Morning mail: murder charge over Justine Damond shooting

Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 21 March.

Top stories

The Minneapolis police officer who shot and killed an Australian woman, Justine Damond, in July last year has been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Officer Mohamed Noor turned himself in on Tuesday after a warrant was issued for his arrest. Damond was shot on 15 July, minutes after she called 911 to report a possible sexual assault in the alley behind her home. Damond’s family said the charges were “one step toward justice” and they were pleased the Hennepin county attorney, Mike Freeman, had decided to bring charges. They said they hoped a strong case would be presented and Noor would be convicted.

Noor has not talked publicly about the case and declined to be interviewed by state investigators. An officer who was with Noor at the time of the shooting, Matthew Harrity, told investigators he had been startled by a loud noise right before Damond approached the driver’s side window of their police SUV. Harrity, who was driving, said Noor had then fired his weapon from the passenger seat. Damond died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Jail records showed Noor was being held on $500,000 bail. If convicted of third-degree murder, he could face a maximum of 25 years in prison, though the presumptive sentence is 12 years. A judge could issue a sentence ranging from about 10 to 15 years.

Documents released under freedom of information laws show state and federal ministers plan to renew 20-year-old logging agreements without conducting any new scientific or environmental reviews. The ministers have also discussed legal concerns that the extensions to regional forestry agreements might be invalid if they were based on the old scientific assessments. The concerns about the “legal and political risks” to the extensions that are about to be agreed are highlighted in a collection of 10 documents – including briefing notes and “contentious issues briefs” – prepared for the NSW primary industries minister, Niall Blair, and the state’s lands and forestry minister, Paul Toole, and obtained by Guardian Australia.

Hundreds of millions of Facebook users are likely to have had their private information harvested by companies that exploited the same terms as the firm that collected data and passed it on to Cambridge Analytica, according to a new whistleblower. Sandy Parakilas, the platform operations manager at Facebook , told the Guardian: “My concerns were that all of the data that left Facebook servers to developers could not be monitored by Facebook, so we had no idea what developers were doing with the data.” He adding that the lax approach to the privacy of users was “utterly shocking”. In related news British MPs have summoned Mark Zuckerberg to appear before a select committee investigating fake news, and accused his company of misleading them at a previous hearing. But where is the Facebook chief executive, and when will he publicly address the mounting accusations?

Sally McManus, leader of the ACTU, will today call for gig economy and labour hire workers to be offered the same minimum conditions as other employees, including access to unfair dismissal and collective bargaining. In a speech to the National Press Club, McManus will call on casual employment to be “properly defined” and for casual employees to be given the right to convert to permanent positions after six months. McManus’s call is backed by a big union advertising campaign.

Google says it welcomes an inquiry by the Australian competition regulator into the impact of digital platforms on Australian media companies. In a briefing from New York, Google’s vice-president for news, Richard Gingras, says he would much rather collaborate than “exchange criticisms in the press”. The search engine giant has come under sustained criticism about its dominance over advertising which media companies say is threatening journalism.

Sport

He might have the most glittering football CV of any of his peers, but Gary Ablett Jnr is desperate to enhance his reputation as he finishes his career back at Geelong. Despite his success at Gold Coast, Ablett Jnr may still be haunted by the legacy of his famous father.

Michael Cheika has always emphasised ball in hand but serious tactical changes may be needed to keep up with the Six Nations champions Ireland. Indeed, the Waratahs showed that tactical kicking still has a place in Australian rugby, with a 51-27 win over the Melbourne Rebels thanks to the devastating execution of Bernard Foley and Kurtley Beale.

Thinking time

The federal court of Australia ruled on Friday that the letters between the Queen and the former governor general of Australia John Kerr leading up to Gough Whitlam’s 1975 dismissal should remain secret. Here is what Paul Chadwick, the Guardian’s global readers’ editor, would say if he wrote to the Queen this week. “How should Australians feel when their legal system implicitly tells them that they must again look far abroad for an authoritative ruling on a matter of such consequence? These are testing times for the democracies. By this act of disclosure, you can nourish Australia’s.”

Tracey Emin says a lot of public art projects are “ego-based” and “take over everything”. Her new project in Sydney, four years in the making at a cost of $912,000, has some of the trappings of a large-scale installation but, she says, it is not like that. The Distance of Your Heart features lifesized birds made out of bronze under park benches, awnings and lamposts. “I’m being gentle, I’m not being domineering, I’m not being macho,” she tells the Guardian Australia before its opening today.

Carrie Hou, a single Asian female, offers her take on Michelle Law’s acclaimed play, Single Asian Female. It’s the first mainstage production in Australia to feature three Chinese-Australian leads. While the plot, featuring an overprotective mother from Hong Kong, might read “to white audiences … like a pretty stereotypical family drama”, Hou says it had a profound effect on her. It was “the first time we had seen our experiences so accurately encapsulated in theatre.”

Media roundup

The Canberra Times reports that a surge in demand for acute mental health services in the city means people in urgent need of help are being turned away from over-crowded wards and told they are not sick enough to be admitted. The Daily Telegraph splashes with plans to transform Sydney into a 24/7 city, following the lead of London, Berlin and Adelaide – where a significant proportion of consumer spending occurs after dark. A report into the transformation recommends that shops, museums, galleries and libraries all stay open much later at night. And the ABC reports that in the seven years since ice use began to surge in Australia, there has been a 33.5% rise in children placed in out-of-home care.

Coming up

The Senate will sit again in Canberra, and is expected to focus on reforms to university funding.

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