Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 15 April.

Top stories

Julian Assange repeatedly violated his asylum conditions and tried to use the Ecuadorian embassy in London as a “centre for spying”, Ecuador’s president has said in an interview with the Guardian. Lenín Moreno said he had been given written undertakings from Britain that Assange would not be sent anywhere to face the death penalty. The WikiLeaks co-founder faces up to 12 months in prison after being found guilty of breaching bail conditions when he entered the embassy in 2012. He made the move after losing a battle against extradition to Sweden where he faced allegations including of rape, which he denies. The British MP Jess Phillips, writing in the Guardian, has criticised the treatment of the sexual assault allegations as an example of “how little the political class from left and right give a toss about women’s safety”.

Elective surgery waiting lists and traffic congestion will be the focus for Bill Shorten and Scott Morrison as they take their campaigns to the battleground state of Victoria today. With the latest Newspoll showing Labor still ahead 52% to 48%, Shorten will promise $250m towards reducing delays for patients needing cataract, knee and hip operations. The prime minister will be talking up the Coalition’s plans to reduce traffic congestion in Melbourne. Government MPs in marginal and safe seats alike have been nervous since Labor’s landslide victory at state level last year, and the Coalition is grappling with a Queensland-Victoria divide over the Adani coalmine.

An overwhelming majority of Australians have lost trust in federal politics and want a strong, well-resourced anti-corruption commission, new polling shows. About two-thirds of Australians have either low or very low trust in federal government, and rates have declined since 2017, the poll found. A staggering 80% of Australians want an integrity commission, and the support is shared across the political spectrum. Integrity experts and Transparency International Australia have launched a new campaign to persuade the major parties to establish a properly empowered federal integrity commission, reform donations and lobbying, and provide better protections for whistleblowers.

World

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The White House has escalated its assault on the Muslim American congresswoman Ilhan Omar, with the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, insisting on Sunday Omar’s comments about 9/11 were “absolutely disgraceful and unbefitting of a member of Congress”.

In the UK, talks between Labour and the government are unlikely to advance much further in the coming week unless Theresa May moves on her red lines over a future customs union, sources close to the talks have suggested, as the Tories are hit by new defections and the party divide widens.

Finland may usher in its first leftist prime minister in two decades after partial results in the country’s election showed the Social Democrats had won 18.9% of the vote, making them the largest single party.

Khalifa Haftar, the Libyan warlord bombarding Tripoli in an attempt to oust the country’s UN-recognised government, has won unequivocal support from Egyptian leader Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, his closest political ally.

South African police have seized 167 rhino horns believed to have been destined for Asia. Two suspects were arrested in the sting operation on Saturday, which police said netted one of the biggest hauls of rhino horns in the country.

Opinion and analysis

Jon Snow of the Single Expression and Daenerys ‘More vowels than clothes’ Targaryen. Photograph: HBO

What happened when the Guardian’s TV critic watched Game of Thrones for the first time? “Ten years, 47 Emmys and innumerable shattered budgetary and viewing records later, Game of Thrones’ eighth and final season is about to dawn. Of the previous seven I – apparently alone of my generation – have not seen a single minute,” writes Lucy Mangan. “This must, I am told by people pressing feverish hands to my shoulders and me to the sofa, be remedied. When you watch 67 hours of epically sweeping storytelling, you win or you die. I kept a diary of my long, long days and nights to find out which it would be.”

Ian McEwan has been enthralled by the possibility of human-made consciousness for about as long as he could remember, writes Tim Adams. Reflecting on the themes of his new novel, Machines Like Me, McEwan refers to the Boeing 737 crash in Ethiopia, in which the plane’s software apparently overrode the pilot’s best efforts to keep it airborne. This is a story, he forecasts, that will become an insistent narrative in all areas of our lives. “People are not quite aware yet that when they get in a plane they are flying in a giant brain,” he says. “That brain might believe the plane is stalling – though every last passenger and the pilot can look out of the window and see the plane is not stalling. We are in the process of handing over responsibility for safety, but also for ethical decisions, to machines.”

Sport

Tiger Woods wins the Masters. If ever five words did not do justice to an outcome. The scene was barely believable, writes Ewan Murray. That Woods came from behind after 54 holes – something he had not achieved before – to win his 15th major, barely registered amid the chaos.



A wonder goal from Mohamed Salah has secured a 2-0 win for Liverpool over Chelsea, keeping them in front of Manchester City – 3-1 winners at Crystal Palace – as the Premier League title race moves towards a tense finale.

Thinking time: the Australians neither political party wants to discuss

‘For decades, poverty and deep disadvantage have been all but absent in our political debate.’ Photograph: Naomi Rahim/Getty Images

“Despite Australia’s 28 years of continuous economic growth, almost three decades of uninterrupted national good fortune, we have achieved virtually no change in the 10% or so of Australians living below the poverty line. Nothing. The number of children living in poverty is by some measures actually rising,” writes Lenore Taylor. Yet debate about the causes of this failure, and how to rectify it, will barely feature in the election campaign if the two main parties have their way. To try to fill that gap, Guardian Australia today launches a series called Fair go? Why 10% of Australians are still being left behind.

Gay Alcorn delves into the policy history that has brought us to this point. We are the second wealthiest people on earth. Last year the Productivity Commission concluded that those three decades of economic growth had “delivered for the average Australian household in every income decile significantly improved living standards”. Yet, Alcorn writes, despite all that growth, despite relatively low unemployment, despite investment in redistribution through the tax system, and despite increasing the age pension, about 10% of Australians still live on very low incomes. What are we doing wrong? And how can we fix it? “Reducing the number of Australians living in poverty will take far more than political commitment, but it can’t happen without it. Political commitment will only come, perhaps, once the public cares. Whether, collectively, our conscience is offended by poverty, or not.”

Media roundup

One Nation has nosedived in the polls, the Australian reports, “handing Scott Morrison the equal-best primary vote for the Coalition since just after the last election, but also strengthening Labor’s lead.” The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald highlight GetUp’s election war chest, as the activist group raises $12.5m in annual donations, an increase of 27% over the last year. The West Australian reveals that the Israeli ambassador, Mark Sofer, has rebuked the Labor MP Josh Wilson, the federal member for Fremantle, after Wilson was shown on video saying that Israeli checkpoints are “places you go to and you go to jail ... sometimes they are places you go to and you die”. Posh cars may avoid Labor’s $5,000 green hit, the Daily Telegraph writes, under the headline Maserorti.

Coming up

The Victorian supreme court will hear an application by the director of public prosecutions to have 36 media organisations and editors found guilty of breaching suppression orders in the George Pell case.

An inquiry into the convictions of Kathleen Folbigg, who was jailed in 2003 for killing her four babies, resumes in Sydney.

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