Zoe Saldaña stars as Neytiri in ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash.’ (20th Century Studios)
We see you, Avatar: Fire and Ash, at the top of the box office.
The third film in James Cameron‘s epic sci-fi series opens at #1 with an $88 million haul in its debut weekend, Box Office Mojo reports.
While certainly a good start, Avatar: Fire and Ash has a ways to go if it hopes to catch up to its predecessors. The 20th Century Studios franchise has spawned the highest and third-highest grossing films of all time in the original 2009 movie and its 2022 sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, respectively.
Coming in second at the weekend box office is the animated Bible adaptation David, which brought in just over $22 million. It was followed by two other new releases: The Housemaid, starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney, took #3 with $18.95 million, and The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants, notched #4 with $16 million.
The Disney sequel Zootopia 2 added an extra $14.5 million to round out the top five.
Here are the top 10 films at the box office:
1. Avatar: Fire and Ash — $88 million 2. David — $22.017 million 3. The Housemaid — $18.95 million 4. The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants — $16 million 5. Zootopia 2 — $14.5 million 6. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 — $7.25 million 7. Wicked: For Good — $4.3 million 8. Marty Supreme — $875,000 9. Hamnet — $850,000 10. Now You See Me: Now You Don’t — $600,000
Disney is the parent company of 20th Century Studiosand ABC News.
In a screen grab from a video released by Secretary Kristi Noem, the US Coast Guard apprehends an oil tanker that was last docked in Venezuela, on Dec. 20, 2025. (@Se_Noem)
(WASHINGTON) — A U.S. official tells ABC News that the U.S. Coast Guard is “in active pursuit of a sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela’s illegal sanctions evasion.”
“It is flying a false flag and under a judicial seizure order,” the official added.
The action comes after the U.S. Coast Guard seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on Saturday, just ten days after the seizure of a sanctioned oil tanker.
Unlike that first vessel seized, the tanker seized Saturday is not on any sanctions list maintained by the U.S., EU, U.K. or U.N., according to Kpler, a data firm that tracks transportation and logistics networks.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed Saturday’s operation in a post on social media, saying that the Coast Guard “apprehended” the tanker with support from the Department of Defense in a pre-dawn action. She said the tanker had last made port in Venezuela.
“The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco terrorism in the region,” Noem said in the post. “We will find you, and we will stop you.”
Last week, President Trump threatened to impose what he called “a total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers” traveling to and from Venezuela – a move that could devastate the Venezuelan economy, since oil exports are the lifeblood of President Nicholas Maduro’s regime.
In response to Trump’s announcement, Maduro said Venezuela would continue to trade oil and that Trump’s “intention” is regime change.
“This will just not happen, never, never, never – Venezuela will never be a colony of anything or anyone, never,” Maduro said.
The U.S. has amassed the largest military presence in the Caribbean in decades, including the world’s largest aircraft carrier.
The Pentagon also has so far struck 28 alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing at least 100 people, without providing any public evidence that the boats were carrying illegal drugs or identifying those killed.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi’s daughter Kiana Rahmani, son Ali Rahmani, and chairman of the Nobel Committee Norwegian Berit Reiss Andersen attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony at Oslo City Hall on December 10, 2023 in Oslo, Norway. (Rune Hellestad/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — More than a thousand political, social, and cultural activists signed a petition condemning the “violent arrest” of the Iranian Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi and others allegedly by Iranian security forces in the northwestern city of Mashhad earlier this month.
Mohammadi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023, was arrested as she attended a memorial ceremony for Khosrow Alikordi, a lawyer who had been found dead in his office.
Dozens of other attendees were also detained, according to a statement released by Mohammadi’s foundation. The ceremony had turned into a scene of protest against the regime as videos show some of the attendees shouted slogans, including “death to the dictator” and “long live Iran.”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has served as the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader since 1989. Mohammadi has been of prominent and vocal critics of Khamenei’s policies, accusing the regime of human rights abuses.
Mohammadi, who had campaigned against sharia-based laws including the mandatory hijab and executions, had been imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin prison until December 2024. She was released on medical leave, her lawyer said at the time.
Among those who were arrested this month were political activists including Sepideh Gholian, Hasti Amiri, Pouran Nazemi, Aliyeh Motallebzadeh — who have been arrested, prosecuted or jailed for their activism before — and Javad Alikordi, a brother of the deceased lawyer.
The day after Mohammadi and others were arrested, Taghi Rahmani, Mohammadi’s husband, said in a post on his X account that “apparently” the intelligence forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps” has been behind the arrests.
