Greetings! Happy National Writing Day to those celebrating.

Let’s get into today’s top stories.

🇦🇺 America and Australia sign counter-China critical-minerals pact. The new agreement targets financing, permitting coordination, and offtake guarantees to push projects from geology to gigafactories. Canberra wants processing onshore so ore does not chase the cheapest refinery and vanish abroad. Washington will lean on the Defense Production Act (DPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) loans office to de-risk capital-intensive steps. Automakers and grid firms need nickel, cobalt, lithium, and dysprosium with provenance that the compliance team can defend. China still dominates refining, so timelines and cost curves matter more than press releases. The test arrives when a contractor breaks ground rather than a minister breaking news.

🇯🇵 Sanae Takaichi is poised to become Japan’s first female prime minister. Her coalition arithmetic now moves from convention hall to parliamentary vote, where factions count by thumbs, not tweets. Markets will parse whether fiscal restraint or stimulus leads, particularly on child benefits and defense spending. The Bank of Japan’s path off yield control remains the economic weather, and personnel choices will hint at timing. Diplomats expect continuity on the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) agenda and closer security ties with allies. Domestic reformers watch if promised deregulation reaches labor markets and startup finance rather than staying rhetorical. Gender firsts are historic, but governing is granular and starts on day one.

☁️ Major Amazon cloud outage rippled across consumer apps and smart homes. Amazon ($AMZN) reported DNS and IP issues in an East Coast region that knocked services offline for hours, stalling logins and video streams, impacting business for companies and services including Apple Music, AT&T, Delta Airlines, Fortnite, Reddit, Robinhood, Signal, Snapchat, Venmo, and Zoom. Smart-device users found doorbells, thermostats, and cameras timing out while support queues ballooned. Enterprises rerouted workloads where architectures allowed, a reminder that multi-region redundancy is a cost until it becomes a lifeline. Regulators track these episodes because a few platforms underpin commerce, media, and emergency alerts. Outages look like technical footnotes until they start to feel like infrastructure.

🏛️ Administration defends Alina Habba’s tenure as top NJ federal prosecutor. Justice Department officials argue in favor of the New Jersey attorney’s experience and statutory authority, while opponents cite case management questions and conflicts of interest, as Habba was President Trump’s former counselor, legal spokesperson, and senior advisor to the MAGA, Inc. super PAC. Senate oversight may request briefings on recusal protocols, hiring, and charging policies during high-visibility probes. Bar groups want clearer guardrails so political proximity does not compromise prosecutorial independence. Federal defenders say consistency in discovery and plea practices matters more than headlines and op-eds. Expect any future motions to test jurisprudential boundaries rather than topple the controversial office outright.

🏀 Purdue PG Braden Smith earned unanimous preseason All-America honors. The national media panel praised point guard Smith’s efficiency and pace control after a season steering one of college basketball’s most disciplined offenses. Ball security and pick-and-roll reads remain his calling cards against elite guards. Meanwhile, Texas Tech’s frontcourt addition of standout hooper JT Toppin brought the much-needed length and clamp-down rim pressure that modern spacing schemes demand. Coaches will key on usage rates and late-game possessions, where awards often become self-fulfilling scouting reports. Big Ten and Big 12 schedules promise ranked-on-ranked collisions before March. Preseason is poetry; conference play is prose.

⚖️ The Supreme Court considers whether regular pot users can legally own guns. Petitioners argue that prohibitions rest on outdated assumptions about impairment and danger, not contemporary science or state legalization trends. The U.S. Department of Justice contends the restriction fits a historical tradition of disarming categories deemed risky. Gun-rights groups see a test of how far recent Second Amendment precedents extend into modern regulatory thickets. Public-health scholars warn that intoxication and firearms remain a lethal mix regardless of statute. A ruling could unsettle background check questionnaires and spur new state-level compliance puzzles. Constitutional theory will meet messy reality at the range and the courthouse.

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That’s all for today!

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See you tomorrow!