Friday, 31 July - It's been a long time

Good morning, it’s Friday, 31 July. In your Squiz Today…

• Optus is facing legal action over last year’s Triple O network outage

• A new blood test for Alzheimer’s disease has been TGA approved

• And Ted Lasso’s shortbread…

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🙋🏻‍♀️ This newsletter was written by Andrew Williams and Larissa Huntington

Squiz the Weather

Squiz Sayings

Said retired police superintendent Peter Flanders after a Toyota Yaris flew through the air and crashed into the side of a bus in Brisbane on Wednesday night. No one was hurt in the crash, which you can see here - but you really should buy a ticket before getting on a bus like that…

Optus is called to account

The Squiz

The country’s second-largest telco is being sued in the Federal Court by the Australian Communications and Media Authority over an outage last September that blocked hundreds of emergency calls to Triple 0 from getting through. The company is facing fines of up to $502 million, which reports say would be among the largest penalties in our corporate history. ACMA’s chair Nerida O’Loughlin said “Giving access to the emergency call service is not optional, it is a fundamental legal obligation and the most important public safety responsibility telecommunications providers have”.

To recap…

The outage was caused by human error during a firewall upgrade, and left customers in South Oz, Western Oz, the Northern Territory and parts of NSW unable to reach Triple 0 for nearly 14 hours. After welfare checks were carried out on the hundreds of people who couldn’t get through to Triple 0 because of the outage, it was linked to 2 deaths. ACMA claims that Optus broke 2 laws over 1,000 times each in one day: not giving people access to Triple 0, and failing to make sure that those emergency calls went through. The company wouldn’t comment on the case but said it was investing in “network resilience”, strengthening its systems and processes, and implementing the recommendations made in Dr Kerry Schott's independent review that followed the outage.

And that’s not the only tech-related legal action going on…

The eSafety Commissioner has launched legal action against the messaging platform Telegram for not taking down terrorist and violent extremist content, even after it was made aware of it. The app, which gets around 1.5 million Aussie visits a month and isn’t included in our social media ban for under-16yos, is facing fines of up to $54.6 million. The eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant says since the Bondi terror attack and in a "heightened security environment" it was "more important than ever" for companies to meet their legal obligations. A spokesperson for the company says it'll fight the case and that “calls to violence and terrorist propaganda have no place on Telegram”.

Making travel easier

Getting to where you need to be can be tricky for Aussies with a disability - and although state governments provide transport subsidy schemes, some say they’re out of date because they don’t include on demand ride-share services. To understand the role rideshare can play in better serving people who rely on state-funded taxi subsidy schemes, Uber partnered with organisations including Vision Australia, and conducted a 12-week trial allowing participants to use the equivalent value of their government subsidy on the Uber platform. Of the participants, 92% felt more independent and empowered when they had more choice over their travel plans. You can check out its findings here.

Squiz the Rest

A ‘strange morning’ in the NT

It’s not every day you read this headline - a federal Labor MP has been charged with assault. Luke Gosling is the member for Solomon in the Northern Territory, and he's been charged over an incident that allegedly took place at a Thai community event in Darwin earlier this month, involving the NT Administrator David Connolly… (FYI, that's the Territory's version of a State Governor). Gosling was arrested yesterday on what he called "a strange morning", but says he has a "job to do", and would continue to serve the people of Darwin and Palmerston. His lawyer says he denies the charges, and Gosling says he’s cooperating fully with the police investigation. In terms of other reactions, a spokesperson for PM Albanese says it would be inappropriate to comment, whereas there are calls from the Coalition for Gosling to stand down… 

A football civil war breaks out

It’s the battle of the acronyms as FIFA (the global football governing body) and UEFA (the European version) are at loggerheads over a plan to sell off the World Cup… Earlier this week, FIFA President Gianni Infantino announced that the organisation (which is a non-profit) would sell off a stake in a new business tasked with running the World Cup to private buyers - including Joshua Kushner, the brother of US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared. But others have raised the alarm over the decision, saying that they hadn’t been consulted, and that everything around the World Cup needs to stay non-profit. Today, UEFA went a step further - saying it will boycott all FIFA competitions until the proposal is nixed. 

There’s a new blood test for Alzheimer’s disease

It’s got the catchy name of pTau217 and it’s been approved by the TGA, with doctor referrals expected within 6 to 9 months. The Alzheimer’s Association says the disease is the most common form of dementia in Oz, affecting memory, reasoning and behaviour. But it often isn’t found until signs show up. What’s got doctors excited is that this test can detect changes in the brain decades before symptoms show, meaning a much earlier diagnosis, and it’s said to show results within 18 minutes. The way it works is by detecting a certain protein which is a biomarker for a build up of amyloid plaque in the brain - the one that’s frequently found in Alzheimer’s patients. Neurologist Emma Devenney says the test promises to be “transformative”, adding that earlier diagnosis will have a huge impact on "treating and eventually curing and preventing” Alzheimer's disease. 

