Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 5 April.
Top stories
Bill Shorten has used the final day of the 45th parliament to unveil a $2.3bn package to reduce out-of-pocket costs for cancer patients, while promising more generous tax relief for workers earning under $48,000 and a $440m injection for technical education. With the major parties now campaigning full-tilt in an undeclared election contest, the Labor leader used his budget reply speech to promise to eliminate out-of-pocket costs for cancer diagnostic imaging by opening up MRIs across the country for cancer scans, and allocating $600m to improve access to and affordability of diagnostic imaging. A further $433m will fund a new bulk-billed Medicare item for consultations with oncologists and surgeons for Australians diagnosed with cancer.
Facebook has announced it will restrict “political” ads from being bought by non-Australians during the election campaign, but will not roll out key political ad transparency features used in other countries until after the election. They include the requirement for advertisers to go through an approval process before they can run ads containing political content, and for the ads to show who paid for them. Facebook will extend its fact-checking program to stories appearing in Australia, using Agence France-Presse to “review and rate public, newsworthy Facebook posts”. Meanwhile in the UK, an inquiry has been launched following revelations about the involvement of Sir Lynton Crosby in running a secretive network of campaigns on Facebook to push for a hard no-deal Brexit. Readers can help make political advertising more transparent during the Australian election campaign by documenting online material.
The pilots of the Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max correctly followed Boeing’s emergency instructions but were still unable to stop the plane’s nose repeatedly pointing down, investigators have said. The initial findings will intensify pressure on Boeing to explain and resolve the issues with its Max jets, the company’s newest planes, which have been grounded worldwide following two fatal crashes in five months.
World
The US Congress has given final approval on a resolution to end American military assistance for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, in an unprecedented attempt to curtail the president’s power to go to war and a sweeping rebuke to Donald Trump’s foreign policy.
Amazon claims Woody Allen “sabotaged” his films with #MeToo comments. The tech giant has responded to a US$68m (AU$96m) breach of contract legal action launched by Allen by saying that the director’s controversial comments were responsible for the failure of his films.
A humanitarian aid ship carrying 64 rescued migrants was refused safe harbour by Malta and Italy on Thursday, leaving the passengers in cramped conditions on deck as a storm approached.
Armed men have stolen jewellery worth up to €400,000 from the foyer of a Paris hotel. One man threatened staff with a gun while another used an axe to smash four glass cases where designer jewels and clothing were on display, police said.
An ancient four-legged whale with hooves has been discovered, providing new insights into how the ancestors of the Earth’s largest mammals made the transition from land to sea.
Opinion and analysis
When we think of the effects of climate change it’s easy to focus on rising sea levels – but what about the changes happening much higher up? The latest episode of our podcast, Look At Me, tells the story through a rare and tiny marsupial. At Mount Hotham in Victoria, the mountain pygmy possum spends months under the snow: it’s Australia’s only hibernating marsupial and was once thought extinct. Now, zoos and ski resorts are doing everything they can to keep it alive – but it faces a changing climate, which may create insurmountable challenges, including the sudden disappearance of its main food source, the bogong moth.
It can be easy to dismiss anti-vaxxers and people who believe in pseudo-science as stupid. But what if they are just looking for comfort? Elfy Scott explores whether the problem is with people who believe the Earth is flat or whether it is with the aloof way science is being communicated. “As a science journalist, the insistent misconceptions of the scientific method and self-important fear-mongering of pseudoscience proponents can be absolutely infuriating,” she writes.
Sport
Eddie Jones has ruled himself out of replacing Michael Cheika as Australia’s head coach after this year’s World Cup. The England coach last week suggested he may be open to a possible return to the Wallabies, having said “I don’t think I would ever say never”, but Jones has revealed he sees his short-term future in Europe.
The A-League is ambling towards the end of a forgettable season. But luckily cartoonist David Squires is on hand to point out the magic moments you may have missed.
Thinking time: Bad romance
Last year the Strand Bookstore in New York convened an all-star panel titled Let’s Woman-Splain Romance! The line to get in the door stretched down the block, and the room was thrumming with glee even before the panel started. This was not an audience that needed to be told that smart women read romance novels, or that the genre could be feminist. The authors speaking that night were all big names, including Beverly Jenkins, an author of African American historical romance – who blew a kiss to the audience as she was introduced to whoops of delight – and two breakout stars of the previous year, Alisha Rai and Alyssa Cole.
The subtext of the event was clear: it was not just a celebration of romance novels, but a celebration of diversity within an industry that has long been marked by pervasive racism. Jenkins and Cole, who are black, and Rai, who is south Asian, had been fighting against these barriers for years. Their success – as authors of critically acclaimed love stories sold in Walmarts and drug stores across the US – had not made them any less vocal. The panel moderator turned the “diversity” question to Rai first. Her latest series was, he began, “very multicultural and [with] a broad spectrum of sexual identity in it. There’s a lot going on in the sweeping saga that has hot romance at the centre of it.” He paused.
“I’m sorry, is that a question?” Rai asked, very calmly. In her day job, she was a lawyer. The moderator started referring to a previous time when romances had been less diverse, but Rai cut him off. “We’re still not at mission accomplished,” she said. And the issue was not really diversity. “It’s about reality.”
Media roundup
Bill Shorten’s budget reply dominates this morning’s front pages, with the Australian depicting the Labor leader as Robin Hood firing an arrow at an elderly couple and three people in suits carrying briefcases, below the headline: Shorten’s tax and spend ‘cure’. The Courier Mail and the Daily Telegraph share the headline “Clean Bill of health”; the West Australian’s head is Cure for All Bills, and the Australian Financial Review leads with Shorten outbids on tax, health. The ABC reports that there are fears for a heavily pregnant young Australian woman taken to Syria by her terrorist father and married when she was 13, “as her health is failing amid the squalid conditions of a refugee camp in the country’s north”.
Coming up
Australian man Brenton Harrison Tarrant is scheduled to reappear in court over the Christchurch massacre at two mosques on 15 March.
The Queensland coroner will hand down its finding into the disappearance and murder of schoolboy Daniel Morcombe.
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