Thursday, 23 October - 99 red balloons go by

October 23, 2025

Good morning, it’s Thursday, 23 October. In your Squiz Today…

  • China returns serve on our minerals deal with the US

  • A wild day of weather around the country

  • And a love letter to penpals…

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Squiz the Weather

Squiz Sayings

“When I stepped up to shoot the free throw, that’s the most nervous I’ve been in years. In years.”

Said basketball GOAT Michael Jordan, revealing it had been a while since he’d picked up a ball (let alone tried to shoot one), when he was asked to take a shot in front of a friend’s grandkids. Spoiler alert: he hasn’t lost his touch…

China returns serve

The Squiz

Australia’s biggest trading partner has started to make more noise about Tuesday’s critical minerals deal between Australia and the US. The deal is aimed at reducing China's dominance in the critical minerals and rare earths sector, particularly when it comes to processing. Both PM Anthony Albanese and US President Donald Trump say it's a winner, but an article in state-owned Chinese news outlet the Global Times tried to take the shine off yesterday, saying it was a result of Australia “exhibiting a strong dependency inertia toward (the US) and being in need to pledge loyalty”. In other words: we only did it coz we had to keep sweet with the States…  

Any other fault lines between Oz and China?

Yes, just a few… You might remember that Defence Minister Richard Marles criticised a Chinese fighter jet on Monday for releasing 2 flares near an Oz surveillance plane over the South China Sea - which he said was “unsafe and unprofessional”. The Chinese military rejected that on Tuesday and said Australia’s military violated Chinese airspace. Yesterday, its Defence Ministry went a step further - spokesman Jiang Bin said the Chinese jet’s actions had been “lawful” and “legitimate”, and described Marles’ account as a “false accusation” and a “twisted and absurd argument that holds no water anywhere”. Marles hasn’t hit back, but Western Sydney University Associate Professor Lowell Bautista - an expert in issues around the South China Sea - said it was one of the “strongest public protests” from China about Australia’s actions in the region in years.  

Surely that’s it…

Nope, when it rains it pours - one of the other big-ticket items to come out of the Trump/Albanese meeting was more surety around the AUKUS defence agreement. China has never been happy about the pact, and it's sticking to that line - the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the country continues to “oppose bloc confrontation and anything that increases the risk of nuclear proliferation”. And if you thought things seemed a bit tense between us and China, it's nothing compared to the US and China… President Trump had planned to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping during his upcoming trip to Asia, but after China expanded its export controls on rare earths, he said it was on shaky ground… He’s also threatening to slap another 100% tariff on the country as of 1 November, bringing the 2 countries back into another trade standoff. So there’s no love lost there…

If you want to dig deeper into the Oz-US minerals deal, keep an eye out for our Squiz Shortcuts episode dropping around midday today…

Your holiday shop just got 10 times better

Skincare, perfume, gifts, whatever - Lotte Duty Free has 10x Qantas Points on online orders right now. Which means that the holiday shopping you were lining up is now working a lot harder for your next getaway. You can order from home or swing by any Lotte Duty Free location for the same duty-free prices - either way, the points stack up fast. Find out more here.

Squiz the Rest

Pushback on a Ukraine peace plan

Talks between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday are on ice after the Kremlin rejected a proposed ceasefire with Ukraine. It would have seen an immediate end to the fighting, but the 2 sides don’t see eye-to-eye on key details… For one, Putin says he wants Ukraine to give up land Russia has claimed, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vetoed. Trump, who’s been pushing for peace, said he didn’t want a “wasted meeting”, but hasn’t ruled out other developments - he said the White House will give updates in the coming days. On the ground, fighting between Russian and Ukrainian troops continues… Reports say Russia launched a large air attack on Ukraine overnight, which hit a kindergarten in Kharkiv, killing at least 7 people. Hours earlier, Ukraine deployed UK missiles on Russian infrastructure.

Watt trigger?

