Chris Spyrou

And like you heard, we're starting in the US this morning where King Charles is, as we record, making a historic address to US Congress.

He started his speech by acknowledging the US's upcoming independence anniversary, getting a standing ovation.

Yeah, well, all right, get your thesauruses out.

But he also spoke about, in serious news, he also did speak about the latest assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

Back home and US tech giants have come out to slam the Australian government's new laws designed to get them paying for local news.

Yesterday, Anthony Albanese announced details of the new media bargaining incentive, which would see platforms like TikTok, Facebook and Google pay for Australian news content on their sites.

The proposed laws would see the tech companies slap with a 2.25% tax on local revenues if they don't sign deals with newsrooms.

Yeah, Australian news companies are welcoming the announcement as a critical step in securing the future of local journalism with the new rules to generate up to $250 million in revenue that will be entirely distributed to newsrooms here.

Now, interestingly, I kind of have skin in the game here because a lot of my early roles in journalism were funded by these deals that different newsrooms had brokered either with Meta or with Google.

I know my job before this was a

a meta-funded role.

My job here, my initial role here at Southern Cross Austeria was a Google-funded role.

And watching that funding dry up, you see and feel the impacts very quickly.

Heading back overseas and the United Arab Emirates has announced it's leaving the world's most powerful oil cartel in a move that could eventually mean cheaper petrol for Australians.

The UAE making the announcement it's quitting OPEC, the club of now 12 oil producing nations, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iraq.

That's controlled global gas prices since the 1960s by setting strict limits on how much oil its members can sell.

Yeah, there's also talks of new pipelines from Abu Dhabi's oil fields designed to bypass the Strait of Hormuz entirely.

But do not expect prices to drop at the Bowser just yet.

With the Strait of Hormuz still effectively closed due to the war, the UAE can't get much more oil to market anymore.

anyway.