Thursday, 24 September - Bound for glory

Good morning, it’s Thursday, 24 September. In your Squiz Today…

• PM Anthony Albanese pushes back on the US and China at the UN

• Vale Angry Anderson

• And toddlers go raving…

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🙋🏻‍♀️ This newsletter was written by Andrew Williams, Anna Pykett, Larissa Huntington and Sophie Felice

Squiz the Weather

Squiz Sayings

Said Taylor Swift on her insta profile when announcing her first new song since getting hitched. It’s called Patient Zero and will be released on Saturday, Aussie time - Swifties rejoice, we reckon you’re ready for it…

Welcome to New York

The Squiz

PM Anthony Albanese is in the Big Apple for the United Nations General Assembly, and he's got a lot on… Today, he's set to receive a Global Citizen Award for his diplomatic work in the Indo-Pacific region, and he'll use his acceptance speech to warn the US and China to avoid using that region as a "chessboard" for their own interests. Along with his government's digital safety laws and concerns over AI, it's another point of tension between us and the US - not that you'd know from this smiling selfie the PM and US President Donald Trump took yesterday… 

Scroll back a bit…

Albanese has been pushing his digital safety agenda at the summit - but the Trump Administration took the rare step of making a public submission on our draft laws. You might remember, they're called the My Feed, My Way laws and they'd give Aussies the choice to opt-out of social media companies' algorithms and force platforms to take action to prevent content that could inflict 'serious harm' on children. The US argues that amounts to censorship; it has concerns about how Australia will decide what is/isn't harmful - and it's called for US companies to be exempt. But the PM pushed back yesterday, saying he'd "always stand up for Australia's national interests" and that the draft legislation isn’t about government control, but “about giving people back control over what they receive on their devices”. 

What else should I reel-y know?

Another big topic at the UN has been AI, with 22 leaders, including Albanese, signing a statement calling for guardrails around the tech. But Trump made it clear in his own speech that the US would reject any attempt at regulation - and he says it should be rebranded 'super intelligence' in America. With US midterms approaching, the President also flagged he was facing a "big decision" over the war with Iran, which has been going on for nearly 7 months. Iran pushed back overnight on Trump's warning it could be "annihilated", with President Masoud Pezeshkian telling the UN it would "never bend the knee" to the US. But Trump has headed back to Washington DC, where he's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping today - with the war, oil supply issues, and AI all likely to be high on the agenda.

Squiz the Rest

A new war has begun in Africa

Fighting broke out yesterday between federal Ethiopian troops and forces from its northern region of Tigray, making analysts nervous about a wider African conflict. Tigray is a small part of Ethiopia, but its main party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), ran the government for nearly 3 decades before current PM Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. He and the TPLF quickly fell out, leading to a civil war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives before a peace deal was signed in 2022. That held until yesterday, when the TPLF launched what it called a "defensive" war against Abiy's government, accusing it of ongoing aggression - but Ethiopian officials say the war is the TPLF’s doing. Experts are worried that the fighting could spread internationally, because neighbouring countries like Eritrea and Sudan are likely to become involved.

Counterterrorism police have charged a man in Melbourne

He’s been identified as Mohamed Bakit, and he's alleged to be a member of the Islamic State terror organisation who shared guidelines online on how to plan and carry out "mass casualty attacks" between 2015 and 2020. The 65yo Somali-born Australian citizen was arrested yesterday after police searched his property in Carlton. He was charged with 5 terror-related offences, including possessing and sharing extremist material. The AFP's Paula Hudson says Bakit's devices allegedly show that he'd pledged allegiance to ISIS and that he sent 10,000 files containing extremist content. She said terrorist propaganda “is not harmless online content” and that organisations like ISIS “rely on online platforms to distribute propaganda and recruit supporters”. Bakit’s expected to apply for bail today.

