Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 19 March.
Top stories
Authorities in Europe are working to establish whether the man suspected of carrying out the Christchurch terrorist attack had any links to far-right groups on the continent. Since Friday, officials in Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece have begun formal investigations into the alleged gunman’s extensive travel through Europe in the years before he moved to New Zealand. Brenton Harrison Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian, appears to have travelled extensively throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia, including to Turkey, France, Pakistan, Bulgaria, Hungary and North Korea. The “manifesto” published online in the minutes before Tarrant’s alleged attack on two mosques in Christchurch on Friday, which left 50 people dead, claimed that it was while travelling through western Europe in 2017 that his views on immigration “dramatically changed”.
Labor’s plan to reduce Australian’s carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 will not be as damaging to the economy as the Coalition has claimed, according to new modelling. Work by BAeconomics says the 45% reduction could be achieved with an increased carbon price of only $24 a tonne, assuming carryover credits and international trading. The findings were leaked to energy minister Angus Taylor last week and he used them to claim that workers would be $9,000 a year worse off by 2030 under Labor’s plans. But the study does not model Labor’s policy directly because it assumes emissions must reduce by the same amount year-on-year, whereas the opposition wants to start reducing slowly and then ramp up the cuts. However, the research will put pressure on Labor to come clean on whether it wants to use the credits – a controversial system which is seen by the Greens as distorting efforts to reduce emissions targets.
More than 100 economists and labour policy experts have called for “proactive measures” to accelerate wage growth. Low wage growth is shaping up to be a key issue at the forthcoming federal election. The letter has been signed by 124 labour force experts and economists, including Prof Andrew Stewart of Adelaide Law School. “This is not a problem that is going to fix itself,” he said, calling for a policy response from governments at all levels. The group advocates measures to raise (and better enforce) minimum wages, strengthen collective bargaining, relax wage caps on public sector workers, tackle pay inequities and constrain the ability of businesses to avoid or outsource normal employment responsibilities.
World
More than 1,000 people are feared dead in a devastating cyclone that hit Mozambique on Friday, the country’s president has said. Filipe Nyusi told Mozambican radio he had seen “many bodies” floating in the overflowing Pungwe and Busi rivers. “It appears that we can register more than 1,000 deaths,” he said, adding that more than 100,000 people were at risk because of severe flooding. At least 215 people have been confirmed dead and hundreds are missing across Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe from Tropical Cyclone Idai, according to government agencies and the Red Cross, which said 1.5 million people had been affected. “I think this is the biggest natural disaster Mozambique has ever faced. Everything is destroyed,” Celso Correia, the environment minister, said.
A shooting on a tram in Utrecht has left at least three people dead and five injured. Armed police are searching the Dutch city for the gunman. The shooting was apparently due to a family dispute.
House of Commons Speaker, John Bercow, has said the British government cannot bring the meaningful vote back to parliament again unless there has been substantial change to the Brexit deal. In a shock move likely to infuriate the Theresa May, the Speaker said the House of Commons was “being repeatedly asked to pronounce” on the same question. Meanwhile, the EU could offer May a lifeline, with the formal offer of a new Brexit date.
US Democratic hopeful Beto O’Rourke raised an unprecedented $6.1m during the first 24 hours of his official run for the White House, his campaign announced on Monday. The stunning sum is more than rival Bernie Sanders and every other 2020 Democratic challenger who has disclosed their first-day fundraising totals.
China has claimed to have arrested 13,000 “terrorists” in Xinjiang over the last five years, as it launched an aggressive propaganda campaign in defence of its restrictive measures in the far-western region.
Myspace has lost every single piece of content uploaded to its site before 2016, including millions of songs, photos and videos with no other home on the internet.
Opinion and analysis
“Billions, the labyrinthine drama about a shady hedge-fund investor and the shady district attorney on his tail, is by far and away the smartest dumb show on TV,” writes Alex Hess. On the one hand it’s by-the-book prestige television. On the other, it offers everything the golden-era box sets didn’t. Billions has no time for the slow-burn and never skimps on surface-level fun. Factor in its exuberant refusal to take itself too seriously, and it’s a show that above all else will keep you entertained. Or to put it another way: the exact opposite of Mad Men.
Australia now has more than one million people working multiple jobs. While the growth of main jobs has slowed, the number of secondary jobs has accelerated, writes Greg Jericho. “The last two years – and especially 2018 – has seen the consequences of the low wages growth flow through. Very few people work more than one job for the fun of it – you seek out more jobs because your main job does not pay enough for you to make ends meet.”
Sport
If you cut through the noise – and there has been plenty of it this off-season – there is much to look forward to in the 2019 AFL season, which gets under way later this week, writes Craig Little.
After Lionel Messi scored a wonderful third goal to complete his 51st career hat-trick, Real Betis supporters did what only true fans can, when in the presence of genuine football genius. They stood, applauded Messi and joined with Barcelona fans in chanting his name.
A racing pigeon has been sold for a world record €1.25m (AU$2m) as a result of prices being driven sky-high by a craze for bird racing among an elite group of Chinese enthusiasts.
Thinking time: It’s called Ffasiwn. Look it up.
Meet the children who gave their Welsh town a fashion makeover. After their costume workshop at the Gellideg youth centre in Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, some of the girls who had taken part braved the wind and the rain to parade the streets in their finery. It was soon after Halloween, November 2016. They were dressed in black, in extravagant hats, faces pale as the moon. Ice-cold curls, frozen by gel and the weather, snaked stiffly across their foreheads. A few boys skulked around on their bikes to watch the unlikely procession. When the girls walked past, the boys broke into derisive laughter. The girls stopped in their tracks. “It’s called fashion!” one shouted. “Look it up!”.
Right then, the photographer Clémentine Schneidermann “realised there was something magical happening”. From then on, every couple of weeks, Schneidermann, and Charlotte James, a creative director, would offer new workshops to the children who attended the youth centres. The workshops were so popular that summer schools followed. In the youth centres, the children – almost all girls – spent hours sewing ruffles and sticking diamante on to secondhand finds. One youth club was given a yellow theme, another purple. They painted flowers on to plain tops, forged pompoms from fur. They braved the sewing machine, swapped and reswapped their pieces, tucked and untucked tops to refine their looks. The photographs Schneidermann and James took of that seminal outing launched a collaboration lasting nearly three years. Now a selection of their photographs are to be exhibited in a collection entitled It’s Called Ffasiwn (Welsh for fashion).
Media roundup
Christchurch mourns... as Morrison clears immigration cut is the headline on the Sydney Morning Herald’s front page, with the news that the Morrison government’s 2 April budget will show a fall from about 190,000 to about 160,000 in the annual intake of permanent migrants. The Daily Telegraph is leading with a video of Michael Daley saying: “Our young children will flee and who are they being replaced with? They are being replaced by young people from typically Asia with PhDs.” Scott Morrison is calling for the G20 to place grater focus on social media governance, writes the Australian.
Coming up
The ABS will release house price figures for the last quarter of 2018.
The aged care royal commission’s public hearings will resume in Adelaide.
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