News Feeds

  Venezuela frees six US men after Trump envoy meets Maduro Venezuela has freed six US detainees after talks in Caracas between President Nicolás Maduro and a senior Trump administration official. The release of the men was announced on social media by Donald Trump and his special envoy, Richard Grenell. Grenell - who published online a photo of the six on board his plane - said they had spoken by phone to President Trump to thank him. Earlier, the White House had called on Venezuela to release "US hostages" - as well as agreeing to receive Venezuelan criminals deported by the US - or face consequences. Venezuela's Maduro sworn in for third term after contested elections US announces $25m reward for arrest of Venezuela's Maduro 'I thought I was going to die': Jailed Venezuelan activist Grenell did not name the six men, who were seen dressed in light blue outfits used by the Venezuelan prison system. "We are wheels up and headed home with these 6 American ...

  Which is worse for wildlife, wind farms or oil drilling? US President Donald Trump says that wind farms harm birds and whales. Scientists weigh wind power's impacts on wildlife against those of oil and gas. Aspen Ellis, a seabird biologist at University of California, Santa Cruz, spent a decade doing field work on remote islands off the coast of the United States. She often lived for months amongst thousands of birds, becoming so immersed in their ways that she even learned to tell which predators were nearby from the birds' calls. But as she added her observations to 40 or 50 years of previous research on these colonies, she noticed a worrying pattern. "Again and again, I just found myself logging the impact of climate change over time," she recalls, from rising sea levels that threatened breeding colonies, to fish moving to cooler areas and leaving seabird chicks starving. "Without addressing this larger issue of climate change, the seabird conversation work ...

  Black boxes found as officials examine staffing shortage in DC plane crash The black boxes for a commercial flight that crashed into a military helicopter in Washington DC have been located as questions mount about staffing and other close calls at the airport where the plane was landing. Normally two people manage air traffic control for helicopters and airplanes flying in the area - one of the most controlled airspaces in the world - but only one person was on duty at the Regan Washington National Airport on Wednesday at the time of the crash, according to sources cited by the BBC's US partner CBS News. Officials said they are still investigating the cause of the incident that is suspected to have killed all 67 people aboard the two aircraft. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said a preliminary report will be issued in 30 days. The flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, known as the black boxes, can help offer clues to investigators about what m...

  US and Russian figure skaters were reportedly on crashed plane US and Russian figure skaters were reportedly among the passengers on board an aeroplane that hit a helicopter above Washington DC on Wednesday evening. "Several" athletes, coaches and family members involved with US Figure Skating were on the flight, the sport's US governing body said in a statement. Russian citizens were also on board, the Kremlin confirmed - after local media reported that ice skating coaches and former world champions Yevgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were on the plane. US officials have not provided a number of casualties, although a law enforcement source told the BBC's US partner CBS News that at least 19 bodies had been recovered from the icy cold Potomac River. The plane was carrying 64 passengers and crew when it collided in mid-air with a US Army helicopter just after 21:00 local time on Wednesday (02:00 GMT), and then fell into the water. As many as 15 people on the flight ...

  Meta to pay $25m to settle Trump lawsuit over ban US President Donald Trump has signed a legal settlement that will see Facebook and Instagram owner Meta pay out roughly $25m (£20m). Trump sued the social media giant and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2021 over the suspension of his accounts after the 6 January Capitol riots that year. In July 2024, Meta lifted the final restrictions on Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts in the lead up to US presidential elections. The settlement was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Around $22m of the settlement will go to a fund for Trump's presidential library. The balance will be used to cover legal costs and the other plaintiffs who signed on to the lawsuit. Meta will not admit wrongdoing. The company suspended Trump's accounts in 2021 and said that it would ban him from the platforms for at least two years. After Trump's election victory in November, Mr Zuckerberg visited his Florida resort in Mar...

  OpenAI says Chinese rivals using its work for their AI apps The maker of ChatGPT, OpenAI, has complained that rivals, including those in China, are using its work to make rapid advances in developing their own artificial intelligence (AI) tools. The status of OpenAI - and other US firms - as the world leaders in AI has been dramatically undermined this week by the sudden emergence of DeepSeek, a Chinese app that can emulate the performance of ChatGPT, apparently at a fraction of the cost. Bloomberg has reported that Microsoft is investigating whether data belonging to OpenAI - which it is a major investor in - has been used in an unauthorised way. The BBC has contacted Microsoft and DeepSeek for comment. OpenAI's concerns have been echoed by the recently appointed White House "AI and crypto czar", David Sacks. Speaking on Fox News, he suggested that DeepSeek may have used the models developed by OpenAI to get better, a process called knowledge distillation. "There...

  Australian sect members guilty of causing girl's death Fourteen members of an Australian religious group have been convicted of the manslaughter of an eight-year-old diabetic girl who was denied insulin for almost a week. Elizabeth Struhs died at home in 2022, having suffered from diabetic ketoacidosis, which causes fatally high blood sugar. The court heard that Elizabeth's treatment was withheld because the group, known as the Saints, opposed medical care, believing God would heal her. Her father Jason and the group's leader Brendan Stevens were on trial for murder but were convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter. Twelve other members, including Elizabeth's mother and brother, were also convicted of manslaughter. All had pleaded not guilty. The judge-alone trial lasted several months and has received international attention since it began in July 2024. Prosecutors called some 60 witnesses when building their case, painting a picture of an "intelligent...

  Microsoft in talks to buy TikTok, Trump says US President Donald Trump has said Microsoft is in discussions to acquire TikTok and that he would like to see a "bidding war" over the sale of the social media app. When asked by reporters whether the US tech giant was preparing a bid, Trump replied: "I would say yes" - before adding that there was "great interest in TikTok" from several companies. Both Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden have been trying for years to force TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell its US operations on national security grounds. It comes as Trump signed an executive order last week to delay a Biden Administration ban on TikTok that briefly took the app offline for its 170m users in the United States. Despite granting TikTok a 75-day reprieve from the ban, Trump had been the first president to start pressuring ByteDance to sell its app. In August 2020, ByteDance approached Microsoft as a possible buyer - somethin...