A multimillion loss for Myer

The department store chain made a $276.5 million loss over the last financial year - its second biggest on record. Myer executive chairwoman Olivia Wirth says the “volatile and significantly more challenging” economic environment is to blame, and that fewer Aussies are shopping because of things like higher fuel prices, this year’s 3 rate hikes (with another predicted next week), slower household income growth and a weaker property market. On that - Mirvac, one of the country’s biggest housing companies, had some similarly gloomy predictions. Its development boss Stuart Penklis says home building is about “to fall off a cliff” because inflation is pushing up construction costs, and because of the Federal Government’s tax reforms. If this was all a bit much, here’s a video of a flying cow to cheer you up.

Vale Angry Anderson

The frontman of Rose Tattoo, known affectionately as ‘the angriest man in Australian rock’ died aged 79yo on Monday. His actual name was Gary, and he’d been performing across music, stage and screen for 50 years. But he was best known for hits like Bad Boy For Love, 1991’s unofficial AFL anthem Bound for Glory and his power ballad Suddenly, which reached #2 in Oz and #3 on the UK singles chart (it was also Scott and Charlene's wedding song…). The band announced on 31 August that Anderson suffered a cardiac arrest midway through their finale tour, named One Last Ride. Yesterday, his bandmates remembered him as a devoted dad, friend and band member, saying: “His loss will be deeply felt by all those who knew and loved him both here in Australia and overseas”.

It’s never too early

The words ‘toddlers’, ‘EDM’ and ‘rave’ don’t usually appear in the same sentence, but Aussie DJ Lenny Pearce is out to change all that… He’s about to start a tour of the US where he plays toddler-friendly tunes like Wheels on the Bus, but turns them into the kind of music that you might hear while waiting to pay $38 for a cocktail at a crowded nightclub. He’s built quite the following, with young’uns (and their parents) turning out to see him live in their droves. Here’s him performing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for a bunch of toddlers carrying glow sticks - no, really - and here’s his banger version of, um, Row, Row, Row Your Boat… 

Apropos of Nothing

A 6yo girl from China has just set the new women’s world record for solving a Rubik’s Cube, sorting it out in just over 4 seconds. Lian Yunzhi is what’s known as a ‘speedcuber’, and you can see her do it here - provided you don’t blink… 

The new Tom Cruise film Digger had its world premiere in London yesterday (with Prince William and Princess Kate in attendance), and it’s one to keep your eye on. Cruise looks very, very different in it and the word is you’re either gonna love it or hate it… 

And this picture of a gannet diving into the ocean off the coast of Scotland has helped British photographer Henley Spiers to take out the title of Bird Photographer of the Year 2026. He had the judges absolutely raven about it… 

Squiz the Day

7.15am (AEST) - Hundreds of Qantas ground workers are due to strike for 24 hours in Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth Airports over pay, job security and safety

10.00am (AEST) - Suncorp’s holding its annual general meeting - Brisbane

4.00pm (AEST) - AFL: Appeal board hearing - Brisbane Lions appealing Lachie Neale’s one-game ban for striking ahead of the grand final - via video conference

5.00pm (AEST) - The winner of this year’s Napier Waller Art Prize announced at the Australian War Memorial - Canberra

6.00pm (AEST) - Cricket: South Africa v Australia - First Men’s ODI - Durban, SA, watch on Kayo

US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet at the White House - Washington DC

ARIA Award nominees announced

Dom Dolla performs at Marvel Stadium 

Melbourne Royal Show (until 4 October) 

ABS data release: labour force, August 2026; Australian national accounts - finance and wealth, June 2026 

National Punctuation Day

World Bollywood Day

Anniversary of:

• the birthdays of F Scott Fitzgerald (1896), Sir John Kerr (1914), Jim Henson (1936) and Linda McCartney (1941)

• Kentucky Fried Chicken opening its first franchise in Salt Lake City, Utah (1952)

• the release of Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock (1957)

• the release of Nirvana’s album Nevermind (1991)

• the release of the BBC's Pride and Prejudice starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth (1995)

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