Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 2 October.
Top stories
Hong Kong police have shot a protester with live ammunition for the first time in four months of demonstrations, marking a major escalation in the use of force on a day when China celebrated 70 years of Communist party rule with a triumphalist military parade. Protests called to mark a “national day of grief” drew tens of thousands of people on to the city’s streets in the most widespread show yet of public anger towards Beijing. Although warning shots have been fired during other protests and police have caused serious injury with rubber bullets and beanbag rounds, this was the first time someone has been hit with a live round. The commissioner of police, Stephen Lo Wai-chung, said the use of a live round was “lawful and reasonable” and the man had been arrested for assaulting a police officer after he was taken to hospital.
Most Australians believe Scott Morrison was wrong to snub the UN climate summit, but have otherwise backed the prime minister’s handling of the relationship with Donald Trump. The latest Guardian Essential poll, taken in the wake of Morrison’s trip to the US last week, shows that most Australians believe it is important for the prime minister to have a good relationship with the US president, “whoever they might be”. While 15% of people disagreed with the statement, 77% agreed, with men and Liberal voters most likely to back a strong relationship. The survey of 1,097 people was taken before Tuesday’s revelation that Australia had agreed to help investigate the genesis of the Mueller inquiry into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, which Trump has suggested was a “hoax” to bring him down.
Australia’s vast carbon sink is releasing millions of tonnes of CO2 back into the atmosphere. Australia’s mangroves, tidal marshes and seagrass meadows are absorbing about 20m tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, according to a major study that is the first to measure in detail the climate benefits of the coastal ecosystems. But the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, warns that degradation of these “vegetated coastal ecosystems” was already seeing 3m tonnes of CO2 per year being released back into the atmosphere. The NSW government is, meanwhile, considering legislation that could limit the ability for planning authorities to rule out coalmine projects based on the climate change impact of emissions from the coal once it is burned.
World
Boris Johnson’s has been criticised in Dublin and Berlin for signalling the possible return of a hard border, which could dash his hopes of entering into decisive Brexit negotiations next week. The UK prime minister is expected to table his long-awaited proposals for the Irish border after making his speech at Conservative party conference in Manchester on Wednesday.
Mark Zuckerberg has said Facebook will “go to the mat” if Elizabeth Warren is elected president and seeks to fulfil her promise to break up America’s tech giants, leaked transcripts show. Having to mount a legal challenge, Zuckerberg said, would “suck for us”. In response, the Massachusetts senator said: “What would really ‘suck’ is if we don’t fix a corrupt system.”
Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, has taken the unusual decision to sue the publisher of the Mail on Sunday after the newspaper published a handwritten letter she had sent to her estranged father. The decision came as Prince Harry launched an extraordinary and highly personal attack on the British tabloid press and its treatment of his wife, saying he could no longer be a “silent witness to her private suffering”.
One person has been killed and 10 others injured in an attack at a vocational college in eastern Finland, police have said. Local media quoted witnesses as saying a young man with a sword had burst into a classroom.
Opinion and analysis
A few hours of administrative triage on your superannuation can save you tens of thousands of dollars in the long term, says Xavier O’Halloran, acting director of the Superannuation Consumers’ Centre at Choice. By logging into your MyGov account you can find and consolidate any lost superannuation you may have spread over multiple accounts, accumulating extra fees. Then, using comparison tools and a bit of internet sleuthing, you can ensure your funds are collected into a superannuation account that suits your personal needs. If you manage your super properly, it might only take a few hours of work a year to save upwards of $50,000 in your lifetime.
There must be a better way than sending homeless patients back on the street after a hospital visit, writes Ranjana Srivastava: “Perhaps the raison d’etre of a public hospital is to treat medical illness and accept that entrenched poverty, homelessness, drug addiction and chronic mental health issues are simply beyond our remit. This would certainly ease our conscience, but it doesn’t seem right, especially when such patients are the most likely to return to our doors, each time a little sicker, a little more expensive and time-consuming. The truth is, medical illness cannot be separated from socioeconomic factors, which is why good healthcare needs better out-of-hospital supports.”
Sport
There are many ways to get knocked out of the Champions League and, if that fate does befall Real Madrid, they may just have chosen the daftest of all, writes Sid Lowe. Madrid’s 2-2 draw with Club Brugge was a success, given where they had come from.
Alberto Salazar’s ban leaves Mo Farah and UK Athletics with questions to answer, writes Sean Ingle. There is no evidence that Farah cheated – but sometimes people are judged by the company they keep.
Thinking time: Republicans, impeachment and an elusive strategy
Republicans are flailing as they seek a coherent strategy against impeachment, writes Tom McCarthy: “Republicans have ‘decided on a new strategy’ to address a whistleblower complaint against Donald Trump, joked Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican national committee and a frequent critic of the president. Steele tweeted a slapstick video of a woman trying to sweep sand into the ocean as the tide rolled in. He was lampooning something noted by veterans of the last impeachment fight, targeting Bill Clinton, and others. One week after the Democrats opened their official inquiry, the president and his party are still improvising a defense and have yet to hit on a coherent response.
“‘It’s as if the Trump campaign has read the Clinton playbook and at every turn opted for the opposite,’ said David Frum, a conservative columnist in the 1990s who was later a speechwriter for George W Bush, writing in the Atlantic. Where Clinton tried to appeal to voters in the middle and stay focused on policy, counting on impeachment to blow over, Frum wrote, Trump is ‘wholly obsessed with impeachment … raving nonstop against the whistleblower, the House, and all his political foes – seen and unseen’.”
Media roundup
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Australian women and children were forced to “cower in their tents in fear of their lives overnight as shooting broke out between Islamic State hardliners and Kurdish forces at the al-Hawl camp in Syria”. The Australian writes that Julia Gillard has given the Coalition a “British lashing” for its “regrettable’’ foreign aid budget at a forum backed by Britain’s Conservative party. St John of God Bendigo hospital is being sued for alleged medical negligence after a patient died of multiple organ failure following gallstone removal surgery, the ABC reveals.
Coming up
The water resources minister, David Littleproud, and the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, will embark on a drought tour of NSW and Queensland.
A Senate committee will hold hearings into the government’s proposal to drug test welfare recipients.
