Finance Ministry Working to Get Ministries Up to Date in Submitting Appropriations Accounts
HAMILTON, Bermuda, Dec. 09, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Teekay Corporation Ltd. (Teekay) (NYSE:TK) and Teekay Tankers Ltd. ( Teekay Tankers ) (NYSE:TNK) announced today the following changes to their respective Boards of Directors, which are effective as of December 31, 2024. The changes further streamline and simplify the Teekay Group, and align with the previously announced goal of having Teekay Tankers serve as the sole operating platform within the Teekay Group and Teekay focusing on managing its controlling interest in Teekay Tankers: Teekay Board Changes "I'd also like to thank both David and Kenneth for their excellent leadership as Chairs of the Teekay and Teekay Tankers Boards. I'm grateful to be stepping into their positions at a time when the Teekay Group is well-positioned for the future and I look forward to continuing to work with them both in their respective Board roles. In addition, I welcome Poul to both Boards and Rudolph and Alan to the Teekay Tankers Board, and I look forward to continuing our work together.” Heidi Locke Simon Ms. Locke Simon joined the board of Teekay Corporation Ltd. in 2017 and currently serves as the Chair of the Compensation and Human Resources Committee and as a member of the Audit and Nominating and Governance Committees. She also served on the board of Teekay GP LLC, the general partner of Teekay LNG Partners LP (now known as Seapeak LLC), from June 2021 until Stonepeak's acquisition of Seapeak in January 2022. Ms. Locke Simon brings over 30 years of experience to these roles. She was formerly a partner at Bain & Company and an Investment Banking Analyst at Goldman Sachs. Ms. Locke Simon has served as a Director of Compass Diversified Holdings (NYSE:CODI) since July 2023, where she is also a member of the Audit Committee. She has experience as Board Chair serving on several private company and non-profit organization boards. Ms. Locke Simon holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and has completed various certifications in governance (including cybersecurity governance). Poul Karlshoej Mr. Karlshoej has served as a Board Observer on the Teekay Corporation Ltd. board since 2019 and the Teekay Tankers Ltd. board since 2021. Prior to these roles, he also served in various business development, commercial management and chartering roles within the Teekay Group in its offshore and tanker segments since 2007. Mr. Karlshoej joined Anholt Services (USA) Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kattegat Trust, which oversees the trust's globally diversified investment portfolio, in 2018, and currently serves on its Investment Committee. In addition, Mr. Karlshoej is involved in a number of commercial ventures in real estate development and agriculture, both as an owner and investor. Mr. Karlshoej graduated from Colorado State with a degree in Agriculture Business in 2006. Alan Semple Mr. Semple has served as a Director of Teekay Corporation Ltd. since 2015 and currently serves as the Chair of the Audit Committee. He previously served on the board of Teekay GP LLC, the general partner of Teekay LNG Partners LP (now known as Seapeak LLC), from May 2019 until Stonepeak's acquisition of Seapeak in January 2022. Mr. Semple brings over 30 years of finance experience, primarily in the energy industry, to these roles. He was formerly a Director and Chief Financial Officer at John Wood Group PLC ( Wood Group ), a provider of engineering, production support and maintenance management services to the oil and gas and power generation industries, a role he held from 2000 until his retirement in 2015. Prior to this, Mr. Semple held a number of senior finance roles in Wood Group from 1996. Mr. Semple currently serves on the board of Cactus, Inc. (NYSE:WHD), where he is the Chair of the Audit Committee. He also served as a Director and Chair of the Audit Committee of Cobham PLC until 2018. Mr. Semple graduated from the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, Scotland) in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland. Rudolph Krediet Mr. Krediet joined the board of Teekay Corporation Ltd. in 2017 and brings over 20 years of experience as a financial investment professional to this role. He has served as a partner at Anholt Services (USA) Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kattegat Trust, which oversees the trust's globally diversified investment portfolio, since 2013. Mr. Krediet acted as Principal at Compass Group Management LLC, the manager of Compass Diversified Holdings, from 2010 to 2013, and as Vice President from 2006 to 2009. He acted as Vice President at CPM Roskamp Champion, a global leader in the design of manufacturing of oil seed processing equipment, from 2003 to 2004. Mr. Krediet has an MBA from the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia. About