Tag Archives: oceania

Anzac Day commemorations return to Gallipoli with moving service

A moving dawn service has been held in Gallipoli, Turkey, after two years of cancelled Anzac Day commemorations due to the pandemic.

Today marks the 107th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings at Anzac Cove.

The service began with a song and didgeridoo performance.

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This year's Gallipoli dawn service featured a didgeridoo performance.

Major General John Boswell, Chief of Army, delivered the Call to Remembrance on behalf of the New Zealand Defence Force.

"At this time, 107 years ago, in ships that covered the ocean off this tiny bay, thousands of Australians and New Zealanders were preparing to land on this rugged coast," he told those gathered in the cove.

"For all but a few, this was to be their first experience of the horrors of combat. Most were convinced that, as one New Zealand soldier wrote in his diary: 'It will be the greatest days in our lives'."

Hundreds gathered at Anzac Cove in Turkey to mark Anzac Day, with veterans and current service men and women coming together to pay their respects to all those who fought and continue fighting to safeguard their country. Major General John Boswell, Chief of Army delivers the Call to Remembrance on behalf of the New Zealand Defence Force.

The first Commemorative Address was then given by his Excellency Myles Armitage, the Australian ambassador to the Republic of Turkey.

"While the nature and focus of our remembrance of Anzac has changed over the intervening decades, our respect endures for those who fought here," he said.

"The men who landed at Arabuna on 25 April faced a daunting prospect. Sergeant Hubert Maher of the 3rd Battalion wrote that the country was precipitous, the heat tropical, and weighed down 'with our kit, the pace was a killer'."

Australia and New Zealand's buglers, who played the Last Post at this year's services in Gallipoli, told 9News earlier of their matching stories.

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Australian Army Bugler, Isaac White and Raynor Martin, from the New Zealand Army.

Australian Army Bugler Isaac White and Raynor Martin from the New Zealand Army both attended for the first time, both visits were delayed due to COVID-19, and both had great-grandfathers who served at Gallipoli.

Mr Martin's 99-year-old grandmother gave him his great-grandfather's medals to take to Turkey.

"I actually had them blessed at Anzac Cove the other day and played a little sunset for him," he said.

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After two years of cancelled Anzac Day commemorations, Australians are being given a warm welcome back to Turkey as the pilgrimage to the Peninsula begins.

"That was pretty moving for me. I did shed a wee tear on the Peninsula."

Mr White said it was "surreal" to meet somebody with a similar family story.

Organisers had short notice for 2022's commemorations.

They were only officially given the green light by the government in early March.

After two years of cancelled Anzac Day commemorations, Australians are being given a warm welcome back to Turkey as the pilgrimage to the Peninsula begins.

Repatriation Commissioner Don Spinks said: "New Zealanders and Australians expect the opportunity to come here, so all stops were pulled out to make sure we were prepared."

Numbers were expected to be down at this year's Gallipoli service, with around 500 people anticipated, a far cry from the 10,000-strong turnout in 2015.

Those in charge of the historic site say they've made use of the two-year absence of Australian visitors to better preserve the location.

Why the US government proposed nuking the Moon

A now-defunct US government program developed a proposal to tunnel through the Moon using nuclear weapons in a search for "lightweight metals", new documents reveal.

The papers were obtained from the Department of Defence's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) by VICE, through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The secretive program ran from 2007 to 2012 and spent millions on researching experimental technologies such as invisibility cloaks, traversable wormholes, warp drives, and anti-gravity devices.

LIVE COVERAGE: How Australia marked Anzac Day as dawn services return

The earth's shadow covers the full moon during a partial lunar eclipse, Friday, Nov. 19, 2021, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Buried among 1600 pages of reports, proposals, contracts and meeting notes was a explosive plan to mine the moon.

In the report on "negative mass propulsion," authors suggested extremely lightweight metals may be found inside the heart of the celestial body.

They claimed these may be "100,000 times lighter than steel, but still (have) the strength of steel".

To reach the centre, the authors proposed blasting a tunnel through the lunar crust and mantle using thermonuclear explosives.

The existence of the AATIP was first revealed by the New York Times in 2017 upon director Luis Elizondo's resignation.

Later that year the former Pentagon official went public about reports of UFOs.

While AATIP's moon proposal was not greenlit, space agency NASA is moving forward with plans to mine the space rock.

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Earth's moon

It's believed "the Moon holds hundreds of billions of dollars of untapped resources".

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced on Twitter in 2020 the agency "is buying lunar soil from a commercial provider".

"It's time to establish the regulatory certainty to extract and trade space resources," he wrote.

He expanded on this in a blog post, explaining all commercial proposals and operations will comply with the Outer Space Treaty created in 1967.

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View of Earth from Apollo 8 over the Moon (Getty)

"We are putting our policies into practice to fuel a new era of exploration and discovery that will benefit all of humanity," Mr Bridenstine said.

The tweet marked one giant leap for the space agency's Artemis missions, which plans to return humans to the Moon by by 2025.

With Artemis, NASA will land the first woman and first person of colour on the Moon, and seek to set up a permanent base there.

This is the first time humankind will return to the Moon since the Apollo missions.

Billionaire investor sells Netflix stake after losing almost $600 million

Billionaire hedge fund investor Bill Ackman has told shareholders he has chosen to sell his fund's investment in Netflix despite losing almost $600 million in three months.

Netflix's stock has plummeted in recent days after an earnings report revealed 200,000 subscribers had left the streaming giant, marking the first-time subscriber numbers fell in more than a decade.

Mr Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management became one of Netflix's largest shareholders in late January this year. Based off market disclosure at the time – and Netflix's current stock price – it is estimated that Pershing Square lost around $US430 million ($596 million) on the deal.

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In a letter to shareholders, Mr Ackman said while the hedge fund has "a high regard" for Netflix's management they can no longer confidently predict the company will experience long-term growth.

"Yesterday, in response to continued disappointing customer subscriber growth, Netflix announced that it would modify its subscription-only model to be more aggressive in going after non-paying customers, and to incorporate advertising, an approach that management estimates would take 'one to two years' to implement," Mr Ackman said.

"While we believe these business model changes are sensible, it is extremely difficult to predict their impact on the company's long-term subscriber growth, future revenues, operating margins, and capital intensity."

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https://twitter.com/billackman/status/1486460691519361024

Mr Ackman said the fund "would not be surprised" to see Netflix become more successful, but had learnt with other investments that acting quickly was key.

"One of our learnings from past mistakes is to act promptly when we discover new information about an investment that is inconsistent with our original thesis. That is why we did so here," he wrote.

"While Netflix's business is fundamentally simple to understand, in light of recent events, we have lost confidence in our ability to predict the company's future prospects with a sufficient degree of certainty.

"Based on management's track record, we would not be surprised to see Netflix continue to be a highly successful company and an excellent investment from its current market value."

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Netflix mobile phone generic logo

Last week Netflix's stock dropped 30 per cent when the market opened on Wednesday, instantly wiping more than $60.54 billion off the value of the company.

Netflix said it shed 200,000 subscribers in the first three months of the year, when it had been expecting to add 2.5 million.

The streaming giant, whose stock had already dropped more than 40 per cent this year-to-date, blamed the attrition on increased competition for viewers and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Netflix said its decision to pull out of Russia cost the company 700,000 subscribers.

Nine, the publisher of this website, also owns streaming service Stan.