Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 28 May.
Top stories
The former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani has revealed that his allegations about a scandal at the heart of the Robert Mueller investigation – which Donald Trump calls “Spygate” – are a tactic to sway public opinion and limit the risk of the president being impeached. “Of course we have to do it to defend the president,” he told CNN. “It is for public opinion ... because eventually the decision here is going to be impeach or not impeach.”
As Giuliani acknowledged the political nature of his public campaign against Mueller, Trump advanced that campaign on Twitter, lamenting what he said were “young and beautiful lives … devastated and destroyed” by the investigation of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The final stages of the government’s plan to dramatically flatten Australia’s income tax scales will provide a multibillion-dollar boon to the top 20% of income earners, a progressive thinktank says. The Australia Institute has produced modelling of the most expensive elements of the income tax plan, saying the Senate needs to understand how skewed they are towards richer households. The top 20% of taxpayers will have a tax cut of $12.7bn.
Many foods promoted as “gluten-free” in Melbourne eateries contain levels of gluten that can be dangerous to people suffering from coeliac disease, a survey of 127 restaurants has found. The findings, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, found that of 158 samples of “gluten-free” dishes from 127 randomly selected restaurants within the City of Melbourne council, 9% contained gluten and were not compliant with food standards. Dr Jason Tye-Din from the Institute of Medical Research said “just a few crumbs” of foods containing gluten could be harmful to those with coeliac disease, yet his research team found some restaurant staff did not know which grains contained gluten.
Kim Jong-un is committed to meeting Donald Trump and complete denuclearisation, South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in has said after a surprise meeting between the two Korean leaders. Three days after Trump said a summit was cancelled, a state department spokeswoman confirmed that a US delegation was in “ongoing talks with North Korean officials at Panmunjom”.
Independent experts have called for changes to the Direct Action policy to prevent tens of millions of dollars of public money going to projects that would have gone ahead anyway. The recommendation is in a review of the $2.55bn emissions reduction fund, which pays landowners and companies to avoid emissions or to sequester carbon dioxide in plants at the lowest cost. In Guardian Australia’s Our wide brown land series, Adam Morton looks at one of the most common criticisms of the fund, that “we are either counting abatement that they were already doing or we’re counting emissions they were not going to be released anyway”.
Sport
As tales of sporting redemption go, few will have been harder to earn than Daniel Ricciardo’s journey to the top spot of the Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday, writes Giles Richards. As the Australian persuaded the prince and princess of the principality to join him in swigging from a champagne bottle on the podium, his sheer joy was infectious.
Chris Froome has won the Giro d’Italia to join cycling’s most exclusive club. Froome is the first Briton to win the century-old race and the first cyclist in 35 years to hold three grand tours at same time. “It is a dream to have all three leaders’ jerseys in the space of 10 months,” he said. “I am still pinching myself.”
Thinking time
How did a NSW police officer come to shoot and kill a young man who was mentally ill and had fled into an alleyway in a country town? Kate Wild’s book Waiting for Elijah delves into the killing of Elijah Holcombe in 2009. This extract traces the final hours of his life and the police conclusions about his death. “There has been an incident. Your son has been shot by the police and he has passed away. I’m sorry, Mr Holcombe,” police said in a devastating call to Elijah’s father.
Some “comedians” like Kevin Bloody Wilson and Austen Tayshus have out strongly against the current comedy climate, writes comedian Rebecca Shaw, claiming that the Australian humour they have wielded for decades is dying, strangled by political correctness. Shaw begs to differ. “It is true that you can probably no longer walk on stage, talk about how disgusting homosexuals are and expect the audience to eat it up. But this is not a bad thing. This is not PC culture censoring you or ruining your life, or making it impossible for you to do comedy. This is society progressing, and you remaining sadly stagnant.”
Bishop Michael Curry, who stole the show at the royal wedding with his powerful 14-minute address, has returned to the US to pray for Donald Trump. Curry wants to address what he and other clergy behind Reclaiming Jesus describe as a “crisis of moral and political leadership”. “My hope and prayer is that what we’re really doing is helping the average Christian person of faith find their voice,” Curry told the Guardian. “We’re trying to find a way to bring people together and the values that we share is our starting place for doing that.”
What’s he done now?
More than a year and half since Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election and retired from politics, Donald Trump is continuing to call for an investigation into her “crooked” campaign. “Why didn’t the 13 Angry Democrats investigate the campaign of Crooked Hillary Clinton, many crimes, much Collusion with Russia? Why didn’t the FBI take the Server from the DNC? Rigged Investigation!” he tweeted overnight.
Media roundup
The Daily Telegraph reports that Barnaby Joyce and his new partner have lodged a complaint with the Australian Press Council, claiming that their privacy was breached by the paper, and have also accepted a large sum from Channel Seven for a tell-all interview. Australia could ask its US and European allies to take “mass diplomatic retaliation” against Russia in response to the shooting down of flight MH17, the Australian Financial Review reports. And the ABC investigates the hidden costs in medical bills after analysing more than 700 bills sent in by Australians.
Coming up
The banking royal commission hearings will continue this week, starting with today’s focus on how Commonwealth Bank treated business customers after it bought Bankwest.
The former NSW premier Mike Baird will give evidence at a state upper house committee inquiry into museums and galleries over plans announced in 2015 to move the Powerhouse Museum in Ultimo to Parramatta.
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