The October supermoon in pictures

The October supermoon in pictures

Star-gazers in Australia and across the world were treated to a a stunning lunar display when the closest supermoon of the year appeared this week.

Tow truck hauls away massive shark that washed ashore US beach

Tow truck hauls away massive shark that washed ashore US beach

Police on Cape Cod had to call in a tow truck to haul away a massive shark that had washed ashore a Massachusetts beach.

The Orleans Police Department shared photos of the great white shark being towed away from a local beach.

"Not one of our typical calls for service," the department posted.

READ MORE: One Direction bandmates 'completely devastated' following shock death

"Unfortunately, this giant was located washed up on the beach," US Police said after the great white shark has found.The great white shark on the back of a tow truck in Cape Cod.

After the shark was discovered, police called Nauset Recovery to remove it. The company placed the dead shark on a flatbed truck.

"You really never know what kind of call you'll respond to on any given shift.

At least Seargeant Elliott only needed to follow the tow truck and didn't have to wrestle an unruly Great White," police posted.

The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy said it is not yet known how the shark died.

"A white shark was found washed up off of the town of Orleans, MA. A necropsy will be performed to learn more. At this point, we do not know if it was a tagged or previously identified individual," the organization said.

READ MORE: Former pilot Greg Lynn to be sentenced for killing missing camper

The shark had several large gashes along its side.

At the beginning of the summer, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy installed acoustic shark receivers along the Outer Cape in an effort to make swimmers safer from the sea creatures.

The devices were installed at several beaches, including Nauset Beach in Orleans.

A 2023 study found that there were an estimated 800 white sharks in Massachusetts waters from 2015-2018.

The sharks are regularly attracted near shore by seals in the area.

Shark sightings weren't only limited to Cape Cod this summer. Popular Crane Beach in Ipswich was closed to swimmers in September due to several great white shark sightings.

Beaches remain closed as clean-up of black 'tar' balls continues

Beaches remain closed as clean-up of black 'tar' balls continues

Sydney's Coogee Beach and Gordons Bay Beach remain closed today as council workers continue to work to remove thousands of black balls which mysteriously washed ashore earlier this week.

Tests conducted by Randwick City Council have identified the golf ball-sized debris as "tar balls".

A tar ball is a small blob of petroleum that has been weathered and shaped after floating in the ocean for a period of time.

READ MORE: Real estate agent accused of fleeing country after stealing hundreds of thousands

Council staff continue the clean up at Coogee Beach.

Randwick Mayor Dylan Parker said council staff were working fast to remove the balls from the beaches.

"Our community is rightfully very protective of our natural environment and this has been a very concerning incident," Parker said.

"Our priority as a local council is to keep people safe and protect as far as possible our coastal and marine environment."

The origin of the tar balls remains unknown, however, the council said it would work with authorities to pinpoint it.

Coogee Beach was closed Tuesday afternoon after the balls washed up, with clean-up crews starting their work at the beach yesterday.

Gordons Bay Beach is closed until further notice.

Parker said Randwick Council staff have been working closely with the NSW Environmental Protection Authority, Ports Authority and Transport for NSW on the cleanup response.

The next beach along the coast, Gordons Bay, was also closed on Wednesday as the small black spheres were spotted there on the sand.

The tar balls were also found scattered along the length of the shore by lifeguards.

"We're currently investigating exactly what the source of this mysterious beach pollution is," Parker said at the time.

Randwick City Council collected samples to investigate their materials and origin.

"We thought we'd have a swim, walk along the beach, and lo and behold, we can't even get on the sand," one would-be beachgoer told 9News.

Why Harris campaign has spent $16 million on a Facebook page with 1000 followers

Why Harris campaign has spent $16 million on a Facebook page with 1000 followers

As Donald Trump and Kamala Harris feverishly chase undecided voters in the final stretch of the US presidential campaign, millions of people in battleground states are being served ads on Facebook and Instagram from an obscure page calling itself "The Daily Scroll."

The social media ads, which are adorned with a nondescript logo resembling a pair of checkmarks, have promoted news articles from mainstream outlets including CNN, ABC and NBC, showing easing US inflation, cheaper insulin prices, and the consequences of state abortion bans.

But the ads on Meta-owned platforms aren't being paid for by any news outlet — they're a product of Harris' presidential campaign, which has spent heavily on social media platforms and embraced influencers to power her online efforts against Trump.

READ MORE: How does the Electoral College work? Explaining the centuries-old system that decides the US election

Since Harris launched her bid for president this summer, her campaign has spent more than $US11 million ($16 million) on Facebook and Instagram ads to promote The Daily Scroll into users' feeds, a CNN analysis found. That made it the second biggest page by spending on political or social issues ads in the last 90 days, after only Harris' main campaign page.

The Harris campaign spent another $1.3 million on ads from a similar news aggregator page dubbed "Headlines 2024."

The ads promoting The Daily Scroll have appeared on screens at least 700 million times, according to data from Meta's Ad Library, with about 97 per cent of views coming from seven battleground states: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina.

All the ads include a disclaimer that they are "paid for by Harris for President," and they do not appear to violate Meta's rules for political advertisers.

The Daily Scroll and Headlines 2024 pages are just a small part of a much wider effort to reach undecided voters across all forms of media, Kevin Munoz, a Harris campaign spokesperson, told CNN.

READ MORE: 50 states will vote in the US election. Only seven actually matter

Promoting news stories is just one of many digital strategies the campaign is using, in addition to traditional online display ads and short video clips to target voters on YouTube and other platforms, he said.

