A 35-year-old man from Brisbane's south has been sentenced to six years in prison for preparing to travel to Syria and help overthrow the government.

He was sentenced to six years behind bars with a non-parole period of four years and six months yesterday in the Queensland Supreme Court.

A joint investigation conducted by the Queensland Joint Counter Terrorism Team (JCTT) found that between July 2016 and February 2017 the man undertook multiple activities attempting to enter Syria to help fight to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad-led government.

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This included lodging an Australian passport application and researching flights from Brisbane to Türkiye, where he planned to cross the Turkish border illegally and enter Syria. 

In May and June 2018, a search warrant was executed at the man's Kuraby home, where several items that were consistent with preparations to fight in Syria were found.

The items included a USB containing electronic copies of publications related to hostile activities, including books on guerrilla warfare, guides for building explosives, as well as multiple issues of a magazine produced by al-Qaeda.

Devices with content related to extremism, martyrdom and jihad were also seized.

On June 30, 2018, the man was arrested and charged with three counts of making preparations for incursions into foreign countries for the purpose of engaging in hostile activities.

He entered a guilty plea on May 30, 2024.

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AFP Assistant Commissioner Stephen Nutt said the AFP were targeting violent extremism, whether it was planned to happen in Australia or overseas.

"The AFP holds a great focus on protecting Australia and Australians from acts of domestic terrorism, but we are also watchful of people here at home who wish to engage in violent activity on foreign soil," Assistant Commissioner Nutt said.

"We denounce violence in all its forms, and our investigators pursue matters tenaciously to ensure people who wish to commit acts of violent extremism here or overseas are put before the courts."

"I'd like to acknowledge the thorough work undertaken by all of the officers involved to gather and analyse the available evidence in this matter and bring criminal charges," Queensland Police Service Assistant Commissioner Charysse Pond said.

"This result is a credit to the hard work and commitment of the Queensland Joint Counter Terrorism Team to keeping the community safe."

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The pair were pulled from the water in only the clothes they had on when the boat flipped.

Bill Gates has called for governments, investors, activists and scientists to change their approach to the climate crisis ahead of next month's COP30 summit in Brazil.

In a post on his personal website, the Microsoft founder said that the "doomsday view" of climate change – that it will "decimate civilisation" – is wrong.

"Although climate change will have serious consequences – particularly for people in the poorest countries – it will not lead to humanity's demise," he wrote. 

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"People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future. 

"Emissions projections have gone down, and with the right policies and investments, innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further."

Gates said that, because of that view, there was an overwhelming focus on short-term emissions reduction targets, which is diverting resources away from measures he claimed are more cost-effective at improving people's lives.

Pointing to a need for greater innovation – particularly to remove the "green premium", or the extra cost associated with using zero-emissions products – and to better measure the impact of climate initiatives, he wrote that next month's UN climate conference was a perfect opportunity to change approach.

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"This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives," he said. 

"Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world's poorest countries.

"Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. 

"The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been.

"Understanding this will let us focus our limited resources on interventions that will have the greatest impact for the most vulnerable people."

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Gates, who was previously the world's richest man and currently has a net worth of about $US122 billion ($185 billion), has invested more than $100 billion into charitable causes, and has previously pledged to give away the majority of his fortune before he dies.

Much of his philanthropic work has focused on initiatives such as malaria prevention and climate adaptation, and he stressed in his post that rising global temperatures was still a crucial issue that needs to be urgently addressed.

"It needs to be solved, along with other problems like malaria and malnutrition," Gates wrote.

"Every tenth of a degree of heating that we prevent is hugely beneficial because a stable climate makes it easier to improve people's lives…

"Climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems. We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause.

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MPI says the US-imported snack may contain pieces of metal.

The "storm of the century" has devastated a holiday hotspot, and is heading north.

Australian girls are being targeted online by sadistic young men, who treat their victims as if they were characters in a video game, the new head of the Australian Federal Police has revealed.