Teekay Teekay is a leading provider of international crude oil marine transportation and other marine services. Teekay provides these services directly and through its controlling ownership interest in Teekay Tankers Ltd. (NYSE: TNK), one of the world's largest owners and operators of mid-sized crude tankers. The consolidated Teekay entities manage and operate approximately 62 conventional tankers and other marine assets, including vessels operated for the Australian government. With offices in eight countries and approximately 2,200 seagoing and shore-based employees, Teekay provides a comprehensive set of marine services to the world's leading energy companies. Teekay's common shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "TK”. About Teekay Tankers Teekay Tankers has a fleet of 42 double-hull tankers (including 24 Suezmax tankers and 18 Aframax / LR2 tankers), and has six time chartered-in tankers. Teekay Tankers' vessels are typically employed through a mix of spot tanker market trading and short- or medium-term fixed-rate time charter contracts. Teekay Tankers also owns a VLCC through a 50 percent-owned joint venture. In addition, Teekay Tankers owns a ship-to-ship transfer business that performs full-service lightering and lightering support operations in the U.S. Gulf and Caribbean. Teekay Tankers was formed in December 2007 by Teekay Corporation Ltd. as part of its strategy to expand its oil tanker business. Teekay Tankers' Class A common shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "TNK”. For Teekay Investor Relations enquiries contact: E-mail: [email protected] For Teekay Tankers Investor Relations enquiries contact: E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.teekay.com Forward-Looking Statements This release contains forward-looking statements (as defined in Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended) which reflect management's current views with respect to certain future events and performance, including the expected Board of Directors' changes described in the release and the timing thereof. The following factors are among those that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties, and that should be considered in evaluating any such statement. Teekay and Teekay Tankers expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in Teekay's or Teekay Tankers' expectations with respect thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.ABC has made the holiday season a little brighter thanks to The Great Christmas Light Fight . Season 12 is currently underway with more elaborate and unique displays. Even though Carter Oosterhouse has been judging for more than a decade, the longtime judge continues to be impressed. The construction expert and interior designer Taniya Nayak has the difficult task of deciding who out of the four families they visit in each episode takes home $50,000 and the coveted trophy. Here Oosterhouse talks about the show’s longevity and what his residence looks like during the holidays with his wife, actress Amy Smart . It’s amazing how this show has become such an annual holiday tradition for families to watch together. Carter Oosterhouse: The Great Christmas Light Fight is the gift that keeps on giving. The more we are on, the more people come up to me at the airport and reflect on how it’s a tradition for them. They tell me, “We know it’s Christmas time when we see this show come on air.” The family programming this embodies is so sweet and perfect for the holiday season. You have the holiday movies on, which are nostalgic and fun. This is a little bit different, yet gives the same moment for families to gather and have a nice little night at home. Disney/Jim Gensheimer How would you say your judging eye has evolved? That’s a good question. I think sometimes as a judge you don’t even realize how these displays continue to get better. And it’s not just bigger. It’s more than more lights. I always say I can pick the winner right when the lights go on, but that’s not always true because now what I’ve seen is the creativity level has skyrocketed. People are more and more creative than ever before. It’s not just about putting lights on a tree or making sure the balance is correct or the color profile is engaging and interesting. It’s really about creativity. What that means is people are starting to tell stories with their lights. That’s fascinating. In scripted or nonscripted TV, it’s all about telling a story. When you watch something, that is why you keep going back to it. Now these families with these light displays are telling stories. As the viewer, it’s so much more dynamic and interesting to the point you have to scratch your head and say, “I’m blown away. I’m shocked. Just when you think you’ve seen them all, you haven’t.” Technology has also advanced within these displays through computer programming and drones. The technology is there and every year