Hayden Panettiere, widely recognized for her memorable role as the unbreakable cheerleader Claire Bennet on NBC’s “Heroes” and later as the country sensation Juliette Barnes in “Nashville,” has passed away.

The actress was 36 years old.

Panettiere’s representative conveyed the heartbreaking news of her passing to ABC News on Sunday.

“With heavy hearts, we announce the tragic loss of our dear Hayden,” her spokesperson stated.

“She was a remarkable ray of light and an extraordinary presence who spread boundless love and joy to everyone she encountered — and touched the lives of millions who followed her remarkable journey on screen,” continued the statement.

No cause of death or details about the circumstances surrounding her death were immediately provided.

The former child star and mom of one recently opened up about growing up in the spotlight, postpartum depression and her struggles with substance abuse in her memoir “This Is Me: A Reckoning” published in May.

Angel Reese found herself in an awkward spotlight when she missed the chance to secure a victory for the Atlanta Dream against the Indiana Fever, much to the delight of her competitor, Caitlin Clark.

In a nail-biting overtime clash on Saturday, Clark and the Indiana Fever clinched a thrilling 95-91 win against the Dream. This game was another installment in the heated rivalry between Reese and the former top pick, Clark.

Yet, as the regular game time ticked down, the fate of this intense encounter could have easily turned out differently.

The fourth quarter was a nail-biter, as the Dream charged down the court with Rhyne Howard aiming for a crucial three-pointer.

However, Howard’s shot fell far short, missing the mark entirely and concluding in Reese’s hands, highlighting a pivotal moment in the game.

Despite snatching an apparent lifeline for the Dream, Reese, with a clean look around the rim, missed the game-winning layup. 

The three-time WNBA All-Star immediately attempted to correct her mistake but saw the ball snatched away by teammate Naz Tillmon, who also failed to find the net on the rebound with neither she nor Reese managing to clinch the game-winning shot at the buzzer. 

With the score tied at 81-81, the missed attempt sent the clash to overtime with the Fever going on to clinch the dramatic win. 

As a deflated Reese buried her face in her hands, Clark could be seen walking past behind her rival with a gleeful expression on her face. 

Clark was caught on the ESPN broadcast with a beaming smile of her face before appearing to chuckle as she looked in the direction of Reese while heading to the Fever bench.  

Reese was ruthlessly mocked for the miss on social media with Barstool founder and Clark superfan Dave Portnoy leading the brutal taunting. 

‘ANGEL REESE AT THE BUZZER FOR THE WI……,’ he wrote on X followed by a stream of skull emojis. 

‘Angel Reese is a comedy show,’ controversial sports analyst Jason Whitlock posted. 

‘She is the worst I’ve EVER seen under the rim! FFS,’ one fan claimed. 

Another social media user branded her a ‘choke artist,’ while a third said: ‘that’s the moment she finally realized how bad she sucks.’

Earlier in the game, Reese suffered another humbling moment when Clark, her biggest rival since their college days, sent a three-point attempt over the Dream star’s head and into the basket.

Reese finished the game with 15 points, 14 rebounds and six assists. In comparison, Clark scored 26 points, including two free throws after Atlanta trimmed Indiana’s lead to 93-91, with nine assists.

‘I was playing like s*** in the beginning, but it’s a game of runs,’ Reese told ESPN at halftime after starting 0-of-6 from the field. 

‘You’ve got to put that in your back pocket just because you know you have teammates that have your back. [Allisha Gray], Madina [Okot], [Rhyne Howard] – they’re carrying us right now.’

Indiana (23-12) managed to hold off Atlanta (21-13) despite Allisha Gray matching her career high with 32 points. The top four teams have homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs.

Kelsey Mitchell’s layup with 13.6 seconds remaining in overtime gave the Indiana guard 20 points, her 19th consecutive game scoring at least 20.

Mitchell’s three-pointer for Indiana with 1:05 remaining tied the game 81-81. Atlanta had three misses on its final possession to end regulation.

A shocking incident unfolded involving a Louisiana man, who allegedly committed murder by killing his wife and then placing her body in the passenger seat of his vehicle, according to law enforcement. He drove across several states before being apprehended in Tennessee.

Identified as 50-year-old Tyronne Brazille, the man was stopped by Memphis police on Thursday for a traffic infraction. That’s when officers discovered his wife, Lanessa Bradford, also 50, deceased in the car, having sustained a gunshot wound, as reported by WREG.

In an interview with the outlet, Shelicka Decker, a close friend of Bradford’s, shared that the couple had been married for many years. However, Bradford had recently intended to end the marriage with Brazille.

“She had the money saved up. She had come up with a plan, and she was going to just vanish. That was the only way she would be able to get away from him,” Decker said. “She was going to leave her car, she was going to leave all the things behind, and she had been in touch with her family that was out of town, and that’s how she was going to make this move to get away.”

