Victoria recovers from a power outage; Tasmania's off to the polls; CommBank's smaller big profit...

this is a squeeze podcast where your shortcut to being informed this week's podcast is brought to you by BHP copper is a big deal in the energy transition because it's used to make electric vehicles wind turbines and solar panels when it comes to producing copper responsibly it's happening now at BHP good morning I'm Alice dster and I'm CLA kimle it's Thursday the 15th of February in your squee today recovering from a power outage taz's off to the poles a smaller big profit and a loaf of love this is your squiz [Music] today CLA about 650,000 households and businesses were left without power after Victoria's huge storms on Tuesday the regulator says that they've made good progress but the full restoration could take weeks as of yesterday morning about 220,000 homes and businesses were still without power but that number was down to about 135,000 by yesterday evening and yesterday Victoria's energy Minister Lily dambrosio said that it's one of the largest outages the state has ever seen what happened was that Victoria recorded 544 th000 lightning strikes between 9:00 a.m. and 900 p.m. on Tuesday and that was just within a 600 km radius of Melbourne there was also very heavy rain and strong winds and that caused widespread damage including to six major transmission towers and that damage to infrastructure is what prompted agl's Power Station ly Yang which is Victoria's largest power generator to go offline from about 2 p.m. on Tuesday the Australian energy Market operator is responsible for operating Aussie power networks and its boss Daniel Westerman said the Tipping Point was two key Towers being destroyed between Melbourne and jalong yeah and he also said that other transmission lines were effectively being overloaded so that's what led to the big blackouts there were plenty of questions after that of course about how stable Victoria's power grit is in recent times there's been lots of questions about those sorts of things but what some experts say is that what happened on Tuesday with those storms would have seriously disrupted any power system that was the scale of what happened with the weather uh Minister de Ambrosio agreed she said that just to give a bit of an example if a road collapses and you have a car full of petrol it's just got no road to travel on so that's what happened there um probably the other thing to mention Alice is that in the Gibs region a Dairy Farmer was killed in those storms Reports say that he was likely hit by flying debris when he was driving a tractor and we also mentioned yesterday the big bushfires burning in Victoria the two catastrophic level Blazers burning in the grampians region have been downgraded but authorities say at least 6,000 hectares of bush land was burnt and at least 25 homes were lost in the small town of pomonal there's been a big development in Victorian woman Samantha Murphy's disappearance CLA Victoria Police Commissioner Shane Patton now says that it's being treated as suspicious and that's because it's been 11 days now since she set off from her run near bat and although there hasn't been any actual breakthroughs in the case Patton says that it's very unusual that they haven't been able to locate any trace of the 51-year-old Reports say that detectives are sifting through hundreds of pieces of evidence that includes CCTV which they gave a call out for last week they also scaled back their Bushland search um that happened on the weekend and that came after not turning over any new Clues so what Patton said yesterday is whether it means there's Foul Play involved or not they're still not really sure the other thing is that there's been widespread online speculation about Murphy's disappearance but a former missing persons detective nurel Fraser says that it's unhelpful to have online sleuths who Listen to True Crime podcasts on the case she says they should leave the police to do their job longtime squizz would know how you feel about elections Claire and we mentioned Indonesia's National vote yesterday and now tasmanians have been given the gift of going to the polls it's a little bit earlier than they expected though how lucky a tasm my hands so lucky I wonder if it's too late to move there just to participate but yeah what happened yesterday is Premier Jeremy rockcliffe called an election for the 23rd of March it's a year earlier than was anticipated he says it's time to deliver certainty and stability for the state our Tasmanian listeners will know exactly what that means but for everyone else it's been really quite unstable there for a while what happened is last year two former liberals quit the party and became Independents their names are Lara Alexander and John Tucker and they had promised support for the government but it has turned into a very certain situation and what rock cliff said yesterday is they need that certainty to be able to proceed yeah that's right it's certainly been a roller coaster since they quit and CLA just on the Indonesian election the official count is still underway but the early results suggest that the former military General prooo subianto will be the country's next president Indonesia is of course our big Northern neighbor so if you want to get across why the election matters and how it affects Oz we have a new squee shortcut out this morning you'll find that episode straight after this a message now from