Yahoo News Morning Mail: Trump-Biden debate, audit office plea, Costa frees the leaves
Good morning, this is Tamara Howie bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 30 September.
Top stories
Trump and Biden are set to go head to head in the first presidential debate in Ohio. Just hours before the debate the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, released his 2019 tax returns, as did his vice-presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, pressuring Trump to do the same as controversy continues to swirl around revelations the president only paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. Analysts say Trump needs a big score at the debate to shift the national conversation away from the sputtering economy, the coronavirus pandemic and his staggering tax avoidance.
The Australian National Audit Office will be forced to cut the number of its audits without a budget rescue package. The auditor general, Grant Hehir, has written to Scott Morrison saying the agency, responsible for uncovering sports rorts and the massive overspend on land for the western Sydney airport needs a funding boost. The independent senator Rex Patrick said he was worried the government would “quietly starve” the audit office of funds after its reports “caused great discomfort” and said “the auditor general is one of the last bastions of frank and fearless analysis and advice within the public service – he calls things exactly as he sees them”.
Global coronavirus deaths have exceeded 1 million in just nine months since the virus emerged, with several countries reporting record daily rises in cases. The UK and the Netherlands both recorded their highest cases overnight, and theGerman chancellor, Angela Merkel, warns the country could face upwards of 20,000 new infections a day by Christmas if action is not taken. The director general of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, said the 1 million death milestone marked a “difficult moment for the world” and the key lesson from 2020 was that “no matter where a country is in an outbreak, it is never too late to turn things around”.
Australia
New research has found that using e-cigarettes triples the chance of a non-smoker taking up regular cigarettes. Researchers led by the Australian National University found vaping is a gateway to smoking, especially among young people, and there was limited evidence that e-cigarettes help people give up smoking.
Cardinal George Pell did not need to apply for a travel exemption to leave Australia because he is travelling to Rome for official Vatican government business.
Prof Brendan Murphy has conceded that some deaths in aged care homes could have been avoided during the second wave of Covid-19 infections in Victoria if the commonwealth had set up its aged care response centre in the state earlier.
The NSW independent planning commission is due to hand down a decision on the proposed $3.6bn gas development at Narrabri today. The proposal by Santos to develop a gas field at Narrabri has been in the works for more than a decade, but questions still remain around the impact on the Australian environment.
Anthony Albanese says the Morrison government should use next week’s budget to launch new investments in social housing, skills and local heavy manufacturing. The Labor leader will use a speech to the McKell Institute today to step up a political attack on the prime minister and to argue that clean energy can power Australia’s economic recovery.
The world
Uighurs and other Muslim minorities would be given the right to petition a UK high court judge to declare that genocide is taking place in China, requiring the UK government to curtail trade ties with Beijing, under proposals brought by MPs and peers.
A nursery school teacher in China has been sentenced to death for poisoning dozens of children in an act of revenge against a colleague. Wang Yun put sodium nitrite into porridge being prepared for her colleague’s students in March last year, making 25 children ill and ultimately killing one student.
The UK has imposed sanctions including an asset freeze and a travel ban on the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, his son and six other senior government officials judged to be responsible for rigging the August presidential poll and suppressing subsequent street protests.
Protests have erupted in India over the death of a young woman two weeks after she was dragged from a field and allegedly gang-raped and tortured, in a case which has angered many and highlighted the impact of sexual violence in Indian caste system.
Recommended reads
Gardening Australia host Costa Georgiadis has always offered a wealth of ideas but, during a pandemic that has left many of us housebound, his pragmatic optimism has taken on a particular poignancy – and attracted a surge in ratings, too. So what does the man who has taught Australians to think like a microbe, and guided us through an urban henhouse boom, do for himself every day? We asked him to share three items he relies on to get him through the day.
Art imitates life in the opening scene of Craig Silvey’s latest novel, Honeybee. A transgender teenager, feeling helpless and alone, leans out from a highway overpass, ready to jump and end their life. It recalls a situation when Silvey’s brother and sister-in-law helped talk a young transgender person down from a Perth overpass. This real world event inspired Silvey to learn more about what challenges this young person might be facing. As a straight, cis-gender man, Silvey welcomes scrutiny of his ethics, as the new novel wades into a discussion about “own voices”.
Listen
QAnon followers believe that the world is run by a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats and Hollywood celebrities who are engaged in wide-scale child trafficking, paedophilia and cannibalism. Despite there being no evidence to support these claims, the visibility of the movement has surged. The Guardian US tech reporter Julia Carrie Wong talks to Anushka Asthana about the rise of QAnon, an online conspiracy theory.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
Rugby Australia has moved to ring-fence key Wallabies in its latest interim pay deal with the players but it is hardly an equitable arrangement for the vast majority of Australia’s professional players, which may create friction in the ranks, writes Bret Harris.
Tony Gustavsson will lead the Matildas to a World Cup on home soil after Football Federation Australia confirmed his appointment as Ante Milicic’s successor on Tuesday evening. The Swede, 47, has signed a deal that runs through to 2024 with a remit to extract the best from Australia’s so-called golden generation during an upcoming period crammed full of major international tournaments.
Media roundup
Up to 5,000 members of the stolen generations could be in line for more than $100,000 each in compensation as part of a class-action lawsuit for being taken from their families by the Australian government, the NT News reports. A new study predicts a shortage of up to 26,000 workers to pick and pack fruit and vegetables in Australia over the next six months due to the pandemic, according to the Age. And the ABC explores “turtle rodeo”, a unique method used to track vulnerable turtles in Queensland.
Coming up
Malcolm Turnbull, Mike Cannon-Brookes and the UN special envoy on climate, Mark Carney, will speak at an online event on energy and climate change highlighting actions other countries are taking to tackle the economic climate crises.
The parliamentary budget office is expected to release a report looking at the medium-term implications of spending on jobseeker unemployment benefits.
And if you’ve read this far …
It sounds like something from a comic book, but soon paramedics may be coming to the rescue in the UK by jet-packs. If given the green light by ambulance service chiefs, the paramedic powered by lightweight jet-packs would flit across treacherous terrain within minutes to reach stranded casualties in the Lake District in the UK.
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