But before Bradford had the chance to leave, investigators allege Brazille shot and killed her during an argument at Independence Community Park in Baton Rouge, according to investigators, WREG reported.

Investigators said Brazille drove through several states with his wife’s body in the vehicle before he was stopped in Memphis. He was taken into custody in Memphis as a fugitive.

“I have so many questions, like, what were you doing in the car with her that amount of time while she was deceased,” Decker said. “Where was his mind at during that ride? It’s so crazy and heartbreaking.”

Decker said Bradford had told her that Brazille threatened to kill himself or Bradford when she discussed leaving him, but Decker said she never believed he would actually follow through.

“He never put his hands on her up until recently, like maybe like two or three months ago,” Decker said. “It wouldn’t have surprised me if someone had called and said that he killed himself because he always says this. It surprised me that he killed her.”

Decker said Bradford worked at an elementary school in Baton Rouge, and the school asked police to conduct a welfare check at her home after she missed a few days of work.

“It’s such an unfortunate situation, like everybody, she was such a good person. Everybody, she uplifted a lot of people, a lot of parents,” Decker said. “My prayers are with her family and friends as well as his, because we were all friends. We all, you know, hung around each other, and this is just not the same person that we grew up with.”

Brazille is scheduled to appear in court on Monday as he awaits extradition to Louisiana.

Police said Brazille is expected to face a murder charge after extradition in connection with Bradford’s death.

Let’s rewind to 1996. Hal Jordan emerges as Earth’s pioneering Green Lantern, sitting for an exclusive interview on 60 Minutes. Draped in his iconic green attire, Jordan unravels his dual identity to the world. An Air Force test pilot burdened by a tragic past, Jordan redefines himself as humanity’s guardian—a “space cop” charged with the monumental task of shielding not just our planet but an entire quadrant of the galaxy from cosmic menaces. And though he calls himself “a regular person like you,” there’s one stark difference: he knows no fear.

Fast forward to 2006, and Hal Jordan still holds the title of Earth’s first Green Lantern. Although time has made him wiser, he’s retained his laid-back demeanor and sense of duty. As part of his routine, Jordan engages in a rather serious task—backing up his consciousness—a ritualistic procedure he won’t repeat for another decade.

By 2016, John Stewart steps into the limelight as Earth’s second Green Lantern, or at least he would, if Hal Jordan were more eager to pass the torch. Hal, embroiled in his own universe of angst, exhibits traits that range from the bitterly sardonic to the irresponsibly egotistical. His possessiveness over the Green Lantern mantle is blatant and Earth feels too congested for two Lanterns. With John waiting in the wings, Hal drags out his mentorship, reluctant to speed up the inevitable changeover.

Now we leap to 2026. The mantle of Earth’s Green Lantern confidently fits John Stewart. But Hal Jordan, the original torchbearer, meets a chilling end—frozen to death among the stands of a Nebraska high school football field.

In this intriguing mix of heroics and suspense, Chris Mundy (Ozark), Damon Lindelof (Lost), and Tom King—hailing from both DC Comics and the circles of the CIA—pen HBO’s spellbinding Lanterns. On the surface, it unravels a classic whodunit—a mysterious firefight involving human-disguised aliens at that football stadium. But beneath lies a far more captivating enigma: how did Hal Jordan’s journey wind from being an all-American icon in 1986, through his transformation to a divisive figure in 2016, and ultimately to his mysterious demise by 2026?

As a pilot episode (though the word “Pilot” has a double meaning here), there’s a lot of getting-to-know-you getting done here. In addition to everything we learn about Hal’s personality and past (his dad was a test pilot too until he died in a crash, making test pilot an…interesting choice of occupation for his son), we see that John had a military father who was arguably even more intense. From a young age he appears to have been training John to take over as Green Lantern by shooting apples off his head William Tell/William S. Burroughs–style, to train him to have no fear.

Hal does not want to be training this guy, despite their similar backgrounds. He keeps ditching him, sometimes from the driver’s seat of a moving car, forcing him to scramble to use the ring just to stay alive. Arguably, forcing him to fly to Nebraska the hard way while Hal himself takes to the sky with his ring is even crueler.

Hal’s in a hurry because of the message his old ring-stored self delivered to him via John: “There’s hail in Rushville, Nebraska.” This is right near the sight where the dying alien whose Green Lantern ring selected Hal to take over crashed his ship, so Hal’s been monitoring the location for threats ever since. Now there’s been a shooting at a football game, only nobody seems to know or care about the victims, who are all from the visiting side. 

