Hollywood star Melissa McCarthy has responded by saying, “I win the day”, after Barbra Streisand was criticised for asking her if she had taken a weight-loss drug.
Bridesmaids star McCarthy had posted an image of herself on Instagram at a charity gala alongside US director Adam Shankman on Monday.
Streisand, the legendary singer and actress, replied in a comment below: “Give him my regards, did you take Ozempic?”
The drug can only be prescribed for patients with Type 2 diabetes and is not licensed as a weight-loss treatment in the UK or US.
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In a short video shared on Instagram, hours after the apology, McCarthy said: “The takeaway: Barbra Streisand knows I exist, she reached out to me and she thought I looked good. I win the day.”
McCarthy was holding up a magazine with Streisand on the cover in the video, which was filmed at the premiere of the new Netflix movie Unfrosted, in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
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The 53-year-old will appear in the film alongside Jerry Seinfield and Hugh Grant when it is released this month.
McCarthy was earlier asked by a photographer in Los Angeles what she thought of Streisand’s comments and replied: “I think Barbra is a treasure, and I love her.”
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Image: Melissa McCarthy poses at the premiere of the Netflix film Unfrosted. Pic: AP
‘I forgot the world is reading’
Streisand, 82, had said in her apology earlier on Tuesday: “I went on Instagram to see the photos we’d posted of the beautiful flowers I’d received for my birthday.
“Below them was a photo of my friend Melissa McCarthy, who I sang with on my Encore album.
“She looked fantastic! I just wanted to pay her a compliment, I forgot the world is reading!”
Image: Barba Streisand apologised for the comment. File pic: Reuters
In response to Streisand’s original comment referring to Ozempic, one social media user wrote: “Omg somebody please teach Barbra Streisand how to send a DM.”
Another wrote: “Omg…this comment from Barbra Streisand. Yes, it’s real, but she’s deleted it.”
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Ozempic works by suppressing the appetite and lengthens the amount of time food stays in the stomach, leading to weight loss – at least for as long as you carry on taking it.
It has been banned as a treatment for obesity in the UK due to high demand for the drug causing a global shortage.
Numerous Hollywood stars are rumoured to have used Ozempic to lose weight – but just a handful of celebrities have admitted it publicly.
Stephen Fry was prescribed the drug in the US “years ago” and said earlier this year that side effects included vomiting up to five times a day.
Actors, directors and celebrity friends have paid tribute to Val Kilmer, after he died aged 65.
The California-born star of Top Gun, Batman and Heat died of pneumonia on Tuesday night in Los Angeles, his daughter Mercedes told the Associated Press.
She said Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 but later recovered.
Tributes flooded in after reports broke of the actor’s death, with No Country For Old Men star Josh Brolin among the first to share their memories.
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2:49
Watch: Val Kilmer in his most iconic roles
He wrote on Instagram: “See ya, pal. I’m going to miss you. You were a smart, challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker. There’s not a lot left of those.
“I hope to see you up there in the heavens when I eventually get there. Until then, amazing memories, lovely thoughts.”
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Kyle Maclachlan, who co-starred with Kilmer in the 1991 biopic The Doors, wrote on social media: “You’ll always be my Jim. See you on the other side my friend.”
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Michael Mann, who directed Kilmer in 1995’s Heat, also paid tribute in a statement, saying: “I always marvelled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Val’s possessing and expressing character.
“After so many years of Val battling disease and maintaining his spirit, this is tremendously sad news.”
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Heat co-star Danny Trejo also called Kilmer “a great actor, a wonderful person, and a dear friend of mine” on Instagram.
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Cher, who once dated the actor, said on X that “U Were Funny, crazy, pain in the ass, GREAT FRIEND… BRILLIANT as Mark Twain, BRAVE here during ur sickness”.
Lifelong friend and director of Twixt, Francis Ford Coppola said: “Val Kilmer was the most talented actor when in his High School, and that talent only grew greater throughout his life.
“He was a wonderful person to work with and a joy to know – I will always remember him.”
