Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 4 October.
Top stories
Scott Morrison has declared that sovereign countries need to eschew an “unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy” and the world needs to avoid “negative globalism” in a major foreign policy lecture at the Lowy Institute. A week after Donald Trump used a speech to the UN to declare the future belonged to patriots, Morrison echoed the US president’s tone, telling the foreign policy thinktank “only a national government, especially one accountable through the ballot box and the rule of law, can define its national interests”.
Trump has called on China to investigate Joe Biden, his leading political rival, in defiance of impeachment proceedings in Congress where he stands accused of abusing his office to put similar pressure on Ukraine. At the same time, Trump noted that the US was in trade talks with China and “if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous, tremendous power”. Asked if he had asked Xi Jinping to start an investigation, he said: “I haven’t, but it’s certainly something we can start thinking about.”
The European parliament has told Boris Johnson that his proposals for the Irish border do not “even remotely” amount to an acceptable deal for the EU, in comments echoed by Ireland’s PM. Jean-Claude Juncker has called on the British government to publish its Brexit plan in full after Johnson faced accusations from Leo Varadkar of misleading parliament. MEPs said Johnson’s proposals could not form the basis for an agreement, describing them as a “last-minute” effort. The European parliament will have a veto on any withdrawal deal.
Contaminated water has been discovered spilling from a luxury Gold Coast estate into an internationally important wetland site, amid a broader investigation into an unfolding “environmental catastrophe” in the once-pristine waterway. On Thursday the Gold Coast council notified the Queensland environment department that a “private recycled water main” at the Serenity Cove site had broken. Guardian Australia understands the contamination is likely to be grey water, which authorities advise has the potential to turn septic or breed micro-organisms.
World
An employee at Paris’s police headquarters has stabbed and killed four colleagues before being shot dead. The victims were three male police officers from the anti-terrorist department and a female administrator in the public security department.
Hong Kong’s leader plans to use harsh colonial-era emergency powers for the first time, banning face masks in an attempt to curb the city’s protests. Opposition politicians warned it represented a slide towards authoritarianism.
Northern Ireland’s near-blanket abortion ban breaches the UK’s human rights commitments, the high court in Belfast has ruled. The decision, on Thursday, was made in a case brought by Sarah Ewart, 29, who was denied a termination despite a scan showing the foetus she was carrying would not survive.
Palaeontologists have found the fossilised partial skeleton of a new winged dinosaur species capable of crossing continents. The pterosaur may have lived about 90m years ago. It was named Ferrodraco lentoni – or “Butch’s Iron Dragon”.
Scotland has become the first country in the UK to ban the physical punishment of children, making it a criminal offence for parents to smack their offspring. .
Sport
Dyed green sausages, hordes of bouncing fans and a giant Viking horn on the back of a truck: Canberra has seen it all this week as it gears up to get behind the Raiders in the NRL grand final.
It isn’t Super Rugby but, with 24 players figuring in Japan, the Canterbury club is having a big say, writes Matt McILraith.
Opinion and Analysis
Alexander Downer allegedly being a secret leftist spy is one conspiracy that manages to spark mirth, even as the world is burning, writes Amy Remeikis. “On the political spectrum, Downer, who holds the titles for Australia’s longest serving foreign affairs minister and shortest serving leader of the country’s main conservative party, sits slightly to the right of Margaret Thatcher. But a night of drinking at the Kensington Wine rooms in London in May 2016, with a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s campaign, George Papadopoulos, had Downer marked as a ‘spy’ and ‘Clinton errand boy’ by Trump supporters, spurred on by Papadopoulos, who claimed Downer had been placed there to help bring him, and Trump, down.”
Imagine a city with no elite private schools or prohibitive house prices – Brigid Delaney has lived there. “Last week the Victorian coastal city of Warrnambool was crowned by the Ipsos annual Life in Australia study as the most liveable city in Australia. Access to nature, feeling safe, a sense of community and a lack of traffic congestion ‘helped the area score so highly’, according to reports. But I also think inequality – or the perception of it – is important when it comes to liveability. Take away elite private schools and ridiculously expensive median house prices, and suddenly you’re living in a much more equal place.”
Thinking time: the Made in the USA bomb dropped in Yemen
The last day of Raja Hamid Yahya al-Oud’s life began like any other. The 14-year-old got up early along with the rest of her family because there was always a lot of work to do on the farm in the spring planting season. White drones had intermittently circled above their cornfields for weeks but there was no sign of them that morning. Raja and her mother, Amira, liked to take breaks under the acacia trees about 200 metres from the house. At 4pm, this was to become the girl’s final resting place.
The plane was flying too high for them to hear it coming but Amira said the sound the CBU-52 B/B cluster bomb made as it rained 220 deadly submunitions on their heads will stay with her forever. Some exploded on impact while others, still armed, fell into the fields. Screaming, Amira saw Raja’s twisted body under a small tree. Her jaw and entire right side had been ripped apart and blood had already dyed the sand around her. A neighbour, Hamoud Mohammed al-Ghar, dodged the remaining submunitions to pick Raja up and then ran with her to the nearest road. “I knew the girl was already dead,” he said. “But I had to try.”
Raja died on 23 March 2018. But the story of the bomb that is believed to have killed her stretches back decades earlier. Using the serial number on the CBU-52 B/B’s outer shell, the Guardian traced the munition from its manufacture in Tennessee to Yemen, where it ended a child’s life.
Media roundup
The Sydney Morning Herald reveals that a “detailed external audit shows that the high-end restaurant business that runs Chin Chin in Melbourne and Sydney underpaid staff by $340,000 in a single year”. The Australian Financial Review reveals “Why Morrison is on the rise” as it names the PM Australia’s most powerful person. The Australian reports that Michaelia Cash has threatened to suspend the welfare payments of activists “who spend their time protesting instead of looking for jobs”.
Coming up
Morrison will be in Tasmania today, where he will open the Burnie show.
A coroner will hand down findings on the deaths of two women during equestrian events.
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