Hal immediately runs afoul of the local sheriff, Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald), who insists the GLs have no jurisdiction since there’s no reason to suspect the victims are aliens. But Hal’s been doing this a long time, and his gut feeling pays off: When he’s finally able to interrogate the one “visiting team fan” who didn’t get killed, the guy outs himself as an alien bringing war to our barbaric planet, then blows himself up. Only Hal’s nearly-depleted power ring saves the day.

But in the 24 hours the Lanterns are in town, a lot more than that goes down. Hal gets himself arrested by provoking a bar fight (he plays Melanie’s “Brand New Key” a few too many times on the jukebox) in a vain attempt to be put in a cell next to the suspected alien. John gets picked up by a gorgeous woman (Poorna Jagannathan) for a very hot quickie in his rental car. 

At Hal’s arraignment, a clever young lawyer named Billy Macon (Jason Ritter) shows up to represent him. He’s also Sheriff Kerry’s wife…and the son of the very rich local militia leader, William Macon (Garret Dillahunt). A big fan of the Lanterns, Macon Sr. explains that the gunmen roaming his Yellowstone-like ranch are preparing to repel literal alien invaders, as in ETs. He’s hoping for Hal’s help. He’s also married to Zoe, the beautiful woman John slept with, and he knows that it happened somehow.

Whatever’s about to go down, I assume it goes down well enough, because when John arrives back in town to examine Hal’s frozen body ten years later, he and Kerry act like close old friends. Does that mean Hal was outside their circle of trust by this point, more alone now even than he was when Kerry clocked his so-called fearlessness as loneliness ten years earlier?

Now that it’s here, I can see why this Lanterns project wound up on the small screen rather than the big one. It feels very TV, a hodgepodge of popular shows and genres and influences. Like a lot of television over the past decade-plus, from Fargo to Dutton Ranch, it’s set in a conservative environment west of the Mississippi. There’s a harried heroine trying to do the right thing in a brown uniform. The mystery box, the police procedural, the big-sky drama — it’s all here.

But what it reminds me of the most, with its mismatched buddy cops and its time jumps and its conspiratorial mystery involving hidden truths about the world and who runs it, is True Detective. Like that show, Lanterns generates titanic amounts of goodwill just by virtue of its charismatic, attractive leads, Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre, whose insanely piercing eyes they had to cover with contacts to make him look like a normal person and not a Greek god. 

They’re matched in this department by Macdonald and, especially in this episode, Jagannathan as Zoe, whose sexual chemistry with Pierre’s John is instantaneous and instantly convincing. (He lights her cigarette with his ring! Oooh-whee!) Dillahunt’s bearded, MAGA-coded anti-alien big-timer commands the screen when he’s on it, too.

To put it into the context of superhero comics, Lanterns is very much a ’00s-style “superheroes-plus” story, the idea back then being that superheroes were unpopular, but other genres were not, so you just mash them together and enjoy the results. The plus in this “superheroes-plus” story is “a True Detective–style unlikely buddy cops in rural America murder mystery.” It’s the kind of slow, down-to-earth thing superhero fans reared on Bendis and Brubaker are likely to enjoy.

Could I have done without the interrogation scene hinging on verbal product placement for Harry Potter, WBD’s transphobia-funding boy-wizard cash cow? Oh, you bet. I also think individual creators deserve credit for these characters and concepts, not “DC Comics,” which is societal construct. In this case, we have Martin Nodell and Bill Finger to thank for the original Green Lantern name and general idea, John Broome and Gil Kane for Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern superhero concept as we currently know it, and Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams for John Stewart. Print their names, and print them some money.

Other than these unfortunate bum notes (seriously, they could have picked any other book or movie in the world, and not crediting the people who made this up for you is embarrassing), Lanterns is a cleverly written show, engagingly acted by people I like watching. I’ll render my final verdict the happy moment I see a giant green boxing glove, but until then, these space cops are still worth a ride-along.

Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.

The son of Rob and Michele Reiner, Nick Reiner, who faces allegations of murdering his parents, has once again demanded access to his trust fund. His request comes amid an urgent need to secure funds for his legal defense.

Nick Reiner, now 32, has petitioned the Superior Court of California for release of his inheritance, including accrued interest. He claims these funds are necessary to cover legal expenses in his forthcoming trial, as indicated in court documents filed last Friday.

Reiner, at the center of a high-profile double murder case, insists in multiple legal documents that he is entitled to the $558,000 disbursement that should have been available to him shortly after his 30th birthday. He alleges this sum is being unlawfully withheld.

“I never consented to any Trustee of my Trust holding back, deferring, or indefinitely retaining my Age-30 Distribution,” stated the attorneys for Reiner in a recent legal declaration, reinforcing their position that the funds ought to be released without further delay.

Further in the declaration, it was asserted: “Neither did I authorize my mother to give any such consent on my behalf, nor do I recall signing any document that would grant such permission.”

