Family says actor, who played Xander in hit TV series, died on Friday ‘in his sleep of natural causes’
Nicholas Brendon, the actor best known for playing Xander in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has died. He was 54.
Brendon’s family issued a statement saying that he died on Friday “in his sleep of natural causes”.
Continue reading...Officials warn some residents could be trapped by rising waters as Wahiawā dam on Oahu ‘may collapse at any time’
Towering flash floods and an imminent dam failure in the northern part of Oahu triggered evacuation warnings in Hawaii on Friday, as the state continued contending with a powerful storm this week.
The waters came on quickly in the middle of the night, and videos on social media captured inundated streets and cars being swallowed by the muddy floodwaters.
Continue reading...Treasury secretary Scott Bessent says move will bring 140m barrels to market but insists Tehran will not benefit
The Trump administration has issued a 30-day sanctions waiver for the purchase of Iranian oil at sea to ease energy supply pressures since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said.
It is the third time the US has temporarily waived sanctions in about two weeks.
Continue reading...Forces have been stripped back since the cold war but political stasis is dangerous in the face of growing global threats
• Middle East crisis – live updates
It will have been more than three weeks since the US and Israel first attacked Iran when the first British warship finally arrives off the coast of Cyprus, a belated defensive deployment that has highlighted the lack of military capacity available to the UK.
Nominally, HMS Dragon was one of three destroyers available out of six. In reality the warship has had to be hauled out of dry dock, prepared and then, after launch, tested for several days in the Channel. Its arrival date is still unconfirmed.
Continue reading...Tania Warner and Ayla, her seven-year-old with autism, sent to notorious Texas detention center and told to ‘self-deport’
A Canadian woman and her seven-year-old daughter with autism who have been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for nearly a week have been transferred to a notorious detention center and asked to “self-deport”, according to her husband, who said the pair had been “traumatized” by the experience.
Tania Warner and her daughter Ayla Luca, originally from British Columbia, moved to the US five years ago, when Warner married Edward Warner, a US citizen.
Continue reading...The insects covered its largest area since 2018, despite threats from habitat loss, climate crisis and pesticides
The population of monarch butterflies in Mexico increased 64% this winter, compared with the same period in 2025, offering a glimmer of hope for an insect considered at risk of extinction.
The figures, released this week by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Mexico, showed that the area occupied by monarchs expanded to 2.93 hectares (7.24 acres) of forest from 1.79 hectares (4.42 acres) the previous winter, the largest coverage since 2018.
Continue reading...Defense secretary had said relatives of service members killed in refueling tanker crash told him ‘do not stop until the job is done’
The father of a US military member killed in the Iran war has contradicted Pete Hegseth’s claim that bereaved families urged him to “finish” the job in the Middle East.
Hegseth, the defense secretary and a former weekend Fox News host, told reporters at a Pentagon briefing on Thursday that he had spoken with relatives of all six service members killed in last week’s refueling tanker crash during a “dignified transfer” of their remains at Delaware’s Dover air force station the night before.
Continue reading...Mette-Marit says she ‘did not know he was a sex offender’, despite Googling him three years after his prison sentence
Norway’s crown princess, Mette-Marit, has said she was “manipulated and deceived” by Jeffrey Epstein as she spoke publicly for the first time about her years-long relationship with the late sex offender.
She also claimed that she “did not know he was a sex offender or an abuser” – despite telling him in an email in 2011, three years after he had been sentenced to 18 months in prison and pleaded guilty to soliciting sex from girls as young as 14, that she had recently Googled him.
Continue reading...Anglo-Dutch company, which also owns Dove and Hellmann’s, will focus more on personal care products if deal agreed
Unilever, the owner of Marmite, Dove and Hellmann’s mayonnaise, is in talks to combine its food business with the US-based spice and seasoning maker McCormick.
The Anglo-Dutch food company – which last year spun off its ice-cream division, the home to Ben & Jerry’s, Magnum and Wall’s – has entered discussions over the future of the “highly attractive” business.
Continue reading...Interim president announces changes after firing defence minister, who was close to Maduro, the leader ousted by US
Venezuela’s interim president has said she has replaced all her senior military commanders, the latest in a flurry of changes since the US ousted Nicolás Maduro.
Delcy Rodríguez announced the changes in a social media post a day after firing the long-serving defence minister, who had been close to Maduro, and replacing him with a former intelligence chief.
Continue reading...Mother and child held in notorious Rio Grande Valley detention centre despite presenting visa, family says
A Canadian mother and her seven-year-old daughter, who has autism, have been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Texas since Saturday, family members have said.
