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

Top stories

Donald Trump has fired John Bolton, his national security adviser, in tweets which laid bare searing internal divisions within his inner circle, saying he had “disagreed strongly” with his top aide. The president’s firing of his third national security adviser in as many years appears to have caught even the White House by surprise. Bolton himself added to the confusion, commenting minutes after his public dismissal that he had offered to resign on Monday night but that Trump had replied: “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.” “Trump hired Bolton to break things, like the Obama administration legacy and the orthodox foreign policy establishment in general. Now, with the 2020 election coming, a downturn looming and a second presidential term in doubt, Trump is trying to build a foreign policy legacy of his own – or at least a reasonable impression of one,” writes Julian Borger. Here’s how Bolton’s departure is likely to affect US foreign policy.

The EU is looking to the Northern Ireland-only backstop to break Brexit deadlock, pinning its hopes on British negotiators reverting to the approach that was previously rejected by Theresa May as a threat to the constitutional integrity of the UK. With Boris Johnson facing a choice between breaking his word and extending the UK’s EU membership beyond 31 October or bringing back a tweaked deal for a last-gasp vote in parliament, officials and diplomats have expressed hope that the prime minister will make a U-turn.

Environment department officials were acutely sensitive about meeting Angus Taylor over critically endangered grasslands while his family’s company was being investigated for alleged illegal land clearing in New South Wales, according to internal emails. The information is revealed in correspondence that had previously been partially redacted from documents obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws. It comes after Labor again pursued the energy and emissions reduction minister in question time on Tuesday and called on him to resign over the saga.

Former Liberal leader John Hewson has called on Scott Morrison to grant government MPs a conscience vote on a motion declaring a climate emergency. Hewson, who will join MPs on Wednesday to champion the new parliamentary motion which is being pursued by the Greens and is supported by most of the lower house crossbench, told Guardian Australia there was no controversy associated with declaring a climate emergency in 2019, “because my view is it was an emergency 30 years ago”.

World

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An Israeli legislative election will be held on 17 September. Photograph: Abir Sultan/EPA

Benjamin Netanyahu has announced he will annex large swathes of the occupied Palestinian territories if he is re-elected, a decision that for decades has been considered an endgame scenario for Palestinians’ aspirations of statehood.

A Turkish newspaper has revealed Jamal Khashoggi’s last words before he was apparently drugged and lost consciousness. The Saudi journalist urged his killers not to cover his mouth because he had asthma and could suffocate, according to Turkey’s Sabah newspaper.

An Iranian female football fan has died a week after setting herself on fire outside a courtroom after learning she may face six months in prison for trying to enter a stadium, a news agency reported on Tuesday.

The operator of the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will have to dump huge quantities of contaminated water from the site directly into the Pacific Ocean, Japan’s environment minister has said.

Gwyneth Paltrow has been revealed as a “a crucial source” in the Harvey Weinstein revelations, in a new book which says the actor was scared of going on the record at first but then encouraged other women to speak out.

Opinion and analysis

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trolley, New Orleans, 1955, from The Americans by photographer Robert Frank. Photograph: Robert Frank. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

Photographer Robert Frank, who has died aged 94, helped to change the direction of photography. The Swiss-born photographer’s seminal book The Americans, which had an introduction from author Jack Kerouac, featured 83 pictures rejecting many conventions of photography up to that point. The black-and-white images are considered Frank’s masterwork and focused on figures from the overlooked margins of American life – from teenage couples and factory workers to bikers. Dubbed the “Manet of the new photography” by the New Yorker critic Janet Malcolm, Frank was considered the father of “the snapshot aesthetic”, which captures a spontaneous moment taken on the fly.

Can we save the world, one tree at a time? asks Van Badham. Bushfires are raging across Queensland and NSW. At the same time Australia faces a land-clearing crisis, although we know that deforestation drives more forests to burn, writes Badham. “And this is why both habitat protection and active reforestation and revegetation has to be prioritised by governments – at all levels – in the pressing climate fight. The battlefront is not only to save the forests we have left, but to properly revegetate the spaces humanity has already taken over – for while wildlife areas perish, cities are also warming.”

Sport

The Socceroos have earned a comfortable 3-0 win over Kuwait in the opening 2022 World Cup qualifier. In front of a hostile away crowd, Australia showed no signs of rust despite only playing one game since January as they surged at the hosts’ backline at the Al Kuwait Sports Club Stadium on Tuesday night.

England’s Jimmy Anderson believes he can become the world’s No 1 Test bowler once more. To make this goal a reality, he now plans to study how other elite athletes prolong their careers.

Thinking time: The French Fleabag

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Camille Cottin in Mouche – the French version of Fleabag. Photograph: CANAL+

Mouche, or the French Fleabag, is a near replica of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s hit TV series, with Paris taking the place of London and Camille Cottin in the title role. What Cottin delivers, though, is by no means a tribute act to Waller-Bridge. To call her elegant would be insufficient. Cottin has a whole munitions depot of self-possession and chicness that gives her performance a more knowing, and also more mournful, edge. At 40, she’s older than Waller-Bridge was, but she doesn’t have more maturity – just less goofiness.

Cottin’s breakthrough show, Connasse, came out in 2013. The timing of her next TV show, Call My Agent, was fortuitous: with the benefit of subtitles and Netflix distribution, Cottin reached an international audience for the first time. Call My Agent, about a talent agency, has been a fantastic calling card, illustrating how much greater Cottin’s range was than “clown”. It generated a lot of discussion, partly by being great, and partly because it was, as she says, the first prime-time French drama to feature a lesbian whose “homosexuality was not the subject. The subject is how it is hard for her to commit to a relationship, because what she likes is the act of seduction. The fact that she likes women is completely accepted.”

Media roundup

The Sydney Morning Herald’s front page announces the cashless welfare card has “failed”. The Australian reports that there isn’t enough water available to conduct major environmental flows in the northern Murray-Darling River basin, and that environment minister Sussan Ley is “bracing the public for ­horrendous environmental consequences in coming months.” The ABC reports: “The most powerful bureaucrats in Australia have been wargaming to prepare the country for “national-scale systemic climate risks” that could impact “the full spectrum of human activity” and are already ‘overwhelming’ the country’s ability to respond.”

Coming up

Friends of the Biloela Tamil family stuck in detention on Christmas Island will go to Parliament House with more than 250,000 signatures supporting their release.

The shadow attorney-general, Mark Dreyfus, will give a speech at the National Press Club titled “Time’s up: why Australia needs a national integrity commission”.

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