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- Friday, 27 June - Strike a pose
Friday, 27 June - Strike a pose
Good morning, it’s Friday, 27 June. In your Squiz Today…
The US hits back at reports it failed to destroy Iran’s nuclear program
Anna Wintour’s stepping down at Vogue
And a semifreddo so good you can pretend it’s summer…
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Squiz the Weather
Squiz Sayings
“It’s an absolute privilege to wear this jersey, so why not enjoy it and play for each other?”
Said Matilda Emily Gielnik following her return to the national team in a 3-0 win over Slovenia in Perth last night. It was the Tillies’ first game under new coach Joe Montemurro as they build for next year’s Asian Cup - just 246 sleeps to go…
Surveying the damage
The Squiz
The to and fro over what level of damage was inflicted on Iran’s nuclear facilities by US strikes at the weekend isn’t letting up, with the CIA wading in with its own assessment… It backs up US President Donald Trump’s comments about the 3 sites being “obliterated” by the bombs, with the spy agency report finding its “body” of intel shows they were all “severely damaged”.
Was that in doubt?
Yep. There was leaked intel from the Pentagon a day earlier which indicated that core components of the Iranian nuclear program were still intact, but the CIA's intel disputes that. John Ratcliffe, the CIA boss, didn't go as far as to say Iran's nuclear program was completely destroyed, but he said the key sites targeted by US warplanes had been - and the Pentagon backed that up again in a briefing this morning. So Trump is happy… He'd pushed back on coverage of the earlier leaked intelligence, saying that US network CNN and The New York Times had been spreading "fake news" when they reported on it - and an investigation is underway into who leaked it. As for Iran itself, the country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said overnight that the strikes didn't "accomplish anything significant".
Anything else?
As the dust settles on the conflict between Israel and Iran, the Trump administration has also indicated a new ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza could be “very close”. Trump says his Middle East Envoy, Steve Witkoff, has been leading the negotiations for that - something that a senior Hamas official backed up yesterday. That official, who hasn’t been named, says mediators are “engaged in intensive contacts aimed at reaching a ceasefire agreement” but that Hamas “has not received any new proposal so far”. An Israeli official has also said that their major disagreements still haven’t been resolved…
Smiling wide
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Squiz the Rest
Cassius Turvey’s killers to be sentenced…
…after a 2-day hearing in the Western Oz Supreme Court, which will end today. It's been a long-running case… To remind you, the Indigenous schoolboy was walking with friends in a suburb east of Perth in October 2022 when he was chased into bushland by a group of people. Cassius was beaten with a metal pole and died in hospital 10 days later. Jack Brearley, 24, and Brodie Palmer, 30, were convicted in May over his murder and are up for sentencing today along with another man, Mitchell Forth, on charges of manslaughter. Cassius’s mum, Mechelle Turvey, gave an emotional victim impact statement yesterday, saying he was a “gentle giant” and that he “was not just part of my life, he was my future”.
A new political figure emerges
You’ll probably see the name Zohran Mamdani in the news a fair bit - the 33yo upset frontrunner Andrew Cuomo to become the likely Democratic candidate for New York City Mayor. Mamdani describes himself as a democratic socialist, and his win has caused a debate amongst the Dems about which way to go to try and win back voters after their 2024 election loss - move their policy platform further left or stay closer to the political centre. One way or another, he's making waves - attracting the attention of US President Trump, who called him a "communist lunatic", and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who said Mamdani's campaign is "the direction in which the Democratic Party should be moving". One to watch…
Anna Wintour steps down
In very fashionable shoes, probably… Reports this morning say the editor-in-chief of American Vogue let staff know this week that she’d be calling it quits after almost 4 decades at the top of the fashion mag. But she’s not going off to live in the sticks somewhere - she and her signature sunnies will still be doing the rounds as Vogue’s global editorial director. If you’re not familiar, Wintour is one of the biggest names in fashion - famous not only for her work with Vogue, but also her association with gigantic annual fashion event the Met Gala and striking similarity to Meryl Streep’s character Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. And good news - she’s hiring for the role of Chief Content Officer at Vogue, so if you know your blues from your ceruleans…
DIY DNA
You might remember back in the nineties and noughties, there was something called the Human Genome Project, which was a years-long attempt to study human DNA - the building blocks of life itself. Now, the Wellcome Trust, a major medical charity that funded that project, is giving money to a new effort to take things a step further and create artificial human DNA. The Synthetic Human Genome Project is underway now, and the scientists behind it reckon it will lead to better medical treatments (as the initial project did). But it’s got its critics - anti-genetic modification groups say this research could be used to create designer babies or even modified and enhanced humans. Something to keep an organically-made eye on…
A new direction for an old spy
Now that the character of James Bond is under the control of Amazon, fans have been wondering how the trillion-dollar tech company would shake (not stir…) things up. They got their first clue yesterday when Canadian director Denis Villeneuve got the nod to direct the next film in the franchise. You might have seen Villeneuve’s work on Dune, Sicario or Arrival - his films get great reviews, so plenty of fans are chuffed with this pick - now to see who gets the nod to play the iconic role. And that wasn’t the only interesting tidbit of movie news yesterday - writer Aaron Sorkin is hard at work on The Social Network II, a sorta-sequel to the 2010 film about the people who invented Facebook. Whatever happened to those guys…
Will The Social Network III be about Australia’s social media ban for under-16yos? Probably not, but here’s our Shortcut to the topic anyway…
Friday Lites - 3 things we liked this week
Given the fourth season of the chef series The Bear begins this week, it seems like a good time to jump in and catch up on the first 3 seasons on Disney+ so you can see what all the fuss is about. It’s very well made, but it’s probably not for the easily stressed…
We like this very straightforward party game called Just One for an entertaining evening - it's a cooperative game where you work together to give one-word clues to one-word answers without doubling up. Simple, fun, and argument-free - it's worth a try.
