A woman wearing red contact lenses at a Halloween event in Kawasaki, near Tokyo, Sunday, 28 October, 2012.(AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)

HERE ARE THE things you need to know as we round off the day in three easy steps.

THINGS WE LEARNED:

#IRISH AID: The Prime Minister of Uganda Amama Mbabazi today told RTÉ’s This Week programme that he did not personally receive any of the Irish humanitarian funding that was misappropriated by his department – but that some of the money had been “irregularly managed”. A report from the country’s Auditor General published earlier this week found that up to €4 million in funding sent by Irish Aid had been misappropriated.

#AUSTRALIA: Adrian Ernest Bayley, the Australian man charged with the murder of Co Louth woman Jill Meagher, has reportedly been taken to hospital to be treated for self-inflicted wounds.

#HURRICANE SANDY: States of emergency have been declared in eight US states ahead of the oncoming Hurricane Sandy, which is expected to impact between 50 – 60 million people. The storm has thrown the presidential race into disarray,with both candidates being forced to cancel appearances. Meanwhile, New York City Governor Andrew Cuomo has ordered the city’s subway system to be shut down at 7pm tonight in anticipation of the advancing storm.

#BUDGET BOSS: The President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi has said he fully supports Germany’s proposals to give the European Commission extra power to scrutinise national budgets – including the power to veto them and demand changes. “I am certain: if we want to restore confidence in the eurozone, countries will have to transfer part of their sovereignty to the European level,” he said.

#HACKED: The French website for the EuroMillions lottery was hacked today with warnings denouncing gambling as impure and the work of the devil. “Oh you believers. Wine, games of chance, statues all augur impurity and are the work of the devil,” a statement left on the website read.

Chinese anti-riot police men gather outside the city government office in Zhejiang province’s Ningbo city, where residents had gathered to protest the proposed expansion of a petrochemical factory Sunday, Oct. 28, 2012. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

THINGS WE LOVED:

• Happy (almost) Halloween! If you want indulge your morbid tendencies in a grown-up way, check out the Guardian’s 10 best scary paintings.
• Judging celebrities’ fancy-dress costumes. (Cindy Crawford gets 0 for effort.)
• This audio of a male beluga whale spontaneously mimicking human speech:

Uploaded by NMMFoundation

THINGS WE SHARED:

• Even if you’re a fan of the horror movie genre, sometimes all the guts and gore become a little too… real. In proof of this, check out io9′s list of five films that were so gruesome the makers were investigated for cruelty and murder. (Don’t worry – there was no real cause for concern.)
• Her name is now a byword for meddlesome girlfriends, but Paul MacCarthy has revealed in an interview with David Frost that Yoko Ono was not to blame for rock n’ roll’s most infamous break-up. Instead, he credits her love of the avant garde – and the influence that had on John Lennon – for the existence of songs like Imagine.

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