Environment Minister Murray Watt is preparing to introduce an overhaul of our environmental laws to parliament in the next fortnight, but is first finalising what will and won’t make the cut… Making headlines yesterday was a so-called “climate trigger” which Watt confirmed won’t be part of the new Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. It could have been used to block coal and gas projects that worsen carbon emissions, but instead, the government wants companies to report their emissions and share plans to reach net zero by 2050. Watt’s brushed off criticism of the proposal. He’s reportedly briefed the Coalition’s environment spokesperson, Angie Bell, in a bid for support, and is hopeful the laws will pass before Christmas. With 9 weeks to go, time’s a ticking…

Buckle up for a bumpy ride…

Victoria’s Police Commissioner Mike Bush has had to answer a few ‘please explains’ after using the police helicopter to fly to a conference in Hobart on Monday. A mechanical issue left it stuck there overnight, and it returned to Melbourne on Tuesday afternoon. Bush yesterday apologised for taking it to the Australian and New Zealand Police Commissioners Forum, calling it the “wrong decision” and saying he should have “looked harder for a commercial flight”. The chopper is a “secondary” one used for training flights/as a back-up for aerial operations, but Bush admitted his use of it “creates a poor impression at a challenging time for our organisation”. FYI - he’s referring to the pressure Victoria Police is under to deal with the state’s crime problem, linked to his announcement of a restructure last week.

Coming in hot…

The BoM’s brand new website and weather map no doubt got a workout on its first day on the job yesterday, with record-high temperatures reached in Queensland, the NT and NSW. And down south, the weather was no less haywire - destructive winds battered parts of South Oz and Victoria, where 2 men died after being swept off a pier in Frankston. Things should be a bit calmer across the board today, though there are still high temps forecast for Brisbane and the NT. Weather experts say the rest of Spring and Summer are set to be scorching - multiple states have already broken heat records for October. And it's put firies on high alert for the threat of early bushfires. NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Trent Curtin reminded people to have a fire plan in place ahead of an “above-average bushfire season this year”.

Friends 4 life

Back in the last few pre-internet decades, lots of people kept in touch the old-fashioned way: with pen and paper. And for school kids, penpals were all the rage… That was the case for Michelle Anne Ng from Singapore and Sonya Clarke Casey from Newfoundland, Canada, who began writing to each other through a school project in 1983, when they were in year 5, and haven’t stopped for 43 years. How’s that for dedication… In all that time, they never met in person - until this week, when Michelle visited Newfoundland. Local media picked up on their story as the women have been poring over their earliest letters - including one that Sonya was particularly excited to receive: a 4-page note that ended up being all about Michelle’s love for the song 99 Luftballons by Nena. You don’t get much more 80s than that…

Apropos of Nothing

If you’ve ever been playing the board game Catan and thought it had the makings of a movie, well Netflix agrees with you - it’s bought the rights to the game and is planning a stack of films and TV shows. Let’s just hope they’re an improvement on 2012’s Battleship… 

Some New Zealand photographers have found themselves in the right place at the right time, managing to snap some photos of “red sprites” - also known as red lightning. Red lightning is extremely rare, and you can check out how it looks here… 

Not sure if it's a tribute to the band or not, but an annual tradition at an Oregon zoo features elephants smashing pumpkins - which is great on its own, but it was made even better when a baby elephant played soccer with one of the pumpkins instead. Go on, here's the video… 

Squiz the Day

8.30am (AEDT) - President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Hugh de Kretser, will speak at the Kaldor Centre Conference hosted by UNSW - Sydney

10.15am (AEDT) - Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will arrive back in Australia after his official visit to Washington DC - Sydney

2.30pm (ACDT) - Cricket: The second of 3 ODIs between Australia and India - Adelaide, watch on Kayo

ASX Limited, BHP Group, Super Retail Group and South32 Limited will hold their AGMs

ABS data release: Labour Force, detailed September 2025

Domain will release its latest quarterly House Price Report 

Season 2 of the TV comedy series Nobody Wants This is out on Netflix

It’s the first-ever AusArt Day 🎨

Mole Day (which is actually about chemistry…)

Liberation Day in Libya, marking the anniversary of the end of Muammar Gaddafi's regime in 2011

Birthdays for actors Ryan Reynolds (1976) and Emilia Clarke (1986)

Anniversary of:

  • the first plastic surgery being performed by English surgeon Joseph Constantine Carpue (1814)

  • the premiere of Walt Disney's animated film Dumbo (1941)

  • the release of Britney Spears' debut single Baby One More Time (1998)

  • Apple releasing the iPod (2001)

  • the release of Adele's single Hello, which would become the first song with more than a million downloads in its first week (2015)