Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 7 June.
Top stories
The visiting former US vice-president Al Gore says new coalmines make no commercial sense, and even stubborn Australian governments will have to change course. “The United States and Australia have some things in common,” he told Guardian Australia in Brisbane, where he will meet with Annastacia Palaszczuk today. “Both have national governments that are enthralled to the dirty fossil industries of the past … both have dynamic business communities which are impatient with the obsolete ideas of governments that are dominated by special interests in one sector of the economy and both are experiencing the benefits of the sustainability revolution.” In 2017, Gore said Australia faced a choice between coal or the Great Barrier Reef. He maintains that the Adani mine does not make sense. “I am not an expert, but all of the people that I have consulted … have come to the conclusion that the economic analysis makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, even without calculating a cost for all of the pollution that is involved,” he said.
The AFP will be called before a parliamentary committee to explain its decision to launch raids on journalists, as a Labor senator calls for a massive expansion of parliamentary oversight of police and security agencies. The Liberal MP Craig Kelly said asking federal police to justify the widely condemned raids would be “the first order of business” once MPs returned to Canberra in July. On Thursday the Labor senator Doug Cameron told Guardian Australia the oversight powers of parliament’s committees were “third division and not A grade” compared with the US and UK.
A third of the racehorses exported from Australia to Korea in the past six years have since died, with most believed to have been sent to slaughter, a Guardian Australia analysis has found. A further 11% are listed in the Korean Racing Authority records as “undecided”, an entry that often coincides with an abrupt end to their medical history, or the listing of an injury incompatible with racing. This follows Guardian Australia’s publication of footage secretly recorded by Peta at one of the main horse abattoirs at Nonghyup on Jeju Island in South Korea, which showed horses being beaten on the head with plastic pipes before being chased into the abattoir.
World
Sudan has been suspended from the African Union amid growing fears that splits among the ruling military regime could lead to civil war and anarchy. The decision will significantly increase pressure on the new military rulers, raising the prospect of diplomatic isolation and sanctions if they do not hand over power to a civilian-led authority to allow an “exit from the current crisis”.
The US special envoy for Venezuela has said Moscow has “not abandoned” the regime of Nicolás Maduro, and the Russian presence has not significantly changed since the failed uprising in April led by Juan Guaidó. Donald Trump tweeted this week that Russia had pulled out of the country.
A simmering row over the rule of law and judicial independence in Italy has erupted after the far-right interior minister singled out three magistrates who have challenged his hardline anti-immigration policies.
A tourist has hailed a “lucky guess” after random numbers he tried opened a 900kg container sealed for decades in a Canadian heritage museum. The safe had confounded museum staff and locksmith experts for years, but “mechanically minded” Stephen Mills thought he’d give it a crack as a lark for his children. He was astonished to hear a click. “I jumped up and told everyone I’m buying a lottery ticket.”
Pope Francis has risked the wrath of traditionalists by approving a change to the wording of the Lord’s Prayer. Instead of saying “lead us not into temptation”, it will say “do not let us fall into temptation”.
Opinion and analysis
Nearly half of all released prisoners are back in jail, accused or found guilty, within two years of being released. Our prisons are a manifest failure, writes Kathleen Maltzahn. Would that be tolerated in any other public system? “If we accept that prisons can take people, control every aspect of their lives, and then send them back to the wider world a danger to themselves, their families and the community, we are saying that some people are simply bad and the role of prisons is to punish.”
After a train wreck of a day, George Pell’s fate now hinges on alibi evidence. The prosecution stumbled at the final hurdle of his appeal, David Marr writes, but the judges have a wider canvas to take into account: “Big issues were in play in the Victoria court of appeal. The biggest was the unknown at the heart of George Pell’s appeal: the weight these judges must give, after examining all the evidence for themselves, to the fact that a jury of 12 men and women sent Pell to jail”.
Sport
Australia’s Ash Barty has earned the praise of tennis legend Chris Evert, while Pat Cash is predicting an “all Australian final” between Barty and Konta. “Ash Barty has got more variety than any of the players,” she said. “She can disrupt anyone’s rhythm. She will need that against Anisimova because she will hit you off the court. She showed power and composure and touch today.” Barty now heads to the semi-finals after beating Sofia Kenin 6-3, 3-6, 6-0.
Australia has beaten the West Indies by 15 runs at the Cricket World Cup. Nathan Coulter-Nile’s 92 helped Australia recover from 79 for five before Mitchell Starc took five wickets to blast away West Indies. Australia can now breath a small sigh of relief with 288 all out (49.0 overs), to the Indies 273 - 9 (50.0 overs).
Thinking time
Tony Birch’s newest book, The White Girl, is an allegory of good, evil and the legacy of Australia’s colonial past – with strong black women at its core. Which makes it all the more incredible that it took the author only eight weeks to write its first draft. The book is yet more evidence of Birch’s profound gift for language and insight, and tells a story underpinned by the devastating impact of the stolen generations. “I’ve never met an Aboriginal person who doesn’t have a story of loss somewhere in their family,” he tells Paul Daley. “No Aboriginal person I know is completely intact because of that.”
Birch’s other novels – Blood (2011) and Ghost River (2015), both acclaimed – also read as though they were written with ease, so commanding is the authorial voice; so linear of plot, and authentic of character and emotional resonance. But The White Girl, Birch says, came still faster and easier. “I knew at the outset that I was going to write a novel that could reach Aboriginal women. Again, for all the family experience and all the material I’d read in the public records office and what I’d heard from other people, I was determined to write a really strong, central female character. And really to celebrate the courage and heroics of Aboriginal women.”
Media roundup
Enrolments are soaring at an unprecedented rate in Victorian schools, with classrooms set to be filled with 1 million students by 2020, the Age reports on its front page. The Australian reports that Labor plans to overhaul its economic policies and wind back high-taxing measures. And the ABC has an exclusive on the illegal sale of sharks at an Indonesian fish market, including sales of endangered hammerheads, despite government rhetoric that they are getting serious about shark protection.
Coming up
Scott Morrison and Marise Payne will attend the annual leaders meeting with Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong.
Al Gore will discuss the economics of climate change when he meets the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, in Brisbane.
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