Relatives of Tania Warner and her daughter Ayla Lucas say they were detained unlawfully. They are uncertain about what problem ICE found with their immigration paperwork.
Continue reading...Akrotiri and Dhekelia bases have become targets for Iran after outbreak of Middle East crisis
EU leaders have pledged to stand behind Cyprus as it seeks “an open and frank discussion” on the future of the British bases on the island, which have become a target after the outbreak of the latest Middle East crisis.
Ahead of an EU summit on Thursday, Cyprus’s president, Nikos Christodoulides, said he wanted “an open and frank discussion with the British government” regarding the status and future of the British bases on the island.
Continue reading...Lawsuit says rescission of endangerment finding – which ruled greenhouse gases threaten public health – was illegal
A coalition of 24 states, alongside a dozen cities and counties, has sued the Trump administration over its decision to revoke the bedrock scientific determination underpinning virtually all US climate regulations.
The new lawsuit, filed in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Thursday, is being led by the states of Massachusetts, California, New York and Connecticut. It argues that the Environmental Protection Agency’s February rescission of the 2009 endangerment finding – which the White House described as the “single largest deregulatory action in US history” – was illegal.
Continue reading...US president says he told Netanyahu ‘don’t do that’ as he distances himself from attack that has angered Gulf allies
The US-Israeli war against Iran has exposed further divisions between the two countries after an Israeli strike on Iran’s largest gasfield angered US allies in the Gulf and prompted Donald Trump to say he knew nothing in advance about the attack – a claim that Israeli officials disputed.
Speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said he had spoken to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu following the strikes on Iran’s South Pars gasfield – part of a reserve shared with Qatar – and had told the Israeli prime minister to refrain from further attacks that could escalate a regional war on energy infrastructure.
Continue reading...US president was meeting with Japanese PM when he said: ‘Who knows better about surprise than Japan?’
It would be funny if it wasn’t so Trumpy.
Hosting the Japanese prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in the Oval Office on Thursday, Donald Trump could not resist mocking Japan about its 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor during the second world war.
Continue reading...UK’s bilateral aid to African countries, which funds areas such as schools and clinics, to be cut by almost £900m by 2028-29
Some of the world’s poorest countries will lose out on UK aid that funds programmes such as schools and clinics, due to budget cuts set out by the foreign secretary.
The UK’s bilateral aid to African countries will be reduced by almost £900m by 2028-29 – a 56% cut – as part of more than £6bn in cuts which are funding an increase in defence spending.
Continue reading...Discovery at Monte Verde puts north-to-south expansion theory back at centre of heated debate on continent’s human history
A groundbreaking new study may have once again upended our understanding of human prehistory in the Americas.
For years, the predominant theory of how humans arrived in the western hemisphere centred around the Clovis culture, which crossed the Beringia land bridge from Asia between 13,400 and 12,800 years ago, and spread south.
Continue reading...Distributor says authorities warned screening Tunisian film-maker Kaouther Ben Hania’s docudrama could harm India–Israel relations
The Indian release of The Voice of Hind Rajab, the Oscar-nominated Tunisian film about the death of a five-year-old girl during the Israel-Gaza war, has been blocked by the country’s ratings body, according to the film’s Indian distributor.
In a report by Variety, Manoj Nandwana of Mumbai-based Jai Viratra Entertainment said that he was told that if the film was released, it would “break up” India-Israel relations.
Continue reading...German chancellor Friedrich Merz described Orbán’s U-turn on the loan Hungary had agreed to in December as ‘a gross act of disloyalty’
EU leaders fumed after Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, refused to drop his opposition to a vital €90bn (£78bn) loan for Ukraine, accusing him of betrayal and acting in bad faith.
German chancellor Friedrich Merz described Orbán’s U-turn on the loan Hungary had agreed to in December as “a gross act of disloyalty” adding: “I am firmly convinced that it will leave deep marks.”
Continue reading...Daria Boyarskaya coordinating OSCE mission overseeing vote in which pro-Moscow Viktor Orbán could lose power
Hungarian rights groups have raised concerns over the appointment of Vladimir Putin’s former interpreter to a key role in an international election monitoring mission, amid fears of Russian interference ahead of Hungary’s crucial vote next month.
Daria Boyarskaya, who worked for many years for Russia’s foreign ministry and interpreted in numerous high-level meetings including one between Putin and Donald Trump, is now a senior adviser at the parliamentary assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE-PA), based in Vienna. She is coordinating the body’s mission to monitor next month’s parliamentary election in Hungary.
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