Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 8 August.
Top stories
Canadian police have found two bodies, believed to be those of the fugitives Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18. The teeenagers are suspected of having killed the Australian Lewis Fowler, his American girlfriend Chynna Deese and Canadian botanist Leonard Dyck along a highway in British Columbia last month, and then fleeing 3,000km east to Manitoba. Manitoba Royal Canadian Mounted Police assistant commissioner Jane MacLatchy told reporters she was confident the bodies were theirs, but their identity would have to be confirmed by an autopsy.
Tony Abbott is being used to promote a global pro-Brexit lobby group, despite the organisation admitting he has no formal connection with them. Abbott and Donald Trump Jnr both feature prominently in the promotional material of World4Brexit, a new organisation designed to raise funds outside the UK to support Brexit. UK Labour fears the organisation will raise money from hidden foreign donors and risk thwarting the nation’s electoral laws. World4Brexit is co-run by Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit party, but its financial backers are so far largely unknown.
More than 120,000 welfare recipients who had their payments suspended last financial year were later found by their job agency to have had a valid reason for not meeting their obligations, according to data obtained by Guardian Australia. The figures suggest the Jobactive provider of about one in five people who were temporarily cut from income support accepted that they had a reasonable excuse for missing an appointment or compulsory activity. Last week Channel Seven’s Sunrise program sparked outrage over a “dole bludger” segment which cited reports saying 78% of people had their payments suspended.
World
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon “exploded” in July with 2,254 sq km cleared. But the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has scoffed at his portrayal as Brazil’s “Captain Chainsaw” and mocked Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel for challenging him over the devastation.
Pakistan will expel the Indian ambassador and suspend trade after suggesting its rival could carry out ethnic cleansing in Kashmir, where tensions remain high following Delhi’s decision to revoke the state’s special status and divide it in two.
Luxembourg has called on its EU neighbours to relax their drug laws, as its health minister confirmed plans to become the first European country to legalise cannabis production and consumption.
Donald Trump has criticised the New York Times after the newspaper was forced to change its front-page headline amid an intense backlash over its sympathetic portrayal of the president’s position on recent mass shootings.
Authorities in Rome have been accused of applying “fascist-style” measures after police began shooing resting tourists away from the staircase of the famous Spanish Steps, where they face fines of €250 for simply sitting down.
Opinion and analysis
As a mixed-race girl battling self-loathing, Afua Hirsch was inspired by Toni Morrison’s stories to write fiction, and see value in her own experience. “Morrison captured the trauma of slavery and racism so powerfully that my sense of the world – the world of a mixed-race, British-Ghanaian girl, a story so different from those told in her books – became forever infused with her narration of the African American experience. She made the pain and power of her ancestors such a deep aspect of my own consciousness, and – as Hilton Als so powerfully put it – she broke our hearts with the truth.”
Social media is a dangerous space for public servants, but restrictions on its use mean they are being locked out of modern life, writes Greg Jericho, after a troubling ruling in the high court on Wednesday. “The decision effectively prevents public servants from expressing a political opinion, even if it concerns an area over which they have no influence or a workplace role. There will always be grey areas, and no public servant should think they have carte blanche to say what they like. But the reality is that on the basis of this week’s ruling, public servants are denied participation in an area of life the rest of us take for granted – and which is nothing more than what constitutes living in a democracy.”
Sport
After Australia’s big win in the first Ashes Test, Tim de Lisle presents five choices England could make to bounce back. Limiting Joe Root’s options and making better use of Jos Buttler’s brain would start to turn England’s fortunes around, de Lisle writes.
Bjorg Lambrecht’s death on Monday was the eighth of an international rider since 2016, and has shaken the faith of the keenest enthusiast. The high rate of attrition backs complaints from professional cyclists that the sport is becoming more dangerous.
Thinking time: from Scotland to Lagos, a memoir
Before Scotland’s national poet Jackie Kay was a writer, she was a character. “When you’re adopted,” she explains “you come with a story.” Her adoptive mother Helen – fascinated by her possible origins – encouraged young Kay to speculate about her birth parents. It was known that her father was Nigerian, her mother a white woman from the Scottish Highlands. Were they, perhaps, torn apart by racial prejudice in 1960s Scotland?
Kay is 57 with a strong, theatrical energy. Joy, the name she was given by her birth mother, suits her. But there is also a darkness. She has written of “a windy place right at the core of my heart”. Eventually, Kay travelled to Nigeria to ask her birth father if he ever thought of her – he said no. How much did that hurt, and did writing her memoir, Red Dust Road, help? “I didn’t think of it as revenge. In a deeper way I am taking something from him. To write about somebody without their complete permission is perhaps like some people believe of photographs: taking a little bit of their soul. I agonised about the ethical challenges. But I think I have a right to tell my own story.”
Media roundup
Chinese authorities have visited the parents of an international student who protested at the University of Queensland in support of the Hong Kong protests, and warned them of potential consequences for political dissidents, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The Herald Sun focuses on the alarming details of the allegations against gangland widow Roberta Williams. South Australia is considering introducing a three-year ban on snapper fishing to allow declining stock numbers to recover, the Adelaide Advertiser reports.
Coming up
New South Wales MPs will consider proposed amendments to the bill decriminalising abortion.
Clive Palmer’s Queensland Nickel trial will hear the remainder of the liquidators’ claims, following the major settlement reached on Monday.
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