Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 11 February.

Top stories

Seventeen Australian residents are believed to be under house arrest, in prison or detained in China’s secretive “re-education” centres in Xinjiang, the Guardian can reveal. The individuals are believed to have been detained while on trips to China visiting relatives. Advocates for Australia’s 3,000-strong Uighur community are calling on the government in Canberra to secure the release of the detainees. At the same time, members of Australia’s Uighur population have reported serious harassment by Chinese authorities on Australian soil, including intimidating phone calls and requests to send over personal data, with the threat of reprisals against family if they do not comply.

Scott Morrison will add national security and law and order to the economy in the Coalition’s intensifying battle with Labor ahead of the election, using a major speech to claim Bill Shorten wants to wind back punitive deterrence measures to repel asylum boats, and has to be “dragged” to supporting terrorism legislation. The prime minister will use a National Press Club address on Monday to release the government’s plan “to keep Australians safe and secure” – building on an economic speech he delivered at the end of January contending Labor posed a risk to economic growth.

The government has backed away from its commitment to establish a register to help stamp out multinational tax avoidance – by claiming there was never a commitment in the first place. The register was first floated after the Panama Papers release. In response to a question on notice from the Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson on the status of “the commitment to establish” the register and its timing, the government changed tack.

World

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A demonstration in Madrid was called by the conservative People’s party and the centre-right Citizens party, and backed by the far-right Vox party. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

About 45,000 people have gathered in Madrid to protest against what they see as the overly conciliatory stance over the question of Catalan independence adopted by the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and to demand a snap general election. The country is braced for the landmark trial of 12 separatist leaders this week.

Australian Sir Lynton Crosby offered to work on a campaign to cancel the 2022 Qatar World Cup and get it awarded to another country in return for £5.5m (AU$10m), according to a leaked plan that gives a rare insight into the activities of one of the world’s best-known political operatives.



Bipartisan negotiators in Washington are running out of time to reach a deal over Donald Trump’s demand for a border wall after talks stalled, raising the prospect of another government shutdown starting on Friday. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s top Latin America adviser has claimed “there is not a single scenario” in which Nicolás Maduro and his “cronies” are able to retain power in Venezuela.

In Northern Ireland, chimpanzees have used a branch to escape from their enclosure at Belfast zoo. In footage of the escape captured by visitors, a child can be heard exclaiming: “Don’t escape, you bad little gorilla.”

Celebrities are arriving on the red carpet for the Bafta awards. Australian Margot Robbie is among them, and The Favourite, whose screenwriter is Australian Tony McNamara is, well, the favourite. Follow all the latest in our live blog.

Opinion and analysis

Facebook Twitter Pinterest John Lennon and Yoko Ono with their cat in 1968. Photograph: © Yoko Ono. All rights reserved. Used with permission

Over a prolific 10-year period that culminated in 1978, photographer Ethan Russell shot the world’s biggest rock stars, usually at their most candid. He had a ringside seat at what is often seen as rock’s golden era. Russell wasn’t just friends with Lennon and Yoko Ono, he knew their cat as well. He also unknowingly took the last shot of the Beatles together. That day, he says, “George Harrison was miserable from frame one to frame 500. I don’t think he did anything but scowl for three hours.”

When sleep-deprived new father Luke Horton is woken before dawn, he and his 18-month-old daughter watch Bluey. Horton revels in his daughter’s delight, the way she snuggles on his lap, and marvels at how changeable his own emotions are. “At 5.30am, I am bleak and sentimental in equal measure. To be honest, I feel so many things. Outrage at being up so early, overwhelming gratitude that she and A and I are all basically OK. Parenting is a heightening and an escalation, so that you feel everything you used to feel only more deeply and more fleetingly.”

Sport

It’s been 28 years since Chelsea lost this badly. For Manchester City the match was a supreme way to round off an immaculate week.

In the Six Nations, England’s women appear certainties for a grand slam after only two games. A ruthless display by their forwards and some sharp finishing by their backs destroyed France, the Six Nations champions, in Doncaster.

Thinking time: insects could vanish within a century

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The rate of insect extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. Photograph: Courtesy of Entomologisher Verein Krefeld

The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review. More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century. The planet is at the start of a sixth mass extinction in its history, with huge losses already reported in larger animals that are easier to study. But insects are “essential” for the proper functioning of all ecosystems, the researchers say, as food for other creatures, pollinators and recyclers of nutrients.

Insect population collapses have recently been reported in Germany and Puerto Rico, but the review strongly indicates the crisis is global. The researchers set out their conclusions in unusually forceful terms for a peer-reviewed scientific paper: “Unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades.” they write. “The repercussions this will have for the planet’s ecosystems are catastrophic to say the least.”

Media roundup

A Newspoll published in the Australian has primary vote support for the Coalition at a historic low of 37%, with a two-party-preferred vote showing a one-point rise for Labor, 53-47. On the abolition of franking credits: 35% of voters are in favour of the Labor plan and 44% opposed, showing a four-point drop in opposition since December. The Liberal party flew MP Ann Sudmalis home from a secondment to the UN in New York last year to shore Coalition voting numbers on the floor of parliament in the final sitting week last year, the ABC reveals. Christopher Pyne believes Australian politics is “trapped in a self-obsessed and panic-prone spiral”, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Coming up

Scott Morrison will speak at the National Press Club ahead of parliament resuming for the year tomorrow.

In Adelaide, the first evidence will be taken in the aged care royal commission.

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