Good morning, this is Stephen Smiley bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 20 August.

Top stories

The British government has privately appealed to senior ministers in the Morrison government to develop a more “ambitious” climate policy. As the government fends off criticism from Pacific Island nations about its climate policies, Guardian Australia can reveal that the UK’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, has met with Angus Taylor and Marise Payne since the May election. It’s understood the high commissioner’s meeting with Taylor, who is the government’s emissions reduction minister, took place in early July, while a bilateral meeting between Treadell and Payne, the foreign affairs minister, also raised the need for more ambitious climate action. The UK last month became the first G7 country to legislate a target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

With the debate around the low rate of Newstart raging, a 64-year-old woman has detailed how she was forced to volunteer after quitting her job of 27 years to care for her dying husband. Two years ago, Marie Jentner was caring for Siegried, who had testicular cancer and couldn’t walk or look after himself. But when he was moved into palliative care at a nursing home in the Adelaide suburb of Rosewater, Centrelink cancelled Jentner’s carer’s payment, putting her on the lower Newstart allowance instead. “I retired in 2017 to stay home and look after my husband,” Jentner tells Guardian Australia. “I’ve worked nearly 45 years of my life, and there’s no way I wanted to go back to work. And they said, ‘Well, you need to do something because the government has changed things. You need to be on Newstart. You could do either community work, or volunteering’.”

A majority of voters in New South Wales either strongly support or somewhat support removing abortion from the criminal code, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll. With debate on the proposal set to resume in the NSW upper house, the latest survey shows 71% of voters in the sample support the change, with only 17% against. A total of 12% of those polled were unsure. The sanguine voter sentiment represented in the poll is at odds with the clamour and contention in the political debate. In the two weeks since the historic bill passed its first hurdle in the parliament’s lower house, opponents of the legislation have fought hard to stop it becoming law.

World

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Prince Andrew and 17-year-old Virginia Roberts (now Giuffre), with Ghislaine Maxwell on right. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

Prince Andrew should give sworn testimony on “everything he knows” about his friend Jeffrey Epstein, lawyers for some of the victims of the disgraced financier’s sex crimes have said. Epstein, 66, died this month in an apparent suicide.

The medical and psychological condition of 107 people onboard a rescue boat anchored off the Italian island of Lampedusa has reached breaking point, doctors have said. The vessel, operated by the Spanish charity Proactiva Open Arms, has been refused permission to dock for 18 days by Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini.

A convoy of Turkish tanks and troops travelling in Idlib province in Syria has been hit by regime airstrikes, Ankara claims. Columns of Turkish forces, amounting to Ankara’s largest incursion into Syria yet, crossed the southern border on Monday, at a time seen as pivotal for Idlib – the last corner of Syria without a regime presence.

Plans to end freedom of movement for EU citizens immediately after a no-deal Brexit have caused anxiety and confusion among European nationals in the UK. Rules allowing EU nationals to live and work freely in the UK would end abruptly if the UK leaves the bloc without an agreement at the end of October.

Robert de Niro’s company has sued an ex-employee for $6m for embezzlement and Netflix bingeing. Canal Productions alleges Chase Robinson accrued enormous hotel and Uber bills, and spent hours at work watching and streaming TV.

Opinion and analysis

Facebook Twitter Pinterest There are signs that the labour market is not as good as the employment growth might suggest. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP

The latest labour force figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics demonstrate that the economy is showing signs of weakness. And while we’re not falling over the cliff just yet, underemployment and interest rate expectations are both sobering, writes Greg Jericho: “Things can go downhill fast. A month ago, on 19 July, the market was pricing in a cut in the cash rate to 0.75% and a good chance of a further cut to 0.5%. Now it is fully pricing in that cut to happen by early next year and is predicting a 50:50 chance of another cut to 0.25% within 12 months.”

Despite a seemingly unending series of gaffes and unimpressive performances in the two Democratic primary debates so far, Joe Biden retains a solid lead in almost all polls. He’s been consistently between 10 to 20 percentage points ahead of his main rivals nationally and also enjoys comfortable margins in Iowa and New Hampshire. The reason for this, writes Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti, is to be found in what many consider Biden’s main weakness: he’s an old-school candidate, with a policy platform and campaigning style that seem to belong to another political era. In short, he’s a boring candidate. And that’s why he’s doing well.

Sport

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Steve Smith leaves the field after being hit on the head by the ball during the Ashes Test in London on Saturday. Photograph: Matthew Impey/REX/Shutterstock

England have named an unchanged squad for the third Ashes Test against Australia, which starts at Headingley on Thursday. Australia will wait on Steve Smith’s availability, after their talismanic batsman was felled by a Jofra Archer bouncer on Saturday and he was diagnosed with concussion. England trail 1-0 in the series.

Every Saturday morning in winter, netball competitions across Australia begin when the dew is still wet and the sun has barely peeked above the horizon. But by early afternoon, the A graders play the marquee game: it’s the match everyone wants to see, and it will be talked about until the following Saturday. That’s precisely what it felt like in the second-last home and away round of Super Netball on the weekend.

Thinking time: Don’t believe Netflix. ‘Serial killer whisperers’ do more harm than good

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Dictaphone rolls again … Season two of true crime dramas Mindhunter. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix

Uncork the chianti, serve up the fava beans, have an old friend for dinner: the second season of Mindhunter has returned to Netflix. Plenty of true crime dramas claim that the misdeeds they depict actually happened, but Mindhunter goes further. David Fincher’s series is based on the theories and career of John Douglas, whose 1995 book, from which the show is adapted, is full of claims that the innovative methods he established in the basement of the FBI’s Quantico base were critical in establishing modern-day thinking in criminal and investigative psychology. But can you really hunt a mind?

Some of the world’s top forensic psychologists think not. “To put it bluntly, Douglas’s writings should be in the fiction section,” says David Canter, emeritus professor at the University of Liverpool. “Speculations about the mind of a criminal have never helped a real-life investigation. It is very often of no use at all to the police how the killer got on with their mother. Many forensic pathologists wouldn’t let profilers anywhere near investigations they’re involved in, because they’re often so unhelpful.” So does that matter, if it makes for good TV?

Media roundup

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a Liberal party branch president organising an event to discuss the party’s “woman problem” has dismissed the concerns of a former staffer who made allegations of sexual assault within the party. The ABC reports Australia’s defence force is looking to install its technology in Antarctica, even though the Antarctic Treaty explicitly bans military activity. And the Australian reports that Catholic church groups and the federal government are set to clash, as cabinet considers Christian Porter’s plans for new religious exemptions from discrimination laws.

Coming up

Trade and investment opportunities are expected to dominate Scott Morrison’s trip to Vietnam, the first standalone visit an Australian prime minister has made there in a quarter of a century.

The judge in Clive Palmer’s Queensland Nickel trial is expected to deliver her decision on his request to terminate the trial.