Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 5 August.
Top stories
Two mass shootings in the US have left at least 29 people dead, with Donald Trump facing strong criticism. Twenty people were killed in the majority Latino border city of El Paso, Texas, including a woman shot while trying to save her baby. Federal authorities are investigating a potential hate crime and local prosecutors have charged a 21-year-old white man with murder. Less than 13 hours later another mass shooting took place in the Dayton, Ohio, leaving nine dead there and bringing the total injured from both shootings to at least 52. Police were examining a hate-riddled message on the website 8chan, posted about 20 minutes before Saturday’s Texas attack, in which the author expressed sympathy for a white nationalist massacre at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and which stated: “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” By late Sunday morning, Trump had not addressed the nation in person. Leading Democrats criticised him, linking the anti-immigrant rhetoric that characterised both his 2016 campaign and his tenure as president to the potential hate crime.
Providers running ParentsNext claimed more than $350,000 in extra payments last financial year to put welfare recipients through in-house training courses. The figures, revealed in a departmental response to the Senate, suggest all 22 ParentsNext providers with registered training arms went on to bill taxpayers for participants to undertake courses run by their own organisations. The $350m welfare-to-work program for disadvantaged parents faces fresh criticism.
A woman with cancer has become the first person to end her life under voluntary assisted dying laws in Victoria. Kerry Robertson, 61, died at a nursing home in Bendigo on 15 July. She was the first person to be granted the permit, having visited her specialist the day legislation came into effect. Her daughters Jacqui Hicks and Nicole Robertson described her death as a “beautiful, positive experience”. The sisters said it had reinforced their belief that anyone who was terminally ill and in intolerable pain deserved the choice of a voluntary assisted death. “It is the most compassionate, dignified and logical option for those suffering in the end stages of life,” Nicole Robertson said.
World
Russia plans to tow its first floating nuclear power station to the Arctic this month in a milestone for the country’s growing use of nuclear power in its northern expansion. But the station has raised safety concerns, with Greenpeace warning that it could become a “floating Chernobyl”.
A teenager has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a six-year-old boy was thrown from the 10th-floor viewing platform at London’s Tate Modern. The child was taken to hospital by the air ambulance after being found on a fifth-floor roof and is in a critical condition.
Iran claims it has seized a third foreign oil tanker in the Gulf in a further escalation of tensions between Tehran and Washington and its regional allies, who continue to stare each other down over crippling economic sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.
People across the Indian-administered side of Kashmir queued for hours outside petrol stations and cash machines on Sunday amid heightened security measures.
A medical procedure that aims to allow women to delay the menopause for up to 20 years has been launched by IVF specialists in Britain. Doctors claim the operation could benefit thousands who experience serious health problems, such as heart conditions and bone-weakening osteoporosis, that are brought on by the menopause.
Opinion and analysis
As a young man Habiburahman fled oppression in his native Myanmar and lives, stateless, in Australia. Now he has written a book about his struggle – and his suffering people. “There has been much written about the Rohingya people of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma,” writes Gay Alcorn. “The Muslim ethnic group has been persecuted for generations, most recently from 2017, when 800,000 picked up whatever they could carry to flee to Bangladesh. But little has been written from the point of view of a Rohingya growing up in Myanmar – the daily humiliations, the struggle for survival, the fear, the stories whispered through generations to ensure they are not lost.”
“We make Australia, we are all Australian,” says Nick Kalogeropoulos, who immigrated to Australia from Greece in 1976. He is talking to Neha Kale, who spoke to five people who immigrated to Australia during the last five decades. Kalogeropoulos recalls: “In Athens, I studied to be a computer programmer at night and worked as a framer during the day. When I came to Australia in 1976, I couldn’t speak English, so I worked in a factory. Forty years ago, there were no tables on the sidewalks in Australia. No one drank coffee, there were only milk bars. Back home, we said good morning. Here, we walk in the street, we don’t talk … When we first came here, it was racist, and we had a tough time.”
Sport
Australia have taken control of the first Ashes Test. At the end of the fourth day the outcome of the match is still unknown but it is certain England will not win it. Steve Smith achieved his second century of the match, a new accomplishment for the man, writes Barney Ronay, “who bats in a space of his own – no historical comparison required”.
Lewis Hamilton has won F1’s Hungarian GP. “The race was gripping, tense and almost impossible to call until the final laps,” writes Giles Richards.
Thinking time: ‘He had our hopes right up’
Nick Cleary is a man with big dreams. The would-be property developer from the southern highlands of NSW heads the Consolidated Land and Rail Australia consortium. Clara has sold bureaucrats and ministers on a vision so large it’s almost eye-watering: a high-speed rail network between Melbourne and Sydney that would open the way for not one but eight new cities, each between 200,0000 and 600,000 people, to be constructed along its route. They would rise from the paddocks over the next 50 years, taking the pressure off Sydney and Melbourne as workers moved to the regions, but still with access to highly paid jobs just an hour away by rail. Some of the new centres would be planned for the outskirts of existing regional towns, helping to revive their economies. “The policy on population has failed because we have failed to overcome the tyranny of distance,” Cleary says. “Between now and 2061 we are going to grow the population by 15 million. Our plan is to build cities at scale connected by high-speed rail.”
But Cleary – who leads the consortium to which the federal government gave $8m of $20m earmarked to progress high-speed rail – has no expertise in major infrastructure projects, has been a bankrupt and was once a National party candidate.
Media roundup
The Sydney Morning Herald leads with the revelation that Australia is negotiating with the US to buy oil from its fuel reserve “under an emergency strategy to lower the risk of Australia plunging into an economic and national security crisis” and that Melania Trump is pushing the US president to make an official visit to Australia this year. The Australian Financial Review reports that US officials want to deploy missiles to Darwin to deter China. And the ABC travelling retirees are being urged to brush up on their manners as small towns confront a nationwide increase in camping and caravan holidays.
Coming up
The former NSW Labor ministers Ian Macdonald and Eddie Obeid go on trial in Sydney, accused of conspiring for Macdonald to grant a coalmining exploration licence on Obeid family land.
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is in Sydney.
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