Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 4 March.
Top stories
Democrats in the US House of Representatives are stepping up investigations into Donald Trump’s potentially impeachable acts, which include corruption, obstruction of justice and abuse of power. On Monday the House judiciary committee, which is on the front line of renewed Democratic efforts to hold the president accountable, will issue demands for documents from more than 60 people and entities. Among the targets are the president’s son Donald Trump Jr and the chief finance officer of Trump’s business empire, Allen Weisselberg, both of whom have been implicated in payments made to an adult film actor on Trump’s behalf in violation of campaign finance laws.
Bushfires have ripped through Victoria’s east, with a wind change challenging firefighters working all night to contain the blaze. Despite cooler conditions expected on Monday, firefighters may have to contend with dry lightning, which could start more fires. The Bunyip State Park fire, burning 65km east of Melbourne, was sparked by lightning strikes on Friday and has destroyed more than 10,000 hectares. The blaze is still racing towards the Princes Freeway and emergency warnings remain in place for the surrounding area. “The risk of lightning redevelops in the late morning with the chance of some showers and thunderstorms,” Bureau of Meteorology’s senior forecaster Christie Johnson said. While there was a chance of showers, she added, it was hard to pinpoint where they would hit, and there would only be a few millimetres of rainfall.
Labor’s latest policy announcement could see $60m committed to helping domestic violence survivors rebuild their lives. In previewing the announcement, which will officially be made later on Monday, Bill Shorten said the $60m commitment over four years will fund around 20,000 support packages, including money for housing, transport, utilities, medical care or security, with the money to come from Labor’s banking fairness fund, a levy it plans on imposing on the banks to fund community improvement schemes, including increasing financial literacy. “Instead of asking, ‘why did she stay’, we need to ask ‘where could she go’,” Shorten said in a statement.
World
Tory Brexiters are to demand at least two days to scrutinise any new offer from Brussels on the backstop mechanism, warning the prime minister not to “bounce” the group into an early vote on her Brexit deal.
The US has said it is trying to find out whether Pakistan used US-built F-16 jets to down an Indian warplane, potentially in violation of trade agreements, as the standoff between the nuclear-armed Asian neighbours showed signs of easing.
Voters took to the polls on Sunday to elect a new leader to represent Italy’s centre-left Democratic party, as the embattled group strives to re-establish itself as a credible force against the country’s rightwing populist government.
A senior Republican has contradicted Donald Trump about whether Kim Jong-un is to blame for the death of Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old student at the University of Virginia, who died in June 2017 after having been held in North Korea for 17 months. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy spoke on Sunday, saying: “North Korea murdered Otto [Warmbier] … I think Kim knew what happened, which was wrong.”
A surge in Ukip membership is shifting the party decisively towards the far right, as long-standing moderates are replaced by entrants attracted by an anti-Islam agenda based on street protest, a Guardian investigation can reveal.
Opinion and analysis
How fashion forensics are helping solve crimes. Clothing historian Amber Butchart was talking about fisherman’s jumpers on the radio when Dr Karl Harrison, one of the UK’s most experienced forensic archaeologists, who was listening on his drive home, was struck by her explanation of what we communicate through clothing. He sent her a “very uncrazy email” (he insists) inviting her to meet. Would she be interested, he asked, using slightly different words, in forming the fashion police?
In the Philippines they think about gender differently. Australia could, too, argues Vonn Patiag. “When I was eight years old, on my first and only trip to the Philippines, I met my older cousin Norman,” writes Patiag. “He had shoulder-length hair, wore lipstick and eyeliner, and would walk around in heels. His father affectionately called him malambut (Tagalog for ‘soft’); his siblings called him bading, but he told me he was bakla. As an identity not tied to sex, the word bakla does not correspond directly to western nomenclature for LGBTQIA+ identities, sitting somewhere between gay, trans and queer.”
Sport
A cycling race in Belgium was thrown into disarray when the leader of the women’s race almost caught up with her male counterparts and found herself in danger of being impeded by their support vehicles.
Melbourne City finds itself locked in a battle for the heart of fans, following the departure of cult favourite Bruno Fornaroli, writes Jonathan Howcroft.
Thinking time: the history we have inherited
The Killing Times is a Guardian Australia special report that aims to assemble information necessary to begin truth telling – not just the grim tally of more than a century of frontier bloodshed, but its human cost – as told by descendants on all sides. This is the history we have all inherited. Our interactive map details massacres in every state and territory but the research is ongoing. It does not count all the sites of conflict, or clashes over land and resources, in which lives were lost in the colonisation of Australia. The numbers we have drawn on are conservative estimates. There are more massacre sites to be added – places where the true death toll may never be known – and many more we are still working to verify, particularly in Queensland, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and New South Wales. In this first snapshot of the continent, we have found that there were at least 270 frontier massacres over 140 years, as part of a state-sanctioned and organised attempt to eradicate Aboriginal people.
Starting in 1794, mass killings were first carried out by British soldiers, then by police and settlers – often acting together – and later by native police, working under the command of white officers, in militia-style forces supported by colonial governments. These tactics were employed, without formal repercussions, as late as 1926. Using data from the colonial massacre map at the University of Newcastle’s Centre for 21st Century Humanities, and adopting its stringent research methods, Guardian Australia has surveyed the rest of the country. We found that:
Government forces were actively engaged in frontier massacres until at least the late 1920s.
These attacks became more lethal for Aboriginal people over time, not less. The average number of deaths of Aboriginal people in each conflict increased, but from the early 1900s casualties among the settlers ended entirely – with the exception of one death in 1928.
The most common motive for a massacre was reprisal for the killing of settler civilians but at least 51 massacres were justified by the killing or theft of livestock or property.
Of the attacks on the map, only once were colonial perpetrators found guilty and punished – in the aftermath of the Myall Creek killings in 1838.
Media roundup
A “hit list” of six former Liberal party MPs currently serving as ambassadors or consuls general will be reviewed by Labor should it win the next election, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The Daily Telegraph‘s front page has dubbed ScoMo Gladys Berejiklian’s “secret weapon” in the NSW election, after a YouGov Galaxy poll found the marginal seat of East Hills has an ALP swing of 0.4%. Josh Frydenberg wants to stop industry super fund managers from “using their financial leverage over publicly listed companies to advance the political objectives of militant unions,” according to the Australian’s front page lead, “Treasurer’s super war on activists”.
Coming up
The New South Wales election campaign will officially get under way with the issuing of the writs for the 23 March state poll.
The inquest into the death in custody of David Dungay will resume, more than six months after the initial hearing ran overtime.
