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SHE’S NOT GOING ANYWHERE! A famous dusky shark nicknamed Bukangi is still hanging around a canal in Busan, South Korea, a day after rescuers guided her out, the BBC reported.

The three-metre (10ft) shark turned up in the canal last month and became an instant sensation, drawing more than 1.6 million visitors. The city embraced her as an unofficial mascot.

On Wednesday, in a livestreamed operation, rescuers spent more than eight hours gently steering her with a net toward open water while hundreds of fans cheered and waved goodbye. Then on Thursday morning she reportedly broke through a barrier and swam right back in, getting stuck between two layers of nets until rescuers removed the outer one.

Authorities have fortified the barrier, and say Bukangi is swimming further out but keeps circling back to the mouth of the waterway. A government official told the BBC rescuers have now concluded their operations.

Why the fuss? She appeared injured and wasn’t eating, and falling water temperatures could weaken her further. Not everyone wanted her gone: one visitor called her “a rare gift” to Busan. Another fan put it best: “she should go and live her normal shark life.”

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News

THE SPIES ARE BUSY! Germany is the target of “intensive” espionage, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Thursday after a Ukrainian national was arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia, the BBC reported.

Prosecutors identified the suspect only as Vadym Y., under German privacy law. They say he had been in contact with a Russian intelligence service through an intermediary since at least July 2025, and collected information “on the production of armoured vehicles, ammunition, and explosives.” He is due before an investigating judge on Friday.

Merz called the bust a “success” but didn’t sugarcoat it: “let us not delude ourselves – the activities of Russian intelligence services in Germany remain at a consistently high level.” And: “We will likely see more such cases in the coming months and years.”

It’s been a year of it. A woman was arrested in Berlin in January over alleged work for an officer at the Russian embassy. And earlier this month former BND spy chief August Hanning was arrested on suspicion of espionage and treason, with investigators not saying which foreign powers were involved.

Germany is one of Europe’s leading weapons suppliers to Ukraine, and it has accused Russia of launching an explosives-laden drone at Leipzig/Halle Airport in September. Putin claims Germany planted the evidence.

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT! Meta has struck a new deal with chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to keep him from leaving California over a proposed state tax on billionaires, the BBC reported Thursday.

The ballot measure, up for a vote in November, would slap a one-time 5% tax on residents worth more than $1bn. For Zuckerberg, whose fortune is estimated at over $200bn, that likely means around $10bn in extra state taxes.

So what happened? Last month Zuckerberg told Meta’s board he was thinking of moving his primary residence out of the state, warning a move “would be public and inevitably noted and commented upon by company employees.” The board’s answer: a stock split that created an entirely new type of share, one for every existing shareholder. Zuckerberg gets more stock, more often, and can sell it quarterly. His control over Meta doesn’t change.

Meta calls it the “Founder Alignment Agreement.” A company filing says it came out of “robust” and “at several points, contentious” talks with a special committee. It runs for eight years as long as he stays a California resident, and appears to apply even if the tax fails.

Meanwhile Meta says it could spend up to $145bn on AI this year and posted negative cash flow for the first time since going public. Investors weren’t thrilled: shares fell more than 7% Thursday, wiping more than $100bn off its market value.

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News

A FIRST — AND NOT THE GOOD KIND! French authorities say they’ve detected the first known human case of the Shamonda virus, in a patient who died in early October, the BBC reported Thursday.

Shamonda mostly hits cattle, spread by infected midges, and has turned up in sheep, goats, alpacas and horses. In cows it causes fever, diarrhoea and poor milk production. Human infections? Previously unheard of. “Until now, the Shamonda virus was considered non-transmissible to humans,” France’s health and agriculture ministries said, despite decades of the virus circulating in Africa and Asia.

Officials think the patient caught it from a midge bite in eastern France, where animal cases were first found in the spring. The person was being treated for a serious illness at a hospital in Lyon and had neurological complications “very likely linked” to the virus, based on early findings.

