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Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 28 January.
Top stories
Prince Andrew is not cooperating in the Jeffrey Epstein inquiry, say US prosecutors. Federal prosecutors and the FBI have asked to interview Prince Andrew about the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein but he has not responded, said Geoffrey Berman, US attorney for the southern district of New York. Berman spoke outside the mansion in Manhattan formerly owned by Epstein, who died in custody in New York in August. His death was ruled a suicide.
The North Brisbane football club received $150,000 through the controversial federal sports grants program despite already having won $138,000 from the Queensland government and a $110,000 grant from the Brisbane city council for the same field surface upgrade. The Morrison government claims the federal money “complemented” the state grant, but the club was forced to go back to the council for permission to use the local government money to instead build women’s changerooms, after winning funding multiple times for the same project.
Religious groups are fighting a move to make gay conversion therapy a crime in Queensland. In late November, the Queensland government introduced legislation that would, among other amendments to health legislation, make the practice of conversion therapy to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity punishable by up to 18 months in jail. The examples provided in the legislation include aversion therapy, psychoanalysis or hypnotherapy with the aim of changing or suppressing a person’s sexuality, but it also extends to counselling and group activities.
Australia
The Australian government does not know how many of its citizens are caught in the coronavirus quarantine across China, as it and governments around the world scramble to try to evacuate their nationals. In Sydney, several private schools have banned students who have recently visited China from returning to school without medical certificates, as concerns grow about the spread of coronavirus.
The federal government is withholding millions of dollars from the New South Wales government for failing to complete water resource plans for the Murray-Darling Basin.
Ken Wyatt has called for legal changes to protect Aboriginal artists from carpetbaggers. Federal and state ministers, police and Aboriginal art industry representatives will meet in central Australia next month to discuss ways to stamp out the unethical treatment and exploitation of Aboriginal artists.
The Australian government is releasing highly sensitive medical records to police through a secret regime that experts say contains fundamentally flawed privacy protections.
The world
The mayor of Wuhan has acknowledged criticism over his handling of the coronavirus crisis. A virtual lockdown has been imposed on Wuhan since Thursday, when trains and flights were cancelled, public transport suspended and, later, most private cars banned from the roads. There is anger among residents that the public were not informed earlier about the potential risks posed by the outbreak, which is thought to have begun in December, or told about what precautions to take. Also on Monday, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organisation, held a special meeting with officials in Beijing to discuss how to contain the outbreak.
More than 200 survivors have gathered at the former Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz, many probably for the final time, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its liberation.
Trump’s standing against Democratic candidates has improved, according to a new poll. The result comes amid signs that more voters are in general less worried about the economy and their own economic wellbeing, and a week out from the Iowa caucuses.
The US National Security Agency is facing questions about the security of top government officials’ communications following last week’s allegations that the Saudi crown prince may have had a hand in the alleged hack of Jeff Bezos.
People remain in shock over the death of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna in a helicopter crash on Sunday. Seven others died in the crash, including a well-known California college baseball coach, John Altobelli, and his wife and daughter, Keri and Alyssa.
Recommended reads
On paper, Josh Thomas’s Please Like Me didn’t exactly scream “LOL”. A half-hour comedy about mental illness (anxiety, depression, bipolar), the first episode of which opened with the main character coming out as gay and the suicide attempt of his mum? Not quite your classic Australian TV comedy, writes Benjamin Law. Although it was thoroughly Australian, Please Like Me became part of a wave of spiritually aligned international TV comedies in which you got the palpable sense writers had scripted episodes with as much emotional rigour as any prestige drama.
We’re working, but not as much as we want to – and that keeps wages low, writes Greg Jericho. “We began 2019 with the unemployment rate at 5.0% and we left it with the rate at 5.1%. This in itself suggests not much happened, but if we look at the chart of the unemployment rates for men and women, we see that last year was one where these two genders had very different outcomes. Both men and women also had 5.0% unemployment in December 2018, but while women’s unemployment rate remains at that level (and with a rate of 4.96% close to being rounded down to 4.9%), the rate for men has risen to 5.3%.”
Listen
On the latest episode of Today in Focus: Life after Auschwitz. Ivor Perl and Susan Pollack were 12 and 13 when they were transported to Auschwitz. On the 75th anniversary of the concentration camp’s liberation, they tell their stories.
Sport
Nick Kyrgios departed the Australian Open with a fourth-round defeat at the hands of world No1 Rafael Nadal, who took the match 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (6), 7-6 (4) at the Rod Laver Arena, writes Russell Jackson. “Containing some of the most thrilling tennis of the tournament, the three-and-a-half-hour tussle reached fever pitch in an electric third set, which Nadal won in a tiebreak, then chiselled his way to victory. Resilient in defeat, Kyrgios lost no fans.”
John McEnroe has meanwhile has slammed Margaret Court as the “crazy aunt” of tennis. “There’s only one thing longer than the list of Margaret Court’s tennis achievements: it’s her list of offensive and homophobic statements,” he said on Eurosport.
In cricket, England have thrashed South Africa to claim 3-1 series win. England won by 191 runs as their hosts collapsed at the Wanderers.
Media roundup
The Australian reveals that Bridget McKenzie “signed off on about $1m in grants for shooting clubs before her department received the results of a $160,000 report into the economic and social benefits of shooting”. The Sydney Morning Herald leads with the news that coronavirus could cost the Australian economy $2.3bn because of Chinese tourists and students staying home. A fortnight before Christmas “the Morrison government sought advice from one of Australia’s foremost marketing experts on how to better sell its policies, including those on climate change”, the Australian Financial Review reports.
Coming up
Women’s world No 1 Ash Barty plays Petra Kvitova for a place in the semi-finals of the Australian Open.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, will visit Orange in NSW for the first meeting of the drought and flood advisory board.
And if you’ve read this far …
It is a debate that has torn Britain in two, ripped friends and family apart, and entrenched deep and uncrossable lines throughout the land. Should the Royal Mint have used an Oxford comma on its Brexit 50p piece? His Dark Materials novelist Philip Pullman thinks so.
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