Overall, the Harris campaign has far outspent the Trump campaign on Meta's platforms, spending nearly $119 million on ads since this summer, compared with about $14 million from Trump's campaign and associated fundraising committees.

Unlike the Harris campaign's main Facebook and Instagram accounts, the ads run by The Daily Scroll and Headlines 2024 aren't soliciting donations, and most of them aren't directing users to the campaign's website. Instead, the Harris team is using the ads to promote select news stories from major media outlets that reflect well on the Democratic presidential nominee and poorly on Trump.

In recent months, the campaign has spent more than $3 million on The Daily Scroll to promote an ABC News story about slowing inflation — a major voter concern ahead of the election — which was viewed about 120 million times by Facebook and Instagram users in battleground states, according to the Meta database.

"Good news for consumers – price increases have cooled significantly as inflation reaches the lowest point in over three years," the ads declared.

READ MORE: US election poll-tracker: Who will win on November 5?

Other news reports promoted by the page include an NBC News article on Trump boasting that his crowd sizes rivaled that of Martin Luther King Jr., a CNN video of Harris speaking the day after Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, and a story from The Guardian reporting that the Project 2025 conservative policy blueprint will "gut labor rights." The campaign spent more than $440,000 on ads promoting each of those reports.

While the thousands of ads in the social media campaign have appeared in users' feeds hundreds of millions of times, The Daily Scroll account itself appears dormant, with only a handful of public posts and roughly 1000 followers. Headlines 2024 is even more sparse, with only about 100 followers and no posts at all. This is because Meta allows advertisers to run ads that don't appear on the main feeds of the pages they are associated with.

"The ads are clearly labelled as being paid for by the Harris campaign; there is nothing obviously deceptive about them," said Peter Loge, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, who previously worked in the Obama administration. "There is no generic-sounding PAC associated with them."

North Korea accused of sending citizens to fight for Russia

North Korea accused of sending citizens to fight for Russia

North Korea is sending its citizens to help Russia's military fight Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, increasing concerns about the alliance between Moscow and the secretive state.

In his daily video message this week, the Ukrainian president said: "We see an increasing alliance between Russia and regimes like North Korea.

"It is no longer just about transferring weapons. It is actually about transferring people from North Korea to the occupying military forces."

READ MORE: Ukrainian recruiters descend on Kyiv's nightlife in search of men not registered for conscription

Zelenskyy's allegation comes amid an increasingly friendly relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang. Russian President Vladimir Putin visited North Korea in June – the first visit of its kind for more than two decades – and Western observers have wondered how heavily North Korea has assisted Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"Obviously, in such circumstances, our relations with our partners need to be developed. The frontline needs more support," Zelenskyy added, reiterating his plea for Western nations to allow Kyiv to use long-range missiles in Russian territory.

A source in Ukrainian intelligence, who did not want to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, told CNN last week that a small number of North Koreans have been working with the Russian military, mostly to help with engineering and to exchange information on the use of North Korean ammunition.

Some of them were recently killed in eastern Ukraine, the source said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday dismissed allegations that North Korean personnel had been sent to help Russia as "another hoax."

But South Korea's National Intelligence Service said last week it is monitoring developments and believes the claim could be accurate.

READ MORE: How the future of the US will be decided on November

Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun said it is "highly likely that the reported casualties of North Korean officers and soldiers in Ukraine are true, given various circumstances," speaking at the annual parliamentary audit of the defence sector on Tuesday.

"We believe that the possibility of further deployment of regular troops is very high, as Russia and North Korea have entered a mutual agreement that is almost equivalent to a military alliance. We will also be well-prepared for this possibility," he added.

Multiple governments have accused Pyongyang of supplying arms to Moscow for its grinding war in Ukraine, a charge both countries have denied, despite significant evidence of such transfers.

The two nations, both pariahs in the West, have forged increasingly warm ties since Russia's invasion.

During Putin's visit to the North Korean capital in June, the two countries pledged to use all available means to provide immediate military assistance in the event the other is attacked, part of a landmark defence pact agreed by the autocratic nations.

Putin said during that trip that the two countries were ramping up ties to a "new level."

In remarks ahead of talks between the two, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un voiced his "full support and solidarity with the struggles of the Russian government, military and the people," pointing specifically to Moscow's war in Ukraine "to protect its own sovereignty, safety and territorial stability."

FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in breaking news, celebrity and sport via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.

Train crash in Egypt kills one and injures more than 20 people

Train crash in Egypt kills one and injures more than 20 people

One person has been killed and 20 others have been injured after a locomotive crashed into the back of a Cairo-bound passenger train in southern Egypt.

It marks the second train crash in a month in the North African country.

The collision occurred in the province of Minya, 270 kilometres south of Cairo, the railway authority said in a statement.

READ MORE: Former Essendon star's wife arrested in raids at Bali sex spas

The two railway carriages fell into the water nearby following the crash.

The cause of the crash was being investigated, authorities said.

Footage aired by local media showed the two carriages partially submerged.

Along with the fatality, the Health Ministry said in a separate statement at least 21 people were taken to hospitals, of which 19 were later discharged after receiving treatment.

Train derailments and crashes are common in Egypt, where an aging railway system has also been plagued by mismanagement.

In September, two passenger trains collided in a Nile Delta city, killing at least three people.

In recent years, the government announced initiatives to improve its railways. President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said in 2018 some 250 billion Egyptian pounds, or $8.13 billion, would be needed to properly overhaul the neglected rail network.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)