Now the calm-down part: health officials call it an “exceptional case in a severely immunocompromised patient” and say there is currently no risk to the public.

But the bug is on the move. Europe’s first animal cases showed up in late July, and it has since been found in farm animals in Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain and Jersey. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is monitoring and investigating how it reached a human, and the case has been reported to the World Health Organization.

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News

CHECK YOUR ATTIC — NOW! A retired decorator from Woking, England, is a millionaire after his Pokémon card collection sold for £1.56 million at auction, the BBC reported.

He had no idea the cards were worth anything until he read in his local paper about one card fetching more than £6,000. The collection, 42 sets sealed in mint condition in custom binders, had sat in his attic for 15 years.

Back in the late 1990s his son was swapping cards at school. Dad thought they “looked nice” and might be a good investment, and bought some complete sets from a seller in Malaysia on eBay. “He had his own cards, but he never got to touch these, I’m glad to say,” the man, who asked not to be named, told the BBC.

Get this: one set that cost him £300 sold for £75,000. The top lot, a Legendary Collection Complete Master Set with a near-mint Charizard, was estimated at £15,000 to £20,000 and went for £100,000.

Surrey auction house Ewbank’s says it’s the UK’s most valuable trading card auction ever, beating a £872,000 sale in London on 9 October, and may be a European record. Andrew Ewbank, who ran the sale himself, told bidders he was “going for a lie down” afterwards. We don’t blame him.

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News

THE MACHINES ARE TAKING THE DESKS! British banking giant Barclays is cutting around 5,000 jobs as it brings more artificial intelligence into its work, the BBC reported Thursday.

The bank says 1,000 posts are already gone, and another 4,000 will go by the end of this year. That’s about 5% of its global workforce. The cuts center on its UK retail bank, but a big share is expected to fall in India, where some UK back-office work is done. About 60% will hit support functions, developers included.

Not every cut is down to AI, Barclays says. It calls them part of a long-running modernisation plan, and boss CS Venkatakrishnan put it this way: “AI is the icing on the cake not the cake.” Still, “We will employ the AI at scale,” he said.

Meanwhile the money keeps rolling: Barclays posted £2.3bn profit for July through September, up on last year, though slightly below forecasts. It expects its efficiency drive to save another £1.1bn in 2027.

And it’s not alone. HSBC, Standard Chartered and Danske Bank have all flagged AI-related job cuts this year. Analyst Will Howlett of Quilter Cheviot said the industry is reaching the point where tech spending “translates into fewer people being required to run the business.” Translation: check your inbox.

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News

WAITER, THERE’S AN EGG IN MY COKE! UK food delivery app Just Eat has been testing AI to make pictures for menu items that didn’t have photos yet, the BBC reported. It went about as well as you’d think.

A Belfast cafe’s bacon and egg soda bread showed up as a glass of fizzy drink with a cooked egg and bacon floating in it. Other dishes came out as chips poking out of muffins. A “cheese roll” became slabs of cheese rolled up like sushi. And thanks to a misspelling, one garlic bread came out shaped like a plane, presumably because someone meant “plain.”

Users on the Just Eat UK subreddit have spent days posting the best of the worst. The AI pictures carry a label saying so, and the BBC spotted many of the stranger ones still on menus.

A Just Eat spokesperson said the company is “in the process of removing” the bad images and will stop making more until the AI is further developed. “We’ve been trialling AI-enhanced images, and as with any new technology, it isn’t always quite right the first time,” they said, adding that it works with tens of thousands of small restaurants on photos, including funding professional local photographers.

One social media user summed it up: “Well, that lot just helped my diet.” Another made the real point: they want to see what the food actually looks like, because perfect AI versions “just lead to disappointment.”

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News

Is the door creaking open? Russia is “ready in principle” to restart talks with the US and Ukraine on ending the war, Vladimir Putin’s top aide Yuri Ushakov said Wednesday, the BBC reported. He spoke after Putin met Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg.

