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BETTY McGuire – best known for her role as grandma Kate Malone in the sitcom Growing Pains – has died aged 100.

The TV star passed away while staying at a retirement home in California on October 8.

She starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio on the 80s sitcom Growing Pains where she played the mother of Joanna kerns’ Maggie.

Appearing in seasons 1 – 2 and again in seasons 4-7, Betty acted on the show for a total of seven years.

Besides Growing Pains, Betty appeared in scores of TV shows including Falcon Crest, The Doris Day Show, Columbo, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Hill Street Blues, ER, CSI: Miami, MacGyver, Moonlighting and Charlie’s Angels.

Away from the screen performed across a host of Broadway shows and musicals.

Playing alongside the likes of big name stars like Ethel Merman, Barbara Cook, Bea Arthur and Tony Randall she wowed audiences in original productions of Plain and Fancy, Happy Hunting and Oh Captain!.

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The hum of the kidney dialysis machine that Onasis Munoz is connected to suddenly stops. The fluorescent lights overhead flicker out, and his room at a clinic in Valencia, Venezuela, is plunged into darkness.

It is not the first time a power cut has interrupted one of the three weekly sessions Munoz needs to do the work his failing kidneys can no longer do, filtering waste and excess fluid from his blood.

For years, electricity would go out every couple of days across parts of Venezuela’s Carabobo state.

But in recent months, Munoz said, the outages have grown to be daily, lasting around seven hours. The clinic’s emergency batteries have since been depleted, and its backup generator no longer works.

He explained that the frequent power failures have disrupted his treatment. His health has slumped as a result.

“I arrive home, exhausted, as if I had run a marathon,” the 34-year-old said.

But often there is no electricity there either, and recent weeks have been sweltering. “I can’t switch on the air conditioning. I cannot rest because of the heat and the mosquitoes. There’s no relief,” Munoz said.

Across Venezuela, the prolonged outages are riling locals, as the electricity supply to homes, businesses and essential services becomes unstable.

Some of the cuts are deliberate, as the government of interim President Delcy Rodriguez rations electricity.

The resulting frustration has spilled onto the streets, where demonstrators hold “cacerolazos” – a traditional form of protest that involves banging pots and pans.

Some have gone as far as blocking roadways and setting tyres on fire. The electricity crisis has also raised concerns about how the government is managing the country’s vast oil supply, a key source of income for the country.

“We are desperate. We cannot understand how a country so rich in resources can be practically left in the dark,” said Patricia Cueva, a lawyer from Maracaibo, the capital of oil-rich Zulia state.

“We cannot rest. We cannot work. Our children cry.”

The 20-year-old soldier denies the charge as protests held on Okinawa and in Tokyo.

Japan’s prime minister says the killing of a woman, allegedly by a US Marine stationed in Okinawa, is a “heinous crime”, and she has called on the United States to “thoroughly enforce discipline” amid growing outrage in Japan.

Sanae Takaichi told lawmakers on Monday that the government has urged the US to provide “full cooperation with the investigation” and called for “strict discipline among US military personnel”.

About 54,000 US military personnel, including 18,000 Marines, are stationed in Japan. The majority of these forces are based in Okinawa, a Japanese island that came under US administrative control at the end of World War II and was returned to Japan in 1972.

Crimes including rapes, assaults, hit-and-run and drink-driving incidents by US personnel have long sparked protests on the island.

The new case involves a 20-year-old Marine who was arrested on suspicion of killing a 39-year-old woman at a hotel in the city of Naha and stealing her wallet, police said on Sunday.

The Kyodo News agency, quoting police, reported that the woman’s body was found in a hotel room and she appeared to have been strangled.

The Marine was arrested by Japanese police on Sunday and sent to prosecutors on Monday, according to Kyodo News. He has denied the charges.

“The occurrence of such a heinous crime is extremely regrettable,” Takaichi said.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara told reporters on Monday that Tokyo will “continue to urge the US side to thoroughly enforce discipline” among its soldiers in Japan.

Kihara, who is in charge of mitigating the impact of US forces in Okinawa, said Tokyo has protested to the US at “various levels”.

The incident has caused outrage across Japan, and the Japanese Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence have summoned the US ambassador and the commander of US forces in Japan.

According to Jiji Press, about 100 people held protests outside the Okinawa prefectural government building on Sunday and shouted: “How much longer do we have to bear all of this?”

Another 100 people participated in a rally in Naha on Sunday, Japanese media reported.

Okinawa native Sorane Sakihama, 24, who organised a similar rally in Tokyo on Sunday, said she cried upon learning about the woman’s death.

“We couldn’t protect her. That made me so angry and sad,” the university student told the AFP news agency, adding that she was planning to organise another protest in front of the US embassy on Tuesday evening.

“I want to ask them: What are these soldiers stationed here for? They might say they are here to protect lives or boost security. But how can they say that when a life was taken by one of their own?”

Since Okinawa was returned to Japan, about 6,000 US military personnel have been arrested in Japan, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.