Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 10 December.
Top stories
New court filings show Donald Trump was “at the centre of a massive fraud” against the American people, the incoming chair of the House judiciary committee said on Sunday. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat set to take over the panel in January, said Trump would have committed impeachable offences if it is proven that he ordered his lawyer to make illegal payments to women to keep quiet about alleged sexual encounters. “What these indictments and filings show is that the president was at the centre of a massive fraud – several massive frauds against the American people,” Nadler said on CNN’s State of the Union. Another top Democrat, the California representative Adam Schiff, said Trump “could face the very real prospect of jail time”.
Federal prosecutors said in court filings on Friday that Trump had directed his then lawyer, Michael Cohen, to commit two felonies: making payments made to women who said they had sex with Trump in return for their silence, in an effort to influence the 2016 election. “They would be impeachable offences,” Nadler said, though he added: “Whether they are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question.”
Australia’s financial regulators should be prepared for a hard landing in the housing market, according to the world’s leading economic agency. In its latest assessment of Australia, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says the housing market poses a risk to the nation’s economic growth. House prices have fallen gradually since late 2017 and the market is on track for a soft landing, the OECD said, but it stressed some risk of a hard landing remains and regulators should be ready. Otherwise, the agency has found life in Australia is ultimately rosy as its long span of economic growth – 27 consecutive years – continues. “Life is good, with high levels of wellbeing, including health and education,” the group said. Aside from the housing market, the agency said risks to the growth outlook include uncertainty about export demand – owing to rebalancing in China – and the potential escalation of global trade tensions.
Theresa May is facing the reckoning of her premiership on Tuesday, when she is expected to put her negotiated Brexit deal in front of her mutinous MPs. Read the Guardian’s guide to the multiple options that could play out, including the government losing the vote by more than 100 MPs, winning the vote, or May withdrawing the vote entirely. Meanwhile, riot police have been deployed as thousands of people march through central London. As well as the Brexit Betrayal march and the counter-demonstration, there is a People’s Vote and Best for Britain rally in east London today. Follow live updates here.
Tasmanian forest considered important for the survival of the critically endangered swift parrot may be bulldozed to build a dam for a fish farm and golf course development. Glamorgan Spring Bay council, on Tasmania’s east coast, wants to clear about 40 hectares of what scientists say is critical swift parrot breeding and foraging habitat to develop a 3,000m-litre-a-year dam near the town of Orford. The environment minister, Melissa Price, will now decide whether the proposal goes ahead. The dam would provide fresh water to a salmon farm in Okehampton Bay, a planned golf course and housing development and for local towns in the event of drought or climate change-related shortages. Advice to the council from Birdlife Tasmania says all remaining parrot habitat is critical for the species’ survival.
A group of 50 progressive Europeans led by the economist and author Thomas Piketty has drawn up a bold new blueprint for a fairer Europe, aimed to address the division, disenchantment, inequality and populism sweeping the continent. The plan includes huge levies on multinationals, millionaires and carbon emissions to generate funds to tackle the most urgent issues of the day, including poverty, migration, climate change and the EU’s so-called democratic deficit. Published as the British parliament is set for a climactic Brexit vote, the “manifesto for the democratisation of Europe” says EU institutions are stuck in “a technocratic impasse” that benefits the rich.
Sport
How do you objectively judge every female footballer in the world? As one of the judges of Guardian’s Top 100 female footballers list, Sarah Groube had the unenviable task of sifting, evaluating and ranking the world’s very best.
Continuity has been a hallmark of Sydney FC’s post-Arnold transition but Saturday’s shock loss to Wellington shows key defensive relationships still need work, writes Evan Morgan Grahame.
Thinking time
When Michelle Ready first moved to the cane farm she owns with her husband in Queensland, it sounded like a jungle at night. “It was lush and green and wet,” she says. A week after a “frightening” fire ripped across their property in Finch Hatton, it’s obvious that things have changed. This year, early summer heat broke all-time records for Queensland. As the weather gets hotter and drier, and cyclones increase, those such as Ready living in Australia’s north will need to adapt to the fire danger. Guardian Australia’s environment correspondent Lisa Cox explores the state’s transition.
There’s an app for just about every aspect of wellbeing, from training to water consumption to menstruation. Do they help build good habits, or is there a darker side? Research has found that usage of wellbeing apps grew by 330% between 2014 and 2017, and that more than 75% of active users accessed their app at least twice a week. But for every success story, there seem to be as many failures. Alex Hern – whose day is ruled by apps for sleep, exercise and mindfulness – investigates.
The moment that forever changed Paul Daley’s perspective on Anzac mythology was the Surafend massacre, which demonstrates that the core business of good history must always be the preservation of memory. “While the Surafend massacre had been relegated to the furthest edge of the Anzac record, including in Henry Gullett’s official history of Australian troops in the Middle East, it naturally caused me to rethink the book, Beersheba, and, not least, to re-examine the primary sources and literature I’d already read,” Daley writes. “Good history can never be preoccupied with forgetting.”
Media roundup
Australia’s competition watchdog has called for a crackdown on the tech giants Google and Facebook, the Australian reports, warning that their influence needs to be reined in as they could be engaging in “discriminatory conduct”. Confusing South Australian heritage laws are failing to protect precious historic buildings, the Adelaide Advertiser reports, with thousands of historic buildings threatened with demolition. Police are racing to crack down on illicit drug use at music festivals after a third fatal overdose in three months, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Coming up
Australia’s first two F-35A Joint Strike Fighter aircraft will arrive at the RAAF’s Williamstown airbase near Newcastle.
The British billionaire industrialist Sanjeev Gupta will visit the Whyalla steelworks for an update on upgrades and plans to increase production. He is also expected to make an announcement on a development in the town.
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