it gets better. Sometimes we do have people who are extremely good with computers and putting light and synchronized lights together, but that’s not always the winner. I don’t want to say it’s usually not the winner, but it seems to me what I have learned is over time I go back to the creative ones. Those are going to be the winners. If they can throw tech in there, even better because it makes it faster, more efficient maybe, and more interesting to some degree. As far as technology goes, every year we’re seeing something different. The light fighters who have been doing it for decades and are at the forefront of this technology, really geek out over that. I do too. I love learning more about it. Then some people who are doing it for the first time knock your socks off because they have no frame of reference. They just want to do something they want to do and in their mind is really cool. I’m always amazed at the dedication of these participants. The light fighters work extremely hard. They are very diligent with what they are doing. The families are in the grind. When September comes around, they are starting to put their lights up and it’s all hands on deck. It’s a lot of work. As a judge too, I want to make sure I applaud them and give them the credit they deserve. It is impressive to see the lengths they go. These guys are beyond the next level. They know the drill. They take the kids to school, go to work, and then come home to start working on their display at all hours of the night. Then they get up the next day and do the same thing. The cool thing is I’d say 99 percent of the people are happy to do this for their community. That’s the best part. On your travels, have there been places you never thought about going but are glad you went? For Trading Spaces , we traveled all over the United States. I think that was the indoctrination of a really crazy travel schedule. I’d say the good thing is I can go back to some of these areas. To your point, I do get to see areas that have lit up these lights or sometimes they are theme parks because we do heavyweights as well. We get into bigger areas that have the capability of dressing it up. Those are eye-opening. I’m in this last round of shooting right now where there are plenty of places I’ve said, “I want to bring my daughter back here.” That’s a sign they’ve done a really good job. You and Taniya are solo judging in these episodes, but do you talk much? We touch base a couple of times during the season and before. It’s funny because it is all very similar for us. There is a progression of what these light fighters are doing. I always feel like I can figure it out if they are going to be a top tier when the lights go on. Lately, I feel as you’ve gotten into it, this is not what I expected at all and even better. That’s fun. Taniya and I have been on the same page with all that. Carter Oosterhouse and Amy Smart at “Common Ground” Screening. (Gregg DeGuire/Variety via Getty Images) Does this being known for this show put pressure on you at home to deliver a good display? Does Amy get you to work? Good question. It used to be my wife saying, “So what are we doing? Why aren’t we having any lights?” I say, “I am the judge of The Great Christmas Light Fight . I feel like I would not do a service and carry out the oath of being a judge and fail miserably putting lights up.” Usually, when I get home it’s a lot closer to Christmas. So, we do the inside. I’ve been trying to bring back things people make as a builder and duplicate them. There are a lot of makers out there. You see this guy who has been working in his workshop, who has this crazy Santa Claus walking up a ladder built on a timing system. I think that’s really cool that I want to go home and do that. So I have dabbled in those. You mentioned you’re filming right now for next year. Do you go back and watch the episodes airing as a family at home? We try to, absolutely, when I’m not shooting for next year. We critique. If my daughter is into it, I feel like I’m doing my job. There are tons of shows she can watch, especially during the holidays. I feel if she is into it, I’m doing alright. What’s your go-to Christmas movies to watch? Do you watch Amy’s movie Just Friends ? I feel sometimes people forget that is a Christmas movie. Just Friends , we do watch that. That is definitely a Christmas movie. We go back to all the nostalgic movies. