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Fremantle Prison, sometimes referred to as Fremantle Gaol or Fremantle Jail, is a former Australian prison and World Heritage Site in Fremantle, Western Australia. The site includes the prison cellblocks, gatehouse, perimeter walls, cottages, and tunnels. It was initially used for convicts transported from Britain, but was transferred to the colonial government in 1886 for use for locally-sentenced prisoners. Royal Commissions were held in 1898 and 1911, and instigated some reform to the prison system, but significant changes did not begin until the 1960s. The government department in charge of the prison underwent several reorganisations in the 1970s and 1980s, but the culture of Fremantle Prison was resistant to change. Growing prisoner discontent culminated in a 1988 riot with guards taken hostage, and a fire that caused $1.8 million worth of damage. The prison closed in 1991, replaced by the new maximum-security Casuarina Prison.
The prison was administered by a comptroller general, sheriff, or director, responsible for the entire convict or prison system in Western Australia, and a superintendent in charge of the prison itself. Prison officers, known as warders in the 19th century, worked under stringent conditions until they achieved representation through the Western Australian Prison Officers' Union. Convicts were initially of good character as potential future colonists, but less desirable convicts were eventually sent. As a locally-run prison, Fremantle's population was generally short-sentenced white prisoners in the 1890s, with very few Aboriginal prisoners. By the late 20th century, most prisoners were serving longer sentences, a higher proportion of them were violent, and Aboriginal people were present in large numbers.
Prison life at Fremantle was extremely regulated. Meals were an important part of the day, eaten in the cells throughout the operational life of the prison. Convict or prisoner labour was used on public infrastructure works until around 1911; subsequently, only work inside the prison was allowed, though there was never enough to fully occupy the inmates. Punishments varied over the years, with flogging and time in irons eventually replaced by lengthening of sentences and deprivation of visitors or entertainment. More than 40 hangings were carried out at Fremantle Prison, which was Western Australia's only lawful place of execution between 1888 and 1984. Prominent escapees included Moondyne Joe, as well as John Boyle O'Reilly and six other Fenians in the 19th century, and Brenden Abbott in 1989. There have been various riots and other disturbances, with major riots causing damage in 1968 and 1988.
Since 1991, Fremantle Prison has been conserved as a recognised heritage site, and various restoration works have been undertaken. New uses have been found for some buildings within the prison, which has also become a significant tourist attraction. The process of obtaining World Heritage listing as part of the Australian Convict Sites submission focused historical interpretation and conservation efforts on the prison's convict era (1850 – 1886), at the expense of its more recent history, including Aboriginal prisoners held there. (Wikipedia)

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

The US president did not provide details of where Monday meeting would take place or who would be involved

Donald Trump said talks with Iran will happen on Monday but declined to set a deadline for an agreement after earlier saying he had called ⁠off an imminent attack in the hope ⁠of quickly reaching a deal to ​reopen the strait of Hormuz and resolve the impasse over Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.

For its part, Iran said it was nearing a deal with Oman over a new route through the strait of Hormuz, where a tanker reported an explosion nearby on Sunday, underscoring the continued volatility of the strategic waterway. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) Centre reported that the vessel and crew were all safe.

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Officials are banning some ‘compressed hikes’ which involve walkers tackling demanding routes in short timeframes

Malaysia’s government is tightening hiking rules nationwide after a social media trend left increasing numbers of adventurers needing to be rescued when they became lost or stranded in remote locations.

In the first five months of 2026, Malaysia saw 52 cases of lost hikers, an increase of nearly 30% compared with the same period the previous year, the Malaysian Fire and Rescue Department told local media.

