At the peak of his drug peddling, Louis Hall squandered almost $1m at the casino.

$22,020. That's the average amount of savings Australians have in the bank, but that changes dramatically according to your age.

NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb has said she is 'confident' that a dog squad officer is not to blame for the deaths of two police dogs, which were found dead in a police vehicle in Sydney's south.

Their handler made the tragic discovery when they went to check on police dog Xtra and development dog Soldier about 12.30pm yesterday, NSW Police said.

They were at a development day at a Lucas Heights facility and were "in the air-conditioned pods of their purpose-built police vehicles", police said.

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NSW Police said the animals were found dead when the handler carried out a "routine check".

The canines were taken to a specialist veterinary clinic but couldn't be revived.

Commissioner Webb said today that an investigation has been launched, but she was "confident" there was no wrongdoing by the officer.

"I am confident that there has been no human error … we are looking at a technical, engineering type problem," Webb said.

"I spoke to the officer this morning, he is devastated, he had the very difficult task of going home yesterday … and telling his family."

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Assistant Commissioner Stephen Hegarty explained that the police dog squad vehicles have a dedicated pod in the back of the car where the dogs are kept.

A specially designed engine system keeps running and pumps air-conditioning into the pod, even when the officers aren't inside the car.

Hegarty said upon the discovery of the dogs, officers realised that the engine had stopped running, which stopped the air conditioning in the pod.

"At this stage, it seems like the engine and aircon were operating correctly at 10.30am," he said.

"We have really good equipment we don't understand why that has taken place."

"It's standard for the dogs to be in the pod for that amount of time … those dogs can be in the rear of that car at nighttime for a long amount of time."  

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He also said there's an alarm system that goes off when the engine stops, and the alarm had been triggered.

"It did go off at that time, but when they got down there it was too late." 

The probe will be overseen by detectives attached to Sutherland Police Area Command and Fleet Services, which takes in the Lucas Heights area.

Webb paid tribute to the German shepherds, which she said were highly trained.

"Today is a very sad day for the dog unit and the thoughts of the whole police family are with them," she said.

"We owe it to PD Xtra and DD Soldier to conduct a thorough investigation."

The temperature in Lucas Heights peaked today at 27 degrees about 12.30pm. The RSPCA warns it can be 47 degrees in a car within an hour when it's just 22 degrees outside, but police would not comment on whether heat was a factor.

Hegarty said the loss would be felt deeply.

"Our focus is on the welfare of all staff involved with ongoing support services made available to them," he said.

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Xtra had been with the force since 2018 and was working out of the Newcastle and Central Coast region while Soldier only started with the dog unit in February this year for training and development.

He was involved in several arrests publicised by the dog unit, including finding an alleged offender hiding under a house in Mereweather and tracking a man and woman through heavy bushland in 2021.

Xtra was among a crop of five canine recruits named by chronically ill kids from The Children's Hospital at Westmead in 2017.

At the time, police said involving the community in naming was a long running tradition and the hospital said it was a "special" memory the patients would treasure".

Almost a third of all large companies operating in Australia didn't pay any tax in the 2022-23 financial year.

The Australian Taxation Office's (ATO) Corporate tax transparency report revealed that 1253 large entities didn't pay any tax that year.

While an increase on the year before from 831, the proportion of businesses not paying tax has remained steady at 31 per cent.

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The ATO said the majority of those companies didn't have to pay tax due to an accounting or tax loss.

Others used tax losses from the previous year to negate their tax bill, while a small proportion utilised tax offsets.

The ATO said tax avoidance has reduced in recent years.

"We continue to see improvement in the tax compliance of large businesses, reflecting how the ATO's Tax Avoidance Taskforce has supported improvement in voluntary compliance in addition to strong compliance actions," ATO Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Saint said.

Overall, the amount collected by the ATO from big businesses rose to around $100 billion.

Just under $98 billion of that was income tax – a record figure that was up 16.7 per cent from the year before.