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation , we run back through all that. Now there are all these shows, too. Like these Christmas baking shows. I feel like those are of interest to us too. I guess we’re finding shows I never thought I would watch and falling into. Also, being on a show this long, we’re so thankful it has been on the air this long and having such a successful run. You go through a rollercoaster of emotions. Right now, we’re doing great. It’s fun. It’s a new interest not just on the show but on Christmas too. It’s all about being loved ones. This experience has really helped me dive deeper into the whole Christmas world and look at it from other angles compared to when I first started on the show. 2024 Holiday TV Roundup: Full Schedules for NBC, CBS, ABC, More Anything you can tease about the episodes to come? There is one episode that is coming up, and what was really of interest was the coordination. Not just of the lights but things that these blow molds were doing within the light display. We see a lot of coordination from the tech world, but when you can take traditional elements and mix those into a newer feel, that was really impressive. There was this choir of blow molds in the show, and that was so dynamic because you think, “Wait? Are those blow molds singing to me now?” There was a ton of them. Not only was it visually interesting but to hear it was amazing. What do you want to see from the show moving forward? I do like the heavyweights. Those are really fun to shoot because they are on such a different level. It’s also the community is helping out as well. You just have more people involved. I’d like to see more of those to tell you the truth because there seems to be a lot more people, which creates a bigger energy. That’s not to say the homes don’t do that. We only do one of these types of episodes a year, but I’d love to see more of them. The Great Christmas Light Fight , Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC More Headlines: ‘Firefly’ Reunion! Who Will Be at Emerald City Comic Con 2025 for ‘Serenity’s 20th Anniversary? ‘Christmas Light Fight’ Host Carter Oosterhouse on Holiday Traditions, Marriage to Amy Smart & More Snoop Dogg Gives Daughter Pre-Wedding Pep Talk in E! Docuseries Sneak Peek (VIDEO) ‘Bold and the Beautiful’ Breakup? 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The New York Times in December, arguing that the company used its articles without permission to train ChatGPT. The case is now in the discovery phase, where both sides gather and exchange evidence before the trial. As part of that, OpenAI requested to know more about how the Times uses generative AI, including its use of generative AI tools from other companies, any AI tools it's developing for its reporting, and its views on the technology. Judge Ona T. Wang rejected that request on Friday, calling it irrelevant. She then offered an analogy to explain her decision, comparing OpenAI to a video game manufacturer and the Times to a copyright holder. In the same case, legal filings revealed earlier this month that OpenAI engineers that Times lawyers had gathered from their servers. Lawyers for the outlet spent over 150 hours searching through OpenAI's training data for instances of infringement, which they stored on virtual machines the company created. The majority of the data has been recovered, and the Times lawyer said there is no reason to believe it was "intentional." The case is one among dozens of copyright cases filed against OpenAI, including by media organizations like the New York Daily News, the Denver Post, and The Intercept. Some of these cases have already been dismissed. Earlier this month a federal judge dismissed cases from Raw Story and AlterNet, because the outlets did not demonstrate "concrete" harm from OpenAI's actions. OpenAI is also facing lawsuits from authors, including one involving comedian . Silverman and over a dozen authors filed an initial complaint against OpenAI in 2023, saying the tech company illegally used their books to train ChatGPT. "Much of the material in OpenAI's training datasets, however, comes from copyrighted works — including books written by Plaintiffs — that were copied by OpenAI without consent, without credit, and without compensation," the complaint says. OpenAI's website says the company develops ChatGPT and its other services using three sources: publicly available information online, information accessed by partnering with third parties, and information provided or generated by its users, researchers, or human trainers. Silverman, who authored "The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee," discussed the ongoing legal dispute with actor Rob Lowe on his SiriusXM podcast. She said taking on OpenAI will be "tough." "They are the richest entities in the world, and we live in a country where that's considered a person that can influence, practically create policy, let alone influence it," she said. Some media organizations, including Axel Springer, the parent company of Business Insider, have chosen to partner with OpenAI, licensing their content in deals worth tens of millions of dollars. OpenAI and the Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Read the original article onPeople determined to spread toxic messages online have taken to masking their words to bypass automated moderation filters. A user might replace letters with numbers or symbols, for example, writing “Y0u’re st00pid” instead of “You’re stupid”. Another tactic involves combining words, such as “IdiotFace”. Doing this masks the harmful intent from systems that look for individual toxic words. Similarly, harmful terms can be altered with spaces or additional characters, such as “h a t e ” or “h@te”, effectively slipping through keyword-based filters. While the intent remains harmful, traditional moderation tools often overlook such messages. This leaves users — particularly vulnerable groups — exposed to their negative impact. To address this, we have developed a novel pre-processing technique designed to help moderation tools more effectively handle the subtle complexities of hidden toxicity. An intelligent assistant Our tool works in conjunction with existing moderation. It acts as an intelligent assistant, preparing content for deeper and more accurate evaluation by restructuring and refining input text. By addressing common tricks users employ to disguise harmful intent, it ensures moderation systems are more effective. The tool performs three key functions. It first simplifies the text. Irrelevant elements, such as excessive punctuation or extraneous characters, are removed to make text straightforward and ready for evaluation. It then standardises what is written. Variations in spelling, phrasing and grammar are resolved. This includes interpreting deliberate misspellings (“h8te” for “hate”). Finally, it looks for patterns. Recurring strategies such as breaking up toxic words (“I d i o t”), or embedding them within benign phrases, are identified and normalised to reveal the underlying intent. These steps can break apart compound words like “IdiotFace” or normalise modified phrases like “Y0u’re st00pid”. This makes harmful content visible to traditional filters. Importantly, our work is not about reinventing the wheel but ensuring the existing wheel functions as effectively as it should, even when faced with disguised toxic messages. Catching subtle forms of toxicity The applications of this tool extend across a wide range of online environments. For social media platforms, it enhances the ability to detect harmful messages, creating a safer space for users. This is particularly important for protecting younger audiences, who may be more vulnerable to online abuse. By catching subtle forms of toxicity, the tool helps to prevent harmful behaviours like bullying from persisting unchecked. Businesses can also use this technology to safeguard their online presence. Negative campaigns or covert attacks on brands often employ subtle and disguised messaging to avoid detection. By processing such content before it is moderated, the tool ensures that businesses can respond swiftly to any reputational threats. Additionally, policymakers and organisations that monitor public discourse can benefit from this system. Hidden toxicity, particularly in polarised discussions, can undermine efforts to maintain constructive dialogue. The tool provides a more robust way for identifying problematic content and ensuring that debates remain respectful and productive. Better moderation Our tool marks an important advance in content moderation. By addressing the limitations of traditional keyword-based filters, it offers a practical solution to the persistent issue of hidden toxicity. Importantly, it demonstrates how small but focused improvements can make a big difference in creating safer and more inclusive online environments. As digital communication continues to evolve, tools like ours will play an increasingly vital role in protecting users and fostering positive interactions. While this research addresses the challenges of detecting hidden toxicity within text, the journey is far from over. Future advances will likely delve deeper into the complexities of context—analysing how meaning shifts depending on conversational dynamics, cultural nuances and intent. By building on this foundation, the next generation of content moderation systems could uncover not just what is being said but also the circumstances in which it is said, paving the way for safer and more inclusive online spaces.
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I forked out £28 on ASOS heels for my Xmas girls’ night out – I thought they were cute but I looked like Mrs DOUBTFIREAre international thieves exploiting tourist visas to target pro-athletes' homes?
