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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is a Squeeze podcast. We're your shortcut to being informed. Good morning. I'm Alice Dempster.
And I'm Andrew Williams.
It's Wednesday the 27th of May. In your Squeeze today, the US launches strikes on Iran, more ISIS brides return home, the state of origin begins, and Ferrari goes electric. This is your Squeeze today.
We started this week talking about a potential peace deal between the US and Iran, but yesterday the US military launched strikes on Iranian ships that were laying underwater mines and Iranian missile launch sites. It's called them self-defense strikes, but they've put the current seven-week ceasefire and the ongoing peace negotiations at risk.
They have. Iran's criticised the strikes as a sign of what it called bad faith and unreliability on behalf of the US. Now, the port where these strikes happened is called Bandar Abbas. It's home to an Iranian naval base and it lies on the Strait of Hormuz, which is this crucial shipping lane. the closure of which is holding up much of the world's oil traffic, as we've spoken about a bunch.
So that's something that the US is keen to fix. And technically, the ceasefire is still in place. The US military says that it used restraint, in its words, to respect the truce. Afterwards, the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said that a peace deal was still possible and that talks yesterday between Iran's top negotiator and Qatar's PM did show signs of progress.
And reports say that deal currently being discussed involves extending the ceasefire by 60 days and reopening the Strait, along with more negotiations around Iran's nuclear program, which is a big sticking point. But US President Donald Trump now wants the deal to include additional Arab countries joining the Abraham Accords.
If this is the first you're hearing about it, something that we had to remind ourselves about, Andrew.
Yeah, it certainly did. So the Abraham Accords are a series of US brokered peace deals. And the idea was that they would pave the way for friendly relations between Arab countries in the region and Israel. So they've opened up things like trade and tourism and shared intelligence, particularly when it comes to their common rival, which is Iran.
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Chapter 2: What recent military actions did the US take against Iran?
Saudi Arabia supports Palestinian statehood, but Israel is against it. And as for what's next, talks on both of those fronts between Iran and the US and over the Abraham Accords are continuing. So we'll be waiting for more updates there. We'll be hearing a bit about the so-called ISIS brides again today.
It's because the second group of women and children arrived back in Australia from the al-Raj refugee camp in Syria yesterday afternoon.
So four women and six children flew into Sydney and two women and seven children landed in Melbourne. So unlike last time, none have been arrested and charged so far after they landed. Another woman was left behind, though, after she was banned from entering the country under a temporary exclusion order.
We've spoken briefly about those things before, but they basically bar a person on national security grounds for two years, even if they are Australian citizens. So she's understood to be mounting a legal challenge to that.
The federal government says it's given them no help to get here, which is the same thing it said with that previous group of women who arrived earlier this month. PM Anthony Albanese was asked about this latest group yesterday. He said he has, this is his quote, nothing but contempt for anyone who has any sympathy with ISIS.
You and Claire mentioned in Squiz the Day yesterday that the Quad would be meeting. That's the group of Australia, Japan, the US and India. They had a few announcements out of that.
Yeah, so this is particularly the foreign ministers from those countries that meet as part of the Quad. They met in New Delhi and they had a few new deals to announce, particularly their first ever joint infrastructure project. So US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, he's been busy, we've already mentioned him, said that the group would be building a new port in Fiji.
And the idea there is there's insufficient port capacity, as he called it, not enough room in ports in the Pacific Islands. So they're building a new one, these four countries. They also announced new packs on critical minerals and surveillance. Now, It's notable because it's a bit of a turnaround in the group's sort of momentum over the past year or so.
It slowed a bit last year, particularly around a little bit of a spat between US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi over tariffs and a range of things, in fact. So this is sort of picking that momentum up a little bit.
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Chapter 3: How are the US strikes affecting peace negotiations with Iran?
The game's in Sydney, as you said. New South Wales, of course, known as the Blues or the Cockroaches if you're feeling uncharitable. So the experts reckon there's a couple of players to watch tonight, including the New South Wales fullback, James Tedesco. He is returning to the side after missing out on being selected last year and he's an explosive player.
So he's always an interesting one to watch.
Queensland halfback Sam Walker's another one whose name is being mentioned a bit. He's making his Origin debut. And if you're tuning in at home, you can watch it all live on Channel 9 tonight. The luxury carmaker Ferrari made a big announcement yesterday. It's unveiled its first ever fully electric vehicle and it's called the Luce.
Now it's spelled L-U-C-E. So when I first read it, I thought it was called the Luce. It's not. It's called Luce, which sounds much classier and it means light in Italian. It's Italian, so it makes sense that it wouldn't be pronounced Luce. It's a five-seat luxury sedan. It can hit speeds of 100 kilometres an hour in 2.5 seconds, and it will set you back around $900,000 to buy one.
One reason that it's creating a bit of a stir is that it also looks very different to your sort of bog-standard garden-variety Ferrari that we've all got in our driveways that we see on the streets all the time. I'm no expert on design nor cars, but I would say having... Looked at some footage of it. It maybe looks a bit boxier than, you know, the sports car sleekness of a Ferrari.
It looks like a bit more like a normal car that you would see on the roads. And it was actually co-designed by an Australian, Mark Newson. He was a big player in designing the Apple Watch as well. So he has some form in this. It does not look like an Apple Watch. We'll give you that guidance right now. But the design change has already proven controversial online.
One critic said it needed to go straight to the junkyard trash. I've never heard that before. But another praised it as a masterclass in design.
Yeah, you'd hope for $900,000 it would be. Masterclass.
We're hoping for masterclass.
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Chapter 4: What updates are there on the return of ISIS brides to Australia?
In fact, there's a case only a couple of years ago, and they indeed copied a bank guarantee. And when the landlord went to cash the bank guarantee, because these documents are effectively open cheques, they found the bank wasn't prepared to cash it because they said this was fraudulent. So paper is really an old-fashioned way of doing business.
And of course, there's a lot more security that you can surround through a digital platform like eGuarantee has in place than there is in doing paper guarantees.
And for something like this, trust is obviously important. How do you make sure that a digital product stacks up against what people are used to from the banks more traditionally?
Well, that's one of the challenges that we have because a lot of landlords are very used to doing things in a traditional way. So to introduce something new, we obviously have to make sure that we have something which is plausible, authentic, And so we have standing behind us an issuer in HCI, Global Specialty Insurance. They are a huge global entity.
They've got a AA minus standard and pause rating, which is the same as the Commonwealth Bank. So they're the security that the landlord is getting via ourselves, the guarantee, when they enter an agreement with us.
Fantastic. Thanks, Stephen. If you want to find out more or see if Leigh's bonds are for you,
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