Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 21 March.

Top stories

Britain again appears to be teetering on the brink of a no-deal Brexit, after the European Council president, Donald Tusk, said EU leaders would agree to a short delay only if Theresa May’s deal was backed by parliament next week. With nine days to go before the UK’s departure date, Tusk said before a summit of the EU’s 27 leaders on Thursday that success seemed “frail, even illusory”. France has threatened to veto any delay in Brexit and the mood around the EU is that the Brexit shambles is pathetic, incoherent and chaotic. The Guardian says Theresa May is a prime minister gone rogue. So what happens next? And when might Britain actually leave the EU?

Michael Daley’s horror week did not improve in the final leaders’ debate before the NSW election, as the Labor leader stumbled on the costing of some of his policies. Polling suggests a hung parliament is the most likely outcome of Saturday’s state election, increasing the focus on rightwing parties that could end up having a vital say in the balance of power. With the Shooters on course to win perhaps three seats, and One Nation and the Christian Democrats three between them, the parties are vying for support from voters disillusioned with the Liberals, Labor and Nationals. But each has its own problems, with the Shooters risking being derailed by anti-gun sentiment after the Christchurch shooting, and One Nation reliant on the high-profile but volatile candidacy of Mark Latham.

Leading medical colleges are calling for urgent action from the federal government to halt the “unspeakable tragedy” of Indigenous youth suicide. The intervention of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (Naccho) follows another four Indigenous people taking their lives in Queensland last week, and a report into child suicides in Western Australia. Naccho’s acting chair, Donnella Mills, said: “If this was happening across the non-Indigenous landscape the population would have no tolerance for it, there’d be an outcry for a response.”

World

Flooded plains around Beira in Mozambique. Photograph: Adrien Barbier/AFP/Getty Images

Rescue teams are rushing to save thousands of Mozambicans stranded on roofs and in trees before flood levels rise further. With heavy rains still falling in the region, floodwaters are predicted to rise in the coming days.

The pilots of the Lion Air Boeing 737 Max that crashed in Indonesia were searching a flight manual moments before the plane plunged into the sea to try to find why the aircraft kept lurching downwards against their commands, according to reports of the cockpit voice recording.

The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić has been sentenced to life in prison at an appeal court in The Hague for his role in mass killings of civilians in the conflict that tore Bosnia apart a quarter century ago.



The driver of a school bus has been arrested in Milan after allegedly setting the vehicle on fire with 51 children on board. Police managed to get all the passengers out alive.



Cambridge University has rescinded its offer of a visiting fellowship to Jordan Peterson, the self-styled “professor against political correctness”, after a backlash from faculty and students.

Opinion and analysis

A marsupial mole eating a gecko in the Northern Territory’s Tanami desert. Photograph: Auscape International Pty Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

In the latest Look At Me podcast – our deep-dive into Australian wildlife you’ve never heard of – Benjamin Law talks to Chris McCormack about his trip into the desert to find out about the marsupial mole. Living entirely underground and weighing only about 80g, the mole has no eyes but is a formidable predator, with strong, pincer-like limbs. It feeds on termites and larvae. Its subterranean existence makes it very difficult to study. In the 19th century it was classed it as a mole, although it is not related to European moles. In fact, people are more closely related to those moles than this creature, which Indigenous people call itjaritjari.

The drop in housing prices is continuing, and there is no sign of a bottom being reached. This downward trend is most pronounced in Sydney and Melbourne, writes Greg Jericho. So where are things going from here? “Unless the Reserve Bank gets involved and cuts rates soon, house prices will continue to fall for some time ... In the past, such house price falls have seen the RBA act, and in 2011 it also saw the start of a price boom. Whether any cuts now would set off such price rises is harder to gauge.”

Sport

Given the travails of other sporting codes of late, surely it should have been easy for the AFL to look good in comparison by the time the new season gets under way. Not so fast, writes Geoff Lemon. Follow our liveblog of the season’s curtain-raiser between Carlton and Richmond tonight from 6.30pm AEDT.

A revitalised Australian team could pull off a World Cup win, says Shane Warne. A week after Australia completed a dramatic series victory in India by winning their final three matches, ending a dismal run of 22 defeats in 26 completed one-day internationals, Warne believes the team are once again striking fear into opponents and can be spurred to World Cup glory by the reintegration of David Warner and Steve Smith.

Thinking time: ‘We’re in a different world now’

‘We can claw back some of the damage. We will go through 2C, but hopefully come out the other side,’ says Tim Flannery. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

Author and scientist Tim Flannery talks to Guardian Australia about his new role at the Australian Museum in Sydney, where he has become the institution’s de facto ambassador on climate change. With a lifetime of studying the environment behind him, Flannery is one of Australia’s leading experts on the impact of climate change and has frequently lamented the lack of action from Australian governments. He grew up in Melbourne on remnants of the sandplain flora, “one of the great floristic gems of Australia”, he says. Once smothered in flowers in springtime, it has now largely been lost through development and altered burning regimes. Flannery, 63, also spent his youth swimming and scuba diving in northern Port Phillip bay, which he says is now also gravely deteriorated.

But after a series of disasters such as the mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, Darling River fish kills, floods, drought and bushfires, he sees hope for change. “People are shocked, but … they should be angry,” he says. “We’ve gone through a period in Australia and the US where people have been able to lie … But we’re in a different world now, a world where people are living with climate change consequences, and bullshit is no longer baffling brains, and so we are about to see a big shift.”

Media roundup

Fraser Anning claimed more in family travel expenses than any other politician last year and had the highest staff travel bill of any MP who does not hold a ministerial or shadow ministerial role, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The SMH has also obtained a secret report for the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust that shows Allianz Stadium “could have been upgraded to meet all safety standards for as little as $18m”. The Daily Telegraph’s headline is She’s Got His Number, referring to Gladys Berejiklian getting 50 crowd votes in her favour over Michael Daley’s 25, and 25 undecided votes, at last night’s debate in Penrith. The Herald Sun is one of several papers to give front-page prominence to the social media hounding of AFLW star Tayla Harris, itself a notable decision for Melbourne’s largest-selling paper on the first day of the men’s AFL season.

Coming up

Unemployment figures for February will be released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics at 11.30. Economists expect the level to remain steady at 5%.

A petition signed by 1.3 million people calling for Fraser Anning to be removed from parliament will be delivered to senator Mehreen Faruqi so she can table it in the Senate.

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