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"This is a great result for the Australian community," ATO Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Saint said.

"Tax paid in 2022–23 was again the highest since (corporate tax transparency) reporting started.

"When you include the additional tax revenue raised by the Tax Avoidance Taskforce for the year, we collected around $100 billion from large corporates in 2022–23."

According to the ATO, the amount of tax not paid by big businesses was less than 5 per cent.

"Corporate tax compliance in Australia sets the bar for the rest of the world, and these results in part reflect years of sustained effort from the ATO's Tax Avoidance Taskforce to drive and support increased tax compliance by large businesses," Saint said.

"Our tax gap estimates show that after ATO compliance activities, large corporates paid 96 per cent of all income tax they should have for 2021–22.

"As they should be, large corporate groups are amongst the highest in net tax performance of all population segments."

The mining sector paid more than half of all tax from large corporations, while oil and gas companies accounted for more than 10 per cent.

The world's famous faces love to go all out for the spookiest night of the year. We've collected some of the most outlandish costumes and cutest family shots from Halloween 2024.

The flight upgrade row in Parliament has now snared Opposition leader Peter Dutton, who revealed a previous request to billionaire Gina Rinehart.

Dutton has previously declared flights offered by Rinehart's company Hancock Prospecting, but early this week insisted he had never personally requested to use the mining magnate's personal jet.

But yesterday, he was forced to backtrack when he admitted his staff had spoken to Rinehart's office about using the aircraft to fly the Opposition Leader from Queensland to Sydney for a Bali memorial service.

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Dutton said he asked to use the jet owned by Australia's richest woman to save taxpayers the $40,000 fee of flying aboard an RAAF plane.

"I thought that was very expensive and the cheaper option for the taxpayer was for my office to speak to, to Mrs Rinehart's office as to whether the plane might be available," he said.

"That was at zero cost to the taxpayer."

His comments came as MPs are sifting through their flight records and upgrades to make sure they've followed the rules in declaring everything.

Among them is Shadow Transport Minister Bridget McKenzie who said she will review her own travel records after she was challenged about not declaring all upgrades she may have received.

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Earlier this week she declared she had received a flight upgrade in 2018 when she was a government minister.

But McKenzie confirmed on Today this morning she was writing to three airlines to check if there were more.

"I was wrong earlier this week to be so emphatic … I don't like to hold others to a standard I'm not prepared to subject to myself," she said.

The furore began when the Coalition hit out at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese over claims around Qantas upgrades during his time as transport minister.

The PM has been accused of personally calling former Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce to receive the free upgrades for himself and his family in a book published by ex-Australian Financial Review columnist Joe Aston.

Albanese said he had never acted inappropriately and had declared every flight and upgrade he received. He also denied ever calling Joyce around upgrades.

Police are appealing for public help to catch an armed robber who held a knife to the neck of a supermarket worker during a hold-up in the Melbourne store.

The unknown offender armed with a knife approached the worker outside the store at Diggers Rest, in the city's north-west, at about 8.15pm on Saturday, October 5.

He threatened the victim and dragged him into the store on Glitters Road, before demanding money.

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The offender ran away with cash and tripped over while running along Welcome Road.

No one was physically injured.

He is described as being Caucasian in appearance, about 175cm tall with a slim build.

He was last seen wearing grey pants, a black windbreaker with a Nike logo and black work boots.

Investigators have released an image and CCTV of a man they believe can help with inquiries.

Anyone who witnessed the incident or has information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or submit a confidential online report.

North Korea has test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time in almost a year, demonstrating a potential advancement in its ability to launch long-range nuclear attacks on the mainland US.

The launch was likely meant to meant grab American attention days ahead of the US election and respond to condemnation over the North's reported troop dispatch to Russia to support its war against Ukraine. Some experts speculated Russia might have provided technological assistance to North Korea over the launch.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un observed the launch on Thursday, calling it "an appropriate military action" to show North Korea's resolve to respond to its enemies' moves that have threatened the North's safety, according to the North's state media.

