Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 30 January.

Top stories

As Brexit is debated in the House of Commons, the EU is preparing to issue an immediate rebuff to Theresa May by publishing a statement rejecting any renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement in the event of the so-called Brady amendment being passed by parliament. MPs were corralled by the prime minister on Tuesday to back a proposal under which the Commons would commit to supporting the withdrawal agreement should the Irish backstop contained within it be “replaced”. But as the prime minister called on MPs to send a message to Brussels, EU officials revealed that a statement was being prepared that would immediately close off the possibility of revising an agreement that had already been negotiated and agreed over the last 20 months.

Roger Stone, longtime adviser to Donald Trump, has pleaded not guilty to charges brought by the special counsel investigating Russian election interference. Stone appeared at the US district court for the District of Columbia to face the charges in a seven-count indictment filed against him when he was arrested in Florida last Friday, related to lying to Congress, obstruction in the Russia investigation and witness tampering. The self-proclaimed dirty trickster had told the Guardian via text message before the hearing that he was feeling “resilient”. He declined to speak to reporters at the courthouse on Tuesday, but then spoke with the far-right American conspiracy theory and fake news website Infowars, calling his indictment a “legal lynching”.

The environmental laws that formally protect the endangered black-throated finch have also enabled the destruction of its natural habitat, leaving the species at risk of extinction, a new study says. Out of 775 projects overlapping the finch’s habitat that were referred to the federal government for assessment under the Environment Protection Biodiversity and Conservation Act since 2000, only one was refused because of an unacceptable impact on the finch. “Often, extinctions happen because we just weren’t watching. This time, we have charted the steep decline of this Australian bird – but so far, we have permitted it to continue,” said April Reside, the study’s author.

World

Chinese telecom giant Huawei faces criminal charges in the US. Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

China has condemned the US government’s indictments against Huawei as “unfair and immoral” and urged Washington to stop its “unreasonable suppression” of the Chinese telecommunications company after it was charged with a series of crimes.

Venezuelan attorney general Tarek Saab has asked the country’s supreme court to open a preliminary investigation against Juan Guaidó, the self-proclaimed president, and to freeze the opposition leader’s accounts.

Brazilian police have arrested five people in an investigation into the causes of the Brumadinho dam disaster. The dam break on Friday at an iron ore mining complex operated by the minerals firm Vale killed at least 65 people, and a further 279 are missing.

A Christian farm labourer who spent eight years on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy has had her acquittal upheld by the the supreme court. Asia Bibi, who has been held at a secret location since her death sentence was overturned, is expected to be flown out of the country within hours. Two of her children are reportedly already in Canada, which has offered Bibi asylum.

Apple is rushing to fix a glitch that allowed users to listen in on the people they were calling when they did not pick up the call. Under certain circumstances, the glitch also allowed callers to see video of the person they were calling before they picked up.

Opinion and analysis

Boorna Waanginy at Perth festival 2017. Photograph: Jess Wyld

In her final year as artistic director of Perth festival, Wendy Martin reflects on what makes the creative scene in the most remote capital in the world so unique. “Many Perth artists attest to the creative freedom offered by a city unencumbered by the frictions, factions and orthodoxies laid down in the citadels of culture; a city on the ‘periphery’, with an outward focus,” she writes. “For them, distance breeds adventurous curiosity.”

Oliver Yates wants to start a global campaign where citizens “take out” environment ministers who fail to act on climate change. The former Macquarie banker, and head of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, who will confirm his intention to take on Josh Frydenberg in Kooyong as an independent publicly today, says that the challenges of climate change are now so serious that citizens globally need to “hold accountable environment ministers who have disregarded their responsibility”. Yates further explains his reasons for running in an opinion piece for Guardian Australia: “Seeing the now prime minister, Scott Morrison, wave around a lump of coal in parliament … made me angry. Environmentally it’s like waving asbestos. The Liberal party’s culture is sick. Ten years of negative policy actions have created a black hole around the leadership, surrounding them in impenetrable darkness.”

Sport

The 2019 AFLW season begins this weekend with a move away from the traditional Friday night opener in Melbourne. The start to the competition’s latest iteration will be a Saturday night double feature in Geelong and Adelaide – just one of a host of alterations the AFL has made to the women’s competition for its third year.

A 73-year-old French sailor has won an unusual, around-the-world yacht race after 212 days alone at sea without modern instruments, in what was his first sailing victory.

Thinking time: Bleach is the new black

Gemma Bray, known as the Organised Mum, is a cleaning influencer on Instagram. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian

Fitness influencers and fashion bloggers step aside: it’s starting to look like bleach is the new black, writes Arwa Mahdawi. Marie Kondo, who shot to global fame in 2014 when her book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up was published in English, is probably the biggest name on the clean scene. However, she is far from the only person to have organised their way to celebrity. The past year or so has seen cleaning take on a new cultural cachet – particularly on Instagram. The social network is rife with hashtags such as #cleaningobsessed or #cleaningtime and people are amassing enormous followings with pictures of gleaming kitchen counters and sparkling floors.

The link between cleaning your house and tidying your life seems to explain a lot about the current cultural cachet around cleaning. It is perhaps no surprise that the rise of cleaning influencers in the UK and US comes against the background of Brexit and Donald Trump. “The preoccupation with order and self-management flourishes during uncertain times as a self-improvement strategy,” claims Dr Stephanie Baker, a sociology lecturer at University of London and the author of a forthcoming book about digital lifestyle gurus. In other words, when the world looks increasingly like trash, cleaning becomes a lot more comforting.

Media roundup

The Sydney Morning Herald reveals that Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei executive at the centre of the US Department of Justice allegations, oversaw the setting up of Huawei in Australia. Warren Mundine has defended Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s Australia Day comments, the Daily Telegraph writes, saying there are issues more pressing for Indigenous communities than changing the date. Last week’s extreme weather saw Victoria and South Australia rack up a combined $1.1bn energy bill in less than 48 hours, the Australian reports.

Coming up

A parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security will hold a public hearing into citizenship powers.

The NSW Environmental Defenders’ Office and the Humane Society International will go to court to push for the removal of 173 shark cull drumlines installed in the Great Barrier Reef marine park.

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