our podcast partner Sunbeam it can feel like running the kids to all their clubs and classes is never ending so it's important to make sure they have healthy snacks for when you're all on the go sunbeams dried fruit and cheese chilled snacks are a great option as they're made from real fruit and real cheese and they provide a great source of calcium to keep your little ones feeling good and better still they contain no artificial colors or flavors so you don't have to worry about any nasties pick up a pack today in the dairy fridge at your local Woolworth's kl's or independent [Music] retailer the Commonwealth Bank has announced a big $5 billion half year cash profit CLA and although that's a lot of money it's actually down on last year at 3% down on last year and the bank says there's a few reasons for that but the big one is there's hot competition for mortgage lending uh the bank has dropped $2 billion from its home loan business and its CEO Matt Comm says that they're really turning their focus now to investors over owner occupiers he says that's because they can generate higher margins from that kind of Market uh as for the economy of course the Comm bank is an interesting one because it's our biggest bank uh common says that he remains optimistic about the national economy but he does expect that many households will keep doing it tough this year and it's worth pointing out that the banks supermarkets energy providers and other Industries are in the government and Regulators sites over claims that Aussies are not getting a good deal a report released last week by the unions and Professor Alan Fels pointed out that only Germany has a higher banking concentration than Australia among major economies [Music] there's not much artificial intelligence hasn't touched over the past couple of years Claire and now it's coming for bread it is coming for bread is there nothing AI won't touch and yeah of course the pandemic era of sourdough seemed very quaint when you now look forward to this technology that's implemented and Japan's oldest Bakery is on board it's teamed up with Tech Giant NEC Corp and they're baking something they call AI romance breads it's just in time for Valentine's Day uh what they've done is they've used AI to analyze lyrics from love songs and they've developed what they call five key feelings of Romance the first is the first encounter uh then we get into the first date and then it sort of goes a bit off track with jealousy and heartbreak and then we're into mutual love and then they've turned that into bread flavors and if you're wondering what the first date tastes like uh it's not a lot of white wine and fried food um it is zings of citus namely lime and orange peel M interesting the other one I do like is jealousy it tastes like purple sweet potatoes truffle oil and raisins I don't know if I associate truffle oil with jealousy but who am I to say Claire just roll with it I think it's bread it's all good squids the day CLA is there anything to mention Alice it's clean out your computer day and I reckon of late almost every time we record this podcast we talk about the need to free up some space on our computers so that we can have some more audio files so maybe this is the prompt that we both need yep The Prompt everyone needs I think I'm off to clear my computer now and that wraps us up for today we will speak to you again tomorrow good day I'm Kate Watson co-host of News Club News Club is the place to go for conversations about the news this week I speak with Adam Harvey Adam is a reporter with ABC's 730 and was from 2018 to 2020 the ABC's Middle East correspondent throughout this conversation Adam talks to me about his time in the Middle East and how different it was when he returned late last year here's a short clip from the episode tell me about your experience of Israel yeah well I've I've before my latest ENT after October 7 I'd been in I think to Israel about three times uh but covering it constantly um it's a very interesting place to work uh you can get as a as a western journalist you can move freely into into the West Bank um uh because Israel is divided in half really between between the West Bank and and and um Israel proper and uh then you've got Gaza which is a tiny little strip down on the southern Corner butting up against Egypt um working as a journalist if you're accredited and organized there is an amazing amount of information provided to you so the the Israelis are famously very proactive when it comes to uh providing you with information and you know getting in your ear if you get things wrong and I've certainly experienced that or things they think are wrong anyway but but Ju Just during this last conflict when I was over there in November December the current conflict you there are WhatsApp groups now created for journalists that are just full of um invitations to tours of kutas that had been destroyed during the October 7 attack or opportunities to interview survivors or family members or U press tours of of IDF operations in Northern uh Northern Israel up near the border with Lebanon um so all that you could quite easily I think sit in your office and not get out uh and information Prov that's right have all this information from the Israelis come right at you and I think you know a few journalists do do that Adam is incredibly experienced he's thoughtful and insightful to listen to the full interview search for news club wherever you get your podcasts