Time to get on your bike - again

There’s plenty going on this weekend sport-wise, and it’s good news if you’re a cycling fiend - after the men’s Tour de France wrapped up earlier in the week, now it’s the women’s turn. The Tour de France Femmes runs 1,175km over 9 stages, from Switzerland to France. The experts reckon Dutch cyclist Demi Vollering is the one to watch - while West Aussie Mackenzie Coupland is making her Tour debut. Tomorrow afternoon, the first-ever international Aussie Rules women's match is on in Sydney, with Australia taking on Ireland at North Sydney Oval. Out west in Wagga Wagga, the NRLW is having its Magic Round beginning tomorrow morning. Good luck to any of the teams trying to top the 82 points the Sydney Roosters put up last night - the highest men’s rugby league score in 91 years… 

Better extraordinarily late than never

This’ll put your ballooning to-do list in perspective… A NSW man has returned a library book 150 years after it was first borrowed. An 1858 edition of Antiquities of Athens, which might be an antiquity itself by this point, was borrowed from the Kiama Library in the 1870s. And it never came back - until last week, when the man was doing home renovations and found it bricked into a sealed fireplace. He dutifully returned it to the library, but manager Michelle Hudson says that she has no way of working out who borrowed it in the first place. So that overdue fine - which would be about $28,000 at this point - is going to go begging. The book will be put up in Kiama’s local history collection - they’re not keen on it being borrowed again and returned in 2176…

Friday Lites - 3 things we liked this week

We enjoyed the ABC’s adaptation of the Chris Hammer book Treasure & Dirt, which takes a fairly straightforward crime novel and gives it a very weird, off-kilter energy. The whole thing is available to stream (for free) on iView. 

PSA: Season 4 of Ted Lasso drops next Wednesday, so expect to see a lot of his signature sayings in the next few days. We’re here for it, and we got a bit emotional reading this interview in Marie Claire with Hannah Waddingham - aka Rebecca Welton. BRB - off to make some emotional support biscuits… 

Which brings us to this classic shortbread recipe if you want to make a batch of Ted’s ‘biscuits with the boss’. Just press the mixture into a square tin instead of a round one to get the right shape. Fabulous with a cup of garbage water…

Squiz the Day

Friday
11.30am (AEST) - Hadley’s Art Prize (for Oz landscape art) to be announced - Hobart

3.00pm (AWST) - Supercars: Perth Super 440 practice begins at Wanneroo Raceway  (until 2 August), watch on Kayo

Garma Festival begins (until 3 August) - Arnhem Land 

ABS data release: potential workers, February 2026; job mobility, February 2026; producer price indexes, June 2026; participation, job search and mobility, Australia, February 2026; underemployed workers, February 2026

Ariana Grande's Petal album released 

Strive to be Kind Day (in memory of Allison Baden-Clay) 

🥑 National Avocado Day

Birthdays for JK Rowling (1965), Harry Potter (1980)

Anniversary of:

• New Zealand's Christchurch becoming chartered as a city (1856)

• Germany’s adoption of the Weimar Constitution (1919)

• START I signed by the US and Soviet Union to begin nuclear arms reduction (1991) 

• the end of Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland. It was the British Army's longest-running operation (2007)

• Michael Phelps becoming the greatest medal winner in Olympic history after securing this 19th. He ended his swimming career with 28 medals (2012)

Saturday
4.15pm (AEST) - Aussie rules: AFLW Australia v Ireland - Sydney, watch for free on Kayo 

7.45pm (AEST) - Football: Sydney Super Cup Chelsea FC v Tottenham Hotspur - Sydney, watch on 10

Rugby union: Women's Super Rugby Champions Final - Sydney, watch on Stan 

Rugby league: NRLW Magic Round (until 2 August) - Wagga Wagga, watch on Channel 9

Tour de France women's race begins (until 9 August)

SALA Festival begins (until 31 August)

🐾 Start of Pawgust (for Guide Dogs Australia)

World Breastfeeding Week (until 7 August)

Switzerland's national day

National Mustard Day

Birthdays for director Sam Mendes (1965), actor Jason Momoa (1979) and all Aussie horses 

Anniversary of:

• English chemist Joseph Priestley discovering oxygen by isolating it in its gaseous state (1774)

• Moby-Dick author Herman Melville born (1819)

• the publication of the first Michelin Guide by the brothers Édouard and André Michelin (1900)

• American frontierswoman Calamity Jane dies (1903)

• Mahatma Gandhi founding the Non-Cooperation Movement aiming to end British rule in India (1920)

• MTV launches with Video Killed the Radio Star as its first video (1981)

• te reo Māori becoming an official language of New Zealand (1987)

• the publication of George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones, the first in his series A Song of Ice and Fire (1996)

Sunday
Ice Cream Sandwich Day

Birthdays for author Isabel Allende (1942), actor Sam Worthington (1976), and pop star Charli XCX (1992)

Anniversary of:

• the formal signing of the US Declaration of Independence (1776)

• American actress Myrna Loy (1905) and author and activist James Baldwin were born (1924)

• rubber bullets being used for the first time in Northern Ireland during ‘The Troubles’ (1970)

• Iraq invades Kuwait, leading to the Gulf War (1990).

• Ed Sheeran’s Divide tour becoming the most attended and highest-grossing tour of all time, overtaking U2 (2019)

Monday
4.45am (AEST) - Commonwealth Games closing ceremony - Glasgow, watch on Channel 7 and 7Plus