There's a sugar cane farm in far north Queensland. It feels isolated, private. About five minutes' drive from the farmhouse is a lagoon. These days bullrushes just cling to the edge of the murky brown water. But 60 years ago it was thick with them. Something happened in those bullrushes that is still unanswered today. In fact, the questions it raised ended up becoming so much bigger than the mystery itself. At first light, a boy and his father sling rifles over their shoulders and trudge barefoot through squelching grass. They're hunting — for proof of UFO landings on their sugar cane farm. A young Shane Pennisi trails in lockstep behind his dad, Albert, eyes fixed on the swarm of mosquitoes surrounding him as they approach the lagoon. "The whole of his back would be just black and they're all full of red blood," Shane says. They survey the scene for any disturbance to the bullrush reed bristling from the murky water and triple-check that no crocodile has spilt into residency during the recent floods. Best stay armed, just in case. With last night's sleep still clinging to the corners of their eyes, they hoist the rifles above their heads and slide into the warm marsh. Paternal bonding comes in all shapes and sizes. Wading through stagnant, larval-rearing water in search of "saucer nests" is just part of the daily routine for this father-son duo. Something happened here that knocked the family off its axis and tormented a mild-mannered man for the rest of his life. An impression left in this very lagoon would grow into a roaring wave of global crop circle fever. And there are still secrets to tell almost six decades on. An unlikely protagonist George Pedley was a wiry young banana farmer in Far North Queensland when he encountered what he later described as a flying saucer. The gentle bachelor in his 20s worked the plot of land beside the Pennisi cane farm at Euramo, just south of Tully, and built a rough but sturdy shack for his tractor and tools. It was the era of the space race. Aliens, UFOs and interplanetary exploration were part of the pop cultural furniture. Less so, perhaps, around Tully. The town then, as today, prided itself on being the wettest place in Australia — a simple agricultural and logging community carved into the skirt of a rainforest-blanketed mountain. It seemed an unlikely spot, with an unlikely protagonist, for a mystery that would foreshadow a rash of UFO and crop circle reports all over the world. Even so, in the grips of a sweltering wet season in January 1966, Tully went into a tailspin. The sighting Shane Pennisi was seven years old at the time and living on the same cane farm in the single-storey house he still calls home today. He remembers his whole family pulling into the driveway after a beach trip on the afternoon of January 19, 1966 to find their neighbour sitting on their front steps. George Pedley had an uncharacteristic look of agitation etched across his face. "He started stuttering a bit. Something had happened." Shane's dad Albert spoke with George for a few minutes before they all hopped in the ute — adults up front, kids clinging on in the tray — and drove to a horseshoe-shaped lagoon at the edge of a cane paddock. That's when they saw it. A perfect circle of flattened bullrush reeds in the middle of the water, about nine metres in diameter and floating like a pontoon. There were no markings around it — no trail from machinery that might have fabricated the unusual imprint. Back at the house, George opened up about his experience. He had been driving his tractor that morning when he heard a tremendous "hissing" noise and hopped out in search of a punctured tyre. "He heard the hissing getting louder and louder. Then he turned around and looked up," Shane says. "He saw a UFO. Just above the treetops — tilted like it hesitated, and then it was gone. "Then he looked back in the lagoon and saw the water swirling." Shane clearly recalls his neighbour picking up two teacup plates from the table, tipping one upside down and placing them lip to lip. This was what he had seen. A flying saucer, illuminated with bright lights and hissing away in a puff of blue vapour. The term "gone troppo" is Australian slang for being driven mad by excessive heat and possibly a few too many swigs of the flagon. George was not a drinker. Still, the banana farmer couldn't shake the suspicion he had contracted an acute case of the tropical malady. "George being George just thought, 'I'm just seeing things'," Shane says. George went back to the shade of his shed and boiled a billy to get his faculties in order. Questions were piling up. After a while he returned to the lagoon and discovered this floating mat of reeds, almost woven in a clockwise swirl into a perfect geometric circle of botanical fabric. Or so the story goes. The bush telegraph Police were eventually called and word of this weird encounter spread like a contagion as the small-town rumour mill went into overdrive. It was dubbed a "saucer nest" — a sort of prototype crop circle two decades before the latter term would become popular — and everyone wanted a look. Cars roared onto the farm in their hundreds, with yahoos knocking over cane, drinking beer and climbing the reedy pontoon which could hold a man's weight with no trouble at all. It was a lot for a seven-year-old boy to take in. Shane remembers the dust from the traffic being so thick that his mum couldn't hang the washing. "It was one car after the other," he