Headlines: Telstra investigating outage cause
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From The Daily Oz, I'm Emma Gillespie.
I'm Sam Kozlowski.
It's Wednesday the 8th of July. Here's what's making headlines this evening.
Telstra is still investigating the cause of a nationwide outage, but says call and data services have been restored to 90% of its customers. The telco has apologised for the outage, which left thousands of Australians unable to make calls, brought freight and regional train networks to a halt and shut down payment systems for some businesses. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the outage deeply concerning and very disruptive, but said there was no evidence to suggest any malicious activity was behind the technical failure. By mid-morning, Telstra said it had made, quote, good progress on restoring services. CFO Michael Ackland said emergency calls were not impacted in the same way as other mobile services, but WA police said the outage did affect the state's triple zero infrastructure.
As a precaution, it advised residents to contact family or neighbours with a working phone in the event of an emergency.
The consumer watchdog has announced a specialist task force to crack down on gambling scams known as scambling. The ACCC has warned, quote, Australians are being lured into fake online gambling and casino platforms that manipulate results, withhold winnings and incentivise users into recruiting others. In response, the National Anti-Scam Centre has launched a task force, which it calls a cross-sector fusion cell, to investigate and dismantle these emerging threats. ACCC Deputy Chair Katrina Lowe said these scams convince consumers to deposit money into legitimate-looking online gambling platforms before their withdrawals are blocked or scammers demand further payments. Lowe said offenders target vulnerable communities with First Nations Australians disproportionately affected.
According to ScamWatch data, over 45% of reported gambling losses in 2025 were from First Nations consumers.
A cargo plane with five crew members on board is missing after it lost contact with air traffic control off the coast of Pakistan.
What caused the Telstra nationwide outage?
The plane reported a navigational system problem on its way from the UAE to the Pakistani city of Karachi. Three minutes after making contact with Karachi Area Control Center, radar observations indicate the Pakistan-registered Boeing 737 made a series of sharp altitude changes and then rapidly descended. Early flight data indicates it may have crashed into the Arabian Sea. Pakistan Airport's authority said a coordinated search and rescue operation at sea was launched through various agencies to locate the missing aircraft.
And today's good news, new research has revealed Earth may be home to more than three times as many insects as previously thought. Modern entomologists, who are specialists in insects, have long estimated there to be around six million species around the world. But a study led by the University of Arizona Tucson suggests the figure is much higher. with at least 14 to 20 million species. Researchers said a doubling or tripling of estimated insect diversity has profound implications for our understanding of the scale, richness and future of biodiversity on Earth.
That's the latest from the Daily Oz newsroom. Now, if you're looking for something else to listen to this evening, you can catch up on this morning's Deep Dive, where we explain the rise of head injuries in the AFL.
We will be back tomorrow with another Deep Dive, but until then, have a good one.
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