Alikordi who used to advocate the cases of families of protesters in Iran before his death, had been handed one year in prison and two years of exile last year due to his advocacy of political prisoners. Despite official announcements indicating that his death was due to a heart attack, some attorneys and activists suggested possible Islamic Republic involvement.
The petition’s signatories asked for immediate release of those arrested.
“We condemn the violent arrest and the beating of our loved ones present at the memorial… Holding memorial and mourning ceremonies for the deceased is an inseparable part of fundamental human and civil rights,” the petition reads.
“We call for the immediate and unconditional release of all detainees and emphasize their fundamental right to access phone calls, family visits, independent legal counsel, and medical care,” it continued.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee also called on the Iranian authorities “to immediately clarify Mohammadi’s whereabouts, ensure her safety and integrity, and to release her without conditions,” following her arrest.
Clarifying the importance of the petition on the release of Mohammadi and other arrestees, Mina Akbari, Iranian documentary filmmaker and activist wrote in a post on her Instagram account that it is not only a call on the release of those arrested, but its importance is also “in the composition of its signatories.”
“This statement is not just a protest against an arrest, but a demonstration of unprecedented unity in the heart of the deep political and intellectual divisions in Iran today,” Akbari said.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) walks through the Senate subway on December 09, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Republican Sen. Rand Paul on Sunday criticized President Donald Trump’s military mission off Venezuela’s coast, calling the seizures of multiple oil tankers in the Caribbean Sea “a provocation and a prelude to war.”
“I’m not for confiscating these liners. I’m not for blowing up these boats of unarmed people that are suspected of being drug dealers. I’m not for any of this,” Paul told ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
Paul also described the administration’s policy of handling suspected drug traffickers as “bizarre and contradictory.”
“And then why is the former president [Juan Orlando] Hernandez of Honduras, who was in jail for 45 years, why is he released?” Paul asked. “So, some narco-terrorists are really OK and other narco-terrorists we’re going to blow up. And then some of them, if they’re not designated as a terrorist, we might arrest them.”
Here are more highlights from Paul’s interview:
On Erika Kirk and Marco Rubio’s 2028 Vance endorsement Karl: Is JD Vance the heir apparent here?
Paul: I think there needs to be representatives in the Republican Party who still believe international trade is good, who still believe in free market capitalism, who still believe in low taxes. See, it used to separate conservatives and liberals that conservatives thought it was a spending problem. We didn’t want more revenue. We wanted less spending. But now all these pro terror protectionists, they love taxes, and so they tax, tax, tax, and then they brag about all the revenue coming in. That has never been a conservative position. So I’m going to continue to try to lead a conservative free market wing of the party, and we’ll see where things lead over time.
Karl: And that’s not JD Vance.
Paul: No.
On retaliatory strikes in Syria Paul: You know, it’s hard not to want to hit back when they kill some of our own. But I would like to go back, really, to the first Trump administration when he said he didn’t want the troops there. There’s like 900 troops, maybe a thousand, maybe 1,500. They’re not enough to fight a war. They’re not enough to be an effective strategic force. What they are is a target and a tripwire.
So we’ve done this retaliatory strike. Now, now, Donald Trump ought to do what Donald Trump proposed in the first administration, what Ronald Reagan did after the 1983 bomb. He left. There’s no reason for us to be in Syria. We need to leave Syria and not be a trip wire to getting back involved in another war.
On the potential for a one-year extension for ACA subsidies Paul: Look, we have health care in our country for poor people. It’s called Medicaid. All of the rest of this stuff has not worked. Obamacare has been a failure. President Obama said it would bring premiums down. Premiums gone through the roof. Every time we give more subsidies, the premiums go higher. I have a plan that says everybody in this marketplace, and it’s only about 4%, everybody in this marketplace should be able to go to Amazon or Costco or Sam’s Club and as a group, a large group — millions of people in the group — negotiate with Big Insurance to bring prices down. It’s the only proposal out there that — that has a chance of bringing prices down.
Musical guest Cher, host Ariana Grande and Bowen Yang during promos on Thursday, December 18, 2025 (Rosalind O’Connor/NBC)
Ariana Grande returned to host Saturday Night Live for a third time on Dec. 20, and her appearance doubled as a farewell lap for her Wicked co-star and departingSNL cast member Bowen Yang.
