Facebook has removed a total of 443 pages and 125 Instagram accounts from Indonesia, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt for engaging in ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’. 

Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher says there were ‘networks of accounts’ created to ‘mislead others about who they are and what they were doing’. 

Facebook's global lead for threat disruption David Agranovich says the pages were difficult to distinguish as fake. 

Turkey says it is ready to advance into northeast Syria following US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from the Turkey-Syria frontier. 

A build-up of troops and tanks near the border is continuing and a security official claims one of the main goals is to cut off a transit route between Iraq and Syria often used by Kurdish armed groups before the operation in Syria. 

US President Donald Trump has denied that his decision to withdraw troops is a betrayal of US allies the Kurds. 

An inquiry by the Independent Commission Against Corruption has revealed that a Chinese billionaire gave a wine box containing $35 000 in cash to New South Wales Labor boss Jamie Clements to help him cover legal bills to fight allegations of sexual harassment. 

Mr Clements faced allegations that he tried to kiss a 27-year-old Labor staffer in parliament house office in 2015. 

Mr Clements said he was not surprised at being given the money. 

Melbourne Cup-winning horse trainer Darren Weir and two other men have been charged with animal cruelty offences following raids on Weir’s stables in Ballarat and Warrnambool in January. 

Mr Weird was charged with nine offences including three counts of ‘engaging in the torturing, abusing, overworking and terrifying’ of a racehorse and three counts of ‘causing unreasonable pain or suffering to a racehorse’. 

In February Racing Victoria suspended Weir for four years after police allegedly found electrical devices used to shock horses, known as "jiggers", in the raids.

Caretakers of a heritage-listed Queensland landmark are calling for outback tourism funding as the site faces closure for the second time. 

Tour guide Bob Willow says closing the country’s last remaining wool scour in the central-Western town of Blackall would be a tragedy for outback tourism. 

Mr Willow says the wool scour was promised at least $18 000, but a lack of funding has resulted in low visitation. 

“They said they would pay our big expenses like maintaining our steam engine and our diesel supplies,” Mr Willow said. 

Police removed an Extinction Rebellion climate activist who chained himself to train tracks at Bowen Hills station yesterday. 

Trains were delayed for half an hour while the man was on the tracks holding a sign that read ‘Australia has the worst record of species extinction in the whole world’. 

Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk says the government is asking for legislation aimed at increasing penalties for radical protesters to be brought forward in response to the latest action by Extinction Rebellion. 

There has been a positive response with New Zealand’s gun buyback scheme as over 10,000 guns have been returned in 7 days.

The buyback scheme, which compensates owners up to 95% of the original cost until December 20, follows the ban of semi-automatic firearms in April.

The scheme comes four months after a mass attack in Christchurch killing 51 people.