Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 25 January.
Top stories
Key allies of Venezuela’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro, led by Russia and China, have warned the US not to intervene in support of the opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s attempt to lead the country. The defence minister, Vladimir Padrino, accused the Venezuelan opposition led by Juan Guaidó, the United States and regional allies such as Brazil of launching an attempted coup against Maduro that risked bringing “chaos and anarchy” to the country. Donald Trump has warned that “all options are on the table” for a US response if the Maduro government seeks to hold on to power by force. Guardian commentator Simon Tisdall warns that Trump’s threats could spark a disastrous conflict.
Parts of Australia face another day of searing heat, after South Australia broke a succession of temperature records on Thursday. Attention will move to Victoria on Friday, where temperatures of up to 44C are expected in Melbourne, and 46C in Mildura, Swan Hill and Echuca, again testing long-standing records. In Tasmania, Hobart was expecting 37C as emergency services warned that firefighters tackling numerous bushfires around the capital faced unprecedented conditions.
Fifa has urged Thailand’s government to immediately release Hakeem al-Araibi, the Bahraini footballer who is an Australian permanent resident and who has been held in a Bangkok prison for nearly two months amid fears he will be tortured and possibly killed if he is sent back to his home country. In a letter to Prayut Chan-o-cha, the prime minister of Thailand, Fifa warned that Araibi was “at serious risk of mistreatment in his home country” and urged his return to Australia. Speaking to the Guardian earlier this week Hakeem said he was “terrified” and losing hope.
World
The European court of human rights has ordered Italy to pay damages to Amanda Knox for police failures to provide her access to a lawyer and a translator during questioning over the 2007 killing of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher.
The ruling opens the way for Knox’s lawyers to challenge her last remaining conviction, for malicious accusation, in the Italian courts.
Alex Salmond, Scotland’s former first minister, has been charged with multiple counts of sexual assault and two of attempted rape. The 64-year-old has denied all 14 charges.
The Food and Drug Administration is sacrificing American lives by continuing to approve new high-strength opioid painkillers, and manipulating the process in favour of big pharma, according to the chair of the agency’s own opioid advisory committee. Dr Raeford Brown told the Guardian there is “a war” within the FDA as officials in charge of opioid policy have “failed to learn the lessons” of the epidemic that claims 150 American lives every day.
The climate crisis is intensifying a new military buildup in the Arctic, as regional powers attempt to secure northern borders that were until recently reinforced by ice. That so-called unpaid sentry is now melting away, opening up shipping lanes and geo-security challenges, delegates said at this week’s Arctic Frontiers conference.
A plague of white rats has descended on an Italian village, prompting authorities to set up a special taskforce to eradicate the invasion. Locals have nicknamed the newcomers “crazy white rats” because of their strange behaviour. They have reportedly been jumping in front of cars and killing one another.
Opinion and analysis
The campaign to change the date of Australia Day has been mounting, but the demand for a new date when a “united” Australia could be celebrated is as misguided as Scott Morrison’s insistence that 26 January does just that, writes Paul Daley. The date cannot be changed until Australia deals with the unfinished business of Aboriginal sovereignty. Until then there will be no appropriate date to celebrate a supposedly unified nation. “I’m confident that 26 January will be junked as Australia Day, but I’m less assured, and sadly so, that I’ll witness that reckoning.”
Earlier this week an opinion piece in the Guardian asked where “George Clooney and co” were in confronting a new and brutal crisis unfolding in Sudan. Now, Clooney and John Prendergast have responded. “This is indeed a critical moment in Sudan’s fraught history. The people of Sudan are rightly leading demands for change, and we believe our role is to support the cause of human rights for Sudanese people by using strategic and tactical advocacy in Europe, the US, and Africa focused on key points of leverage … As the demonstrations have unfolded this past month, our entire team has continuously engaged officials in governments around the world to take measures to hold the Bashir regime accountable.”
Sport
Rafael Nadal has stormed into the Australian Open final with a win over Stefanos Tsitsipas, who said afterwards the world No 2 “makes you play bad”. Nadal brutally ended the 20-year-old’s run with a 6-2, 6-4, 6-0 victory and will play Novak Djokovic or Lucas Pouille in the final.
Australia are already halfway to eclipsing Sri Lanka’s first-innings score, after the hosts’ bowlers produced their best start to a Test in almost two years at the Gabba. Debutant Jhye Richardson tore through Sri Lanka’s top order and Pat Cummins took four wickets to roll the visitors for 144 before Marcus Harris (40 not out) helped Australia to stumps at 72-2.
Thinking time: Walking on the land of the Palawa
The Wukalina Walk in north-east Tasmania is the best way to learn about a bloody moment in Australia’s history, the former Greens leader Bob Brown writes. The stunning natural beauty of Wukalina beach disguises the tragedy of the coastline, which for thousands of years was the pristine and peaceful home for a community of the Palawa people. Then, in 1803, the British in Sydney sent soldiers and convicts to expand their colony. Within three decades all but 150 of the 15,000 Palawa had been shot or died from European disease, to which they had no resistance.
“On day two our young Palawa guides Jacob and Carleeta take us north to an ancient Palawa campsite set safely above a white beach washed by foaming waves. It has freshwater ponds on spongy black soil with a scatter of shells and stones – the midden or waste pile of thousands of feasts when the Wukalina world was at peace. The Palawa could not have envisaged their destruction.”
Media roundup
Australia’s electricity market has been plunged into crisis by the rolling heatwave, the Australian reports, with the system operator forced to tap its emergency supplies to avoid rolling blackouts after several coal-fired generators failed. The Sydney Morning Herald and the Age splash on Liberal MP Andrew Hastie accusing Beijing of trying to intimidate the Chinese diaspora by detaining the Australian citizen Yang Hengjun, with interesting background on Yang’s life in New York. And the Hobart Mercury warns of the “dire” bushfire threat as Tasmania suffers under unprecedented hot conditions.
Coming up
The 2019 Australian of the Year will be announced in Canberra tonight.
Australia face the United Arab Emirates in their Asian Cup quarter-final in the early hours of Saturday morning, AEDT.
Supporting the Guardian
We’d like to acknowledge our generous supporters who enable us to keep reporting on the critical stories. If you value what we do and would like to help, please make a contribution or become a supporter today. Thank you.
Sign up
If you would like to receive the Guardian Australia morning mail to your email inbox every weekday, sign up here.