Grande kicked off the show by poking fun at herself, noting that she’d last hosted about a year ago. “So many people have been asking me if I’m going to revisit any of my sketches from last time, like Domingo,” she said. “But I told them, ‘I don’t think so. When something is perfect, it doesn’t need a sequel.’ That’s why I just finished filming Meet the Parents 4.”
Grande did revisit one of her past characters, though: Antonio, the traumatized young castrato. She dressed up as him to introduce the second performance from musical guest Cher.The iconic singer stuck to holiday fare for her first appearance on the show since 1987, singing her 2023 hit “DJ Play a Christmas Song,” and then a cover of Chuck Berry‘s “Run Rudolph Run.”
The rest of Grande’s monologue was a parody of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You,” with lyrics changed to reflect the difficulty of buying Christmas presents for acquaintances.
Her other sketches included one where she playedMacaulay Culkin‘s Home Alone character Kevin McCallister. She also showed off her impersonation skills by singing as both Katy Perry and Celine Dion in a sketch called “Random Holiday Duets Spectacular.“
Grande and Cher came together in the final sketch to bid goodbye to Yang, who played a Delta employee doing his final shift serving eggnog in the airport lounge. Ari played his wife and Cher played his boss, and they sang “Please Come Home for Christmas” together.
“I just feel so lucky that I ever got to work here,” Yang said in character, choking back tears. “And I just wanted to enjoy it for a little bit longer. Especially the people. I’ve loved every single person who works here. Because they’ve done so much for me.”
(NEW YORK) — Repeat atmospheric rivers continue to point relentless streams of rain and gusty wind toward the West Coast.
The current system over the Northwest has diminished, but it is still raining in Washington and Northern California and more significant precipitation is on the way later this weekend.
Another Flood Watch is in effect for parts of western Washington and western Oregon until Saturday afternoon for lingering flooding and some spotty rain that could add to it.
The ground remains saturated in these areas and streams remain elevated. This will lower the threshold for additional flooding in the days ahead.
The next atmospheric river will focus primarily on northern California this time, beginning later Saturday and continuing through Sunday.
A Flood Watch is up for much of Northern California, including Redding and Sacramento. Some areas could get up to 4 to 6+ inches.
The extreme Pacific Northwest won’t see as much rain but won’t be completely spared, with a widespread 1 to 2 inches likely. Mountain snow in the Cascades will also come in the order of feet.
On Christmas Eve Wednesday, another coastal storm will set its sights on the West Coast, but this time Southern California will bear the brunt.
Places like Los Angeles and San Diego are facing the threat of over 4 inches of rain, as well as gusty winds. The Sierra Nevada mountains are also looking at 2 to 4 feet of snow, which would render many mountain passes impassible.
Meanwhile, the Northeast has quieted down after being battered by rain and wind on Friday. This made life difficult for those beginning to travel for the holidays.
Many spots saw wind gusts greater than 60 mph, knocking down trees and power lines as well as causing flight delays.
In the storm’s wake, chilly but quieter weather has moved in. Winds have also eased, making for improved travel conditions.
Much of the holiday week will be well above average temperature-wise across the country, with dry and quiet conditions apart from the West Coast.
Dozens of cities are facing record high temperatures across the center of the country. This list includes St. Louis, Kansas City, Tulsa, Amarillo, Sioux Falls, Amarillo and Albuquerque.
Luigi Mangione attends a suppression of evidence hearing in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan Criminal Court on December 18, 2025 in New York City. (Shannon Stapleton-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Attorneys for Luigi Mangione are arguing the death penalty should be suspended from his federal murder case due to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s alleged “conflict of interest,” according to a new court filing.
In an overnight court filing, defense attorneys accused Bondi of failing to disclose her work at the lobbying firm Ballard Partners, which “lists United Health Group as a regular client,” and “that she personally financially profited from Ballard’s lucrative relationship with UHG.”
Mangione is accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson in New York City in December 2024. He has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that accused him of stalking and murdering Thompson and has been fighting the government’s notice of intent to seek the death penalty if he’s convicted.
The defense called it a conflict of interest that should have stopped Bondi from directing prosecutors to seek the death penalty.
“When Ms. Bondi left Ballard Partners to become the Attorney General in 2025, the very first defendant she personally selected to be executed was the man accused of killing the CEO of her former client,” the defense filing argued.
“The Attorney General’s financial connection to UHG represents a conflict of interest that should have caused her to recuse herself from making any decisions on this case,” attorneys for Mangione wrote.
The defense argued the pursuit of the death penalty violates Mangione’s due process rights.
