Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 20 July.
Top stories
Donald Trump has invited Russian president Vladimir Putin to visit the White House later this year. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Twitter Trump had asked national security adviser John Bolton to invite Putin “to Washington in the fall and those discussions are already under way”.
The invitation was issued while the White House was under pressure to provide a full account of Trump’s private talk with Putin in Moscow, as Russian officials spoke of “important verbal agreements” made. Some Democrats went as far as to push for the US translator in the room during Monday’s summit in Helsinki – which Putin hailed on Thursday as a “success”– to give an account to Congress. Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, said the Russian president had made “specific and interesting proposals to Washington” on how the two countries could cooperate on Syria, alarming politicians on both sides of the house.
A deepening row over the deportation of New Zealand citizens from Australia has pushed relations between the neighbours to new lows, with politicians in Wellington branding their counterparts in Canberra “venal” and calling into question the longstanding friendship between the two nations. Australia has deported more than 1,000 New Zealand citizens in the past two years but the recent detention of a 17-year-old New Zealander in an adult detention facility in Melbourne prompted politicians to speak more bluntly than before. The New Zealand justice minister, Andrew Little, questioned Australia’s commitment to humanitarian rights and ideals and told the ABC it “doesn’t look like our best friend, our nearest neighbour”. The Australian home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, hit back, warning Little not to repeat the comments and accused New Zealand of failing to do enough to help Australia on defence and asylum matters.
Universities have been told to improve the way they deal with sexual assault on campuses, after a damning report found only 4% of students believed their university was doing enough to provide support for victims. On Friday, Universities Australia released a set of 12 guidelines that included recommendations to “engage” with independently run residential colleges, improve staff training and create single points of contact to report incidents of sexual assault. The guidelines are a response to a Human Rights Commission report – commissioned by Universities Australia – which found high levels of sexual assault and harassment on campus.
The legislation of marriage equality in Australia may require only “slight tweaking” to protect religious freedom, according to Father Frank Brennan, a member of the Ruddock review panel. In comments to be delivered on Friday, Brennan issued a blunt assessment that he doubts the Coalition will legislate a religious freedom act, as social affairs minister Dan Tehan has suggested, and warned that religious schools should not discriminate against LGBTI staff and students. The speech, seen by Guardian Australia, is the clearest indication yet that only minimal changes to expand religious freedom have been canvassed by the Ruddock religious review.
Remarkable footage has been released of an uncontacted indigenous man who has lived alone in an Amazon forest for at least 22 years. Semi-naked and swinging an axe vigorously as he fells a tree, the man believed to be in his 50s has never been filmed so clearly before and appears to be in excellent health. “He is very well, hunting, maintaining some plantations of papaya, corn,” said Altair Algayer, a regional coordinator for the Brazilian government’s indigenous agency. He is believed to be the only survivor of a group of six killed during an attack by farmers in 1995. The agency, which has been monitoring him and protecting his area since the 1990s, has a policy of avoiding contact with isolated groups.
Sport
Geraint Thomas’s second consecutive stage win at the Tour de France was greeted by booing and whistling at the climax of an ill-tempered stage, during which Chris Froome was shoved by one spectator and the former Tour winner Vincenzo Nibali was brought down by a race motorbike. Thomas now looks every inch a potential Tour winner, yet he still maintains Froome is Team Sky’s designated leader and that he has not targeted final victory.
The shock news of Sharni Layton’s retirement, following on from three high-profile teammates, has rocked the netball world, with the Diamonds losing 249 Tests’ worth of experience in just over a week. As Erin Delahunty writes, it will be hard to find anyone quite like “Sharns”.
Thinking time
In mid 2016, South Australia’s Port Augusta and Whyalla were on the brink, hit by the closure and near collapse of coal and steel plants. Now the region is on the cusp of a wave of construction that investors and community leaders say should place the region at the vanguard of green innovation – not just in Australia but globally. So how did it all turn around? Adam Morton visits to find out how the explosion of investment in renewable energy has raised hopes of a revival.
Melancholia, Lars von Trier’s least controversial film, has been praised for its powerful portrayal of how depression feels on the inside – and has now been adapted for the stage. Making its world premiere at the Malthouse in Melbourne, the interpretation by director Matthew Lutton and playwright Declan Greene of Von Trier’s meditation on existential despair replaces the feverish imagery of the film with a Chekhovian aesthetic of people coming and going from a country manor, and a sparse but effective set that gives the actors’ nuanced performances space – perhaps a little too much space – to breathe.
After the heroic effort to save 12 boys and their coach from a Thai cave system, anyone who had anything to do with the rescue had a story to tell. But for oncologist and Guardian columnist Ranjana Srivastava it was the conduct of doctor and cave diver Richard Harris that captivated attention. Two things he said after he quietly stepped out of the spotlight were instructive, she writes: “It wasn’t me, it was us”; and “I would like to get back to normal life”.
Media roundup
“Please put the NT back in Qantas” shouts the front page of the NT News, with territory politicians urging the airline’s executives to set up a $20m flight academy in Alice Springs. Eight other towns are also vying to host the academy, which would train up to 500 pilots a year. Water levels at Boondooma dam, west of Gympie, have fallen below 30%, with residents accusing the state government of sacrificing the town and hundreds of jobs for the sake of power profits, the Courier Mail reports. And the ABC reports on new findings that dingoes may have killed off the Tasmanian tiger, with fossils revealing the arrival of dingoes on mainland Australia coincided with the tiger’s decline and eventual demise.
Coming up
The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, will meet her new UK counterpart, Jeremy Hunt, in London on Friday, after he replaced Boris Johnson.
Barnaby Joyce and the WA agriculture minister, Alannah MacTiernan, will be among those attending a meeting of farmers to discuss the crisis in the live export trade in the WA town of Katanning.
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