Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 13 November.
Top stories
The army stand ready to be deployed as New South Wales and Queensland fires blaze out of control. More than 100 fires continue to rage across eastern Australia, dozens of them running out of control, but the nation escaped its predicted “catastrophic” fire day without further loss of life. However, fire chiefs have warned that despite cooler conditions expected on Wednesday and Thursday, dangerous fire conditions will return late in the week. At least 170 houses have been razed in fires across NSW and Queensland, but no further lives were lost on Tuesday, predicted by fire chiefs to be the most dangerous bushfire conditions the nation had ever seen. Follow all our latest coverage here.
Police in Hong Kong have accused protesters of bringing the city to the “brink of total collapse” and urged residents not to support them as demonstrations paralysed the city for a second day in a row. Clashes continued late into the night on Tuesday, after protestors built street barricades, set fires and threw petrol bombs, chairs and other objects at police during another day of strikes demanding greater democracy in the Chinese territory. Universities have emerged as new battlegrounds in recent days. At Chinese University of Hong Kong, pro-vice chancellor Dennis Ng pleaded with police to stop firing teargas. “It is out of control,” he yelled over a loudspeaker. The police later said they would retreat in an effort to “diffuse the situation”.
A camper trailer company in the marginal NSW seat of Gilmore was awarded a $750,000 federal government grant at a time that it may have been trading while insolvent. Under the grant, awarded under the regional jobs and investment program that was subject to a scathing report from the auditor general, applicants were required to spend a matching amount to the government contribution. But six months after the company’s $1.5m project was announced as successful under the program’s business innovation stream, the company was placed into administration and the company’s 50 employees were made redundant.
Australia
Cardinal George Pell will on Wednesday find out if he has reached the end of the road in fighting his conviction for historical child sexual abuse offences, when the high court decides whether it will grant his legal team special leave to appeal for a final time. In June Victoria’s court of appeal dismissed the appeal by a majority of two to one, prompting Pell’s lawyers to take the matter to the high court. But there is no automatic right to have an appeal heard. When the court delivers its decision on Wednesday morning it will do so based on papers alone and, if unsuccessful, Pell will have no other option but to accept his conviction.
The biggest barrier to suicide prevention is discrimination, according to Scott Morrison’s suicide prevention adviser. Christine Morgan says she has been shocked by the “horrific” level of stigma that Australians face when people learn they have attempted self-harm.
Rich Australians lobbied the tax office to exempt some of their companies from increased scrutiny, according to submissions from their accountants seen by the Guardian.
Angus Taylor will face a further grilling when parliament returns over the origins of a doctored document he says informed a letter blasting the City of Sydney over its travel spending.
The world
A whistleblower has told the Guardian of growing alarm over secret transfer of medical history data, which can be accessed by Google staff. The whistleblower works in Project Nightingale, the secret transfer of the personal medical data of up to 50 million Americans from one of the largest healthcare providers in the US to Google.
The British Labour party has faced a second cyber-attack, a day after experiencing what it called a “sophisticated and large-scale” attempt to disrupt its digital systems. Meanwhile 25 sitting and former Conservative councillors have been exposed for posting Islamophobic and racist material on social media, according to a dossier obtained by the Guardian that intensifies the row over anti-Muslim sentiment in the party.
White House officials are reportedly drafting plans to make US foreign aid conditional on how countries treat their religious minorities, in an effort that is seen as a sop to Christian evangelicals in Donald Trump’s base.
Recommended reads
Carol Heriot was standing in the kitchen thinking about what to cook for dinner on Tuesday afternoon when a police officer knocked on her door. “He said: ‘Love, it’s time to get out of here.’ I said: ‘What do you mean?’ and he pointed up the hill and he said: ‘You see that smoke? It’s coming this way.’” Heriot, her partner Rodney Smith and their dog Bundy were among the 80-odd people, dogs, birds, cats and goldfish crowded into the auditorium of the Tuncurry bowling club on Tuesday night. “We’re a bit of a menagerie at the moment and it looks a bit like Noah’s ark out the back,” the manager, Terry Green, told Guardian Australia earlier in the day.
What if we treated history as a giant data set? asks Laura Spinney. “Peter Turchin used sophisticated maths to show how the interactions of predators and prey produce oscillations in animal populations in the wild. He had published in the journals Nature and Science and become respected in his field, but by the late 1990s he had answered all the ecological questions that interested him. He found himself drawn to history instead: could the rise and fall of human societies also be captured by a handful of variables and some differential equations?”
Listen
After Scott Morrison signalled the Coalition would crackdown on environmental activism, Katharine Murphy and Ben Butler examine exactly what that means on today’s Full Story podcast. In a speech at a mining conference in Queensland, Morrison raised the possibility of outlawing secondary boycotts and making sure companies listen to their “quiet shareholders”. These proposals seem to run against the Liberal party’s free market ethos. What is behind this new push and will the government be able to legislate any of these proposals?
Sport
The 2019-20 W-League season looks set to inspire a new cluster of fans as it makes up for lost time. Energised by local youth but anchored by international stars, here’s how the nine clubs shape up for season 11.
Roger Federer warmed up for his hugely anticipated rematch with Novak Djokovic on Thursday by blunting the power of Matteo Berrettini on the third day of the ATP World Tour Finals. The young Italian, who scraped into the last eight at the last minute, could not live with a Federer playing near his peak to win 7-6 (2), 6-3.
Media roundup
“Two-thirds of junior doctors working in NSW hospitals are so exhausted they’re worried they’ll make a medical mistake that could potentially harm their patients, or come to harm themselves,” the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The Washington Post reveals “how climate change is triggering a chain reaction that threatens the heart of the Pacific.” The ABC looks at screen time in Australian schools.
Coming up
Today the high court will rule on whether disgraced cardinal George Pell can appeal his child sexual abuse conviction.
The former ACTU boss Bill Kelty will deliver the annual Bob Hawke lecture in Adelaide and will pay tribute to his long-time friend.
The aged care royal commission is holding a hearing in Hobart.
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