Document shows partial felling last year, which led to legal action against Toby Carvery, was done by Ground ControlA mystery contractor who chainsawed an ancient oak in north London for the Toby Carvery restaurant chain has been identified by the Guardian, prompting more questions about the incident.The unauthorised partial felling of the 500-year-old oak a year ago on Friday in Whitewebbs Park, Enfield, prompted widespread public outrage and questions in parliament. Continue reading...
Exclusive: documents chronicle years-long campaign to make it easier to build intensive livestock unitsMinisters are rewriting planning rules to make it easier to build intensive livestock farms despite concerns about water pollution, air quality and local opposition.Documents obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act show that proposed changes to the national planning policy framework (NPPF) were discussed by ministers and officials in response to concerns of the country’s leading chicken producers, who have been lobbying on the issue for at least two years. Continue reading...
Actor and comedian known for voicing Gene Belcher, as well as roles in Flight of the Conchords and Archer, has suffered serious injuriesBob’s Burgers voice actor and comedian Eugene Mirman has suffered serious injuries after crashing his car into a toll plaza in New Hampshire, before he was pulled from the fiery wreckage by a state trooper assigned to protect the state’s governor.The crash happened just before noon Tuesday when a northbound electric vehicle struck the Bedford toll plaza and caught fire, New Hampshire state police said. Republican governor Kelly Ayotte and her security detail came upon the crash soon after, and a trooper and two others pulled Mirman from the burning car through a window, said New Hampshire state police colonel, Mark Hall. Continue reading...
Other winners include Inter Alia’s Rosamund Pike, Ivo van Hove for All My Sons and Hayley Atwell who beat her Much Ado co-star Tom Hiddleston to best Shakespearean performanceBrendan Gleeson has been named best actor at the Critics’ Circle theatre awards for his West End debut in Conor McPherson’s pub drama The Weir. He beat fellow nominees including Bryan Cranston and Paapa Essiedu, both recognised for All My Sons, and James Hameed and Arti Shah, the duo who together portray Paddington in the new musical about Michael Bond’s bear. The Weir, directed by McPherson, was entirely omitted from the nominations for this year’s Olivier awards and is being turned into a film with Gleeson and the rest of the West End cast.All My Sons, a critically adored production of Arthur Miller’s 1946 classic at Wyndham’s theatre, won in two categories at the Critics’ Circle awards: best revival of a play or musical and best director for Ivo van Hove. A new production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods, directed by Jordan Fein at the Bridge theatre, also won two prizes – best designer (Tom Scutt) and the inaugural award for best ensemble or cast. Continue reading...
• Elon Musk launched Terafab, a $20 billion-plus semiconductor fab in Austin, Texas, jointly developed by Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI to produce custom chips for EVs, Optimus robots, and AI computing.
• The facility targets terawatt-scale power output, addressing global chip shortages constraining Musk's AI and robotics timelines amid TSMC capacity limits.
• This vertical integration bolsters U.S. domestic manufacturing self-sufficiency amid geopolitical tensions and accelerates competition in AI hardware where compute is the key bottleneck.
Video of Reacher star allegedly showed him striking a man in what looked like a suburban Tennessee neighborhoodAlan Ritchson, the actor best known for his role in the hit action series Reacher, was filmed allegedly assaulting his neighbor in front of his children.In a video obtained by TMZ on Sunday, the 43-year-old appeared to strike a man several times as he kneeled on the ground in what looked like a suburban neighborhood in Tennessee. Two children, reported by TMZ to be Ritchson’s, can be seen nearby sitting on motorbikes and watching the incident unfold. Continue reading...
• Tesla officially launched Terafab, a $20 billion AI chip manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas, marking a major expansion in US AI hardware production.
• The factory aims to produce advanced AI chips for Tesla's autonomous driving and robotics initiatives, reducing reliance on foreign suppliers.
• This development strengthens US domestic semiconductor capabilities amid global chip shortages and boosts Texas as a tech hub.
