Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 24 June.

Top stories

The children of Islamic State terrorist Khaled Sharrouf have been removed from Syria and are set to return to Australia. Eight Australian children caught up in the Syrian war after their parents joined Islamic State have been spirited out of the country. The group includes five family members of Sharrouf, an Australian terrorist who made international headlines in a photograph standing next to his young son holding a severed human head. The remaining three are the children of the foreign fighter Yasin Rizvic and his wife, Fauzia Khamal Bacha, who joined Isis in 2014. It is the first instance of Australian children of foreign fighters being rescued from the northern Syrian camps. The eight children crossed into Iraqi Kurdistan at 3:30pm local time on Sunday into the care of Australian officials, and the Guardian has been asked not to disclose further geographical information for security reasons. All eight children are headed for Australia, but the Sharrouf children’s return will be delayed because of the impending birth of Sharrouf’s 17-year-old daughter Zaynab’s baby. They have been reunited with their maternal grandmother, Karen Nettleton.

Labor is demanding Peter Dutton release the details of a review into contracts worth almost $500m to manage the Manus Island offshore processing centre, before the Morrison government approves the next one, expected to occur within days. The home affairs minister has been forced to defend his department’s awarding Paladin, a previously little-known firm, a series of contracts to manage the Papua New Guinea offshore processing centre, without a tender process. The shadow home affairs minister, Kristina Keneally, is demanding Dutton first release the findings of an Ernst & Young audit into the contracts, which was ordered in March, and expected to take just seven weeks.

Financial markets around the world are braced for a renewed period of turbulence this week as the US readies fresh sanctions against Iran, and amid rising hopes for a breakthrough in the US-China trade war. Iran has announced it may take further steps to pull away from its nuclear deal. John Bolton, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, said a fresh round of sanctions against Tehran would serve as a warning not to “mistake US prudence and discretion for weakness”. Donald Trump has meanwhile also dismissed a United Nations request for the FBI to investigate the murder of the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, suggesting it would jeopardise American weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.

Human Rights Watch has urged Australia to use its position on the United Nations human rights council to do more to stand up against abusive nations. In a letter to the foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, the Australia director at HRW, Elaine Pearson, noted that Australia has often preferred a “quiet diplomacy” style of advocating for human rights improvements with other countries, but said it needed to increase its public pressure to ensure that private discussions are not used to shield countries such as China, the Philippines, Bahrain and Egypt from international scrutiny.

World

Ekrem İmamoğlu, candidate of the secular opposition Republican People’s party, arrives to make his victory statement in Istanbul. Photograph: Bülent Kılıç/AFP/Getty Images

Turkey’s ruling party in Istanbul’s controversial mayoral election rerun has conceded defeat, handing the nation’s beleaguered opposition a victory that will have dramatic consequences for president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s grip on the country.



More of Boris Johnson’s neighbours have confirmed a row with his partner Carrie Symonds, which prompted a late-night police callout, with one saying the “tear-up” led him to believe that someone was being murdered.

The chief of staff of Ethiopia’s army has been shot dead at home by his bodyguard, and a regional governor has been killed in an attempted coup, the Ethiopian prime minister’s office has said.

An estimated 250,000 people have demanded the resignation of the Czech Republic’s prime minister, in the country’s biggest display of dissent since the 1989 velvet revolution that ended communism in the former Czechoslovakia.

Paris is preparing pools, parks and “cool rooms” as French authorities fear for residents’ health during the anticipated European heatwave. The French capital still carries the trauma of the 2003 heatwave, which caused many thousands of deaths in France and so many deaths in the Paris area that morgues ran out of space.

Opinion and analysis

Louis Delsarte’s mural, The Spirit of Harlem. Photograph: Michael Henry Adams

On every Harlem corner, big money and bulldozers are threatening black history, writes historian Michael Henry Adams. “In New York in 1975, Jacqueline Kennedy was worried about a plan to destroy Grand Central Terminal. Writing to the mayor, the former first lady asked: ‘Is it not cruel to let our city die by degrees, stripped of all her proud monuments, until there will be nothing left of all her history and beauty to inspire our children?’ Nearly 50 years later, the same threat hangs over Harlem. It is nothing less than existential. In the home of so much African American history, churches and other landmarks are disappearing with a rapidity that invites thoughts of the indifference that places our whole planet at risk.”

How is it that men from vastly different cultures know to use the same basic techniques of oppression? asks Jess Hill. In an extract from her book, See What You Made Me Do, Hill traces the psychology of abusers and how they use the same techniques. One of the victims she speaks to, Deb, who now counsels domestic abuse victims and perpetrators, says one thing stands out about abusers: it’s as if they’ve studied some kind of domestic abuse handbook. “They all have the same tactics. So, for example, they may not come out and say, ‘I don’t want you seeing your friends, or having hobbies, or being around your parents,’ but they’ll just make it hard … And eventually women go it’s just all too hard, because they don’t want the fight.”

Sport

Josh Addo-Carr of the Blues dives over to score a try during Game 2 of the 2019 State of Origin series. Photograph: Darren England/AAP

NSW smashed the Queensland Maroons 38-6, setting up a Game 3 decider – and keeping the State of Origin series alive in a rain-soaked Game 2 at Optus Stadium in Perth. “Each of coach Brad Fittler’s contentious recruitment choices paid off for the Blues,” writes Matt Cleary, “with so-called ‘out-of-position’ centres Jack Wighton and Tom Trbojevic having particularly strong games.

Ashleigh Barty will become the first Australian woman in 43 years to reach the top of the singles rankings after she won the Birmingham Classic grass court title on Sunday. The 23-year-old beat German Julia Görges 6-3, 7-5 in the final, meaning when the new WTA rankings are released on Monday she will knock Japan’s Naomi Osaka off the summit.

A week before the Netball World Cup break, Maria Folau has been dragged into the controversy surrounding her husband, Israel Folau, after reposting a message supporting his legal campaign.

Thinking time: the drug route you’ve never heard of

Fiji police commissioner Brigadier General Sitiveni Qiliho. Photograph: Rob Rickman/The Guardian

It’s a multibillion dollar operation involving cocaine and methamphetamines being packed into the hulls of sailing boats in the US and Latin America and transported to Australia via South Pacific islands. In the past five years there has been an explosion in the number of boats, sometimes carrying more than a tonne of cocaine, making the journey across the Pacific Ocean to feed Australia’s growing and very lucrative drug habit.

Hundreds of kilograms of cocaine have washed up on remote Pacific beaches, ships laden with drugs have run aground on far-flung coral reefs, and locals have discovered huge caches of drugs stored in underwater nets attached to GPS beacons. Since 2014, the Australian federal police has been involved in the seizure of about 7.5 tonnes of cocaine shipped through the region in small vessels and intended for Australia. Kate Lyons also speaks to Sitiveni Qiliho, Fiji’s police commissioner, who is using Fiji police’s only large patrol boat, the Veiqaravi – a gift from the Australian federal police – to battle the drug trade.

Media roundup

A cancer patient at a Sydney hospital has had the wrong body part removed during surgery, the Sydney Morning Herald reveals. Scott Morrison will use his first major domestic speech since the election to “challenge business to make the case for industrial relations and red tape reform,” the Australian Financial Review reports.

Coming up

A judgment is expected in the defamation case brought by former Northern Territory youth detainee Dylan Voller against Fairfax and other media companies over posts about him on their Facebook pages.

Sign up

If you would like to receive the Guardian Australia morning mail to your email inbox every weekday, sign up here.