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The Top Gun account on X also said it was remembering Kilmer, who starred as Iceman in both the 1986 original and 2022 sequel, and “whose indelible cinematic mark spanned genres and generations”.
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No one expected penguins to bear the brunt of Liberation Day.
But among the barrage of tariffs set out by Donald Trump, the US also took aim at uninhabited islands, talked up American beef and turned its nose up at plastic eggs.
Here is what you might have missed in the US leader’s expansive announcement.
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5:07
What the numbers behind Trump’s tariffs really mean
Tiny territories hit with big tariffs
At first glance, newly imposed tariffs on countries such as China, the European Union, India and the UK stand out – ranging from 34% to 10% respectively.
But the president also imposed tariffs on dozens of tiny territories – some of which don’t even have human inhabitants.
One of those was the Heard and McDonald Islands, an external territory of Australia in the Antarctic that is inhabited only by penguins and seals.
Image: All of Australia’s external territories that have been hit with US tariffs
Despite having no human residents – or imports and exports – the island now faces a 10% tariff for any goods bound for the US.
According to export data from the World Bank, the US imported $1.4m (£1m) of mainly “machinery and electrical” products from Heard Island and McDonald Islands in 2022.
Australian territory Norfolk Island, a volcanic island 600 miles east of Queensland, was also hit with a hefty 29% tariff on exports to the US. That’s much higher than mainland Australia, which had a 10% tariff imposed.
The news was met with confusion by some of Norfolk Island’s 2,188 residents.
“Norfolk Island is a little dot in the world,” Richard Cottle, owner of a concrete-mixing business on the island, said on Thursday.
“We don’t export anything. It was just a mistake”.
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3:27
How is the world reacting to Trump’s tariffs?
Although the island does ship a modest amount of Kentia palm seeds abroad, this is typically worth less than $1m (£760,000) a year, with the products mostly going to Europe.
According to US government data, America has recorded trade deficits with Norfolk Island for the past three years.
Other tiny nations and territories were also hit with 10% tariffs, including Tokelau, a dependent territory of New Zealand, with a population of around 1,600 people, and the Cocos Islands, another territory of Australia, with a population of around 600 people.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters he had no explanation for the tariffs, calling them “unexpected” and “a bit strange”.
Image: We have a feeling the seals won’t welcome Trump for his next holiday to the Heard Island… Pic: AP
‘Our beef is beautiful, theirs is weak’
After announcing a 20% tariff against the European Union, Mr Trump’s secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick spoke to Fox News to try to explain what was behind the decision.
In a brief but bizarre rant, Mr Lutnick spoke about the bloc’s ban on imported chicken from the US.
“I mean European Union won’t take chicken from America,” he said.
“They will take lobsters from America… they hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak.”
The EU has a ban on chicken washed in chlorine – a practice that is approved by the United States Department of Agriculture.
Although US beef is not completely prohibited in Europe, any beef that has been treated with artificial growth hormones – which is legal in the US and common among producers – is banned by the EU.
Why was Russia exempt?
Russia was not on Mr Trump’s tariff list, despite his threat to introduce some on Russian oil imports last week.
The US president made the threat after telling NBC’s Kirsten Welker he was “very angry” and “pissed off” after Vladimir Putin criticised the credibility of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as fragile peace negotiations are ongoing.
Mr Trump said that if Russia was unable to make a deal on “stopping bloodshed in Ukraine” – and Mr Trump felt that Moscow was to blame – then he would put secondary tariffs on “all oil coming out of Russia”.
“That would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States. There will be a 25% tariff on all oil, a 25 to 50-point tariff on all oil,” he said.
Axios reported that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the publication on Wednesday that Russia was left off the tariffs list because US sanctions already “preclude any meaningful trade”.
Russia ran a $2.5bn goods trade surplus with the US in 2024, according to the US Trade Representative’s office, falling from $35bn in 2021 as a result of sanctions put in place due to the war in Ukraine.