Commissioner Krissy Barrett said online criminal networks are intimidating, exploiting and controlling girls with low self-esteem or mental health disorders to perform serious acts of violence on themselves, siblings, others and pets.

They have identified 59 people as being part of the network in Australia and arrested three people aged between 17 and 20.

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"They are crimefluencers, and are motivated by anarchy and hurting others, with most of their victims pre-teen or teenage girls," Barrett told the National Press Club in her first major speech. 

Barrett said young men from Western, English-speaking backgrounds are engaged in the "twisted type of gamification" where they treat and trade their victims as they would if they were characters in a video game.

"These groups have a similar culture to multiplayer online gaming culture, and they hunt, stalk, and draw in victims from a range of online platforms," she said.

"To be accepted into these networks, the perpetrators often must have to pass a test or undertake a task such as providing videos of the self-harm of others or other gory content.

"This is where mainly vulnerable girls are being victimised.

"In this new, twisted type of gamification, perpetrators reach a status or new level in their group when they provide more content, showing more extreme acts of depravity and sadism.

"And in some cases, perpetrators trade their victims with each other, just like an online game.

"Once traded, a new perpetrator can control their new victim."

These offenders are believed to be motivated by their own amusement or to be popular online.

The criminal networks they are part of have no centralised hierarchy or single ideology and are attracted to violent extremism, nihilism, sadism, Nazism, and Satanism.

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The AFP has set up Taskforce Pompilid to investigate and arrest these crimefluencers.

Federal police and Microsoft are developing a prototype AI tool that will interpret emojis and Gen Z and Alpha slang in encrypted messages and chat groups to identify sadistic online exploitation.

The AFP has also provided information to departments and state and territory police to help them navigate the new trend and is working with partners overseas, who have arrested another nine people.

"Internationally, information provided by the AFP has contributed to arrests for murder, inciting suicide, inciting harm online, violent sexual offences, possession of child abuse and child sexual abuse material, as well as cybercrime offences such as unauthorised access of data and attempted extortion of organisations," Barrett said.

"A sub-group within the Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group has also been established to target these groups."

Barrett encouraged parents and guardians to be aware of the rising trend and speak with their children, letting them know that they can talk about uncomfortable online experiences with a safe adult.

"You can encourage safe conversations by talking regularly about online activities and apps, encouraging critical thinking, and reassuring kids that they won't be punished for coming forward if they think they have done something wrong," she said.

"You can look out for warning signs that include self-harm, changes in eating or sleeping habits, sudden withdrawal from friends, families or activities, use of extreme behaviour, extreme language or symbols, and rejection of previously held morals."

Readers seeking support can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or beyond blue on 1300 22 4636.

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A young humpback whale has been found dead tangled in shark nets south of Sydney, prompting renewed calls to remove the "barbaric walls of death".

The Department of Primary Industries, which oversees the state's shark program, said its shark net contractors found the two-year-old mammal floating upside down off Wombarra Beach, in northern Wollongong, during a routine inspection yesterday morning.

It was found with a shark net tangled around its tail and side fin.

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ORRCA, a non-profit rescue organisation, also received reports and is working with the Wollongong City Council, National Parks and Wildlife Service, and the Local Aboriginal Lands Council are managing the incident.

A National Parks and Wildlife Service spokesperson said this was a "very sad incident".

The cause of death remains unclear until the whale undergoes a necropsy, but choppy weather conditions have hampered efforts to retrieve the eight-metre body.

The dead whale is feared to attract sharks to the area, with the public advised to stay clear of it and avoid entering the water. 

The Wollongong City Council has temporarily shut the patrolled Scarborough and Coledale beaches to swimmers and surfers as a precaution until further notice.

Animal groups, councils and politicians have long been calling for shark nets to be removed from beaches across the state, arguing that it does not deter sharks and leads to other endangered sea animals being caught and killed in the nets.