Ushakov suggested a new round around 10 November in Abu Dhabi. A US official told the BBC that Witkoff and Jared Kushner had proposed a technical-level three-way meeting, which Ukraine accepted in Oslo on Tuesday and Russia accepted on Wednesday. Zelensky said the US wants it “as soon as possible” and “we are in favour of it.” The talks have been frozen since February.

Don’t pop the champagne. Ushakov called the ideas Witkoff brought “not very useful,” and said the talks must focus on “building a security system for Russia and Ukraine after the end of the conflict.” He also said Putin insists his troops are advancing everywhere on the front, a claim Ukraine and its European allies dispute, pointing to a near stalemate.

Zelensky, meanwhile, told Fox News he would accept freezing the war along the current front line. “Freeze and stop,” he said, with security guarantees to be discussed after.

All of this lands in the middle of a nasty row between Kyiv and Washington. Trump has said it is time for Ukraine to get a new president. Kyiv accused the US of withholding missile-warning intelligence, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio called “scandalous,” and Zelensky now says the sharing “works now.” Witkoff called Wednesday’s talks “constructive.” Kushner: “There is still hard work ahead.” You can say that again.

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News

THE BIGGEST ONE YET! A judge in New Mexico on Wednesday ordered Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to pay $25 billion, the BBC reported. It is the largest fine ever levied against the company for its business practices.

It follows a two-week trial earlier this year that found Meta spent years lying to the public about how it handled Facebook user data. The case grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The state also accused Meta of misleading people about how it profited from hate speech and how it enforced its own rules, and the jury agreed on those claims too. Jurors found Meta broke state law more than 40 million times.

Judge Francis Mathew called the violations “willful” and said they spanned “more than 11 years,” from 2010 to 2021. He wrote that communications between senior executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, were “designed to mislead the public.” “The lies extend beyond Facebook’s data practices as well,” he said, going to “the heart of Facebook’s core business practices.”

Get this: the full penalty was calculated at $219 billion. The judge cut it to $25 billion, roughly what Meta earns in profit each quarter. The state had asked for up to $40 billion. Meta argued anything over $3.4 billion would be unconstitutional.

Meta’s top lawyer CJ Mahoney said the ruling makes it “all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico,” called the suit “a tax on speech,” and said Meta will appeal and win. Attorney General Raúl Torrez fired back: “No corporation is too powerful to be held accountable.” For scale, the FTC’s 2019 privacy fine was $5 billion. This one is five times that.

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News

Two trillion-dollar giants, one CEO, and now a very big question. Elon Musk says he is actively considering merging Tesla and SpaceX, the BBC reported. “Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes,” he said on Tuesday’s call about SpaceX’s quarterly results.

Musk said both companies have formed special committees of independent directors to study the idea. “The special committees have not reached agreement on terms of any transaction and there’s no guarantee that they will,” he said. “But I do think there is a lot of merit to merging and a lot to be gained.” He also warned, per NBC News, that “some people out there assume that a SpaceX and Tesla merger is a certainty, and I think that would be overstating it.”

The size is BONKERS. The BBC puts Tesla at roughly $1.5 trillion and SpaceX at $2 trillion, which would make it one of the largest mergers in history. Musk calls himself a “conflicted party,” says he isn’t on either committee, and compared even talking about it to “tap dancing through a minefield.”

The hurdle: at least 50% of Tesla’s shareholders would need to approve, which Musk called “quite a high hurdle to achieve.” His pitch is chips, AI and software, plus Terafab, the chipmaking effort the two companies already share.

Wall Street liked the sound of it. SpaceX shares rose 8% after hours and Tesla gained 2%, per the BBC. SpaceX posted a $4.4 billion profit for the latest quarter, though it lost $1.1 billion over the first nine months of the year. Tesla reports its own results Wednesday. Grab the popcorn.

Featured image: editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News; NBC News