Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 29 July.

Top stories

Many recipients of Newstart and Youth Allowance are skipping meals, medication and showers to save money, a survey has revealed. As political support grows for an increase to Newstart, the Australian Council of Social Service asked about 500 people on the payment how they get by on $277.85 a week. It found 84% of those who responded said they had skipped meals to save money. And of those who were skipping meals, 30% said they missed between three and four each week. The Acoss chief executive, Cassandra Goldie, said: “Our survey shows people can’t afford rent, food, energy, clothing, transport, haircuts, dental care or internet access, which severely hampers their chances of getting a job.”

Labor will continue to target the energy minister, Angus Taylor, as the government’s weak link, renewing its call for a Senate inquiry into his meetings with the environment department over endangered grasslands. On Sunday the mooted inquiry took a step forward with Rex Patrick reversing Centre Alliance’s position and pledging to support the move, although Labor and the Greens still need Cory Bernardi or One Nation’s votes to succeed. As parliament resumes, the government will press Labor on two bills to crack down on unions.

The Australian and Papua New Guinean governments have failed the people of Manus Island, according to the province’s governor, who says the island did Australia a favour in hosting its offshore immigration centre only to be left with “bad memories” and no infrastructure. Charlie Benjamin, who joined the PNG prime minister for an official visit to Australia last week, also opposed the forthcoming joint US-Australia military base, chiefly because of the way Australia has treated Manus over the past six years.

World

Boris Johnson gives a speech in Manchester at the weekend. Photograph: WPA Pool/Getty Images

Boris Johnson is “turbo-charging” preparations to leave the EU without a deal on 31 October as his government’s first priority, according to several senior cabinet ministers. Scottish conservatives leader Ruth Davidson has told Johnson she will refuse to back a no-deal Brexit .

Robert Mueller’s testimony to Congress potentially cleared the path to impeachment, House judiciary chair Jerrold Nadler said on Sunday, defending the decision to call the former special counsel before Congress.

Hong Kong police fired teargas and rubber bullets at protesters on Sunday, as political unrest deepened. Tens of thousands of people defied police orders to keep the rally constrained to a park in central Hong Kong.

Dozens of gold miners have invaded a remote indigenous reserve in the Brazilian Amazon where a local leader was stabbed to death, taking over a village after the community fled in fear, local politicians and indigenous leaders have said.

A woman from Belarus has died after being swept away by a river in Alaska while trying to reach an abandoned bus made famous by the book and film Into the Wild.

Opinion and analysis

A solar farm near Canberra. Photograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

New data released quietly late last week underscores the staggering pace of growth of renewable energy across Australia. Nearly 3.5 gigawatts of large-scale clean energy projects were built in 2018. In generation terms, the amount of clean electricity being sent into Australian homes and businesses is expected to increase 36% this year, and should grow another 25% next year. The Clean Energy Regulator, which released the report, says this makes Australia the global leader in per capita renewable energy deployment. And in an outcome considered near impossible four years ago, the country already has enough projects committed to meet the national 2020 renewable energy target, roughly equivalent to about 23% of electricity required.

The link between the Old Etonian Boris Johnson and punk rock may not be immediately obvious, writes John Harris, but the Brexit instinct is at least partly about outrage for outrage’s sake. “Led by a serial smasher-upper and self-publicist, we are on our way out of the EU because of a collective set of desires akin to the punk-era urge to break things, along with a connected inability to channel resentment into anything more than gestures of self-harm … This is an increasingly familiar populist trick: encouraging a set of voters to relish taboo-busting as a kind of surrogate for a lost sense of economic agency and power.”

Sport

Egan Bernal of Colombia celebrates after the Tour’s final stage ends in Paris. Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

Egan Bernal has become the first Colombian to win the Tour de France. The 22-year-old was mobbed by teammates and delirious Colombian fans who had flooded Paris to celebrate a long-awaited success in the world’s most famous cycle race.

Collingwood and Adelaide are struggling with the burden of expectation in the AFL finals race, writes Craig Little, while Richmond and Brisbane are relishing the pressure.

Thinking time: How walking makes us healthier, happier and brainier

Shane O’Mara with reporter Amy Fleming in Dublin. Photograph: Johnny Savage/The Guardian

Neurologist Shane O’Mara’s book In Praise of Walking is a backstage tour of what happens in our brains while we perambulate. O’Mara, 53, is in his element striding through urban landscapes – from epic hikes across London’s sprawl to more sedate ambles in Oxford, where he received his DPhil – and waxing lyrical about science, nature, architecture and literature. He favours what he calls a “motor-centric” view of the brain – that it evolved to support movement and, therefore, if we stop moving about, it won’t work as well.

“Our sensory systems work at their best when they’re moving about the world,” says O’Mara. He cites a 2018 study that tracked participants’ activity levels and personality traits over 20 years, and found that those who moved the least showed malign personality changes, scoring lower in the positive traits: openness, extraversion and agreeableness. There is substantial data showing that walkers have lower rates of depression, too. And O’Mara says the scientific literature tells us “that getting people to engage in physical activity before they engage in a creative act is very powerful”.

Media roundup

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a cousin of Chinese president Xi Jinping was on board a private jet for high-roller gamblers that was searched by police on the Gold Coast in 2016 as part of an international money-laundering investigation. The ABC says the US military has allocated more than a quarter of a billion dollars on naval construction in the Northern Territory, “in a move that could raise tensions with China”. And the Australian reports that Australia will lead an international online campaign to target child exploitation.

Coming up

The New South Wales coroner will hand down findings in the death of pregnant Aboriginal woman Naomi Williams, who presented around 50 times to medical service providers in the year before she died in Tumut hospital.

The defamation case brought by former Labor MP Emma Husar against BuzzFeed is back in court in Sydney.

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