TRANSCRIPT
The federal Minister for Communications, Annika Wells, says that there will be a full investigation into the Optus network outage that resulted in the deaths of three people.
Optus has admitted to the South Australian government that Triple-zero calls were out of action for 10 hours on Thursday after a botched network upgrade.
South Australian Police say eight-week-old boy and a 68-year-old woman died during the outage.
The third death linked to the incident, which involved up to 600 attempted triple-zero calls, occurred in Western Australia.
Ms Wells says Optus will face legal ramifications.
“This is completely unacceptable, and we are going to get to the bottom of it. I have spoken with the three state leaders of the three affected governments this morning and you would have seen Premier Malinauskas on the television earlier today… I think it’s fair to say that we are staggered by the way that Optus has navigated this with our governments. I’ve also spoken to the head of the regulator the Australian Communications Media Authority, about ensuring that there is a full and thorough independent investigation into what has happened here.”
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Opposition Communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh says she fully backs a government inquiry into the fatal Optus outage.
Ms McInotsh says what happened was a catastrophic failure, and it is reprehensible that Optus was not transparent about the outage from the start.
"This incident with Optus happened from midnight Thursday morning to about Thursday lunchtime and this is new information. Initially Optus said that the upgrade to its systems meant that there was an outage to its Triple-O network for around two hours and it was the South Australian Premier that let us all know today that it seems to be that that outage was for ten hours."
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Russia is denying three of its military jets violated NATO airspace- but Estonia, whose airspace they allegedly flew over, says the incident shows it's time to get tougher on Russia.
Russia claims the jets flew over neutral waters.
It's being reported the three jets strayed nine kilometres into Estonia's airspace, and stayed in the airspace for 12 minutes, before Italian NATO jets forced them out.
Estonia says it is summoning Russia's top diplomat in the country to officially protest.
Estonia's Foreign Minister, Margus Tsahkna, says the brazenness of Russia's action is unprecedented, and shows the need to do more against Russia in Ukraine especially.
"Putin only understands the language of strength, and also we're talking about the Russian aggression against Ukraine so we need to increase the military support to Ukraine, we need to increase the pressure to Putin using more sanctions, more tariffs. Also we need to decide finally to start using the Russian frozen assets."
The incident comes a week and A half after a Russian drone incursion into Poland, and just days after joint military exercises between Russia and Belarus.
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The New South Wales government will roll out Artificial Intelligence technology to help fight bushfires.
The A-I powered cameras will be rolled out in 22 locations around New South Wales forecasts, as part of a package costing 1.4 million dollars.
The government says the introduction of the cameras is part of its response to the inquiry into the so-called Black Summer bushfires in the state over the summer of 2019-2020.
While the cameras cannot stop fires starting, it's being boasted that they can monitor millions of hectares at once and can alerts firefighters to a blaze within minutes of one starting.
The technology is already being used in parts of Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania.
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The New South Wales government says closing off suburban streets for festivals will help bring people together in multicultural Australia.
The streets of Earlwood, in Sydney’s Inner-West, have been closed off today for a one day street festival, as part of the government’s Open Streets Program.
The Program is an open competitive grant program available to all councils across NSW, with a total of $14.6 million to be awarded for special events.
New South Wales government minister Sophie Cotsis claims the program inject vibrancy into streets, and create thriving local spaces that support businesses, creative sectors, and the community in general.
"It's about bringing community out. It's about getting to know our neighbours better, it's fostering that community spirit. Ans as you can hear, the laughter, the buzz... everybody's been buzzing. And it's getting out there meeting new people, but also investing in out local businesses. It's about supporting our local businesses."
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The Irish-language rap group Kneecap has been banned from entering Canada.
The Canadian government says the group has endorsed political violence and terrorism by glorifying groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
But Kneecap denies the allegations- and they say they are taking legal action.
Kneecap were scheduled to perform in Toronto and Vancouver next month.
The group says people are trying to silence them over their support for Palestinians.
On stage in the United states in April, they accused Israel of committing genocide, a claim they've repeated in their latest public statement.
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In the National Rugby League, the Canberra Raiders have suffered a late blow ahead of tonight's [[sat]] sudden-death semi-final against the Cronulla Sharks, with five-eighth Ethan Strange forced to withdraw with an illness.
He'll be replaced by utilty Simi Sasagi [[simmy sa-sungy]], who has never started an N-R-L game in that position.
Englishman Matty Nicholson will replace Sasagi on the bench, and Danny Levi will be the new 18th man.
Strange has been one of the breakout stars of the season for the Raiders.
The winner of tonight's game plays the Melbourne Storm in Melbourne next Friday night [[26 sep]] for a spot in the Grand Final.
