those fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
“It’s OK to have questions, but go to trusted sites,” Lindsay, who has become a vaccine advocate, said. “Everyone knows that we are scarred from historical events. But you’ve got to put that aside. So much has happened since all those terrible things. Safeguards have been put into place to ensure that these terrible experiments don’t happen again.”
Issues of access, particularly in minority communities, remain a significant hurdle for many to get vaccinated.
“The access issues still exist, and I think that they can be even more challenging now, because a lot of the mass vaccine clinic and mobile clinic efforts have given way to vaccines being distributed by pharmacies or doctors’ offices,” Prins said. “There are many neighborhoods in the U.S. where people don’t have access to a pharmacy or physician’s office and may not have good transportation to be able to get to one easily.”
According to an ABC News’ analysis of pharmacy locations across the country conducted earlier this year, there are 150 counties where there is no pharmacy, and nearly 4.8 million people live in a county where there’s only one pharmacy for every 10,000 residents or more.
“While it is important to celebrate the incredible science, engineering and public health expertise that went into designing and delivering so many vaccines this past year, we must also remember the lack of equity both nationally and internationally in who has been vaccinated,” said Samuel Scarpino, managing director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation. “As we move forward, it is critical that we address the systemic barriers preventing more equitable delivery vaccines.”
‘Now is the time to take action’
Ultimately, experts concurred that the country’s vaccination efforts are far from over.
“If we had controlled the virus early on, we could have avoided this. More recently, if everyone had been vaccinated, we could have prevented many deaths and much suffering. Too late now, but still not too late to use the vaccine to soften the landing,” Morse said.
With the waning of immunity over time and the potential that the omicron variant could chip away at efficacy, experts are urging Americans to slow the rise of infections by getting vaccinated and boosted.
“The virus isn’t going anywhere,” Lindsay added. “Now is the time to take action, get informed and make the right decision for yourself and for your loved ones.”
ABC News’ Sony Salzman and Chris Donato contributed to this report.
The main cast of Spider-Man: No Way Home — Tom Holland, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zendaya and Jacob Batalon — were Monday’s guests on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! where they fielded some tough questions from Jimmy and even tougher ones from younger fans.
At one point during the interview, the cast answered prerecorded questions from kids about the Spider-Man movies.
One girl asked Zendaya which Spider-Man was her favorite — Holland, Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield — to which she replied, “Listen, I’m not gonna get in trouble, I’m not gonna pick a favorite, but…,” before pointing to Holland].”
The Euphoria star was also asked if she was mad about not being Spider-Woman, and said that she wasn’t, explaining, “If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that this superheroing isn’t always that easy, so I’m good.”
Another girl asked Holland how long a fight between him and Thor would last and who would win. “I hope it would be pretty quick and painless,” he answered, adding, “I think he would batter me, [Thor actor Chris Hemsworth] and Thor.”
While Tom and Zendaya have both seen the movie, though not the finished version, Cumberbatch opted to wait until the premiere, explaining, “I want to have an experience with an audience. That’s what we have been coming back to, is to be able to enjoy it with the community again.”
Spider-Man: No Way Home opens in theaters on Friday.
Britney Spears is letting the world know how she really feels about that 2003 interview with Diane Sawyer.
In a lengthy Instagram post, the 40-year-old pop star shared some harsh words for the journalist.
“Do we dare forget the Diane Sawyer interview in my apartment almost 20 years ago? What was with the ‘You’re in the wrong’ approach?? Geeze…and making me cry???” she said, according to screenshots obtained by People.
“Seriously though…I lived in my apartment for a year and never spoke to anyone,” Britney continued. “My manager put that woman in my home and made me talk to her on national television and she asked if I had a shopping problem!!! when did I have a shopping problem?”
The “Toxic” singer also referenced her split from Justin Timberlake, noting that the interview came just two days after their breakup.
“Something I never shared when I had that break up years ago was that I couldn’t talk afterward,” she said. “I was in shock…pretty lame of my dad and three men to show up at my door when I could hardly speak…two days later they put Diane Sawyer in my living room…they forced me to talk!”
Britney added that unlike before when she was “a baby,” she now knows how to speak up for herself.
Referring to one of the questions Sawyer asked during the early aughts interview, Britney wrote, “She said ‘a woman or a girl’ …I would like to say now, ‘Ma’am I’m a catholic slut!!! She can kiss my white a**.”
Reps for Sawyer did not immediately answer People‘s request for comment.
(NEW YORK) — In late November, Twitter rolled out a new privacy policy it said was aimed at preventing the misuse of media to harass, intimidate or reveal the identities of individuals — but, within days, accusations circulated that some users were abusing the new policy to remove legitimate media.
Under the policy, which was announced on Nov. 30, Twitter users could ask the company to remove photos and videos of themselves posted to the platform without their permission. Twitter said there were exceptions, including photos and videos taken at public events, such as protests, those taken by journalists, or those that were in the public interest.
However, Twitter soon “became aware of a significant amount of coordinated and malicious reports,” a spokesperson told ABC, “and unfortunately, our enforcement teams made several errors.”
“It was completely predictable,” said David Greene, civil liberties director and senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The policy was too broad and too imprecise, so it was very quickly abused, he said, adding, “I don’t think anyone was really surprised. Only surprised by how fast.”
