Good morning, this is Will Woodward bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 25 August. Top stories A Russian tanker has travelled through the northern sea route in record speed and without an icebreaker escort for the first time, highlighting how climate change is opening up the high Arctic. The $300m Christophe de Margerie carried a cargo of liquefied natural gas from Hammerfest in Norway to Boryeong in South Korea in 19 days, about 30% quicker than the conventional southern shipping route through the Suez Canal. On its maiden voyage, the innovative tanker used its integral icebreaker to cross ice fields 1.2m thick, passing along the northern sea section of the route in the Russian Arctic in a record six-and-a-half days. Simon Boxall, an oceanographer, said shipping companies were making a "safe bet" in building ships in anticipation that the northern sea route will open up. "Even if we stopped greenhouse emissions tomorrow, the acceleration in the loss of Arctic ice is unlikely to be reversed," he said. "The irony is that one advantage of climate change is that we will probably use less fuel going to the Pacific." Meanwhile Sir David Attenborough is more encouraged about the future health of Earth than he has been for some time after what he called a "worldwide shift" in attitudes about concern for the natural world and the damage that humans are doing to the planet. The veteran wildlife broadcaster said there were "signs of hope" for the health of the planet and called the Paris climate change agreement a "big advance" despite Donald Trump's disengagement. Memorials to Queensland pioneers who were involved in the "blackbirding" of South Sea Islanders should be amended to more fully reflect history, say descendants of the islanders forcibly brought to Australia. Debate is raging in several countries about whether to remove statues of slave-owning pioneers, but those whose forebears were forced into indentured labour in Queensland want to use the statues of men such as Robert Towns and John Mackay to teach Australians about their own history, writes Ben Doherty. And as the debate about statues hots up in Australia, our columnist Paul Daley suggests six statues that need rethinking. "Statues dedicated to Captain James Cook – or to other early killers of Indigenous men, women and children, murderers such as Governor Lachlan Macquarie, the syphilitic John Batman, Thomas Mitchell or Alfred Canning – are not, of themselves, histories of the people they memorialise," Daley writes. "Indeed, sometimes, they are the opposite: they are anti-histories."
Conservation safeguards on a "handful" of national monuments across the US could be rolled back after the White House's long-awaited review of such public lands. Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, said unspecified boundary adjustments for some of the 27 national monuments were among his recommendations. None of the sites would be eliminated and revert to state or private ownership, he said, while public access for uses such as hunting, fishing or grazing would be maintained or expanded. Sydney's Lindt cafe siege might not have occurred if the Turnbull government's proposed citizenship laws had been in place, an official from the immigration department has claimed. David Wilden, the first assistant secretary of the department's immigration and citizenship policy division, told a parliamentary inquiry that Man Haron Monis, who took 18 people hostage in December 2014, might have been deported years earlier if immigration laws had been stricter. The Greens senator Nick McKim said that was a "highly contentious" claim. Goop, the lifestyle and publishing company founded by Gwyneth Paltrow, is facing new criticisms from an advertising watchdog for making false claims promoting almost 50 products, including a Carnalian crystal claimed to treat infertility and the now-infamous jade vaginal egg promoted as preventing uterine prolapse. The claims against Goop were lodged with two California district attorneys connected to the California Food, Drug and Medical Task Force by Truth in Advertising (Tina), a nonprofit group that says it conducted an investigation into Goop for using "unsubstantiated, and therefore deceptive, health and disease-treatment claims to market many of its products". Sport Courtney Bruce was a bashful child, but she now faces the daunting task of filling the shoes of one of the best – and most vocal – netball players in the world, Sharni Layton. "I have been working on having a bit more a voice and a really strong presence on the court," the 23-year-old tells Guardian Australia as she prepares to take her Australian Diamonds bow in the upcoming Quad Series. In the draw for the group stage of the Champions League, Spurs have been handed a hard task, including ties against reigning