Listen to Australian and world news, and follow trending topics with SBS News Podcasts .
Today, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will witness the signing of new major defence pact between Australia and the Philippines.
Mr Albanese has arrived in the Filipino capital, Manila, ahead of the Australia-ASEAN summit, to be held on Tuesday, and a Quad leaders’ summit, to be held the next day.
The new defence pact will make for enhanced maritime awareness, information sharing, strategic dialogue, planning, training, interoperability, and defence infrastructure development.
Mr Albanese will visit Australian Defence Force personnel aboard the Navy ship HMAS Stalwart, which is docked in Manila.
US Transport authorities say a nationwide ground stop that halted thousands of flights was caused by an issue after a copper wire upgrade.
Major airlines cancelled more than 4,000 US flights and delayed 3,000 more on Saturday, as the US sought to recover from the longest nationwide shutdown of flights since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Flights have resumed but the disruption continues.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says it's still unclear whether the problem was caused by "incompetence" on the part of the company doing the upgrades, or faulty equipment.
He says there is nothing to suggest the issue was caused by a nefarious actor and would not threaten ongoing safety.
"Did some foreign nation attack this network? And the answer to that is, we don't believe so. Once we were able to isolate the work that was being done at this remote location, all of our systems came back online. So, we don't believe this was cyber, at all. This was an FAA system that, didn't meet, didn't meet the moment.”
Ukraine's president says the US questioned whether Ukraine would give up the Donbas region to Russia, in exchange for NATO membership.
That idea was put forward at the latest peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegates, facilitated by the US.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has since publicly reiterated Ukraine's position that it will not cede any territory as part of any deal to end the war with Russia.
During the talks, the issue of European participation was also raised, as well as a proposal of a humanitarian mission to evacuate eastern Ukrainian residents.
Egor Toropov, an analyst at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, says it is likely European countries won't play a significant role in the negotiations.
"By contrast, the U.S. side has shown that its position and Russia's are converging. The most the European countries can do is help coordinate the specific details of the humanitarian missions."
Australia's top cybersecurity body says Friday's Microsoft outage has exposed an enormous amount of sensitive information about Australians to huge risk.
The Australian Information Security Association says the risk may have come from the measures people took to keep working during the outage, such as using personal e-mail accounts and USB drives.
It is feared Australian businesses lost billions of dollars during the shutdown.
The Australian Computer Society is renewing its call for a national review of sovereign risk in Australian IT.
In rugby league, Australian forward Sariah Paki says she doesn't regret choosing to play for Australia over New Zealand- even as she prepares to face the Kiwi Ferns in today's [[sun afternoon aedt]] World Cup final in Brisbane.
Of Maori heritage, Paki had the choice of who to play for when she became a rugby league player earlier this year, coming across from rugby union.
She says the quality of her team mates on this side of the Tasman Sea helped her make the decision to play for the Jillaroos.
"Yeah, it was a really difficult decision. Obviously, my family is from New Zealand, But I knew I wanted to play with some great players like Tamika Upton, Isabelle Kelly. So, it was definitely a hard decision to make, but I feel like I have made the right decision to come to the Jillaroos."
Both the men's and women's World Cup finals will be played in Brisbane today- and Australia versus New Zealand is the matchup in both games.
The Australian men will be going for their 11th consecutive world title, whilst the women will be going for their fourth straight title.