“The Attorney General’s past and present financial interest in Ballard Partners, which continues to lobby the government on behalf of UHG and UHC, implicates Mr. Mangione’s due process rights because the very person empowered to seek his death has a financial stake in the case she is prosecuting,” the filing said.
The United States Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York customarily declines to comment on ongoing cases and is expected to file a written response to the defense argument.
Attorneys for Mangione have been fighting to exclude evidence from his forthcoming murder trial in state court. The new defense filing in the federal case used some of the testimony from that suppression hearing to argue the evidence should also be excluded from Mangione’s federal case.
The defense argued the search of Mangione’s backpack was illegal because, at the time, he was handcuffed, separated from his backpack by several feet and was surrounded by Altoona police officers.
“There was no reasonable possibility that Mr. Mangione could have evaded the numerous officers surrounding him and opened his zippered backpack while rear cuffed. Accordingly, law enforcement’s search of Mr. Mangione’s backpack at the McDonald’s cannot be justified as a search incident to a lawful arrest,” the defense wrote.
The pretrial hearing for the state case concluded on Thursday. New York Judge Gregory Carro gave the defense until Jan. 29 to make its final argument about what evidence should be excluded in writing. Prosecutors have until March 5 to respond. The defense then has two weeks to submit a response.
Carro said he expected to issue his decision about what, if any, evidence to exclude on May 18, at which point he would also set a date for trial.
Esa engineer Michaela Benthaus, photographed in the anteroom of the Munich office of the German Press Agency dpa. (Felix Hörhager/picture alliance via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Blue Origin made history Saturday, sending for the first time a person who uses a wheelchair past the Kármán line, an internationally recognized boundary of space that’s 62 miles above Earth.
Michaela “Michi” Benthaus, who suffered a spinal cord injury after a mountain biking accident in 2018, and her five teammates, who nicknamed themselves the “Out of the Blue” crew, spent several minutes in microgravity before safely returning to Earth with the assistance of parachutes and a retro thrust system. The entire mission lasted about 10 minutes.
During the webcast, Blue Origin said that the launch tower, equipped with an elevator, and the crew capsule did not require any modifications for Benthaus, as they were originally designed to accommodate individuals with disabilities and reduced mobility.
Blue Origin also partners with AstroAccess, “a project dedicated to promoting disability inclusion in human space exploration by paving the way for disabled astronauts,” that is sponsored by the nonprofit SciAccess, Inc.
Benthaus, an aerospace and mechatronics engineer at the European Space Agency, told ABC News this week she was eager to participate, especially because she feels as if she has waited “very long for it.”
“I am excited to show the world that also wheelchair users can go on a suborbital flight, and I’m really happy that Blue Origin is supporting this,” Benthaus told ABC News on Wednesday.
In a Blue Origin profile video of Benthaus shown prior to the launch, she said, “I think there’s was not like this one moment when I realized my dream of going to space was not over.”
“I really, really figured out how inaccessible our world still is and how sometimes socially excluding a wheelchair can be even though now one is actively excluding you,” she added.
In a statement, Blue Origin said the “crew exemplifies the breadth and diversity of people who can now experience spaceflight, from engineers and scientists to entrepreneurs, teachers, and investors from all over the world. Each brings their unique perspective and passion for exploration. Michi’s flight is particularly meaningful, demonstrating that space is for everyone, and we are proud to help her achieve this dream.”
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Coast Guard is currently interdicting a sanctioned vessel off the coast of Venezuela in international waters of the Caribbean Sea, according to three U.S. officials.
No further details were available as to the name of the ship or where exactly the operation is taking place.
This is the second sanctioned vessel seized by the United States. On Dec. 10, an elite U.S. Coast Guard tactical operations team, with the support of U.S. Navy helicopters, boarded and seized The Skipper, an oil tanker sanctioned for being part of an illicit oil operation involving Venezuela.
Reuters was first to report that a second sanctioned vessel is currently being seized by the Coast Guard.
(NEW YORK) — The No. 2 official in the Justice Department told ABC News in an interview Friday that there has been “no effort” to redact President Donald Trump’s name from the release of files stemming from federal investigations into convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked Friday in an interview by ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas whether every document that mentions Trump will be released as the government continues its rollout of hundreds of thousands of files in the coming weeks.
“Assuming it’s consistent with the law, yes,” Blanche said. “So there’s no effort to hold anything back because there’s the name Donald J. Trump or anybody else’s name, Bill Clinton’s name, Reid Hoffman’s name. There’s no effort to hold back or not hold back because of that and — and so — but again, we’re not, we’re not redacting the names of famous men and women that are associated with Epstein.”