The day after the policy was introduced, Sean Carmitchel, a freelance videographer in California, who covers protests, said he found himself locked out of his account. Two of his tweets had been flagged as violating the policy.
“It’s frankly a pretty boring tweet,” he told ABC News. “The thread itself was of an anti-mask rally which was counter-protested and ended up in a very brief shouting match. What’s funny is that I wasn’t even sure what the tweet was until I was able to get back on Twitter.”
Carmitchel said he doesn’t know who reported him. However, he showed ABC screenshots, which we verified, from right-wing accounts calling for him to be targeted.
The caption on a post on the messaging app Telegram read: “…NOW is the time to mass report for them posting piks [sic] of patriots without their consent and with the intent to cause harm! We need to get these doxxer accounts shut down! LET’S GO BRANDON!”
After Carmitchel was locked out of Twitter, a user on Gab, a rival social network, posted a screenshot of the Twitter notification Carmitchel received and wrote: “Keep going. Antifa ‘press’ are getting hit with their doxing riot videos.”
The Gab account owner also posted that he had “made over 50 reports myself today. Keep reporting all Antifa who post any media (video/photos). It’s time to stay on the offensive.”
In the wake of the introduction of Twitter’s policy, multiple other reports emerged of far-right activists misusing it.
Carmitchel’s challenged tweets contained videos he had filmed of small public protests in January and March. Once Twitter had ruled that the two tweets violated the new policy, Carmitchel said his account was suspended until he either deleted them or appealed the decision. Carmitchel, who relies on Twitter for his livelihood, said he chose to delete one and appeal the other. Carmitchel said his account was then restored without an explanation from Twitter.
Twitter has said that this new policy is an extension of existing rules preventing private information such as addresses or telephone numbers from being posted publicly. It is based on Right To Privacy laws in place around the world, including in the European Union, and extends those rules to all Twitter users whether they live in such jurisdictions or not.
The new policy is “a very egregious overreach” of regulation in the free-speech-versus-privacy debate, according to Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association.
Immediately after the introduction of the policy, he accused Twitter of misunderstanding U.S. law, tweeting that “a person photographed in a public place has NO reasonable expectation of privacy.” If Twitter chose to enforce the policy, it would “be undermining the ability to report newsworthy events by creating nonexistent privacy rights,” he said.
As a private company, Twitter can regulate speech on the platform however it wants, Osterreicher told ABC News, but he said the new policy has dangerous implications because it may embolden those who think they have no right to be photographed in public.
In the past, NPPA members have experienced resistance, often violent, to being photographed in public from both sides of the political spectrum, he said. Osterreicher told ABC he isn’t aware of left-wing abuse of the Twitter policy, but said: “We’re seeing it from the far right, but it could easily be from people on the left.”
Samir Jain, director of policy at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said he agreed. “There’s a chilling effect on speech on the platform,” he told ABC News. He said that account suspension is a significant penalty, and the threat creates a deterrent effect.
“If you know that particular photos of extremists result in a suspension, even if that’s eventually overturned, it will make you reluctant to post them even if they’re in the public interest,” Jain said.
Explaining why they see the new policy as necessary, a Twitter spokesperson told ABC about a photo of a rape victim that was shared widely in a country without Right to Privacy laws.
“This led to revelation of their identity,” the spokesperson said. “Twitter had no policy basis for enforcement, but the expansion of this rule would close that gap.”
Twitter does already have a “Non-consensual nudity” policy that allows it to remove some media, but with a much narrower scope. That policy applies only to explicit sexual images or videos.
Greene, Osterreicher and Carmitchel said the policy was aimed at an issue Twitter should address. But, Osterreicher said, it was easy to see how the policy would be misused. “How could they not have foreseen this?” he said.
“I am sensitive to having to fix online issues of doxing,” Carmitchel said, but this is having “the opposite effect — silencing people who are speaking out about perpetrators of crimes. I think we can all agree that there’s a difference between showing a photo of a rape victim and showing a video of someone assaulting a counter protestor.”
Carmitchel said the exemptions in Twitter’s policy — including videos shot by journalists or those in the public interest — were vague.
“Twitter is having to make value-based judgements, and not easy value-based judgements,” Greene said.
Twitter has said that after receiving a report “that particular media will be reviewed before any enforcement action is taken.” The company did not reply to a question from ABC about how many take-down requests it has received.
Osterreicher said it was a step too far and Greene said he thought the policy should have been more specific, perhaps just targeting sexual harassment, for example. He said he hoped Twitter would revise it.
“I wouldn’t want to see this replicated by other [social media] sites — certainly not as broadly as it was rolled out by Twitter,” he said. “I think it is too subject to manipulation, involves too many impossible decisions.”
There should be a clear and timely appeals process, according to Jain, and part of that is clearer guidelines and appropriate training for Twitter moderators.
For Carmitchel, the tweet he appealed is back online, but the tweet he deleted is, of course, gone.
A Twitter spokesperson did not reply to ABC’s request for comment on Cartmitchel’s case, but acknowledged errors were made.
“We’ve corrected those errors and are undergoing an internal review to make certain that this policy is used as intended — to curb the misuse of media to harass or intimidate private individuals,” the spokesperson said.
