WORLD NEWS UPDATE: August 3, 2025
The Senate confirms ex-Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as the top federal prosecutor for the nation’s capital. Also, new images of emaciated Gaza hostages stoke fears of a ceasefire deal and medical experts explain why higher tariffs aren’t working. Plus, Chile’s plunging birthrate may have a warning for the U.S.
During the show’s run, World News Now featured a mix of general news stories and offbeat, often humorous features, including a recurring segment featuring a local restaurant or cafeteria preparing a menu item for viewers to sample during a commercial break; on Wednesdays (for “Hump Day”), the anchors would dance in a small studio. Weather predictions were also made for obscure and exotic locales, and the broadcast often included a full sportscast, which provided the anchors with comedic fodder. A variety of repurposed segments and story packages from other ABC News programs were also used.
On some nights, the anchors would check in with local ABC affiliates around the country to see what stories were breaking in their markets and would occasionally use a first few minutes of an affiliate’s late-local newscast when relevant during a breaking story (for example, during a blizzard in Buffalo, New York, the opening of WKBW-TV’s late newscast was shown). The last segment on every broadcast was a compilation of the best clips from the previous night’s World News Now program.
When a full-time anchor left the program, a ceremony of sorts was held on their final broadcast with cardboard cutouts of them being placed in the original set’s rafters and monitors. Today, WNN still shows its own version of this on some nights when an anchor moves on, usually by showing a graphic of their head in the original set.