Morning mail: Australia retain Ashes, Lambie's Setka message, Trump's Taliban surprise

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/09/morning-mail-australia-retain-ashes-lambies-setka-message-trumps-taliban-surprise

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Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 9 September.

Top stories

Australia has retained the Ashes, beating England in the fourth Test. England were worn down by the persistence and skill of one of Australia’s best attacks, with the star of them Pat Cummins. “Obviously Smith and Cummins have been the key architects of this victory and the retention of the Ashes,” writes Vic Marks at Old Trafford. “But kudos must also go to Paine. As captain he carries the can when it all goes wrong. Paine’s side has been aggressive throughout without ever crossing that much-discussed line. Australia have been the better team.”

The Senate powerbroker Jacqui Lambie has returned to Canberra after the long winter break with one message: either union boss John Setka resigns, or the government’s controversial “ensuring integrity” bill will pass, with her vote. Lambie’s vote will also be crucial in the government’s bid to extend its cashless welfare card program, and its revived proposal to drug test welfare recipients. The crossbench senator Rex Patrick will push to fix a historic wrong stemming from the “shameful” treatment of Timor-Leste during oil and gas negotiations by overturning decisions that limit Australia’s exposure to international courts.

Newstart recipients are six times more likely to suffer poor health, researchers have found. The Monash University study finds these people report “stark” differences in their health outcomes compared with those in paid work. Australia’s 700,000 Newstart recipients are more likely to be admitted to hospital than wage earners, more often report “mental and behavioural problems” and generally face an “increased burden of ill health”. The lead researcher, Prof Alex Collie, told Guardian Australia that an increase in the rate of the unemployment benefit could turn these health outcomes around and help get people back into work.

Australian internet service providers have been ordered to block eight websites hosting video of the Christchurch terrorist attacks. In March Australian telecommunications companies and internet providers began blocking websites hosting the video of the Christchurch shooter murdering more than 50 people. A total of 43 websites based on a list provided by Vodafone New Zealand were blocked. The order issued on Sunday covers just eight websites, after several stopped hosting the material.

World

The government of the Bahamas has sent 900 police and military personnel to the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama hardest hit by Hurricane Dorian, while taking action to stave off profiteering by private-sector rescue missions amid signs of chaos in some of the aid operations.

The French government has threatened to veto a further Brexit extension due to the “worrying” lack of progress in talks, as EU diplomats expressed their frustration at being caught up in game playing by the British government.

Hong Kong police have fired teargas to disperse protesters in the upmarket Causeway Bay shopping district, after demonstrators rallied at the US consulate, calling on Donald Trump to “liberate” the territory.

Trump’s shock announcement that he had cancelled secret peace talks with the Taliban has prompted criticism and confusion, including from within his own Republican party.

Brazil’s biggest newspaper has printed an illustration from a Marvel comic of two men kissing on its front page, to attack an attempt at censorship by the evangelical mayor of Rio de Janeiro.

Opinion and analysis

Trump’s cancelled Taliban talks are typical of a president who blows hot and cold, writes Simon Tisdall, with the president’s snakes-and ladders approach to diplomacy raising eyebrows in Kabul and Washington. “Trump’s tweets announcing the cancellation smacked more of disappointment than annoyance. As he envisaged it, this was going to be his ‘peace in our time’ moment. Trump would be able to wave a piece of paper in the air, hog the credit – and milk it in next year’s election. Or at least that seems to have been his idea.”

Without MPs like Amber Rudd, the Tories won’t survive, writes Matthew d’Ancona. Boris Johnson’s risky tactics may be working, according to the polls, but he will come to regret his purge of the moderates. “In driving out Rudd and all the others, the prime minister has managed to make Corbyn’s Labour look like a broad church: quite a feat. The rich irony is that Johnson himself used to be – or at least behaved as if he were – exactly the sort of Conservative which he is now expelling.”

Sport

Despite a loss at the US Open tennis great Serena Williams is not giving up her fight to equal Margaret Court’s record, and though she has lost her past four grand slam finals she still has the fire inside to win that elusive 24th major, with the new adulation of the crowd spurring her on.

Taking on the world’s best pace attack and the genius of Steve Smith was always going to be tough for England, writes Barney Roney at Old Trafford, after three years geared towards white-ball cricket and a home World Cup. “There will now be a temptation to dwell on England failing to regain the Ashes; but in reality this has been an active feat. Australia have retained them, and done so by asserting some obvious strengths.”

Thinking time: The world’s most famous gynaecologist

Dr Jennifer Gunter is the world’s most famous – and outspoken – gynaecologist. And she’s on a mission to empower women with medical facts, taking on wellness gurus, old wives’ tales, the patriarchy and jade eggs along the way. When one of Goop’s “medical experts” wrote that Gunter was “strangely confident” in her thoughts on jade eggs, she replied: “I am not strangely confident about vaginal health; I am appropriately confident because I am the expert.” Many of her statements end with mic drops. It is a rare moment when a gynaecologist becomes an international celebrity, and it comes on a wave of misinformation, fear and continued attacks on the bodily autonomy of women. One Goop fan called Gunter the “vaginal Antichrist”.

Gunter argues that the wellness industry and the anti-abortion industry are, if not exactly dancing together, certainly at the same disco. The former manipulates that confusion to take women’s money, the latter to take their power. “I even started to notice overlap between the language,” she says. “Themes like ‘purity’ and ‘cleanliness’ with their similar rituals. It’s predatory. It’s the patriarchy by another name. And it keeps women back by telling them lies about their body.”

Media roundup

Thousands of dying native fish will be moved from the drought-hit Menindee today, the Sydney Morning Herald reports, part of a $10m rescue mission dubbed “a modern day’s Noah’s Ark” for native species. The ABC has examined the death of an 18-year-old in Broken Hill for tonight’s Four Corners, “a harrowing account of failure in Australia’s regional hospitals”. Cuts to nursing shifts at Royal Hobart hospital will mean a significant drop in income for workers, the Mercury reports, as Labor and unions fight the cuts which they say will jeopardise patient care.

Coming up

Bushfires in Queensland and NSW continue to challenge firefighters in what Queensland’s fire chief is calling the worst start to the fire season on record.