Good morning, this is Patrick Keneally filling in for Eleanor Ainge Roy and bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 1 November. Top stories Donald Trump has broken his silence over his former foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos, who tried to secure a meeting for him with Vladimir Putin during the election campaign and who has pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his work. Trump fired off a series of tweets on Tuesday morning in which he publicly addressed for the first time the conviction of Papadopoulos, which was revealed on Monday shortly after Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort was was charged with a catalogue of serious federal crimes. "Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar," Trump posted on Twitter shortly after 8am local time on Tuesday, adding: "Check the DEMS!" It emerged on Monday that Papadopoulos pleaded guilty last month to lying to federal agents working for the special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. Papadopoulos's plea was unsealed on the same day Manafort and a business associate, Rick Gates, were charged with money laundering, tax evasion, fraud and failing to register as agents of foreign interests. Papadopoulos is the first person to face criminal charges that cite interactions between Trump campaign associates and people claiming to be Russian intermediaries during the 2016 presidential campaign. The Australian-run Manus Island detention centre is closed. Staff left early yesterday morning, according to the asylum seekers and refugees who remain in the compound. Power and other utilities have been progressively switched off, which is the subject of a legal challenge launched by the detainees. Behrouz Boochani is still writing his diary of the closure – the latest entry was from last night and expands upon the detainees' concerns about the local police and military. "The whole precarious situation has been militarised in a terribly perverse manner." In Australia the government response was unyielding. The immigration minister accused detainees – "aided and abetted" by advocates and the Greens – of attempting to force the government to change its policy through subterfuge. The acting prime minister, Julie Bishop, said the government was in "constant communication" with Papua New Guinean authorities, and refugees and asylum seekers would be "guaranteed all appropriate services" at the new accommodation units. The citizenship crisis that has convulsed the Turnbull government may have claimed another victim, with the Liberal senator Stephen Parry saying he had asked British authorities to check whether he was a dual citizen. Parry is a senator for Tasmania and is also the president of the Senate. He announced on Tuesday afternoon that he had informed the government that he may be a dual citizen through descent, and said if that was confirmed by the UK's Home Office, he would step down and resign from parliament. Pacific Islanders whose homes face inundation by rising sea levels have called on Australia to not fund the Adani Carmichael coalmine, as a new report reveals the worsening impact of climate change across Oceania. Thousands of Pacific islands face peril owing to rising sea levels, king tides and natural disasters brought about by climate change. In Papua New Guinea, 2,000 households across 35 coastal communities were displaced by coastal erosion over the past year. In Samoa, 60% of the village of Solosolo was relocated to higher ground. Erietera Aram, a resident of Kiribati – a nation of low-lying coral atolls, said he had decided to visit Australia to ask its government to take action. "We talk about the Adani coalmine," he said. "It's not a good idea – it makes the world worse for all of us. It is inconsiderate of other humans on this planet." In the latest twist to Catalonia's independence drama, the region's deposed president, Carles Puigdemont, has promised to respect the outcome of elections planned for December and said he would return home if a fair judicial process were guaranteed in Spain. Puigdemont, who could face charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds over his administration's push for independence, travelled to Brussels hours before Spain's attorney general announced the possible charges on Monday. The ousted leader said he had come to the Belgian capital to seek safety and freedom, and accused Spanish police of failing to protect his rights and those of other separatist leaders. But, in a possible sign that Madrid has gained the upper hand in the dispute, Puigdemont also said he would abide by the results of the snap regional elections on 21 December called by the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy. Sport Code and country-hopping star Jarryd Hayne is back at home in the Bati black and white. Since first representing Fiji in 2008, Hayne says the country has come on "in leaps and bounds" in the sport. In a wide-ranging interview, Hayne reflects on growing rugby league internationally and his time with the San Francisco 49ers in the NFL, arguing that there are overlaps between the two codes. South Africa is set to host the 2023 Rugby World Cup after a recommendation from the sport's governing body which identified the Rainbow Nation as the "clear leader" ahead of France and Ireland. To some surprise, it won the unanimous approval of the World Rugby board after scoring highest in an exhaustive evaluation report and is expected to be ratified when the World Rugby council votes on 15 November. Thinking time |
"Travelling with parents is not for the faint-hearted," writes Johanna Leggatt in a piece detailing how a trip to Greece with her mother and her partner's mother and stepfather tested their relationship. "We would show them around and prove how capable we were in the world," she imagines. "They would marvel at our conversational Greek. Look on in awe as we decoded menus and dispersed touts. They would feel lucky to have such competent and unfazed tour guides." But, she says, the trip did not turn out that way. "Nothing prepares you for how rigidly parents will adhere to old habits even as the world is screaming at them that they're not in Kansas anymore and that they should just adapt. Adapt, they did not." But, given her mother's impressive ability to catch pickpockets red-handed, who ends up teaching who? Emma Freud logged on to Twitter and typed: "What is your biggest regret? Asking for a friend." The response was huge. It wasn't just big in volume but the tweets were devastatingly honest. "I had casually asked a question that, surprisingly, a lot of people really wanted to answer," she writes. "These were sad, sobering, enlightening responses – big stories told in 140 words to a stranger on a Saturday night. I don't know why so many people had such strong regrets living so close to the surface – but by the end of the evening, I felt I might have learned more about life through what people regretted not doing, than through 55 years of being given advice about what to do." Amy Remeikis writes that Queensland voters are fatigued and disillusioned, and the major parties are facing an uphill battle for votes. One Liberal National party operative says they "do not see a scenario where One Nation aren't the kingmakers" while a Labor campaigner blames Malcolm Turnbull and the federal government for normalising Pauline Hanson's party, comparing the Queensland campaign to "day-to-day trench warfare". And finally, why has Fox News declared war on Radiohead? Media roundup The Daily Telegraph makes light of an ugly pub brawl in Cairns during which the NRL player James Tedesco was king hit by a fellow World Cup Italy teammate, Shannon Wakeman. Never to be outdone on outdated pop culture references, the Tele's headline riffs on the 1953 song That's Amore: "When a fist hits your eye like a big football guy, that's a brawl eh." The Sydney Morning Herald splashes with the closure of the Manus Island detention centre with the headline "None will resettle here" – based on comments from the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, who has reiterated that refugees can settle in PNG, Nauru or potentially the US under the refugee swap deal, but will never be allowed into Australia. And the ABC says things could get messy if a recount of Tasmanian Senate votes is required because of Stephen Parry's potential dual citizenship status. Coming up The Queensland election continues – Labor's Annastacia Palaszczuk will start the day in Cairns in the state's far north, while the LNP's Tim Nicholls will continue to campaign in the south-east, having complained on Tuesday about the difficulty of arranging flights after the premier called the snap poll. The Movember campaign launches today to promote and raise money new research for men's health issues including prostate cancer, testicular cancer, mental health and suicide. Supporting the Guardian We'd like to acknowledge our generous supporters who enable us to keep reporting on the critical stories. If you value what we do and would like to help, please make a contribution or become a supporter today. Thank you.
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Donald Trump at a tax policy meeting in the White House Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA 
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