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Kim said the enemies' "various adventuristic military maneuvers" highlighted the importance of North Korea's nuclear capability. He reaffirmed that North Korea will never abandon its policy of bolstering its nuclear forces.

North Korea has steadfastly argued that advancing its nuclear capabilities is its only option to cope with the expansion of US-South Korean military training, though Washington and Seoul have repeatedly said they have no intention of attacking North Korea.

Experts say North Korea uses its rivals' drills as a pretext to enlarge its nuclear arsenal to wrest concessions when diplomacy resumes.

The North Korean statement came hours after its neighbours said they had detected the North's first ICBM test since December 2023 and condemned it as a provocation that undermines international peace.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea could have tested a new, solid-fueled long-range ballistic missile on a steep angle, an attempt to avoid neighbouring countries.

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Missiles with built-in solid propellants are easier to move and hide and can be launched more quickly than liquid-propellant weapons.

Having a missile fly higher and for a longer duration than before means its engine thrust has improved. Given that previous ICBM tests by North Korea have already proved they can theoretically reach the US mainland, the latest launch was likely related to an effort to examine whether a missile can carry a bigger warhead, experts say.

The US, South Korea and Japan released a joint statement on Thursday condemning the missile launch, saying it was in "flagrant violation" of numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The foreign ministers of the three countries also condemned the deepening military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, particularly the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia.

The Perseverance rover spotted a quick glimpse of a cosmic "googly eye" on Mars during a recent solar eclipse.

As Phobos, one of Mars' two moons, passed in front of the sun, it cast a lumpy, potato-shaped shadow on the sun's face as well as on the Martian surface.

The Perseverance rover, currently ascending the western wall of Jezero Crater, captured a video of the partial eclipse, which resembled a googly eye, on September 30.

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The eclipse lasted about 30 seconds, which makes the minutes-long solar eclipses seen from Earth seem epic — but the events are comparatively brief on Mars because Phobos is about 157 times smaller in diameter than Earth's moon, according to NASA.

Perseverance's latest observation carries on the tradition of Mars rovers that have served as the few spectators to glimpse — and record — a Martian eclipse. Previous images includes a video taken by the Curiosity rover in 2019 and photo that the Opportunity rover snapped in 2004.

With each video or photo of a Martian eclipse that a robotic explorer takes, astronomers can better understand the changing orbit of Phobos and how its days are numbered.

Doomed from the start

Phobos completes an orbit around the Martian equator every 7.6 hours, or three times a day, and is about 6000 kilometres from the surface of the red planet.

Pockmarked by thousands of meteorites, this moon was once nearly shattered by a giant impact. While it survived the collision, Phobos remains doomed. The tiny moon is drawing closer to Mars at a rate of 1.8 metres every 100 years, and it will either crash into Mars in 50 million years or break up and become a ring around the planet.

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Astronomer Asaph Hall discovered Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, in 1877. He named them for the Greek gods associated with fear and panic.

Astronomers suspect Phobos and Deimos may be asteroids captured in orbit by Mars' gravity or fragments scattered during a giant impact with Mars, but mysteries persist about the Martian moons.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Martian Moons eXploration mission, or MMX, intends to solve some of those enduring riddles. The mission, expected to launch in 2026, will closely observe both moons before landing on Phobos, retrieving a sample from that moon and returning it to Earth.

Perseverance's slippery journey

Meanwhile, the Perseverance rover continues its arduous climb up the slippery, 20-degree-sloped surface of the crater wall, which is covered in loosely packed dust and sand and a fine layer of brittle crust.

To conquer the difficult terrain, the rover's engineering team on Earth had the robot experiment with driving backward up the incline, switchbacking and driving closer to the northern edge of "Summerland Trail", the name given to the rover's route up the rim.