champions Real Madrid – including former Tottenham star Gareth Bale – with Borussia Dortmund and the Cypriot champions Apoel making up the rest of the group. It won't be easy for English champions Chelsea either, against Atlético Madrid, Roma and Qarabag. Among the mouth-watering ties elsewhere, Barcelona and Juventus are both in group D and Neymar's Paris St Germain go up against Bayern Munich in a group that also includes Australian Tom Rogic's Celtic. Thinking time Adam Morton delves deeper into the decline of coal in the second part of his series, looking at international trends away from fossil fuels, while Australia plans a mega-mine in Queensland's Galilee basin with Indian company Adani. If acting on climate change is a priority, how does this tally? Morton scopes Australia's share in a declining world market. "It is becoming clear that Chinese coal demand has peaked," , Laszlo Varro, the International Energy Agency's chief economist said last month. "The outlook for imports [to] India and other countries is uncertain." What does this mean for Australia, producer of about 30% of the world's coal, as it plans a vast expansion in production in outback Queensland? |
Amani Al-Khatahtbeh is the kind of woman who fights back against racism, and who gives other women a platform on which to fight back, too. As the founder and editor-in-chief of MuslimGirl, an online magazine by and for young Muslim women, she has made a life out of amplifying the voices of her community. "We grew up being denied this accurate representation of ourselves and the world around us," she tells the Guardian. "We were constantly bombarded with very dehumanising, very racist messaging, about who Muslims are, what Islam represents. And that had a tremendous impact on us and the formation of our identities."
Malcolm Turnbull is having a sliding doors moment, writes political editor Katharine Murphy. His summer could be all champagne and back-patting after three months of legal and party room wins, or it could be a season of ugly and electorally destructive Liberal party brawling. Several issues are at a tipping point: the dual citizenship legal wrangle, marriage equality and renewable energy. The problem is that the deciding factors are almost entirely outside the prime minister's control, resting with the high court, the voters and his colleagues. What's he done now? Either those curtains go, or … ? Donald Trump's makeover of the White House in a $3.4m overhaul has been unveiled, including gold drapes and gold-hued upholstery, both of which now adorn the president's office, and 6,000 metres of new carpet featuring a floral medallion inspired by the White House architecture and the Rose Garden. Still, Oliver Wainwright says, those hoping for an opulent vision to match the glitz of his Trump Tower eyrie, or the palatial pomp of his Mar-a-Lago resort, will be disappointed. For once, in matters of domestic design, it seems the billionaire builder has acted with relative restraint. "The plain old Obama brown carpet clearly wasn't lustrous or glorious enough, but the new busier version looks like it has been lifted straight from a mid-range chain hotel." Media roundup The "fist bump" by Australian spy chief Nick Warner with Rodrigo Duterte is criticised in the Age by Lindsay Murdoch, who describes the Philippines president as "south-east Asia's most dangerous dictator in decades". With more than 12,000 people killed in Duterte's "war on drugs", Murdoch asks: "Where is the outrage from Australia?" But the ABC's political editor Chris Uhlmann, who has known Warner for 25 years, takes a different line. "Mr Warner's visit to the presidential palace speaks volumes about the government's level of concern about the rise of Islamic State in the southern Philippines. To confront those threats Australia needs the cooperation of all the region's leaders, even those many find objectionable. That's part of Mr Warner's job. But in the age of permanent moral outrage the spy chief is now being condemned on the evidence of a single photograph." The Herald Sun has a nice picture of retiring AFL stars Luke Hodge and Bob Murphy on its front page, as the pair go head to head in tonight's Hawks v Bulldogs clash. Coming up The Melbourne Writers festival kicks off with an opening night gala featuring Kim Scott, Vicki Couzens and DJ Sovereign Trax. Australian and Indonesian foreign ministers Julie Bishop and HE Retno Marsudi, and mining billionaire and philanthropist Andrew Forrest, will discuss modern slavery, human trafficking and forced labour at the Bali Process forum in Perth.
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The Christophe de Margerie carried a cargo of liquefied natural gas from Norway to South Korea in 19 days. Photograph: PR Company Handout 
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