According to data obtained from the Department of Primary Industries, almost 90 per cent of the animals caught in shark nets in the 2024 to 2025 season were non-target species and 67 per cent died.

The animals killed included four dolphins, seven threatened turtles, and four critically endangered grey nurse sharks.

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Following yesterday's death of a humpback whale, Greens spokesperson for healthy oceans Senator Peter Whish-Wilson urged federal Environment Minister Murray Watt to remove a legislation exemption that allows state-controlled shark control programs.

"What further proof do governments need that shark nets do not work, and can even attract sharks to beaches where they can feed on marine wildlife caught in these barbaric walls of death," he said.

"Governments can help keep ocean-goers safe by supercharging investment in modern-day alternatives to outdated and ineffective shark nets and drumlines.

"These include subsidising shark shield personal deterrent devices, shark spotter programs, eco-shark barriers, bite-proof wetsuits, and improving public education."

The NSW government puts up shark nets at 51 beaches across eight councils between Newcastle and Wollongong when temperatures begin to warm from September.

Six of those councils, including the Wollongong City Council, have passed motions in support of removing the shark nets. 

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The Department of Primary Industries had planned to remove shark nets at three spots in the Northern Beaches, Waverley and Central Coast councils this summer to trial its effectiveness.

But the death of a 57-year-old father killed in a shark attack at Dee Why in September caused the government to scrap the trial completely.

"In light of the tragedy that has occurred at Dee Why on the weekend, we need to be sensible about what the community would accept at this time," Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty said at the time.

A Department of Primary Industries spokesperson said the government will continue to investigate new shark mitigation technologies to minimise the impact on marine animals while also protecting beachgoers. 

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Astronomers have captured a stunning new image of the Milky Way as it's never been seen before.

The picture is the largest low-frequency radio colour image of the Milky Way ever assembled and took an Australian PhD student more than 40,000 hours to construct.

It reveals the Southern Hemisphere view of our Milky Way galaxy in vivid colour and reveals details that aren't clear in visible light.

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Silvia Mantovanini, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), spent 18 months putting the radio colour image together.

She spent 18 months constructing it based on data from two extensive GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA (GLEAM) and GLEAM-X (GLEAM eXtended) surveys conducted in Western Australia.

The first survey took place over 28 nights in 2013 and 2014, and the second was conducted over 113 nights from 2018 to 2020.

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Using supercomputers, Mantovanini was able to construct an image that offers twice the resolution and ten times the sensitivity of the previous GLEAM-X photo from 2019.

It also provides insights into how stars form in different parts of the Milky Way, how they interact with other celestial objects, and how they die.

"This vibrant image delivers an unparalleled perspective of our Galaxy at low radio frequencies," Mantovanini said.

"You can clearly identify remnants of exploded stars, represented by large red circles. The smaller blue regions indicate stellar nurseries where new stars are actively forming."

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Associate professor Natasha Hurley-Walker from the same ICRAR team called it an "exciting milestone in astronomy".

"No low-frequency radio image of the entire Southern Galactic Plane has been published before," she said.

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Analysis: Talk about clutching at straws!

The latest criticism of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for wearing a T-shirt of one of his favourite bands, Joy Division, smacks not just of desperation from Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, but a complete lack of ideas.

It's the sort of attack that only serves to speed up the ticking of the clock that's counting down the end of her political future.

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The only thing saving her is that no one else wants the job of leading a party that has Buckley's of winning back power in the foreseeable future.

I had held some sympathy for the thankless task of opposition leader for Ley.

Her grasp on the Coalition top job was already tenuous, having only narrowly claimed the position in the wake of the party's electoral wipeout at the last election.

As a moderate and a woman, Ley appeared on paper to be a reasonable choice for the Liberals to start clawing back some of the centre of politics and attempt to win back voters who had abandoned the Conservatives in droves.

