Source : the age
Welcome to our rolling coverage of all the latest news and developments from around Australia and the world. It’s Tuesday, November 3, 2026 and here’s what you need to know today.
North Korea rejected US claims that it was behind the theft of more than $US6 billion ($8.57 billion) in cryptocurrency from Binance, after the FBI blamed Pyongyang for the biggest crypto heist on record.
The US assertion that North Korea is responsible for the Binance attack is “absurd rhetoric and nothing new,” Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday.
“It is a grave political provocation against the DPRK that the US misleads the international public opinion as if all the cyber crimes in different parts of the world are our deeds,” the statement said, referring to North Korea by its official name.
The rebuttal came after the FBI said Saturday that North Korea was behind the theft of more than $US6 billion in virtual assets from Binance on or around October 29. The agency identified the operation as being linked to TradeTraitor, a North Korea hacking campaign previously linked to cryptocurrency thefts.
Tech giant Apple has posted record September-quarter sales in John Ternus’ first result as chief executive, but its shares fell as soaring memory chip costs threatened its margins.
Revenue rose 12 per cent to $US114.5 billion ($164 billion) in the three months to September 26, beating Wall Street forecasts. The shares fell about 4 per cent in after-hours trading in New York.
iPhone sales jumped 17 per cent to $US57.6 billion, before a single foldable iPhone Duo had been sold. Sales in Apple’s Rest of Asia Pacific region, which includes Australia, grew 15 per cent to $US9.7 billion.
“What we’re seeing with memory pricing right now is unprecedented,” Ternus told analysts, warning costs would climb further this quarter. He said Apple was “not able to predict” when Duo supply would meet demand.
A 60-year-old One Nation volunteer was left hospitalised with serious injuries after he was allegedly attacked with a baseball bat in Torquay, a coastal town southwest of Melbourne, News24 reports.
A 14-year-old from Melbourne was allegedly damaging a One Nation sign outside the Surf Coast property when the 60-year-old man confronted him, according to News24.
Victoria Police said a teenager and a 37-year-old Hampton East man were arrested after they allegedly attacked the older man with a baseball bat about 7.45pm on Sunday.
The alleged attack caused serious head injuries, facial fractures and internal bleeding, leaving the man in a serious but stable condition in Geelong Hospital, News24 reported.
Supermarkets and grocers in Europe have reported further potential cyberattacks targeting fridges and freezers.
Dutch multinational Ahold Delhaize and Belgian supermarket chain Colruyt have said an IT incident hit fridges and freezers in dozens of stores in Belgium and Luxembourg.
In Sweden, grocers ICA and Coop reported similar temperature spikes, with one store blaming a cyberattack.
The incidents follow an attack in France last month, in which police said hackers seized control of cooling units at hundreds of supermarkets, raising temperatures as high as 50 degrees and causing fires and food losses.
A spokesperson for Danish maker of refrigeration systems Danfoss said the incidents across Europe involved its products, as was the case in France in October.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing for another wave of strikes on Iran after the midterm elections in the United States, according to two regional officials and a third person familiar with the matter.
US President Donald Trump has alternated between threatening major strikes and pushing for a deal with Iran.
The two officials said diplomatic efforts have progressed. The two officials said the mediators were trying to advance a framework for Iran to cease its attacks in the Strait of Hormuz in return for the US lifting its blockade on Iranian ports.
They said more talks were planned for this week. The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified briefings they had received from American officials and one Israeli official.
Appearing on ABC Radio National right after Treasurer Jim Chalmers, and acknowledging he’s “not a house price forecaster,” opposition housing spokesman Andrew Bragg diverged from the treasurer’s claim that “volatility” in house prices began before the budget.
Bragg said the government’s property tax changes earlier in the year “destroyed a lot of confidence in the system” and hurt the housing market.
Bragg also responded to Liberal backbencher Garth Hamilton’s claim that most of his colleagues agreed superannuation should remain untouched, going against policies to allow retirement savings to be used for home deposits.
“What we want to try and do here is make sure that we align the housing systems with the retirement and super systems to ensure that we don’t have a nation of retired renters,” Bragg said.
“If you’re a retired renter on the pension, it’s pretty hard going.”
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says Australians’ fears over rising interest rates have put downward pressure on property values, which have fallen for seven consecutive months.
“There’s certainly been a lot of volatility in the housing market that began before the budget,” Chalmers told ABC Radio National when asked whether property prices had fallen further than expected.
“One of the big drivers of that … is that people are very worried about interest rates,” he said.
“The assumptions that are in the budget from the Treasury around house prices are about the next couple of years, not the last couple of months.
“If you look at some of the private sector forecasts for housing, they expect house price growth to continue from next year.”
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says people are under substantial pressure and an expected interest rate rise will make things harder as the government works to make the budget “as tight as it can be”.
“Australians are bracing for a difficult decision from the Reserve Bank today,” Chalmers acknowledged on ABC Radio National this morning.
“People are under substantial pressure already, and obviously, if rates go up today, that will make things much harder, especially when there are already a number of rate rises in the system, and their full effect hasn’t been felt yet.”
Chalmers said the government would look to “find responsible savings where we can, which respond to the economic conditions that we confront together as Australians” in the mid-year budget update in December.
Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson has nixed suggestions from the Coalition backbench that the party should abandon a proposal to allow Australians early access to their superannuation for a home deposit.
Backbencher Garth Hamilton told the ABC at the weekend that most of his colleagues agreed with him that super should remain untouched, creating a division with frontbenchers who have championed the policy taken to past elections.
While the Coalition hasn’t officially adopted the plan again after former leader Sussan Ley committed to reviewing each of the party’s positions, Wilson said he wanted Australians to get into homes sooner.
“I fundamentally believe in home ownership and young Australians being able to get into the market, own their own home, because it has benefits in their working life and their retirement,” he told ABC News Breakfast this morning.
“I would be shocked if there was another Liberal in the country who didn’t share that view.”
Australians will be wondering if Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has lost his mind or simply lost touch, as another rate rise looms while he’s out of the country, the opposition’s defence spokesman James Paterson says.
“The prime minister does need to travel for his job, and sometimes I think that’s in the national interest,” Paterson told Nine’s Today program this morning.
“But I think a lot of Australians waking up this morning to see this news that the prime minister has flown to the Caribbean at taxpayers’ expense to hang out on a yacht owned by a billionaire. They’re going to be thinking: Has he lost his mind, or has he just completely lost touch?”
“We risk another rate rise today … his government has contributed to this and he should be here facing the music and fixing the problems,” Paterson said.
