Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 15 September. Top stories Female employees of Google allege their tech giant employer has denied them promotions and forced them into less prestigious jobs, despite their qualifications. A class action on behalf of all the women employed by Google in California in the past four years accuses the company of denying promotions and career opportunities to qualified women, and systematically paying them less than men doing similar work. The suit provides the most detailed formal accounts to date of gender discrimination and pay disparities at the company after months of criticism and a growing chorus of women speaking out. "We've been talking about these issues for a long time, and it hasn't really changed," Kelly Ellis, a former Google employee and a lead plaintiff on the case, told the Guardian in her first interview about the suit. "There's been a lot of PR and lip service but ... this is going to be one of the only ways to get these companies to change how they hire and compensate women."
Labor and the Greens are not happy, and Nick Xenophon said his compromise deal on media ownership was the most arduous of his career. But the media bosses themselves were delighted with the bill that passed the Senate on Thursday night. "Fairfax will act in the best interests of shareholders to take advantage of any opportunities created by the changes," said Greg Hywood, a fair indication that some shake-ups in the media landscape could be on the way. Harold Mitchell said on behalf of Channel Seven, Ten and Nine: "We warmly welcome the acceptance that we can't continue to compete with the likes of Google and Facebook under media laws that pretend the internet doesn't exist." Seven West's chairman, Kerry Stokes, said: "[It] means a better future for local news and Australian stories." New images have revealed the extent of the scorched earth campaign in Myanmar against the Rohinga people. The government is accused of deploying a systematic strategy in Rakhine state against the Rohingya, who claim soldiers have torched their homes and fired on them after urging them to leave. Satellite imagery captured by Amnesty International shows flames engulfing huge swaths of the beleagured state, while the Guardian has been sent footage of hundreds of people hiking up muddy jungle paths and crossing rivers to escape the crackdown. At least 370,000 Rohingya have fled across the border to Bangladesh over the past three weeks and Unicef estimates that more than 1,100 children have arrived in Bangladesh unaccompanied. The retired judge leading the inquiry into London's Grenfell Tower fire has promised "to get at the truth" behind the inferno that killed at least 80 people in June but his opening statement has been criticised for being clinical and too legalistic in tone. Sir Martin Moore-Bick said the fire was "a tragedy unprecedented in modern times" and he hoped the inquiry would answer "the pressing questions of how a disaster of this kind could occur in 21st-century London". But Moore-Bick's statement failed to satisfy survivors and the relatives of those who died. Emma Dent Coad, the Labour MP for Kensington, described the session as a cold and clinical process. "It was very strange for us to come to a ballroom with glittering chandeliers to start this inquiry," she said. "I thought it was quite inappropriate and kind of set the tone between the 'us and them' aspect. I don't think that went down very well with a lot of people." Tony Abbott has used the second anniversary of his overthrow by Malcolm Turnbull to again weigh in on the fraught energy debate, calling for an end to all subsidies. The former prime minister told 2GB on Thursday he welcomed signs from Turnbull that the government was moving away from the clean energy target recommended by the chief scientist. "Frankly, nothing less than a 100% reliable energy target will do because we've got to keep the lights on all the time ... if we are to be a first-world country," Abbott said. Sport There were chaotic scenes in London overnight as Arsenal's Europa League tie against Cologne was delayed for more than an hour because of crowd congestion. Thousands of ticketless German fans surrounded the stadium, causing police to consider calling the game off. It was an awful night for England's other representative, Everton, beaten 3-0 by Atalanta in a performance described as "terrible", "woefully inept" and "lazy" by the Guardian's Simon Burnton. Data analytics is on the rise in Australian sport with the AFL leading the way. But ring fencing of its data has held back valuable work that could have advanced our understanding of the game, writes Jack Howes.
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