But instead of being backed in as leader, she's been undermined at every turn, had shadow ministers quit the frontbench in protest at the direction she wants to take the party, and become the face of a political rabble intent on eating its own, obsessing over internal dramas instead of offering a credible alternative government.

For democracy to work, we need a strong opposition that can hold those in power to account.

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The Coalition with Ley as leader is failing dismally, and the attacks she has chosen to launch against the prime minister are proof she's not up to the job.

It was bizarre when Ley called for Australia's Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd to be sacked after the prime minister's first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump.

Rudd copped a lashing from the US president for his previous criticism of a man who doesn't take kindly to unkind words.

But the meeting and the entire US trip was a huge success, not just for Albanese but for the entire country.

And Rudd had worked tirelessly to help make it happen.

Ley's criticism of Rudd was a blunder that she was forced to walk back after even her own colleagues publicly admitted she got wrong.

Now, even more bizarrely, Ley has stood up in parliament to criticise the prime minister's choice of clothing when he flew home from the same US trip – swapping a suit and tie for a T-shirt of British band Joy Division.

She claimed it showed a "profound failure of judgement" to support a band that got its name from "a wing of a Nazi concentration camp where Jewish women were forced into sexual slavery", particularly "at a time when Jewish Australians are facing a rise in antisemitism".

She's right about the Joy Division name, but it's a very long bow to draw, trying to claim that makes the band or those who like their music antisemitic.

Joy Division is classed as a highly influential post punk rock band, and it's also ironic that Ley herself once claimed to be a punk rocker!

There are far more important issues for the opposition leader to hone in on than criticising the PM's choice of T-shirt.

At least 64 people have died in a massive police raid aimed at organised crime in Rio de Janeiro, security officials said.

Among the dead are four Brazilian police officers, they said.

Rio de Janeiro State Governor Cláudio Castro said the operation was still ongoing and the death toll may rise. Authorities also claimed on social media that at least 42 rifles were seized during the operation.

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Rio de Janeiro's government called the raid on Tuesday the largest of its kind in the state's history.

Police raids are common in the city of 13 million residents before international events, and next week, Rio will host a major climate conference, the C40 World Mayors Summit.

Video published by Reuters showed huge columns of black smoke emerging from the Alemão favela during the raid.

Photographs of Alemão in the aftermath showed the source: burned cars, constructed as barricades.

Authorities launched an operation aiming to "combat the territorial expansion" of the Comando Vermelho criminal group, Rio de Janeiro's government added in a lengthy thread on X.

The operation was in the works for over a year, the government said, and involved more than 2500 military and civilian police personnel.

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Comando Vermelho is Brazil's oldest active criminal organisation, according to the think tank InSight Crime. Its name, Portuguese for "Red Command," is a reference to its origins as a leftist prisoners' organisation formed during the military dictatorship that ruled over Brazil until 1985.

Since then, Red Command has become a massive, transnational criminal group, involved in drug trafficking and extortion. InSight Crime reports that in recent years, it has struggled with escalating violence from the state and other criminal militias.

Gang used drones, police claim

At least 81 people were arrested on Tuesday, according to a social media post by Rio de Janeiro's Police Department.

During the raid, gang members allegedly targeted police with a drone, authorities said.

"In retaliation, criminals used drones to attack police officers in the Penha Complex," Rio de Janeiro's state government said in a post on X, sharing a video of what appears to show a drone firing a projectile from the sky.

"Despite the attacks, security forces remain steadfast in the fight against crime," the state government added.

"This is the magnitude of the challenge we face," Castro said in a post, before using a term popular among tough-on-crime leaders in the United States and Latin America. "It is no longer common crime, it is narco-terrorism."

Past raids on similar slums in Brazil have attracted copious criticism from civil rights advocates. In May 2021, a raid in the Jacarezinho favela killed at least 25 people and led the Supreme Court to ban all police raids until the end of the COVID pandemic unless the circumstances were "absolutely exceptional."

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