says. "They parked anywhere they could, they walked over plant cane ... broke down trees ... they just walked through the lagoon." The family was eventually forced to retreat to their nearby beach shack until things died down. It would take a while. News reports all over the country featured photos of the splayed, flattened reeds, and reporters spent the night getting mauled by mosquitoes in hope of experiencing a visitation. They never got one, but they did get plenty of fodder for a readership desperate for anything to do with aliens, flying saucers and cosmic expeditions. How do you explain the unexplainable? Wild theories started popping up about what could have caused the strange phenomenon. Obviously it wasn't aliens ... was it? Everything from helicopters and reed-eating grubs to whirlwinds and waterspouts were proposed as logical culprits. There was even a theory that the purported saucer nest had been created by ducks swimming in a circle. George's honesty and mental stability were questioned in news articles and cartoons, and to his dying day he felt slighted about being publicly ridiculed. Locals who knew him and the landscape were more inclined to believe his story. Valerie Keenan was a child when saucer nest mania swept through Tully. Her dad, a cattle station owner from one of the area's original pioneering families, was already something of a UFO enthusiast. "He would sit out on the lawn in this chair and observe the night sky and talk about what he would do if someone, a UFO landed," she remembers. He was one of a few locals to receive an invitation from George to visit the saucer nest shortly after its discovery — and he brought Valerie in tow. For all the interest in George and his encounter, there remained a secret to which only a handful of people were privy. It went almost entirely unnoticed by all those hundreds of trespassing sightseers and headline-chasing journalists. Given the media circus was in full swing, Albert and George weren't keen on bringing too many others into the fold. But Valerie knew. There were more so-called saucer nests in horseshoe lagoon. Even stranger, these shapes would keep appearing on the farm for decades to come. Other farms, other farmers The crop circle is now such a pervasive cultural touchstone that it's easy to forget the term wasn't coined until the 1980s. Sporadic mentions of comparable formations pop up as far back as 1678, when a woodcut pamphlet published in England told of a "mowing devil" at work in Hertfordshire. The story went that a farmer had refused to pay a labourer's exorbitant price to harvest three acres of oats and swore "that the Devil should mow it, rather than he". That night he saw the field go up in flames, but by morning any sign of fire was gone and the crop was cut to perfection in a manner "no mortal man was able to do the like". Crop-lopping Lucifers aside, it wasn't until the Tully saucer nest sensation that these stories really found their stride. Keith Basterfield is a UFO researcher who in 1973 investigated an eerily similar case in an oat field at Bordertown in South Australia. Keith says seven of these shapes were scattered across the farm — and he would investigate similar reports over the years. For some, saucer nests had become the subject of genuine scientific inquiry. Unfortunately for believers, their credibility was dealt a catastrophic blow in 1991 when British artists Doug Bower and Dave Chorley admitted they had faked hundreds of the celestial glyphs across the UK since the 1970s. In a bizarre turn of events, those British artists pointed to what happened at Horseshoe Lagoon in Tully as their inspiration. But authorities were not simply dismissing reports outright. Brett Biddington is a former Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) intelligence officer who spent about a decade investigating UFO reports for the military. He was once tasked with driving to Bendigo after local media went into a frenzy over strange lights appearing in the sky in the 1980s. He got a first-hand glimpse of how the hunt for a headline can whip up hysteria and misinformation. "It tends to be both sensationalised and somewhat trivialised in the general media," he says. Brett says military interest in UFOs was very real, but not because of any perceived threat from little green men. "There was intense interest by both sides in the Cold War — the United States on the one hand, the Soviets on the other, to try to understand what the level of their technologies were with regard to space," he says. RAAF investigations into UFOs wrapped up in the 1990s and never really kicked off again Down Under. A small percentage of cases remain unexplained, like what happened in Tully. Some measure of vindication George Pedley's memorial plaque at the Tully cemetery features a small embossed figure of a horse cocking its front leg and the epitaph: "Husband, father, grandfather and brother." A