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ASIA IN BRIEF Meta last week briefly took down an unremarkable video posted by India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, earning itself days of criticism and regulatory trouble. The video featured Modi announcing a new task force that will reform the exams required to secure places in many Indian universities. Those exams have become a major factor in the sudden development of a major youth protest movement in India, after the cancellation of one test amid claims that questions had leaked. As part of his attempts to quell protests, Modi posted his first-ever selfie-style Instagram reel last week and followed it up with others –including the one Meta took down and replaced with a placeholder saying the vid was the subject of a legal complaint. The social networking giant said that was a mistake, apologized, and restored the video. That error gave India’s government the chance to beat up Meta in public. S. Krishnan, the secretary of India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), said he asked Meta “to come in at the highest level and explain what is happening and why.” “They have agreed to come – well, they have to – and explain what the situation is,” Krishnan said. “We want to have both a policy level understanding and a technical understanding of the issues, and also adaptation to the kind of concerns India has.” Krishnan said Meta has written to India’s government to express regret over the incident and established new protocols governing moderation of accounts run by prominent people to avoid future messes of this sort. India has a complex relationship with Big Tech companies, sometimes celebrating their role in assisting the nation’s development, but often also lamenting their monopolistic tendencies and role in spreading content the Modi government would rather netizens don’t see. DeepSeek teases ‘peak/valley’ pricing for new models which hit beta last week Chinese AI upstart DeepSeek last week released a beta API for its next model, deepseek-v4-flash, and revealed a new pricing policy for its APIs. The company says the new policy will apply “soon” and will see the cost of its services double between 09:00 and 12:00, then again from 14:00 to 18:00 – in China’s single official timezone UTC+8. DeepSeek startled the AI market last year by releasing models that it claimed to have trained without vast fleets of Nvidia accelerators. Those claims didn’t stand up to close scrutiny, but the company is considered a significant challenger to western AI outfits such as OpenAI and Anthropic. deepseek-v4-flash is likely to reach general availability within weeks. DeepSeek already claims it outperforms its last model, V4-Pro. Australia proposes new tax on Big Tech – and a new out Australia’s government has tweaked its plans to tax Big Tech companies unless they pay local media for the right to share links to their work. The Land Down Under previously threatened tech companies with a 2.25 percent tax if they don’t fund local media. On Monday, that plan changed to a 2.5 percent levy on advertising revenue only and expanded incentives to fund small and regional publications. Meta has previously slammed the idea as “A discriminatory tax built on a false premise.” Also in Australia, regulators last week decided to sue Telegram after it failed to take down violent and terrorism-related content. Kioxia profits jump by billions, as you’d expect from a memory-maker Japanese memory-maker Kioxia last week announced [PDF] its quarterly revenue grew 451 percent year over year to reach $11.1 billion, plus profit of $5.3 billion – a massive turnaround from the $287,000 loss for the same quarter last year. According to Japanese outlet Nikkei, CFO Yoshihiko Kawamura said the company expects even better days ahead because he believes demand for NAND storage is “still in the early stages.” Japan’s next moonshot to ride local rocket Japanese space startup iSpace last week announced its next mission will ride a Japanese rocket to the moon. iSpace has launched two moon lander missions, but both failed. The company’s plan for its third mission involves new lander design called ULTRA that is capable of carrying payloads weighing several hundred kilograms to Luna. This time around, iSpace plans to use the H3 rocket built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, instead of the SpaceX Falcon 9 that carried its first two missions. ®

To design invisible drones, researchers have tried camouflage, transparent materials and light-bending optical systems. But engineers at Northwestern University used "motion blur," which an announcement from the school notes is the effect that makes fast-spinning fans seem to disappear.

"The drone spins up to 25 times per second, which is too fast for the human eye to see clearly. While it isn't completely invisible, it morphs into a ghostly smudge that seamlessly blends into the background... "

To design the drone, the Northwestern team first used a computational model to generate roughly 20,000 drone configurations capable of stable flight. Then, they used artificial intelligence (AI) and optimization algorithms to repeatedly rearrange the drones' major components, including a motor, propeller, circuit board, counterweight and batteries. After sifting through many different configurations, the algorithms determined the ideal placement of the drone's components to minimize its visibility from virtually every viewing angle while allowing for stable flight.
After selecting promising candidates, the engineers simulated each drone spinning in flight and overlaid those images a hundred real-world backgrounds. Then, they used a perception model that approximates human vision to determine how noticeable each design appeared. Designs that blended into their surroundings received lower visibility scores. The team selected the 500 lowest-scoring designs and applied the optimization algorithm, which repeatedly adjusted the positions of components to further minimize those scores. "The design process was fully automated," [said Northwestern's associate CS professor Michael Rubenstein, who led the work]. "Then, when we were confident that a drone met all our criteria, we built it."

They've named the drone "Phantom Twist"," and plan to design future iterations with more transparent materials or quieter propulsion to make it even less noticeable.

The Northwestern team presented the work on July 16 at Robotics: Science and Systems 2026 in Sydney, Australia...


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