When directly pressed over whether there’s been any order to DOJ personnel to redact materials involving Trump, Blanche rejected any such suggestion and accused Democratic lawmakers of using selective disclosures from Epstein’s estate to present Trump in a negative light.
“President Trump has certainly said from the beginning that he expects all files that can be released to be released and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Blanche said.
Blanche sat for the interview just hours before the department released its first tranche of thousands of files, which contained little information related to Trump and instead included images of former President Bill Clinton without context, which were highlighted on social media by DOJ and White House officials.
A spokesperson for Clinton accused the department of selectively disclosing the pictures in a statement and denied that they showed any wrongdoing by the former president.
“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday only to protect Bill Clinton,” Clinton’s spokesperson Angel Urena said Friday. “They can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton.”
“Everyone, especially MAGA, expects answers, not scapegoats,” the spokesperson said.
In the ABC News interview, Blanche further sought to defend the department’s decision not to release the entirety of its files subject to disclosure under the bill signed into law by Trump, which gave the Justice Department a 30-day deadline to release the entirety of its Epstein investigative files.
“I did not say that all the files will not be released, I said all the files will not be released today,” Blanche said when asked about an interview he gave earlier Friday to Fox News. “And the law is very specific that the Department of Justice is required to make sure that we protect victims. And as recently as Wednesday, we learned of additional victim names, and so we’ve received over 1,200 names of victims and their family members since we started this process. And so there’s an established precedent that in a situation like this, where it’s in essence impossible for us to comply with the law today, that we comply with the law, consistent with the law.”
When asked whether the public should be confident that Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal defense attorney, would act in the public’s interest over Trump, Blanche said the American people should look at what the department ultimately releases.
“Your confidence should be in the fact that for decades, lots of people have been trying to go after President Trump falsely, and when it came to the Epstein saga, it’s exactly the same story.”
Blanche added that the process to make redactions to the documents, “was not Attorney General [Pam] Bondi, [FBI] Director Patel, Todd Blanche going through and coding millions of documents and saying, ‘yes, no, yes, no.’ You have multiple, dozens and dozens of the most highly trained lawyers in the Department of Justice working for the National Security Division. These are career lawyers engaged in this process.”
Blanche defends prison transfer of Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell
In the interview, Blanche also defended the department’s controversial move over the summer to transfer Epstein’s convicted associate Ghislaine Maxwell to a lower security prison facility just days after he sat for an interview with her over two days in Florida.
In an interview released by Vanity Fair earlier this week, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles denied that Trump was involved in the decision and said he disapproved of Maxwell’s transfer.
While Blanche said he was “not permitted” to talk about security for individual inmates, he said Maxwell was facing “multiple threats” that warranted her being moved to a separate low-security facility in Texas.
“At the time that she was moved, there were multiple threats against her life, and like happens all the time at the Bureau of Prisons when that happens, one of the things that one of the options available to the warden and the security system within the Bureau of Prisons is to move the inmate,” Blanche said. “She’s not released. She’s in federal prison.”
Blanche further denied Maxwell was receiving any preferential treatment in the new facility, despite recent whistleblower disclosures released by congressional Democrats.
Blanche says investigations into Comey, James will continue
ABC News separately asked Blanche whether the department plans to continue pursuing prosecutions against two of Trump’s top political targets, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey after a federal judge tossed their indictments in November on the basis that a Trump-installed prosecutor was unlawfully appointed.
Two separate federal grand juries in the past two weeks have rejected the department’s efforts to re-indict James on mortgage fraud charges and a separate federal judge in Washington, D.C., has restricted prosecutors from accessing key evidence in their probe of Comey.
Blanche confirmed the department’s investigation into Comey “is continuing” and said it was “not a mystery” that DOJ plans to still seek charges against him and rejected any suggestion the prosecution was “vindictive.”
James and Comey have denied all wrongdoing.
When asked about the interview that Wiles, the White House chief of staff, gave to Vanity Fair in which she candidly appeared to concede the DOJ’s prosecution of James was “retribution,” Blanche again defended the department’s actions.
“Because we’re looking at the evidence, we’re investigating them, investigating the cases. We have law enforcement, career law enforcement, doing the investigations are being presented to a grand jury in the normal course,” Blanche said.
ABC News has previously reported that career prosecutors on both the James and Comey investigations recommended prosecutors not pursue either indictment based on what they considered the lack of sufficient evidence to secure a conviction.
