Entertainment
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will return to air Tuesday, Disney says, nearly a week after it was pulled
After being pulled off the air nearly a week ago, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will return on Tuesday, The Walt Disney Company announced Monday.
The late-night show had been “pre-empted indefinitely” last week following comments Kimmel made on the show in response to the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
In a statement Monday, The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, said Kimmel’s show was suspended “to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” adding that some of the host’s comments were “ill-timed and thus insensitive.”
“We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday,” Disney said.
Kimmel had not yet commented on Monday on his show’s return.
The late-night host made the remarks in his monologue on Sept. 15, saying: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” He also mocked Mr. Trump’s reaction to the shooting.
Before Disney announced last week that Kimmel’s show was “pre-empted indefinitely,” Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr called the remarks “some of the sickest conduct possible,” and said there was a “path forward for suspension over this.”
“The FCC is going to have remedies we could look at,” he said during a podcast interview, telling host Benny Johnson: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
Kimmel faced criticism from conservatives over his comments. Mr. Trump last week had congratulated ABC for “finally having the courage to do what had to be done.”
Carr’s comments on Kimmel drew pushback on First Amendment grounds, with the FCC’s sole Democrat-appointed commissioner, Anna Gomez, arguing the agency had used Kimmel’s “inopportune joke as a pretext to punish speech it disliked.” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas also blasted Carr, calling his pressure on ABC “dangerous as hell” and “right out of Goodfellas.”
ABC’s announcement last week came after media giant Nexstar announced that it would pre-empt Kimmel’s show indefinitely on all its stations over Kimmel’s remarks. Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, said the comments were “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located.”
Nexstar owns and operates more than 200 stations nationwide, including more than two dozen ABC affiliates. Nexstar has a deal pending to purchase Tegna, a smaller rival, for $6.2 billion, and needs the Federal Communications Commission to approve it. A Nexstar spokesperson told CBS News last week that the decision was “made unilaterally by the senior executive team at Nexstar, and they had no communication with the FCC or any government agency prior to making that decision.”
Another major station owner, Sinclair Broadcast Group, also said last week that it was pulling Kimmel’s show.
“Regardless of ABC’s plans for the future of the program, Sinclair intends not to return ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ to our air until we are confident that appropriate steps have been taken to uphold the standards expected of a national broadcast platform,” Sinclair said last week in a statement.
Joe Walsh and
contributed to this report.
Meta’s messenger application, WhatsApp, has launched an update introducing 2026 stickers just ahead of the New Year.
WhatsApp stated that its festive update — including interactive video call effects, message reactions, and a sticker pack for status updates — is designed to help users celebrate and connect creatively.
The update also comes with special Lottie sticker, introduced for both group and individual chats, adding a festive tone to conversations.
Users will also be able to place the 2026 sticker inside status layouts, allowing them to highlight the 2026 transition with photos or videos.
Other features include new video call effects, letting users tap the effects icon to add fireworks, confetti, and star animations during calls.
WhatsApp, which handles 100 billion messages and two billion calls regularly, has launched such festive stickers for the first time to make its updates more visually appealing.
The messaging platform has also provided tips for smoother New Year’s planning in group chats, allowing users to create events and pin them to the top of the chat to keep everyone on the same page.
WhatsApp said these features were aimed at helping users stay close no matter where they are, making it easier to connect and celebrate together.
China will on January 1 launch an “action plan” for boosting management and operations of its digital currency, a deputy governor of the country’s central bank said Monday.
“The future digital yuan will be a modern digital payment and circulation means issued and circulated within the financial system,” People’s Bank of China (PBoC) Deputy Governor Lu Lei wrote in Financial News, a media outlet under the central bank.
In the next step towards that goal, a “new generation” arrangement for digital yuan will be launched on January 1, Lu said, encompassing a “measurement framework, management system, operating mechanism and ecosystem”.
The “action plan” will see banks pay interest on balances held by clients in digital yuan—a move to incentivise broader adoption of the currency.
The plan also includes a proposal to establish an international digital yuan operations centre in the eastern financial hub of Shanghai, the report said.
Monetary authorities around the world have in recent years been exploring ways to digitalise currencies, propelled by a boom in online payments during the pandemic and the increased popularity of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
The PBoC has been working on a digital currency since 2014 and has been testing the use of a “digital yuan” or “e-CNY” in various pilot programmes.
Consumers across the country already widely use mobile and online payments, but the digital yuan could allow the central bank — rather than the big tech giants — access to more data and control over payments.
Simu Liu reflected on his latest spy project, The Copenhagen Test and what made him drawn towards it.
Liu plays a new-future intelligence agent, Alexander Hale, whose brain gets hacked allowing unknown forces to see and hear everything he does.
In a conversation with the Deadline, the Marvel star discussed his new sci-fi thriller series in detail.
“I think on the one hand, it was definitely the premise and the world building, just dealing with themes of surveillance and technology,” he began. “I feel like a lot of those things are really just topical and relevant today.”
He continued, “And so, I think there was that. I really appreciated Thomas’ take on this 5 minutes into the future, set in this world of intelligence. And just getting to play a super spy, I think is something that I’ve always wanted to do.”
Liu went on to talk about the relatability of the role saying, “And then on the other hand, it was the cultural specificity. I really was struck by Alexander’s backstory in the script and feeling like he was somebody who, in a fully three dimensional ways, kind of embodied what it was like for someone from an immigrant family to be in a situation or to work in a situation, an environment where they’re constantly being second-guessed, constantly being overlooked and underestimated.”
“I think, for myself, it’s something that a lot of people who grew up in those immigrant families, something that I think resonates a lot.” He said.
The Copenhagen Test was released on December 27.
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