December 25, 2022

“Avatar: The Way of Water” sailed to the top of the box office in its second weekend, bringing in what studios estimate Sunday will be a strong $56 million in North America — a sign that the sequel may stay afloat into the new year and approach the massive expectations that met its release. James Cameron’s digital extravaganza for 20th Century Studios has made $253.7 million domestically in its first 10 days of release, compared to $212.7 million in the same stretch for 2009’s first “Avatar,” which would go on to become the highest-grossing film of all time. While Cameron’s

China’s Zhejiang, a big industrial province near Shanghai, is battling around a million new daily COVID-19 infections, a number expected to double in the days ahead, the provincial government said Sunday. Despite a record surge of cases nationwide, China reported no COVID deaths on the mainland for the five days through Saturday, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday. Citizens and experts have called for more accurate data as infections surged after Beijing made sweeping changes to a zero-COVID policy that had put hundreds of millions of its citizens under relentless lockdowns and battered the world’s second-largest