man's life summed up in five words. He was a quiet farmer who, according to those who knew him, never sought nor enjoyed the limelight that was thrust upon him. To this day, his widow Helen chooses not to speak publicly about the saucer nest incident out of respect for her late husband and the derision he experienced. However, she has meticulously collected snippets from decades of newspaper and magazine articles that mention the encounter and neatly compiled them in a manilla folder at the local library. George died aged 85 in 2022, around the time a fundamental shift was happening in the public perception of UFOs — or UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena), as they're often now called. Three years ago, the United States government published a report into 144 UAP sightings between 2004 and 2021. It was inconclusive in terms of identifying the nature of these phenomena — but it did not rule out the possibility of advanced tech from foreign nations or extraterrestrial sources. In 2022, the US Congress held its first hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years. A new government branch called the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was also created to investigate UAPs across, as the name suggests, all domains — air, sea, land and space. Suddenly there is an acknowledgement that not all encounters can be written off as hoaxes or the creations of overactive imaginations. If this shift does provide some measure of vindication to witnesses, it has arrived too late for old George. Dozens more nests over decades If there was one person who never doubted George's reliability as a witness, it was his neighbour Albert Pennisi. He would visit the lagoon every day for decades, jotting down notes of any disturbances and sending them back to UFO researchers in Brisbane. Shane remembers his dad on the phone, speaking in code to those researchers to avoid government infiltration — and even connecting a camera to electromagnetic equipment so it would automatically shutter if a disturbance was detected in the lagoon. To this day, he believes there was government surveillance of the activities at the farm. There was a reason for all this cloak-and-dagger stuff. The Pennisis had a secret. Valerie Keenan and her dad were among a select few locals who were shown the other saucer nests that had also appeared that fateful January in 1966. "There was another lagoon on the other side, and we saw another three pads, different sizes, different shapes," she remembers. "It was just sort of like something had come down from above — and where we saw the other three, there was no way in the world you would have got a vehicle of any kind in there." And it didn't stop there. Those early mornings spent waist-deep in the lagoon with parasites lapping at their veins and rifles held above their heads were not the most comfortable father-son expeditions. In 1966 a banana farmer in Queensland saw something he couldn't explain. That moment became the inspiration for an international alien hoax and exposed him to the chaotic debate about UFOs. But for Shane, they were beautiful moments spent with the man he idolised. And they didn't always come back empty-handed. The pair never saw a spacecraft themselves, but Shane swears saucer nests kept appearing until about a decade ago. "I couldn't tell you the number ... 25, 30, more," he says. "Towards the end, I didn't even keep marking it down. "You know, it's very scary for your kids. I saw but I didn't mark it down." The last saucer nest Shane says the last "marking" appeared about 10 years ago. He says over the past 20 years the frequency of appearances has decreased, which the family attribute to the changing landscape of more scrub being cleared for cane. It seems odd to come out almost 60 years on with these sensational new claims, but Shane has his reasons. The recent shift in public perception towards UFOs is one factor, but there's something much more existential than that. That seven-year-old boy is now an old man himself, and this lagoon is where he feels closest with his dad. But it's time to sell the farm. Shane recently survived serious heart surgery and his kids won't be taking over the reins. He's terrified that whoever buys the farm will bring in the dozers and fill the lagoon to fit in a few more rows of cane. "What's the biggest thing that's going to hurt me? It's this. Walking away from it," Shane says. "I've got to walk away from it all. "It's my life. I've got to leave and forget and don't look back." Shane's voice trembles as he sits in the same dining room where Albert and George drank tea after that very first sighting in 1966. He feels like a weight has been lifted. "I'm the last that's going to be involved in it, so now's the time for the public to know." Credits Related topics Euramo History Human Interest Tully Weird and Wonderful
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