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Nissan is preparing to axe the Altima and Rogue Plug-In Hybrid.

Amid slowing sales, Nissan believes they only need one sedan in America.

Plug-in hybrid crossover will be replaced by the new Rogue e-Power.

Earlier this year, Nissan announced plans to kill off 11 different models as part of their “Mobility Intelligence for Everyday Life” strategy. At the time, the company was coy on specifics but said they’d cut “low-performing models” to reallocate investments to growth areas.

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Fast forward to today and we’re starting to learn about some of the casualties. In an interview with Wards Auto, Nissan Americas Chief Product & Planning Officer Ponz Pandikuthira revealed the Altima and Rogue Plug-In Hybrid are about to die.

More: Nissan Keeps The Altima Alive For 2026, But Kills Off Key Versions

While the Altima has been a staple of the company’s lineup for 34 years, Pandikuthira said the “Altima will soon depart, since the new, more ‘grown-up’ Sentra is intended to satisfy Nissan’s remaining sedan demand.”

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This is hardly surprising as Altima sales have been declining for years. The brand sold over 200,000 units annually in the United States as recently as 2019, but that number dropped to a mere 92,809 last year.

2026 is shaping up to be even worse as dealers only moved 42,288 Altimas through the first six months of the year. That’s a 31.9% decline and it means the automaker is on track to sell around 84,600 units for the entire year.

The Sentra is doing far better as customers snapped up 75,549 units through June. That’s an 11.7% decline compared to 2025, but the model is easily beating the Altima.

Pulling The Plug On The Rogue PHEV

Besides announcing the impending death of the Altima, Pandikuthira confirmed the sun is about to set on the Rogue Plug-In Hybrid . The lazily rebadged Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV won’t be missed, but the product planner noted it filled a special role.

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As Pandikuthira explained, “We did that car for a very specific reason, to bring it to market as soon as possible to see what having a hybrid in the lineup would do for overall demand.” He added, “If people shopping online see that Rogue does not offer a hybrid, they will not go to the dealer.”

Pandikuthira said the model has served its purpose and will give way to the new Rogue e-Power . He promised the upcoming crossover will offer a “very attractive price point with good fuel economy.”

Lastly, the product planner said the Ariya remains available in Canada and they’re still considering bringing it back to the United States. He went on to mention the company’s upcoming body-on-frame makeover that will spawn new versions of the Frontier and Xterra. Pandikuthira implied a three-row Nissan SUV could follow as well as two- and three-row versions for Infiniti. All would be offered with internal combustion engines as well as hybrid powertrains.

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Researchers have extracted DNA from a 50,000-year-old tooth belonging to an African antelope, setting a record for the oldest DNA ever retrieved from sub-Saharan Africa, a new study reports.

The finding suggests that DNA preservation in sub-Saharan Africa is possible for tens of thousands of years. In most cases, the region's hot climate breaks down the molecule and prevents researchers from understanding the evolution of numerous species, including ancient human ancestors and relatives .

While some temperate regions are known for preserving ancient human DNA — for instance, the Sima de los Huesos ("Pit of Bones") in Spain preserved DNA from a mysterious relative of modern humans that lived around 400,000 years ago — the sub-Saharan African climate is less forgiving. The oldest human DNA from sub-Saharan Africa is about 18,000 years old and was discovered in bones found in a rock shelter in Tanzania . And the oldest sub-Saharan animal DNA is just 9,300 years old, from an extinct antelope in South Africa.

In the new study, researchers tested whether DNA could be successfully extracted from ancient skeletons even older than that. By analyzing more than 300 teeth from animals that lived in the past 110,000 years, they discovered that small amounts of DNA could be identified even in remains from the Late Pleistocene , the latter part of the last ice age.

Researchers extracted the DNA from the 50,000-year-old tooth of a mountain reedbuck ( Redunca fulvorufula ), a species of antelope that still lives in Africa today. (Image credit: Getty Images) In a study published online May 27 in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews , researchers extracted DNA from dozens of Holocene bovid specimens younger than 11,700 years old and from four Late Pleistocene bovid specimens between 12,000 and 50,000 years old. Although many of the teeth didn't yield DNA, a handful did. The oldest DNA the researchers found came from a partial molar from an African antelope called a mountain reedbuck ( Redunca fulvorufula ) discovered in Boomplaas Cave in southern South Africa. The other old DNA samples came from three extinct long-horned buffalos ( Syncerus antiquus ) ‪—‬ two that died 21,000 years ago and one that died 12,000 years ago.

"The 50,000-year-old DNA is exciting," study first author Deon de Jager , a paleogenomics expert at the University of Copenhagen, told Live Science in an email. "But I am myself skeptical of it, for two reasons."

The reedbuck DNA is significantly older than the next-oldest DNA the researchers retrieved, from the long-horned buffalo, de Jager explained, and the reedbuck specimen was contaminated with some human DNA, which they were able to remove. These two issues mean the 50,000-year-old antelope DNA result is not ironclad. However, since the publication of the study, the researchers have also sequenced the genome of a 42,000-year-old wildebeest from Ethiopia, suggesting DNA lasts a lot longer in Africa's climate than experts once thought.

