Yahoo Finance Morning mail: US back in Paris, national cabinet meets, heat-proof your garden
Good morning, this is Imogen Dewey bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 22 January, ahead of a national cabinet meeting on Australia’s Covid-19 pandemic response, and with dramatic changes emerging in the new US administration.
Newly minted president Joe Biden has marked the start of his term with a flurry of executive orders, some undoing significant actions from the Trump administration, including on the Paris climate agreement. Biden will sign more today aimed at tackling the pandemic, which has already claimed more than 400,000 American lives. Nancy Pelosi declined to specify when she will transmit the article of impeachment to the Senate, instead simply saying she will do so “soon”. The Democratic speaker said the Senate had signalled it was ready to receive the article, which charges Donald Trump with incitement of insurrection in connection with the Capitol riot. Trump, meanwhile, appears to be setting up for post-presidency life at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
National cabinet will consider increasing the cap on international arrivals to Australia, after a reduction earlier in January to help combat more infectious strains of Covid-19. Ahead of today’s meeting, which will also consider vaccine implementation planning, seasonal worker arrangements and a bid from Queensland for new regional quarantine facilities, the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) revealed that it is dealing with a record number of complaints, driven in part by Covid restrictions and Australians stranded overseas. Meanwhile, Emirates has announced it will resume passenger flights to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane from Monday and Spanish tennis star Paula Badosa has tested positive to Covid-19 while quarantining after being exposed to the virus on an Australian Open charter flight.
The number of Indigenous Australian prisoners has continued to grow despite an overall reduction in the number of adult prisoners nationally. The increasing gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous imprisonment rates has been laid bare in the Productivity Commission’s latest report on government services, released as Guardian Australia publishes an investigative series into Indigenous children in custody. Isaiah spent his teens in and out of youth detention, in a traumatic (and since-closed) behaviour program dubbed “supermax for kids”. Now he’s using his experience to help vulnerable young people in western Sydney. He runs a footy team, for boys who won’t engage with most social services but will turn up for Oztag. “You get them playing footy together, you’re gonna hear nothing but laughing,” he says. “To be a part of something … it makes them feel included, you know?”
Australia
New South Wales and South Australia have intervened in a high court case in defence of Australia’s foreign interference laws, which are being challenged by a political staffer accused of acting on behalf of China.
Kevin Rudd has added details of his overseas interviews to the country’s foreign influence register after a running battle with the attorney general’s department, but the former Australian PM insists he is “not a foreign agent”.
Australia’s housing market is set for an “up crash”, says investment bank UBS, as the government’s homebuilder subsidy scheme prompts a spike in construction that will rapidly fall away.
The world
Two suicide bombers have killed at least 32 people and wounded more than 100 at a Baghdad market – the first such strike in the Iraqi capital in three years, provoking fears of a resurgence of violence seen in the years after the 2003 US invasion and the Islamic State era.
Facebook’s plans to implement end-to-end encryption on all its messaging products will lead to continued exploitation of some of the British children it would otherwise help to safeguard, the company has admitted to a House of Commons committee.
It will take at least 15 more days to get through a large amount of debris to reach miners who have been trapped since an explosion 11 days ago in a goldmine in eastern China, authorities have said.
Angelo Caloia, 81, has become the highest-ranking Vatican official convicted of financial crime. The former head of the Vatican bank has been convicted on charges of embezzlement and money laundering and sentenced to nearly nine years in prison.
Recommended reads
People will tell you they travel for culture, but a foreign country’s daily stuff is often more illuminating, writes Brigid Delaney. Right now, it’s the overseas everyday she misses most. “‘Show me a supermarket and I’ll show you the country,’ said some Jesuit somewhere …. You walk into the chilled, brightly lit store and are immediately dazzled by brands you do not recognise, for products that you’ve never heard of, at prices you do not understand … When you partake in a ritual of a city, there is briefly bestowed on you a sort of citizenship or keys to that place. You’re doing what all the other people of that place are doing and a kind of communion occurs.”
Whether you’ve got a balcony garden, or an edible backyard crop, there are ways to stop plants withering in heat – both on the day and well in advance. It’s not just about canny planting. Not all pots and mulches are created equal, for one thing – and as one botanist tells Ally Jackson, we need to “bust that myth around watering in the middle of the day”.
“Like growing up itself, Boy Meets World is hilarious and emotional; messy and joyful and sad,” writes Nathan Jolly. “At the height of its power, it was out-rating the hopelessly verbose Dawson’s Creek: a teen phenomenon that courted controversy but failed to reflect the lives of its audience in any real way. And for a show now owned by Disney, the subject matter is surprisingly adult … As the show progresses through the years, so do the characters.”
Listen
You’ve just read a bit of Isaiah’s story, part of our childhood in custody series. In this episode of Full Story, the young Dunghutti man explains how he’s trying to change the way our justice system treats Indigenous kids.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
Fifa executive Sarai Bareman is bringing women’s football in from the margins. Her modest, boots-on-the-ground introduction to football in the Pacific – a region historically ignored by the world game – means Bareman understands well the wider cultural and structural forces that exist while trying to grow a neglected sport.
“We’re cooked,” Wallabies great David Pocock has warned, if the professional sporting world does not act on its moral obligation to combat the rapidly accelerating climate crisis.
Media roundup
Masks distributed to hospitals and aged care homes at the height of the pandemic have been deemed “defective”, the Age reports. The AFR has spotted a “strong hint” the government is considering dumping the legislated rise in the superannuation guarantee to 12%. And a new tunnel under Sydney Harbour has been given the green light, says the Sydney Morning Herald.
Coming up
An inquiry into the news media bargaining code will take place in Canberra.
A parliamentary committee will take evidence from four senior Department of Social Services officials on the abuse survivor redress scheme.
And if you’ve read this far …
Then sorry, those Bernie Sanders mittens aren’t for sale. They were made for the Vermont senator by a second-grade teacher who, despite thousands of requests, has said she is “not going to quit her day job” to make more. “They’re one-of-a-kind and they’re unique,” she said in an interview this week. “Sometimes in this world, you just can’t get everything you want.”
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