☕️ What's going on with Optus?

It’s a big weekend for AFL fans and feline mascots, with the Geelong Cats and Brisbane Lions only one sleep away from the final match of the season.

If you need a preview of the match, you can read George’s guide here over at TDA Sport.

Whether it’s the Victorian public holiday, Snoop Dogg, the Grand Final Sprint or the actual game itself, I hope you have an excellent AFL Grand Final Weekend (and yes, NRL fans, it’s your turn on Sunday 5 October!).

"Last week we removed d4vd from our website and marketing out of respect for the unfolding story... We are working on a replacement booking which we'll announce as soon as it's finalised."
A statement from the organisers of music festival Spilt Milk, weeks after the body of a teenage girl was found in an abandoned car owned by the singer d4vd. The singer’s upcoming tour dates have been cancelled as police investigate.

1 million
The number of Syrian refugees who have returned to the country since December, according to data from the UN. Late last year, a coalition of militant groups overthrew the Assad family dictatorship, which had ruled since the 1970s.

A world-ending event called the ‘Rapture’ was predicted this week, with some people posting on TikTok about their plans to sell their cars or houses. The group believed they would be taken up into heaven, leaving their worldly possessions behind.

A shooting at an immigration facility in the U.S. state of Texas has left two people dead and two others critically injured.

It’s understood the shooter opened fire from a roof at 7am yesterday (local time), killing one detainee and injuring two others.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has confirmed the shooter died at the scene. Here’s what you need to know.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a U.S. government agency created in 2003.

It is responsible for deporting people who are found to have broken U.S. immigration law.

Its website also notes it is responsible for deporting “convicted criminal undocumented aliens and gang members”.

Under U.S. law, an ‘alien’ is anyone in the country who isn’t a citizen.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order this year to demand officials reverse what he called an “unprecedented flood of illegal immigration”.

In response, ICE has engaged in wide-spread raids and arrests around the country.

Officers have waited outside courts to arrest people after immigration hearings and carried out raids on businesses, a practice paused under U.S. President Joe Biden.

ICE officers arrested more than 100 people in Los Angeles in June, leading to protests in the city.

The shooting happened at an ICE facility in Dallas around 7am Wednesday (local time).

No officers were injured.

FBI Director Kash Patel said a bullet casing at the scene had “ANTI ICE” written on it.

It is the second shooting at an ICE facility in Texas this year, after a police officer was shot and injured outside a detention centre in the state’s east.

In a post to X, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said: “This assassination will NOT slow our arrest, detention, and deportation of illegal immigrants.”

State Democrat Rafael Anchía said his “community stands united against targeted gun violence [and] will not allow this moment to be exploited for division”.

Reporting by Annabel Whitehouse.

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Optus said its network outage last week was caused by “human error”.

A technical failure during a network upgrade last week disrupted Triple Zero calls, leading to four deaths.

Earlier this week, the Federal Court fined the telco $100 million for selling products to vulnerable customers who couldn’t afford them.

In recent years, the company has seen another widespread outage blocking access to Triple Zero, and a major cyberattack that led to a data breach.

On Thursday last week, Optus had a “technical failure” during a network upgrade.

The company said no “red flags” were raised during initial testing of the changes, but later received a direct complaint from a person who had been unable to make a Triple Zero call.

Calls in South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory were impacted.

In a statement on Friday, Optus said three Triple Zero calls had failed to go through, leading to three deaths.

CEO Stephen Rue told media on Wednesday four people had died who “could not reach emergency services in their time of need.”

SA Police are investigating two deaths during the outage.

Rue said the company took “full accountability,” and had appointed an independent investigator.

On Wednesday, Rue told media the outage was a “process issue” that was “a result of human error, in terms of instructions provided”.

He said the upgrade program was supposed to happen over two nights. On the first night, the proper steps involved in “past successful upgrades... were not followed.”

Calls were meant to be diverted to a different part of the network not currently being upgraded. This did not happen.

Communications Minister Anika Wells told the ABC on Thursday: “It is incredibly disappointing that we are here so soon after Optus’ last failure in this space.”

In November 2023, Optus experienced a network-wide outage, leaving millions of people without phone reception and internet. It said the outage was caused by a “routine software upgrade.”

During that outage, almost 2,700 people tried and failed to call Triple Zero.

On Wednesday, the Federal Court fined Optus $100 million for selling products to hundreds of vulnerable customers, including people with mental disabilities, who could not afford them.

The lawsuit was launched by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) last year.

Optus admitted it had targeted vulnerable Australians, and in some cases incentivised staff to complete these purchases through commission-based rewards.

Federal Court Justice John O’Sullivan said the company’s conduct was “clearly unconscionable and can only be described as appalling”.

He found the penalty, proposed by the ACCC, was “appropriate”.

O’Sullivan noted that Optus’ conduct meant “many vulnerable consumers suffered financial hardship [and] shame, stress and emotional distress.”

In a statement, Optus said it was “remediating impacted customers,” and working to change its practices.

The company is facing a separate class action over a 2022 data breach.

Reporting by Annabel Whitehouse.

Did you know your food scraps have superpowers?

Most Victorians now have a lime green food organics and garden organics (FOGO) bin – and they’re already proving to be pretty great at using it.

Here’s the deal: food scraps and garden clippings go in the FOGO bin. From there, they’re transformed into compost that helps local farms and gardens thrive – not sent to landfill.

The only catch? Rubbish doesn’t belong – the FOGO bin is just for food scraps and garden clippings. No plastics, containers or even sneaky fruit stickers. If they slip in, the whole load could end up in landfill, where they release methane.

The fix is simple: correctly sort your scraps into the FOGO bin, and you’ll make a real difference every bin night.

🍊 The AFL Grand Final is tomorrow. Here’s your preview.
🍊 Leary too good at para swimming world championships. More details here.
🍊 Postecoglou remains winless with Forest. Read more here.
🗞️ Also in the Sport Newsletter: cricket, rugby, and more…

The drug, called Leqembi, works by targeting a type of protein fragment linked to Alzheimer’s disease, which forms in between nerve cells in the brain. Leqembi has now been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for eligible patients diagnosed with “Mild Cognitive Impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease” and early Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s is a progressive and irreversible neurodegenerative brain disease. Chair of the support organisation ‘Professionals with Alzheimer’s Global’ Cathy Roth welcomed the TGA’s decision, saying the disease has a “profound” impact on patients, families and carers. Roth called new treatment options “crucial” to give Australians living with Alzheimer’s “new opportunities to manage the progression of the disease.”

Want more good news? Sign up to our weekly Good Newsletter here - we promise it’ll make your week better!

Reporting by Emma Gillespie.

Posters warning residents of a “very mean squirrel” have popped up across a town in the U.S. state of California.

Local media reported an aggressive squirrel had sent at least two people to hospital for medical treatment, attacking them “out of nowhere”.

No attacks have been reported since mid-September. Should they occur again, a local animal welfare group has announced that it will assist in their rehoming.

Reporting by Rosa Bowden.

25 years ago today, Australia was waking up in the aftermath of one of the greatest gold medal races of all time - Cathy Freeman’s win in the 400m. It was the undeniable high point of the Sydney 2000 Olympics, a Games that changed the city and set a high bar for other cities to follow.

On today’s episode, we’re taking a walk back in time to the year 2000, explaining how the Games came to Sydney, bringing you some of the highlights, and discussing its lasting legacy.