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"There is of course a limit to DNA preservation in Africa, but what it is, is not clear," de Jager said. "There are certainly parts of Africa where DNA will be preserved even better than from the sites we have surveyed. Deep caves with stable, low temperatures will certainly be good candidates, but also high-elevation sites where temperatures have been very low for a long time."

The Late Pleistocene teeth that de Jager and colleagues analyzed produced very low amounts of DNA, which is thought to have a half-life of about 521 years, meaning half of the DNA in a specimen disappears every 521 years until none is left. But the amount the researchers found is still useful, de Jager said.

The DNA is sufficient for identifying evolutionary lineages, de Jager added. If they can gather enough data, researchers might be able to compare gene flow and interbreeding among species and populations.

Although these results suggest that DNA analysis is possible for understanding the past 40,000 to 50,000 years of animal and human evolution in South Africa, we may never be able to extract DNA from ancient human relatives like Homo naledi , which went extinct around 240,000 years ago, or Paranthropus robustus , which died out around 1 million years ago.

"I think the chances of obtaining DNA from Homo naledi are very, very low, unfortunately," de Jager said. "One would have to get very lucky with an incredibly well-preserved skull with the petrous bone still present, which is the best bone for obtaining ancient DNA. To get DNA from something in Africa nearly 1 million years old would probably be impossible, as the conditions in Africa are just too harsh."

How much do you know about Earth's frosty past? Find out with our last ice age quiz!

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Have you ever thought to yourself, I bet Steve Buscemi would make a good Far Cry villain? I think he would. He's charismatic, superficially good-natured, kind of odd looking, extremely high-strung, and prone to sudden, sometimes random outbursts of extreme violence. And I'm not the only one who thinks so—the people making the live-action Far Cry series for FX do, too.

Word of Buscemi's big role was delivered by the official Far Cry account on X : "Welcome Steve Buscemi to the world of FX's Far Cry. Hope you’re ready to get thrown into the deep end, lose your mind, and make a few catastrophically bad decisions along the way."

(Image credit: Ubisoft (Twitter)) There's actually no indication as to what role Buscemi will be playing in the Far Cry show, good guy or bad. At first blush, the announcement might seem to be warning Buscemi of bad things to come during his time in the cast, but I think it's also quite possible to read it as a warning to viewers of all the bad things he's going to do to other people. "Lose your mind and make bad decisions," that's kind of his whole vibe, right?

Buscemi is too old to play Pagan Min or Vaas, and there's obviously only one person who could fill the shoes of Antón Castillo. But he does have kind of a natural Joseph Seed vibe going on—I could definitely see Buscemi as a guy who psychologically breaks someone so completely that they never speak again and won't go outside without a mask on.

Others on Team PCG feel differently. Chris Livingston thinks he's going to be "a weird helpful NPC," maybe like Hurk—Buscemi doesn't really have a Hurk-like physical presence but I can definitely see him firing rockets at random passers-by from the back seat of a busted-up hatchback.

Wes Fenlon, on the other hand, thinks Buscemi will portray Jason Brody, the barely-out-of-his-teens hero of Far Cry 3. They're de-aging actors for the upcoming Lord of the Rings flick The Hunt for Gollum, but even so I think this scenario is unlikely. I suspect it may even be possible that Wes isn't being entirely serious here.

Issy van der Velde opined that Buscemi would "be a great villain" in Far Cry, which is correct, but then went on to imply that he doesn't much care because Michael Mando was "phenomenal" as Vaas and all Issy really wants is to see Mando turn up somewhere.

The press release from FX isn't any help, for the record: It says only that Buscemi has "built a career out of portraying some of the most unique and unforgettable characters" in movies and TV shows ranging from Reservoir Dogs and The Big Lebowski to Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos, and Wednesday. 'Odd' might be Buscemi's signature move but the man has range, and he could fill either role with equal ease.

Here's his big entrance as weird psycho killer Garland Greene in the 1997 Nicolas Cage classic Con Air:

And here's his big moment as weird sidekick Buscemi (Robert Rodriguez isn't really a details guy, I guess) in the 1995 Antonio Banderas classic Desperado:

(Yes, I have seen some of Buscemi's more recent work, but I like what I like.)

The truth is that Buscemi almost certainly won't play any of the characters we've encountered in the previous Far Cry games. Executive producer Noah Hawley said in April that he's " not specifically adapting any of the games ," but will instead build the series around the broader concept of "civilized people thrown into situations where they have to become increasingly uncivilized," and his own take on what a Far Cry story is. But even with that more open-ended approach to the series, if we take it as a hard-and-fast rule that bizarre, flamboyant characters are an essential part of the formula—and I do—then I reckon Buscemi will fit right in.

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March 14, 2026, is a date Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans will never forget, as it marked the day franchise lead Sarah Michelle Gellar announced that Hulu had decided not to proceed with the much-anticipated fantasy revival. Keep in mind that the streamer had already commissioned a pilot the previous year, tentatively titled Buffy: New Sunnydale , with Oscar winner Chloé Zhao directing from a script by Nora and Lilla Zuckerman . Months after the cancellation, we can confirm Buffy will return again , but this time without Hulu's involvement and with a significant twist.