World’s poorest nations face highest tariffs
Many of Mr Trump’s tariffs have targeted the world’s poorest countries.
Lesotho in southern Africa, listed as the 22 poorest country in the world, has been slapped with the highest duty of 50%. It primarily exports diamonds and garments, with the US as one of the top five exporting destinations, Sky News’ US partner network NBC News reported.
The second-highest tariff went to Cambodia at 49%, even though the US is Cambodia’s largest single-country export destination.
Madagascar in east Africa, the world’s ninth poorest country, will face 47% reciprocal tariffs. It primarily exports vanilla, cloves, and garments, with the US among the top five countries it exports to, according to NBC.
‘Huge complexities’ for Northern Ireland and the Republic
Image: Deputy premier Simon Harris said the difference in tariffs between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland will cause complexities. Pic: Cillian Sherlock/PA Wire
Under the 10% tariff imposed on the UK, Northern Irish goods will also be covered at the same rate.
Whereas the Republic of Ireland will subject to a 20% tariffs – which Mr Trump imposed on the entirety of the EU.
Reacting to the announcement, Ireland deputy premier Simon Harris said the tariff difference would create “huge complexities” for products that need to be carried across the cross-border dimension during production.
He said the issues were similar to those at play during the Brexit debate around maintaining a frictionless land border on the island of Ireland.
Mr Harris said it was on the US to “outline their understanding” on how the 10% differential between Northern Ireland and Ireland will play out.
Trump defines groceries
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0:16
Trump says ‘groceries’ is a ‘beautiful term’
As has become common when delivering major addresses, the US president repeatedly deviated from his script.
At one point, he took time to define the word groceries: “It’s a bag with a lot of different things in it.”
He went on to describe the word as “old-fashioned” but “beautiful”.
‘Could you use plastic eggs?’
In another part of his wide-ranging speech, Mr Trump got onto the topic of eggs – the price of which reached an all-time high earlier this year in the US due to the outbreak of bird flu.
On Wednesday, Mr Trump confirmed that the annual White House tradition of rolling around 30,000 Easter eggs across the South Lawn is expected to proceed, and will use real eggs, despite pleas for plastic ones to be used instead.
“They were saying that for Easter ‘Please don’t use eggs. Could you use plastic eggs?’ I say, we don’t want to do that,” Mr Trump said.
He did not clarify who was telling him not to use real eggs.
Mature, developed economies like the UK and US became ever more reliant on cheap imports from China and, in the process, saw their manufacturing sectors shrink.
Large swathes of the rust belt in the US – and much of the Midlands and North of England – were hollowed out.
And to some extent that’s where the story of Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” really began – with the notion that free trade and globalisation had a darker side, a side he wants to remedy via tariffs.
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6:39
Trump’s tariffs: Ed Conway analysis
He imposed a set of tariffs in his first term, some on China, some on specific materials like steel and aluminium. But the height and the breadth of those tariffs were as nothing compared with the ones we have just heard about.
Not since the 1930s has the US so radically increased the level of tariffs on all nations across the world. Back then, those tariffs exacerbated the Great Depression.
It’s anyone’s guess as to what the consequences of these ones will be. But there will be consequences.
Consequences for the nature of globalisation, consequences for the US economy (tariffs are exceptionally inflationary), consequences for geopolitics.
Image: Imports from the UK will face a 10% tariff, while EU goods will see 20% rates. Pic: Reuters
And to some extent, merely knowing that little bit more about the White House’s plans will deliver a bit of relief to financial markets, which have fretted for months about the imposition of tariffs. That uncertainty recently reached unprecedented levels.
But don’t for a moment assume that this saga is over. Nothing of the sort. In the coming days, we will learn more – more about the nuts and bolts of these policies, more about the retaliatory measures coming from other countries.
We will, possibly, get more of a sense about whether some countries – including the UK – will enjoy reprieves from the tariffs.
To paraphrase Churchill, this isn’t the end of the trade war, or even the beginning of the end – perhaps just the end of the beginning.