Almost 60 injured and three others missing after blaze breaks out at building in DaejeonA fire at a car parts factory in South Korea has killed 11 people and injured almost 60 others.Firefighters said the death toll could rise further. Rescuers were using dogs to search the wreckage of the three-storey building for three people who were still missing. Continue reading...
• The Trump administration has granted Silicon Valley-based nuclear companies expedited pathways to test experimental reactor designs, with the DOE creating a new program and assigning concierge teams to help companies navigate bureaucracy.
• About a dozen advanced reactor companies are currently planning to participate, with the administration targeting some reactors to achieve "critical" status—a key milestone toward functioning power plants—by July 2026.
• The DOE quietly overhauled safety rules for new reactors and shared the revised regulations with companies before making them public, addressing long-standing complaints that companies lack opportunities to experiment.
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...
Technology secretary says government no longer prefers plan to allow tech firms to take copyrighted workActors, musicians and writers have welcomed the UK government’s decision to backtrack on plans to let AI firms use copyright-protected work without permission.Technology secretary Liz Kendall said it no longer had a “preferred option” on copyright reform, having previously supported a proposal allowing tech companies to take copyrighted work – unless rights holders opted out of the process. Continue reading...
More than 200 Americans at Balad site say they have no evacuation plan as fears grow of a post-Ramadan assaultSign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inboxHundreds of US contractors are stranded on a major military base near Baghdad, Iraq, with no evacuation plan, while local Iran-backed militants are possibly making plans to attack the base, three sources said.The contractors are employed on the Martyr Brigadier General Ali Flaih Air Base, formerly Balad Air Base, to support the Iraqi government’s F-16 fighter jet program. Continue reading...
• Michael B. Jordan won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as twins Smoke and Stack in "Sinners," competing against Timothée Chalamet and other nominees in a hotly contested category.
• In his emotional acceptance speech, Jordan acknowledged Black actors who won Oscars before him, including Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, and Will Smith, stating "I stand here because of the people that came before me."
• "Sinners" had a successful night at the 98th Oscars, bringing home four total Academy Awards including Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score.
Death comes two months after Alford was jailed for eight-and-a-half years for sexually assaulting two teenage girlsThe actor John Alford has died in prison two months after being jailed for sexually assaulting two teenage girls. Alford, 54, was jailed for eight-and-a-half years in January after he was found guilty of the assaults which occurred during a party at a friend’s home. The actor, who appeared in the drama London’s Burning and BBC show Grange Hill, died at HMP Bure, Norfolk, on Friday, the Prison Service said. Alford, who was tried under his real name, John Shannon, was convicted of four counts of sexual activity with a 14-year-old girl and charges of sexual assault and assault by penetration relating to a 15-year-old girl at a property in Hertfordshire in 2022. Jurors heard during the trial that he had sexually assaulted the girls while they were drunk after a night out at the pub. A Prison Service spokesperson said: “John Shannon died in prison on March 13 2026. “As with all deaths in custody, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will investigate.” Continue reading...
Motaz Malhees is an actor in The Voice of Hind Rajab, a film about a Palestinian girl killed by the IDF in Gaza in 2024Palestinian actor Motaz Malhees said a travel ban imposed by Donald Trump is preventing him from attending Sunday’s Academy Awards, whose nominees include a movie in which he has a starring role.The Voice of Hind Rajab, a film about a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in 2024, has been nominated for best international feature film. Continue reading...
Microsoft is incorporating rack-scale NVIDIA Rubin systems into its 'Fairwater' AI superfactories to power advanced model training starting late 2026. This follows NVIDIA's Rubin unveiling, promising leaps in compute efficiency for cloud-scale AI. The move bolsters US AI infrastructure amid enterprise agent adoption rates surging in datacenters.
Ukraine has responded to a war it didn’t start by creating an industry it doesn’t want, but could the nation's drone expertise help it rebuild? To learn more, New Scientist gained exclusive access to the research labs, factories and military training schools behind Ukraine’s drones