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Following the northern edge has been the most efficient method for Perseverance's climb, likely due to the presence of large rocks close to the surface that provide more traction.

The team anticipates the rover will reach the scientifically intriguing crater rim by December.

The rover recently shared a mosaic that stitches together 44 images showcasing landmark moments from its three-and-a-half-year journey on the red planet, including its landing site and the final airfield of the Ingenuity helicopter.

"The image not only shows our past and present, but also shows the biggest challenge to getting where we want to be in the future," said Rick Welch, Perseverance's deputy project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "If you look at the right side of the mosaic, you begin to get an idea what we're dealing with. Mars didn't want to make it easy for anyone to get to the top of this ridge."

Once Perseverance crests the crater rim, it will head for Witch Hazel Hill, a light-coloured bedrock feature identified by the rover's science team as a spot that might be ideal for drilling a rock sample. The team is hopeful that samples collected at points of interest along Perseverance's journey could determine whether microbial life existed on Mars billions of years ago, when water flowed from a river delta and filled Jezero Crater.

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Crews searched for bodies in stranded cars and sodden buildings on Thursday as people tried to salvage what they could from their ruined homes following monstrous flash floods in Spain that claimed at least 158 lives, with 155 deaths confirmed in the eastern Valencia region alone.

More horrors emerged from the debris and ubiquitous layers of mud left by the walls of water that produced Spain's deadliest natural disaster in living memory. The damage recalled the aftermath of a tsunami, with survivors left to pick up the pieces as they mourn their loved ones.

Cars were piled on one another like fallen dominoes, uprooted trees, downed power lines and household items all mired in mud that covered streets in dozens of communities in Valencia, a region south of Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast.

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An unknown number of people are still missing and more victims could be found.

"Unfortunately, there are dead people inside some vehicles," Spain's Transport Minister Óscar Puente said early Thursday before the death toll spiked from 95 dead late Wednesday night.

Rushing water turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that tore through homes and businesses, sweeping away cars, people and everything else in its path. The floods demolished bridges and left roads unrecognisable.

Luís Sánchez, a welder, was one of the lucky ones when the storm turned the V-31 highway south of Valencia city into a floating graveyard strewn with hundreds of vehicles. He said he saved several people.

"I saw bodies floating past. I called out, but nothing," Sánchez said. "The firefighters took the elderly first, when they could get in. I am from nearby so I tried to help and rescue people. People were crying all over, they were trapped."

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Regional authorities said late Wednesday it seemed no one was left stranded on rooftops or in cars in need of rescue after helicopters saved some 70 people. The ground crews, however, were far from done.

"Our priority is to find the victims and the missing so we can help end the suffering of their families," Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said after meeting with regional officials and emergency services in Valencia on Thursday, the first of three official days of mourning.

Railways and farms damaged

Spain's Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this was the most powerful flash flood event in recent memory. Scientists link it to climate change, which is also behind increasingly high temperatures and droughts in Spain and the heating up of the Mediterranean Sea.

Human-caused climate change has doubled the likelihood of a storm like this week's deluge in Valencia, according to a rapid but partial analysis Thursday by World Weather Attribution, comprising dozens of international scientists who study global warming's role in extreme weather.

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The greatest pain was concentrated in Paiporta, a community of 25,000 next to Valencia city where mayor Maribel Albalat said Thursday that not fewer than 62 people had perished.

"[Paiporta] never has floods, we never have this kind of problem. And we found a lot of elderly people in the town centre," Albalat told national broadcaster RTVE. "There were also a lot of people who came to get their cars out of their garages … it was a real trap.'

While the most suffering was inflicted on municipalities near the city of Valencia, the storms unleashed their fury over huge swaths of the south and eastern coast of the Iberian peninsula. Two fatalities were confirmed in the neighbouring Castilla La Mancha region and one in southern Andalusia.

The regional president for Castilla La Mancha, Emilion García-Page, said that at least one Guardia Civil police officer was among several missing people in the town of Letur.

