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The Australian government is making a fresh appeal to US President Donald Trump to end the Iran conflict.
It comes after Democrats regained control of both chambers of US Congress in this week's midterm elections, with the pain of tariffs and cost of living pressures contributing to the result.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is also urging our allies to hold firm in their resolve to promote free trade.
"I think it is very important that countries in the Commonwealth continue to promote, given the actions of - well, the US in particular, with its retreat into a protectionist model."
Defence Minister Richard Marles says Australia's position on the Iran war has been consistent.
"We want to see a de-escalation there, and we want to see a return to normality in terms of the global fuel supply chain. And that's I think really important in terms of the global economy and obviously how we're experiencing that here in Australia."
Customers of David Jones are expressing their shock at news the iconic department store chain has gone into administration.
The closure of some of its stores is likely to be on the table ahead of the all-important holiday trading season.
The high-end chain has been struggling in recent years, like many department stores worldwide, in the face of changing consumer behaviour and the rise of ultra-cheap online shopping and buzzy specialty retailers like Mecca.
These customers in Perth say they have noticed these changes themselves.
"I’ve been in Perth for 40 years and David Jones has always been an institution that’s been there. I browse the clothing, the kitchenware, Christmas decorations and things like that. It just seems to have everything."
"Retail shop is very hard. People shopping online."
North Korea has test-fired a newly designed air-defence missile system and staged a cruise missile strike drill.
North Korean news agency KCNA says the air-defence test has confirmed the technical specifications and reliability of the missile's new materials and multiple guidance modes.
The KCNA report confirms a South Korean military statement earlier this week saying Pyongyang had fired multiple missiles towards the sea from the Sondok area on the east coast.
It is the fourth North Korean weapons launch in a month.
Blood banks in France have been targeted in a European cyber attack.
Health ministry authorities say refrigerators at three regional blood banks were hit at the same time hackers struck supermarkets from Sweden to Belgium.
The attack follows a similar incident in France last month in which hackers seized control of cooling units at hundreds of supermarkets, causing fires and food losses.
Cyber3 Lab researcher Laurens Singier says the incidents raise concerns about technological vulnerabilities in European infrastructure, with hackers likely exploiting default passwords on open systems that were easy to guess.
"Anything on the public internet can be found by anyone. So it's really easy to find it anywhere in the world... Attacks on industrial infrastructure are quite rare, and the target in this case is also quite unique. But I think it will be more and more common and prevalent thanks to AI, because one simple prompts can already generate like IDs and code to do these type of attacks."
New research reveals migrants working in rural Australia are being wrongly blamed for fraying social cohesion.
A report from the Regional Australia Institute points to a declining trust in governments and institutions as a key cause of division, driven by the cost-of-living, housing pressures, isolation and poor access to healthcare.
The report coincides with the release of the Scanlon Foundation's latest Mapping Social Cohesion study, which has also found a decline in trust in governments.
Lead author, Dr James O'Donnell, says the findings show communities are becoming increasingly politically polarised.
"So there's lots of pressures, and we can see that people in communities are feeling pressured and a little bit strained. We're less trusting in government and government institutions. We're more polarized on that as well across the political spectrum. People that have gravitated towards the One Nation Party this year are, you know, particularly distrusting in government, they're distrusting in the system and even elections and the court system."
1980 Formula 1 world champion, Alan Jones, has died - three days after his 80th birthday.
Jones won 12 grands prix across his F1 career, and joined Sir Jack Brabham as the only Australians to be crowned world champion.
Jones later built a successful TV career as a motorsport commentator and was renowned for his straight-talking analysis.
