The invasive species has increased in spread and numbers and is costing farmers millions of dollars

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An unpublished government report on feral deer shows Australia is failing in its efforts to stop the spread of what one advocate warns could become “Australia’s next feral pig”.

The five years from 2020-2025 over which the national feral deer action plan was assessed covers a period in which the famously elusive species has increasingly encroached upon major cities, leading to more frequent encounters – including a memorable occasion in which two men in various degrees of undress were fined after becoming lost in the bush when they were spooked by deer while nude sunbathing.

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Are you rummaging about for bits of wire and pumpkin-coloured crêpe paper and wondering if a scorch-marked tea-towel will work as a devil’s cape for a nine-year-old? Spare a thought for the parents of Australian kids going to a fancy-dress party in 1887

Actually, don’t – their costumes were made by professional costumiers, befitting the hundreds of posh kids who sashayed into the lord mayoress’s fancy-dress ball for children at Adelaide town hall nearly 140 years ago. But their rare and incredibly detailed photos could provide some Halloween inspiration.

My happy place is a hushed archive reading room looking at objects. I was looking for copyright-free researching images for my latest book, Spooky Ladies, and silently squeed as these costume photos were delivered in a very long, narrow, custom-made heritage-green box by the good folk at the State Library of South Australia, packed tightly with more than 300 stiff “cabinet cards”, showing kids dressed as fairies, devils, astrologers, witches, and fortune tellers.

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Vivian Beaumont theater, New York City

Unconvincing performances and an ill-fitting big stage make a retooled version of the classic courtroom drama feel like a missed opportunity

Given the current state of the US military brass, it makes some sense that audiences would want to drift back to an older, nobler idea of the armed services, in which bad actors exist but are rooted out by the good guys in uniform. That perhaps explains the Broadway revival of A Few Good Men, Aaron Sorkin’s 1989 courtroom drama about a cocky military attorney defending two young marines who followed an illegal order with fatal results. The play is at once sharp and misty-eyed, critiquing a hallowed institution while reverently imbuing it with a certain dignity – in some ways, it does for the military what Sorkin’s The West Wing did for the Oval Office.

A Few Good Men was turned into a hit Oscar-nominated film in 1992, starring a then boyish Tom Cruise in the role of recalcitrant navy lawyer Daniel Kaffee and a frightening Jack Nicholson as Kaffee’s ultimate enemy, Colonel Jessep, the hardliner in command of the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, where a marine has died under troubling circumstances. Directed by Rob Reiner, the film is a clever, old-fashioned crowd pleaser, culminating in a classic trial scene punctuated by an iconic line. “You can’t handle the truth!”, Jessep memorably bellows at Kaffee just before confessing to his misdeeds. Those in search of crackling drama and sentimentality about the military should just watch that film, rather than plunking down a considerable sum of money to see the play in its current form at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont theater.

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The unprecedented number of empty seats at the fifth plenum – a symbol of expulsions – serve as a symbol for the scale of the purges under Xi Jinping

China expelled a record number of officials from the Chinese Communist party (CCP) as it concluded a major political gathering, which saw an unprecedented number of empty seats indicating the scale of the purges under Xi Jinping.

A record 33 members were expelled at this week’s fifth plenum, a gathering of top officials that takes place roughly once a year.

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Reverse Engineering: An AI-cloned free tool is being dubbed 'the end of software' "New AI tools are disrupting the tech industry, making it relatively easy and fast to clone an existing piece of software and replicate its features. Earlier this month, a small team of developers used AI tools to create near-identical, free versions of two commonly used products: Microsoft Office, with programs such as Word and Excel, and Adobe Creative, which includes Photoshop." Will this kill Adobe and companies like it? Is it really the end? Probably not.

Frontier AI can now reverse-engineer software binaries.

ABU DHABI (ANP/AFP) - Binance, 's werelds grootste cryptobeurs, is mogelijk getroffen door een grote hack. Volgens het bedrijf is voor ruim 2,5 miljard dollar (ongeveer 2,24 miljard euro) aan cryptomunten bevroren om diefstal te voorkomen. Binance heeft de handel in bepaalde producten stilgelegd en inmiddels ook alle stortingen en opnames tijdelijk opgeschort.

Binance stelt in soms tegenstrijdige berichten op X dat het geld van gebruikers volledig veilig is, maar belooft ook eventuele verliezen te vergoeden. Het in Abu Dhabi gevestigde bedrijf voert veiligheidscontroles uit en werkt samen met opsporingsdiensten en andere bedrijven om cryptomunten op te sporen en te bevriezen. Het bevroren bedrag kan nog oplopen.

Hoeveel er daadwerkelijk is buitgemaakt, is nog onduidelijk. Blockchainanalysebedrijf Chainalysis schat de waarde van de gestolen cryptomunten op het moment van de diefstal op ongeveer 5,9 miljard dollar. Medeoprichter en voormalig topman Changpeng Zhao spreekt op X van een vermoedelijke hack. Hij schat de totale verliezen op mogelijk iets meer dan 1 miljard dollar.

Als de schatting van Chainalysis klopt, zou het gaan om de grootste cryptodiefstal ooit. De buit zou bijna vier keer zo groot zijn als bij de hack van cryptobeurs Bybit in februari 2025, waarbij 1,5 miljard dollar werd gestolen. Hoe de aanval op Binance kon plaatsvinden, is nog niet bekend.

Cryptobedrijf Tether heeft naar eigen zeggen ongeveer 1,6 miljard dollar tegoeden bevroren vanwege de mogelijke hack. Circle heeft ruim 800 miljoen dollar geblokkeerd. Beide bedrijven geven zogenoemde stablecoins uit, digitale munten waarvan de waarde is gekoppeld aan de Amerikaanse dollar. Ze worden onder meer gebruikt voor de handel op cryptobeurzen.

De bitcoin daalde na het nieuws bijna 5 procent in waarde. Ethereum verloor bijna 6 procent en BNB, de cryptomunt van Binance, bijna 10 procent.