And it may be seasonally inappropriate here in Oz, but for National Ice Cream Cake Day today, we’re pulling out our favourite Semifreddo recipe, combining lemon, raspberries, pistachios - everything you need to convince your tastebuds you’re sunbaking on the Italian coast…
Squiz the Day
Friday
9.00am (AEST) - Melbourne International EV Airshow gets underway (until 29 June) - Melbourne
9.30am (AEST) - The Rose Scott Women’s Writers festival at the Women’s Club in Sydney (until 28 June)
1.00pm (AEST) - Funeral for Tasmanian Police Constable Keith Anthony Smith who was killed whilst responding to an incident in the state’s north-west - Hobart
Festival of Voices (until 6 July) - Hobart
🚀 Former NASA Astronaut Chris Hadfield kicks off his Australian tour in Perth
Release of Lorde's new Album Virgin
Squid Game season 3 is out on Netflix
ABS release: Provisional Mortality Statistics, Jan - Mar 2025; Microdata: Longitudinal Labour Force, 1982 - May 2025; Update to measuring unpaid care and modelling sex and age in the Labour Account, Sep 2024
Al Hijri (Islamic New Year)
National Bingo Day
Birthdays for designer Vera Wang (1949), filmmaker and composer J. J. Abrams (1966), actor Tobey Maguire (1975), and reality TV star Khloe Kardashian (1984)
Anniversary of:
the publication of the first women’s magazine, the Ladies’ Mercury (1693)
the world’s first ATM installed in London (1967)
Saturday
Term 2 Winter school holidays start in the QLD (until 13 July)
10.00am (AEST) - Scenic Rim's Winter Harvest festival - Kalbar, QLD
7.00pm (AEST) - The Inaugural Australian Tennis Foundations' Night of Champions, honouring Evonne Goolagong Cawley
The wedding for Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez in Venice following protests forcing them to change location
SHOUT AWAY IT'S CAPS LOCK DAY
Birthdays for actors Mel Brooks (1926), Kathy Bates (1948), John Cusack (1966), and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk (1971)
Anniversary of:
Catherine the Great declaring herself sovereign ruler of Russia (1762)
the coronation of Queen Victoria in Westminster Abbey (1838)
the patenting of the saxophone by Antoine-Joseph “Adolfe” Sax (1846)
the last stand of the Kelly Gang at Glenrowan (1880)
the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria (1914)
the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, ending WWI and establishing the League of Nations (1919)
the start of the Stonewall Riots (lasting 3 days) in Greenwich Village, New York (1969)
Sunday
7.00pm (AWST) - The Matildas will take on Slovenia in the second of 2 friendlies at Perth’s HBF Park, watch on Paramount+.
11.00pm (AEST) - F1: The Austrian Grand Prix race is on in Spielberg, Austria (naturally) - watch it on Kayo
Anniversary of:
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London burning down during a performance of Henry VIII (1613)
the birthdays of Australian gangster Joseph “Squizzy” Taylor (1888). He was indirectly involved in the naming of The Squiz…
the start of apartheid in South Africa (1949)
Marilyn Monroe’s marriage to playwright Arthur Miller (1956)
the deaths of actors Lana Turner (1995) and Katherine Hepburn (2003)