Thursday, 27 March - Let the music play on

Good morning, it’s Thursday, 27 March. In your Squiz Today…

• The fallout from a major US security fail continues

• Peter Dutton brews up his own election promise

• And an experiment to grow some spacey mushrooms… 🍄

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Squiz the Weather

Squiz Sayings

Said Senate President Sue Lines after Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young brandished a dead salmon in Parliament yesterday to protest the Albanese Government’s salmon farming legislation. And the issue has gone international - even actor Leonardo DiCaprio has waded into the debate…

A security blunder blows up

The Squiz

The fallout continues after senior members of the US national security team accidentally added a journalist to a group chat discussing confidential military plans, with National Security Adviser Mike Waltz taking the blame. Yesterday, Waltz said he took “full responsibility” for inadvertently adding The Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat, saying “I built the group ... my job is to make sure everything’s coordinated”. But he’s still got the backing of US President Donald Trump - he says he won’t fire him over the “glitch” and he’s “learned a lesson”.

What else do we know?

Waltz added Goldberg to the chat on the messaging app Signal (which you can read up on here…), but it was US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who shared the military plans for strikes on Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen - including real-time updates. All up, there were 18 senior officials in the group, including Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Those 2 fronted a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing yesterday, where Democrats laid into them for the “reckless, sloppy and stunning” attitude towards classified information. Gabbard and Rutcliffe both denied that classified info was shared in the chat, but Democrats pushed back, with one saying there’s been “no recognition of the gravity of this error”.

So what now?

There are still questions to be answered, particularly around whether any laws were broken by the White House officials involved. Democrats seem to think so, with several calling for further investigations and possible resignations over the scandal. While that shakes out, lawmakers on both sides of politics in Washington are doing a bit of a rethink on using Signal for anything sensitive. The other thing getting some attention is that the group also discussed Europe in some not-so-flattering ways in the chat - bringing the Trump administration’s changing stance on foreign policy back into the spotlight. One European diplomat has since said the discussions were “horrific to see in black and white, but hardly surprising”.

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Squiz the Rest

A deadly blaze in South Korea

After months of political turmoil, South Korea is now dealing with the worst wildfires in its history. At least 24 people have died and 26 more have been injured in the country’s southeast, with thousands more evacuated. Fires like this aren’t very common in South Korea - Acting President Han Duck-Soo called the disaster “unprecedented” and says the way it handles fires needs a full investigation. Han himself has only just returned to the role after his impeachment over his role in the failed martial law declaration by President Yoon Suk-Yeol in December was overturned a few days ago. He says everyone is "desperately hoping for rain" - but forecasters say there's not much on the way. 

Dutton returns serve

The one-coffee-a-week tax cut - aka 5 bucks - promised by Treasurer Jim Chalmers in the Budget passed the Senate last night. But Coalition leader Peter Dutton has told the electorate to hold his cappuccino… He’s brewed up his own cost-of-living measure in the form of halving the excise - aka tax - on petrol for a year. Dutton will detail the $6 billion plan to cut the fuel excise by 25c in his Budget reply speech tonight. He says it stands to save people $14 on an average 55L tank and, if elected, he’d put it into play soon after May. ICYMI, Labor's tax cut would cost $17.1 billion and it’d take effect from July next year. Team Albanese says it’s a “modest” and “responsible” cut to help with cost-of-living - which is still front and centre as an election issue.

Another fashion retailer goes under 

Once the go-to for making jeans shopping easy, casual clothing line Jeanswest won’t be part of your local shopping centre anymore - it’s closing down all of its 90 stores across the country. If you’ve never had the pleasure, Jeanswest has been part of the retail landscape here for over 50 years after it opened its first shop in Perth in 1972. It’s been on the brink before - it went into administration in early 2020 before a last-minute reprieve, but now it’s curtains for good. While it wants to move to an online model, hundreds of its 600 employees are likely to lose their jobs. It’s a tough time for Aussie fashion stores - thousands of workers were laid off after the collapse of the Mosaic retail group - which owned brands like Rivers and Noni B - late last year. 

Batting away criticism

This year’s final to the Sheffield Shield - which is our domestic 4-day cricket tournament - is an unusually spicy one. It’s South Oz vs Queensland, but the drama involves Test and Queensland opener Usman Khawaja. After he ruled himself out of the final regular match of the season, citing a dodgy hamstring, Queensland’s team manager Joe Dawes called him out in a press conference, saying there was “no reason” he couldn’t play. Khawaja called that “100% wrong” in a presser of his own, making for a tense lead up to the final. And while Khawaja didn’t make runs on the first day of the game yesterday, his teammates struggled too - the drama-free South Oz finished the day with a 63-run lead. 

A shroom with a view

Growing oyster mushrooms in space could soon be a thing… An Aussie experiment to see if it’s doable will be part of an upcoming SpaceX mission - that’s the company owned by billionaire Elon Musk. Launching Monday, the plan is to take a box along containing substrate and mycelium (aka the stuff that you use to grow mushrooms and the stuff that becomes mushrooms). Over time, the astronauts will check if the 2 substances have successfully combined into all their oyster mushroom glory. If they have, they’ll return to Earth to make sure space hasn’t done anything weird to the mushrooms and if they get the all clear, it could be big for sustainable food sources in space. Sounds like a team of fun gals - and fun guys…

Apropos of Nothing

Scientists have discovered a new species of dinosaur in Mongolia's Gobi Desert. The Duonychus tsogtbaatari (we can't pronounce it either…) weighed about 260kg, looked like a "giant feathered sloth", and sported 2 razor-sharp 30cm claws - but used them to eat plants, which sounds marginally less scary…  

Techie types may remember the program Napster as one people used to - ahem - illicitly download music. Turns out it’s still around and has just been sold for $328 million to a company that wants to turn it into a “social media platform” for musicians. Everything old is new again… 

A big hunt for a mini dog is underway on Kangaroo Island, where Valerie the dachshund has been on the lam for 16 months. Giving her owners some hope is the fact she’s been spotted alive and well in recent months, with wildlife experts “amazed” at her survival skills. Now to catch her…

Squiz the Day

9.50am (ACDT) - Cricket: Day 2 of the Sheffield Shield final - South Australia v Queensland - Adelaide, and watch it on Kayo

7.30pm (AEDT) - Coalition leader Peter Dutton will deliver his Budget reply to Parliament - Canberra, and watch it here

ABS data release - Finance and Wealth, December; Labour Force, February; Regional Population, 2023/24 financial year

Batter up - Major League Baseball tees off in the US

World Theatre Day

Birthdays for director Quentin Tarantino (1963), and singers Mariah Carey (1971) and Fergie (1975)

Anniversary of:

• the patenting of kerosene (1855)

• Billie Holiday playing in front of a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall 11 days after being released from prison (1948)

• Suharto officially succeeding Sukarno as the president of Indonesia (1968)