Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 7 July. Top stories An Australian mining company is embroiled in a standoff with landowners in the Solomon Islands over allegations it coerced, bullied and tricked communities into signing over prospecting rights to their land. The government of Temotu province, which covers the island of Nendo, has been overthrown and local landowners have taken to blocking the roads with stones, even reportedly confronting miners with bows and arrows, to stop prospecting for a proposed bauxite mine. The miner Pacific Bauxite has denied any allegations of impropriety and said it had worked in close consultation with landowners, who overwhelmingly supported its work. But others say the company's application to prospect has divided the Nendo community. Donald Trump said the survival of the west was at risk, as he lashed out at hostile forces ranging from Islamic terrorism to Russia, statism and secularism, during a speech in Poland. According to Polish press reports, Trump was enticed to Warsaw by promises of a rapturous reception. The Polish government paid for supporters to be bussed in from provincial areas, and the president was greeted by a boisterous, highly partisan crowd in Krasinski Square. "As the Polish experience reminds us, the defence of the west ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail," Trump said at the site of the 1944 uprising against the Nazis. "The fundamental question of our time is whether the west has the will to survive." Meanwhile German police have used water cannon and pepper spray to disperse thousands of anti-capitalist protesters in Hamburg, just as world leaders including Trump, Xi Jinping and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan started to arrive for the G20 summit. Unions say there are not enough safeguards to prevent businesses exploiting government-funded interns by avoiding paying penalties for weekend work, or routinely taking on new interns without hiring them. And the Department of Employment has admitted there is nothing to stop businesses using PaTH interns to work the more expensive weekend shifts instead of paid staff. Greens senator Lee Rhiannon has asked the party room to review her suspension and has written to all Greens NSW members via email and Facebook, to call for a resolution of the "current tensions". The Australian Greens national council is meeting on Friday night, with a Greens NSW state delegates council this weekend. "I am disappointed by the suspension and feel that it is unjustified," Rhiannon said. Tests on Mars have revealed the red planet is covered in toxic chemicals that could wipe out living organisms. The discovery has wide-ranging implications for the hunt for alien life and suggests that missions will have to dig deep underground to find past or present life if it lurks there. The most hospitable environment may lie two or three metres beneath the surface where the soil and any organisms are shielded from intense radiation. "At those depths, it's possible Martian life may survive," said Jennifer Wadsworth, a postgraduate astrobiologist at Edinburgh University. Sport Bernard Tomic has been dropped by his sponsor Head and fined £11,600 ($20,000) for his poor behaviour earlier in the week at Wimbledon. Tomic said he was "bored" during his first-round match with Mischa Zverev, and admitted unessasarily calling his trainer to the court to try to disrupt his opponent's momentum. In overnight action, Roger Federer strolled through to the next round, beating Dusan Lajovic 7-6, 6-3, 6-3 in a breezy 90-minute game. In the women's draw, world No. 1 Angelique Kerber is also through, beating Kirsten Flipkens 7-5, 7-5. Marcel Kittel has won his second stage in five days at the Tour de France, edging out Arnaud Démare and André Greipel in an incident-free sprint finish, and appears to have returned to his dominant form of 2014. But the German said he saw no sign that anything had calmed down since the disqualification of Peter Sagan on Tuesday. "[There is] no difference. There are two sprinters less but it's still the same fight, everyone wants to be in front, everyone is trying to defend his position," he said. "The nature of sprints is a mess."
The Super Rugby crisis is no clearer to resolution, and Bret Harris argues that the battling Melbourne Rebels and Western Force franchises should have mirrored their AFL counterparts, building slowly for sustainable success instead of chasing a quick fix.
Thinking time |
No comments:
Post a Comment