Homes were left without water as far southwest as Malaga in Andalusia, where a high-speed train derailed on Tuesday night although none of the nearly 300 passengers were hurt.

Greenhouses and farms across southern Spain, known as Europe's garden for its exported produce, were also ruined by heavy rains and flooding. The storms spawned a freak tornado in Valencia and a hail storm that punched holes in cars in Andalusia.

Heavy rains continued Thursday farther north as the Spanish weather agency issued alerts for several counties in Castellón, in the eastern Valencia region, and for Tarragona in Catalonia, as well as southwest Cadiz.

"This storm front is still with us," the prime minister said. "Stay home and heed the official recommendation and you will help save lives."

The search goes on amid the destruction

More than 1000 soldiers from Spain's emergency rescue units joined regional and local emergency workers in the search for bodies and survivors. The soldiers had recovered 22 bodies and rescued 110 people by Wednesday night.

"We are searching house by house," Ángel Martínez, with a military emergency unit, told Spain's national radio RNE from the town of Utiel, where at least six people died.

Some 150,000 people in Valencia were without electricity on Wednesday, but roughly half had power by Thursday, Spanish news agency EFE reported. An unknown number did not have running water and were relying on whatever bottled water they could find.

The region remained partly isolated with several roads cut off and train lines interrupted, including the high-speed service to Madrid. Officials said that damaged line won't be repaired for two to three weeks.

A man wept as he showed a reporter from national broadcaster RTVE the shell of what was once the ground floor of his home in Catarroja, south of Valencia. It looked as though a bomb had detonated inside, obliterating furniture and belongings, and stripping the paint off some walls.

The chaos also prompted some to smash and grab goods. The National Police made 39 arrests on Wednesday for looting stores in areas affected by the storms. The Civil Guard deployed officers to stop the looting of homes, cars and shopping malls.

Parts of Spain appear to merge with the sea

A year's worth of rain fell in just hours in east-central Spain on Tuesday.

Parts of the area now look like an extension of the Balearic Sea after unprecedented rainfall turned what should be dry ground into a vast expanse of water, satellite imagery captured on October 30 shows.

Floodwaters appear as various shades of blue and cover what was dry ground (browns and greens) earlier this month, the imagery shows.

The dramatic, widespread coverage of floodwater over inland areas has almost turned coastal areas into islands.

Waterways that were hardly noticeable in the "before" satellite image from earlier in the month — like the one that cuts just south of Valencia's city centre — are now highlighted in bright blue, indicating how swollen they are.

Officials questioned over late flood warnings

The violent weather event surprised regional government officials. Spain's national weather service said it rained more in eight hours in the Valencian town of Chiva than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge "extraordinary."

Yet the relative calm of the day after also gave time to reflect and question the official response. The Valencian regional government is being criticised for not sending out flood warnings to people's mobile phones until 8pm on Tuesday, when the flooding had already started in some parts and well after the national weather agency had issued a red alert for heavy rains.

Andreu Salom, mayor of the Valencian village of L'Alcudia, told RTVE that his town lost at least two residents, a daughter and her elderly mother who lived together, and that police were still searching for a missing truck driver.

He also complained that he and his townsfolk had no warning of the disaster that struck when the Magro River burst its banks on Tuesday evening.

"I myself was on my way to check the river level because I had no information," Salom said. "I went with the local police but we had to turn back because a tsunami of water, mud, reeds and dirt was already entering the town."

Mari Carmen Pérez said by phone from Barrio de la Torre, a suburb of Valencia city, that her phone buzzed with the flood warning after the rushing water had already forced open the front door and filled the first floor, forcing her family to flee upstairs.

"They didn't have any idea of what was going on," Pérez, a cleaner, said. "Everything is ruined. The people here, we have never seen anything like this."

Valencia regional President Carlos Mazón defended his administration's management of the crisis, saying "all our supervisors followed the standard protocol".

– Additional reporting by CNN