Good morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 17 August.

Top stories

Aretha Franklin, the “queen of soul”, has died aged 76. The winner of 18 Grammys and 20 chart-topping singles succumbed to pancreatic cancer, surrounded by family at her home in Detroit. Former US president Barack Obama, at whose inauguration the Memphis-born star performed, was among those who paid tribute to the totemic figure of soul, gospel and R&B.

“Through her compositions and unmatched musicianship, Aretha helped define the American experience,” Obama said. “In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade – our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect.” Franklin’s career spanned six decades, and she was the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Alexis Petridis recalls the best of Franklin’s music, while Richard Williams looks back on her turbulent life.

The Turnbull government faces fresh headaches over its national energy guarantee, with Labor’s climate change spokesman, Mark Butler, warning the Coalition that the opposition would block any new taxpayer support for coal-fired power. “The idea that taxpayers would take on a risk that investors are not willing to take on I think would be a gross abuse of the political office of prime minister,” Butler said on Guardian Australia’s politics podcast.

Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman has released fresh audio recordings, which she says reveal she was offered “hush money” by Lara Trump on behalf of Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. In a phone call with Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, the former Apprentice contestant was offered a $180,000-a-year job in exchange for being “positive” about the president – an offer Manigault Newman claims was “an attempt to buy my silence, censor me and pay me off”. Lara Trump has denied she was acting at the president’s behest and called the tapes “a fraud”.

Australian psychiatrists have called for greater regulation of video games that encourage the purchase of “loot boxes”, telling a Senate inquiry they could lead to children and young adults developing gambling addictions. The Office of the eSafety Commissioner estimated that 34% of young people made in-game purchases in the 12 months before June 2017. Dr Marcus Carter argued “predatory” practices were “pervasive” in the industry, and that it was like “having [a] slot machine in your pocket that actively encourages you to gamble at your most vulnerable moment”.

Scientists have solved a 13-year mystery in mapping the wheat genome, a challenge once thought impossible, but considered essential in helping produce hardier wheat varieties if the world is to meet growing food production needs. Scientists have located 107,891 genes and more than 4.7m molecular markers, and hope that traits such as yield, grain quality and resistance to fungal diseases can now be better analysed. “I’d wish I’d be at the beginning of my career again because the fun is really starting now, and we can efficiently decipher the biology of our favourite crop,” said Dr Catherine Feuillet.

Sport

Football Federation Australia chairman Steven Lowy has sensationally announced he will not seek re-election, potentially ending his family’s more than 50-year association with the game. In an interview with the Australian Lowy cited “the politics in football” for his decision to leave, which could open the way for an end to the protracted wrangle between FFA and A-League clubs over the game’s governance.

Despite the intense physical pressure the game puts on the body, elite netball players are getting older. Over the past decade, the average age of players in Australia’s national league has increased by nearly two years, with 23% of players now aged 30 or over. Players such as Geva Mentor, 33, and Rebecca Bulley, 36, who will contest Sunday’s Super Netball preliminary final are leading the way for the old guard, writes Megan Maurice.

Thinking time

From feminist anthems to painful songs of heartbreak, strident black politics to spiritual quests, Aretha Franklin became a pop-cultural titan – and a symbol of American strength, writes Dorian Lynskey. Voted the greatest singer of all time by both Rolling Stone and Mojo, she was “the reason why women want to sing”, Mary J Blige said. “She only took hold of a song if she could feel it in her bones and, once she did, it was changed forever. “I just lost my song,” said Otis Redding after hearing her blazing feminist revamp of Respect. “That girl took it away from me.”

In an era of mass disruption of the media and communications industry, how do Indigenous voices find the space and institutional support to tell their stories? “We make up less than 3% of Australia’s overall population, our cultures and traditions by nature are vastly different to the dominant culture,” writes James Saunders, an IndigenousX journalist who belongs to the Gunditjmara and Wiradjuri nations. “Who gets to decide what the public ‘needs’ to know? Is that at the discretion of the journalist? The editor? The companies that own the media organisation?”

From its grimy tents on Skid Row to its brash plutocracy living in Bel Air, Los Angeles is a city like no other, writes Rory Carroll as he bids farewell to a city of dreamers and squalor. Once described by Dorothy Parker as 72 suburbs in search of a city, LA’s constant complexity “offers the best of America”, Carroll says. “A kaleidoscope of humanity – more than 200 languages – jumbled into Chinatown, Koreatown, Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, Little Tokyo, Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, Pasadena, Palisades. Innovation and industriousness. Tolerance and laid-backness. All bathed in golden sunshine.”



What’s he done now?

Donald Trump has joined in offering tribute to Aretha Franklin, but continued his campaigns against the press, and retaliated against Omarosa Manigault Newman by sharing a video of clips of the former aide praising him.

Media roundup

“Tens of millions of dollars” worth of construction contracts were awarded in exchange for boozy lunches, overseas travel and home renovations, the West Australian reports, as a major investigation by the state’s Corruption and Crime Commission reveals its findings. You can be fined for touching your mobile phone while driving, but you’re allowed to read a book, the Daily Telegraph says, as it rails against loopholes that allow distracted drivers to get off scot free. And the Courier Mail reports that up to a third of science, technology, engineering and maths teachers in Queensland were not trained in those areas, as the state’s teachers’ union warns of a “huge supply issue” and an ageing workforce.

Coming up

RBA governor Philip Lowe appears before MPs today in Canberra, where he is likely to face questions on house prices, wage growth and interest rates.

The Children’s Book Council of Australia will announce the 2018 book of the year in Brisbane.

Supporting the Guardian

We’d like to acknowledge our generous supporters who enable us to keep reporting on the critical stories. If you value what we do and would like to help, please make a contribution or become a supporter today. Thank you.

Sign up

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