‘I would like for my money to be released and I “desire to receive” it, with the accrued interest and income.’

There is a hearing scheduled to discuss Nick Reiner’s trust fund saga on Monday morning in Los Angeles, in front of judge Ruben Garcia. 

The 32-year-old was indicted by a grand jury on two murder charges, facing life in prison, following the deaths of his parents, Rob and Michele, who were found with their throats slit in their $13.5 million mansion in December. 

Reiner’s demands comes as the son of the Hollywood icons hired his high-profile lawyer Alan Jackson, but couldn’t afford to keep him on the case. 

He has since been represented by a public defender, and is seeking to rehire Jackson as he awaits his upcoming trial. 

The trust fund Reiner hopes to gain access to was opened by his parents when he was a baby, and has since grown to $1.6 million. 

Jodi Pais Montgomery, the professional fiduciary that oversees the trust, has refused to pay out a single dollar while he is accused of murder. 

The trustee cited California’s ‘slayer statute’ that blocks anyone inheriting money from someone they ‘feloniously and intentionally’ killed.

‘California has enacted no exception permitting a killer’s inheritance to be used for criminal defense costs,’ its lawyer Lauriann Wright wrote in court papers. 

‘The Slayer Statute question was not a pretext for delay, but a genuine and unresolved legal issue that any prudent trustee administering this Trust would need to address before distributing,’ lawyers for the former manager of the trust wrote on Thursday in a response to Reiner’s request for $558,000 that he says he is owed from his trust. 

‘Nick’s sense of urgency is real, but it did not arise in a vacuum. It arises from the deaths of his parents, the very settlors of the Trust at issue, and Nick is presently accused of causing those deaths.’

The fund would instead be paid to Reiner’s siblings Romy and Jake, to whom Montgomery also has a fiduciary responsibility, the filing stated.

Though Reiner is presumed innocent, the payments from his fund would be ‘irreversible,’ Wright wrote.

Public defender Anita Wu countered that as Reiner was not convicted, the law didn’t apply. Reiner has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder. 

‘The slayer statute requires a determination, not a mere accusation. Nick is presumed innocent and has been convicted of nothing,’ she said.

The battle for the trust money started in June after Reiner petitioned for the money in probate court, the Times reported. 

At the time, he accused successor trustee Paul Kanin of failing to pay out the $558,000 he claimed he was owed on his 30th birthday.

Reiner was not due to receive any more money from the trust until he turned 35, but Wu noted he could be paid early for ‘support, maintenance, health and education.’

The money would allow him to buy basic items at the jail commissary as well as fund his defense.

‘Nick is incarcerated and his basic needs – housing, food, medical care – are being met by the State,’ lawyers for the Kanin said, the Times reported. 

‘He is represented in the underlying criminal matter by the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, appointed counsel to whom Nick has a right and who continues to represent him.

‘To the extent Nick’s damages theory rests on the unavailability of private counsel of his choosing, that theory fails as a matter of law: a criminal defendant has no entitlement to the specific private counsel of his choice at the trust’s expense, and the loss of that preference is not a cognizable trust-related harm.’ 

Reiner in June claimed the trustee ‘has offered a shifting series of excuses and justifications’ for not turning over the funds.

These included ‘unsubstantiated “concerns” about Nick’s so-called competence to “manage a trust”‘ despite the terms his parents set up.

He argued he needed Jackson to avoid ‘further jeopardizing my defense in the criminal matter’ as he has no other source of funding for his legal bills or basic supplies like soap and socks while behind bars.

‘Every additional week of delay is a week in which the counsel of his choice cannot investigate or prepare on his behalf – prejudice to his defense that cannot be undone,’ Reiner’s lawyers claimed.

‘The harm is irreparable and it grows with each day the trustee withholds funds that are already Nick’s.

‘In the meantime, for reasons unknown to Petitioner, the Trustee continues to deplete Nick’s funds by paying lawyers to raise one reason after another for holding on to Nick’s money for another two years, all of which violate the plain terms of the Trust.’

Reiner has pleaded not guilty to six felony charges – two of first-degree murder, two of special circumstances involving multiple murder, and two counts of special circumstances using a deadly weapon.

He was earlier seen having a loud argument with his father at a holiday party thrown by TV host Conan O’Brien hours before his parents’ bodies were found by his younger sister, Romy.

Reiner has a long history of mental health and substance abuse issues and was living in a guesthouse on the grounds of his parents’ home at the time.

The new indictment added the claim that Reiner lay in wait for the chance to kill his parents, a special circumstance that could make him eligible for life without parole or even the death penalty if he is convicted.

Nathan Hochman, the LA County District Attorney, has said that the death penalty is on the table for Reiner if he is convicted.

Reiner has been locked up without bail since his arrest and will next face court in September.