Telstra restoring services after an outage caused chaos across Australia, New US strikes launched after three oil tankers targeted in the Strait of Hormuz, Switzerland eliminate Colombia from the World Cup.
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TRANSCRIPT:
- Telstra restoring services after an outage caused chaos across Australia...
- New US strikes launched after three oil tankers targeted in the Strait of Hormuz...
- Switzerland eliminate Colombia from the World Cup.
Telstra says services are coming back online, after an outage affected scores of customers around the country.
Telstra chief financial officer Michael Ackland says servers in data centres in Melbourne and Sydney are being restored, which should resolve the connectivity issues experienced by thousands of people who couldn't make calls or use their mobile data - from around 5 o'clock this morning.
An investigation has been launched into the root cause of the outage that has impacted regional train services and Eftpos transactions, as well as customers trying to call triple zero.
Mr Ackland says the company is monitoring any calls to emergency services to ensure they get through.
"We know that customers across the whole community rely on our connectivity. And this network challenge has caused many issues and has been a big disruption to many people's days. We believe our systems, we can monitor all calls (to emergency services) that are attempted and failing. And we have been conducting welfare checks on those. We don't believe this issue has impacted triple-zero in the same way as other calls. It uses different network settings. But we are continuing to investigate."
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is holding bilateral meetings with the leaders of Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Samoa.
Prime Ministers James Marape Lord Fakafanua and Laʻauli Leuatea Schmidt are all in Australia for talks, with the group also due to attend tonight's State of Origin decider in Brisbane.
Mr Albanese has just returned from a trip to the Solomon Islands and Fiji, where he signed the Ocean of Peace Alliance, which could be expanded to other Pacific nations.
Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth has told Channel Seven, the ballistic missile test carried out by China in the Pacific on Monday shows the importance of building strong regional partnerships.
"This agreement with Fiji is a very significant one. It's a very significant one. And one that we should all be very proud of. And it highlights the really important work that Australia has been doing in the Pacific - whether that is in Papua New Guinea, whether that is with Fiji, whether that is with Vanuatu. Of course work continues with the Solomons. This is all really important work that we're doing."
The Albanese government has announced it will spend billions on counter drone defences to support Ukraine and the Australian military.
Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy has made the announcement at the NATO summit in Turkiye.
He says Australia is also signing a new $5.7 million contract for an Australian company, Electro Optic Systems, to supply Ukraine with anti-drone technology.
Mr Conroy has told the Nine Network that Australia is working with allies to deter conflict, but also investing to lift its own defence capacity.
"Well, it is the right capability for us. And that is the most important reason why we're doing this. But we're investing in lasers to defeat drones. We're investing in kamikaze drones, one-way drones to hit drones; and also a cannon. So we're making lots of investments here to protect Australia. And it is being noticed around the world. We already spend more on defence than most NATO countries. And that will continue to be the case for some time."
The US military has launched new strikes against Iran, hours after three merchant ships were struck in the Strait of Hormuz.
US Central Command says the strikes had the purpose of imposing heavy costs for the targeting and attacking of commercial shipping in an international waterway.
Soon after the attacks on the three ships, the US revoked a license that had authorised the sale of Iranian oil as part of the interim deal to end the fighting between the US and Iran.
A US official had earlier said negotiators have continued to work in good faith toward a final agreement with Iran.
To sport now and in football,
Switzerland have eliminated Colombia from the World Cup after winning a penalty shootout 4 goals to 3.
Ruben Vargas scored the deciding penalty for Switzerland after the match initially finished as a nil-all draw.
The last time the Swiss were at a World Cup quarter-final was in 1954.
Switzerland will now face Argentina on Sunday, July 12 at 11 am AEST.
In cycling,
Torstein Træen has become the third Norwegian to wear the famous yellow jersey at the Tour de France.
He has claimed the right to wear the leaders jersey after finishing eight in the fourth stage of the race, which was won by Mads Pedersen.
Træen was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2022 after a routine anti-doping test
He says he hadn't expected his journey to lead him to the yellow jersey.
"No, to be honest. Like, it feels unreal, and you don’t really understand what is going on, so, then, yeah, I think in a couple of days maybe, you will wake up and only understand how big it is."
