Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 29 May.

Top stories

Land-clearing has wiped out close to $1.5bn in taxpayer-funded emissions gains, according to the government’s own figures. Official data suggests public money spent cutting greenhouse gas emissions by planting trees and restoring habitat under the Coalition’s Direct Action climate policy will have effectively been negated by little more than two years of forest-clearing elsewhere in the country. The $2.55bn emissions reduction fund has contracts to prevent 124m tonnes of emissions through vegetation projects – mostly repairing degraded habitat, planting trees and ensuring existing forest on private land is not cleared.

Meanwhile, forest-clearing has released more than 160m tonnes of carbon dioxide since the fund began in 2015. Emissions projections data estimates another 60.3m tonnes will be emitted this year – more than 10% of national emissions. The Wilderness Society climate campaign manager, Glenn Walker, said other data sources suggested the projections data was almost certainly an underestimate.



A Productivity Commission report has assessed the superannuation industry’s efficiency and competitiveness, and it finds much wanting. Greg Jericho analyses the results. “More than a quarter of the 74 funds offering a MySuper product failed to meet benchmark performance returns – accounting for 1.7 million member accounts and $62bn in assets. And such was the lack of transparency in the system that a mere five funds out of 208 provided the commission with information on their rates of return across all 14 assets classes, and 71% gave no response on the level of fee for related parties.”



Italy’s faith in the eurozone is set to be tested in fresh elections after the president, Sergio Mattarella, installed an interim prime minister to lead a new government. The political crisis that has engulfed Rome threatens to bring about another bitter battle over the future of the EU, and the uncertainty promped a sell-off on Italian markets on Monday. Mattarella has asked Carlo Cottarelli, a former International Monetary Fund official, to become interim PM, after refusing to accept the nomination of Paolo Savona, a Eurosceptic, for the role of finance minister. Mattarella said appointing Savona, 81, who has called Italy’s entry into the euro a “historic mistake”, would have risked the confidence of foreign investors and destabilising the country.

The Australian Greens will push for a parliamentary inquiry into how $444m in reef funding was awarded to a small not-for-profit foundation, with little scrutiny and without a competitive tender process. The Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson, the party’s spokesman for healthy oceans, will move for a Senate inquiry into why the Great Barrier Reef Foundation was announced as the recipient of the record government grant without the funds being offered to existing government reef agencies. The inquiry, if supported by Labor and the crossbench, would also investigate the capacity of the foundation to meet the objectives of the government’s Reef 2050 plan and the foundation’s governance.

An undocumented migrant in France, Mamoudou Gassama, known as “spiderman” for climbing four stories to rescue a child, has been granted French citizenship. Gassama, 22, met with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, yesterday and was promised documents allowing him to stay, and a fast-track process to gain French nationality. He was also offered a job with the Paris sapeurs-pompiers, the city’s fire and emergency service. “He gave me a present,” Gassama said of Macron. “It’s the first time I’ve had anything like this. I’m very happy.”

Sport

The World Cup in Russia will be a tournament of firsts. It will be the first held in eastern Europe, the first for Panama and Iceland and the first to feature video assistant referee technology. And, for the first time in the 88-year history of Fifa’s flagship event, two of the most senior officials – host city general coordinators – will be female. One is Australian Jo Fernandes, women and girls development manager at Football New South Wales.



Officials from the International Cricket Council have arranged to meet with Al Jazeera television to view all of the footage relating to alleged spot-fixing by English and Australian cricket players. The five players – who remain unnamed – will also be interviewed when the ICC probe gets under way.

Thinking time

Margaret Atwood has admitted having no control over the TV version of her harrowing novel The Handmaid’s Tale, but says she has no problem with that and fans need to chill out over divergences from her novel. “I think I would have to be awfully stupid to resent it because things could have been so much worse,” she says. “They have done a tippety-top job … the acting is great, they’ve stuck to the central set of premises.”

The light emitted from our LED screens is blamed for everything from bleary eyes to much more serious health issues, so what is the truth about blue light: does it really cause insomnia and increased risk of cancer, and just how worried should we be? “Blue light is not sinister,” says Stuart Peirson, of the sleep and circadian neuroscience institution at Oxford University. “ It’s just that we’ve subsequently invented devices that emit light and we’ve filled our environment with them and made them addictive. If you go to bed at night and stare at your bedside lamp for 10 minutes, that will shift your clock, it’s just that nobody does that.”



A US federal court has declined to decriminalise cannabidiol (CBD) – a non-psychoactive chemical produced by the cannabis plant – despite widespread belief in its medical value. Many cannabis advocates consider it a miracle medicine, capable of relieving conditions as disparate as depression, arthritis and diabetes without getting users high. Here is what you need to know about CBD.

What’s he done now?

Despite being the most powerful man in America (if not the world), Donald Trump has a tendency to tweet support for his causes when they come up on Fox News, his only trusted news source. “‘The President deserves some answers.’ @FoxNews in discussing ‘SPYGATE,’” Trump tweeted overnight, along with other quotes supportive of his administration.

Media roundup

The independent commission against corruption is investigating the air wing of the South Australian police, the Adelaide Advertiser reports, after inconsistencies came to light. It is understood two pilots have taken leave, and it is possible the unit will be privatised.

A Newspoll conducted for the Australian reveals 37% believe the Coalition and would be better at maintaining energy supply and keeping power prices lower using Malcolm Turnbull’s national energy guarantee, compared with 39% who back Labor to deliver ­reform. Almost a quarter were undecided.

The ABC has coverage on what went wrong with the search for MH370, and what happens now the search is officially over.

Coming up

Federal parliament resumes. Senate estimates continue for health, economics, foreign affairs and defence, and jobs and small business.

The Victorian coroner will open an inquest into the death of 62-year-old Sonia Sofianopoulos, who died in her department of housing unit at Greensbourgh in July 2017 as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning from a heater.

The City of Melbourne council will hold its first meeting under the new lord mayor, Sally Capp.

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