Good morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 4 June.
Top stories
Additional charges have announced against the four former police officers involved in the killing of George Floyd. Minnesota’s attorney general has upgraded the charge against Derek Chauvin to second-degree murder and charged the three other officers who took part in Floyd’s arrest. In North Carolina, a leading police chief has called for “sweeping reforms” to policing in the US, including a ban on chokeholds. George Floyd’s six-year-old daughter, Gianna, and her mother have spoken publicly for the first time. Elsewhere, the secretary of defence, Mark Espers, has categorically opposed President Donald Trump’s threats to invoke the Insurrection Act, that would allow military troops to be deployed inside US cities in response to protests.
Flawed data underpinned the decisions of the World Health Organization and several national governments to alter their Covid-19 policies, a Guardian investigation has revealed. A little-known US healthcare analytics company – whose handful of staff included a science fiction writer and an adult-content model – provided research for several of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, including the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine. The Guardian’s investigation found that the company, Surgisphere, had hired staff with “little or no scientific background” and its chief executive has been named in three malpractice suits. Elsewhere, the chief architect of Sweden’s Covid-19 strategy has conceded that there was “quite obviously a potential for improvement”, agreeing that too many people had died through the Scandinavian country’s light-touch approach. Sweden’s death rate per capita has been the highest in the world over the seven days to 2 June.
The oil and gas giant Chevron could be facing penalties worth $100m after the Western Australian government ruled that the company had failed so far in its carbon dioxide emission targets at its Gorgon gas field project in the Pilbara. State approval for the development was conditional to an 80% emissions burial target, but the company has not sequestered any emissions during its first three years in operation. Chevron could be liable for more than 10m tonnes of unapproved emissions – equivalent to the annual emissions from Australia’s domestic airline industry. The company has said it is reviewing the state government’s decision.
Australia
Australia could be set for a heightened rate of Covid-19 transmissions this winter, as lower humidity, indoor heating and huddling together make for more propitious circumstances for the disease. But epidemiologists suggest an Australian winter is unlikely to drive the same level of increases seen across Europe or the US.
The Morrison government will fund grants worth $25,000 for eligible singles and couples planning to build or renovate homes between June and the end of December, with the uncapped program estimated to cost taxpayers $688m. The new tranche of economic stimulus designed to create a pipeline of work for the construction sector will be unveiled today.
An investigation into a NSW police officer who slammed a teenager into the pavement during Mardi Gras in 2013 took three years, Guardian Australia has learned. Leon Mixios employed a leg sweep to forcibly bring the then 18-year-old to the ground, in an act an internal review eventually found constituted “unreasonable use of force”. Mixios was dismissed from his job.
Not a single person has been charged under NSW’s race hate laws two years after their introduction. The law changes came after lobbying from an alliance of 31 community groups but the shadow attorney general says a failure to prosecute anyone suggests the government was “simply disinterested in combating racism”.
Repeated forestry conservation breaches in Victoria could spark a fundamental review of industry-wide exemptions, with a landmark court judgment opening the possibility that state forestry operations could fall under federal jurisdiction for the first time in two decades.
The world
Police have identified a German national as the new prime suspect in the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, who disappeared 13 years ago in Portugal. The 43-year-old is in prison for unrelated charges but significant information that emerged in 2017 strongly links him to the case.
Vladimir Putin has ordered a state of emergency after 20,000 tonnes of diesel fuel spilled into a river inside the Arctic Circle. The Russian president berated the head of a power plant responsible for the fuel leak on live television.
The head of a Brazilian foundation tasked with promoting black culture has been caught on tape calling activists from the country’s black movement “scum”. The appointment of Sérgio Camargo, a close ally of President Jair Bolsonaro, to the role sparked outrage in 2019.
Scientists have revealed the largest and oldest structure built by the Mayans – a massive rectangular elevated platform from about 1000 BC exceeding the volume of Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza. Build of clay and earth, the structure was so wide it was mistaken for “natural landscape”.
Recommended reads
It’s an oral story that turned into an epic novel – but Alexis Wright’s 2007 Miles Franklin-winning novel Carpentaria is a story that gets into the marrow of your bones, writes Tara June Winch. “Dream and reality blend, and time bends, and everything occurred even if it never happened. The history … and the people who litter the distances, are complicated, and messy and loving, and spiteful – but you stand in the brine up to your ankles, always with them, the whole journey.”
The robodebt debacle has been acknowledged as an unlawful scheme – but the government repaying the money doesn’t address the mental costs, write Letecia Lucy and Jamie Luxton. “As someone who can experience suicidal thoughts even on what I would call a good day, being informed that I was supposedly thousands of dollars in debt instantly put me in the sort of hopeless headspace which brings on suicidal ideation.” And while the fault has been admitted, an apology or any semblance of accountability have not been forthcoming.
“As a self-employed/unemployed comedian, I spend a lot of time just kind of letting YouTube take me where she wants to go”, writes Rhys Nicholson. So what gets the Australian comedian’s juices flowing? Dark sketches, surreal specials and furious women, apparently. “If you’re honest with yourself, the only reason you go to a school play is the same reason you go to a wedding: in the hope that something is going to go horribly, horribly wrong”.
Listen
After the death of George Floyd, will anything change in the US? Protests have engulfed the country after footage showing a white police officer kneeling on the neck of a black man emerged. On this episode of Full Story, Paul Butler discusses the history of police killings of black Americans.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
The NBA is set to become the first major North American sports league to return, with games scheduled for 31 July. Twenty-two teams will travel to Disney World in Orlando to play eight regular-season games, with finals determined by no later than 12 October.
The Denver Bronco’s coach has faced backlash from players after telling reporters: “I don’t see racism at all in the NFL”. Vic Fangio, a veteran of 34 seasons, has been dubbed “a joke” by the Seattle Seahawks running back Chris Carson.
Media roundup
The Australian reports that 88% of Australians support investment in renewable energy as part of a Covid-19 recovery plan, according to research from a new thinktank backed by Julie Bishop and Christopher Pyne. The Sydney Morning Herald foreshadows the $688m HomeBuilder program announcement, saying the government hopes it will revitalise a flagging construction sector with a “tradie-led recovery”. And 1.4m Australian households are now in mortgage stress, according to the ABC, with concerns growing that the end of the jobkeeper wage subsidy in September could prompt a sharp rise in mortgage defaults.
Coming up
The NSW government will take its policy to freeze public sector pay rises to the industrial relations commission after it was disallowed in parliament on Tuesday.
Scott Morrison and India’s Narendra Modi are holding a virtual summit.
The royal commission into the summer’s bushfires will hear from the national recovery coordinator, Andrew Colvin, as it examines the commonwealth’s role in supporting communities recovering from the fires.
And if you’ve read this far …
A well-known Spanish porn star has been arrested over a fatal toad venom ceremony. Nope, I really can’t top that headline.
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