Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 4 April.

Top stories

Harsher welfare measures that force friends to vouch for the relationship status of social security recipients are damaging and are at odds with the standards recently applied to Barnaby Joyce and Julie Bishop, a single mothers’ group says. The National Council for Single Mothers and their Children wrote to Malcolm Turnbull on Tuesday in protest at the changes. The new policy requires those on the single-parent payment and a similar Newstart payment to find a “referee” to sign a legally binding form verifying that the welfare recipient is single. Giving false information can now land the referee in jail.

Terese Edwards, the council’s chief executive, told Turnbull the requirements effectively allowed Centrelink to “police women’s relationship status”. They were demeaning to women and belonged in the 1970s, she said. Edwards also said there was a clear double standard. Low-income women were distrusted and required to have third parties prove they were telling the truth, while federal ministers were able to “self-determine” the classification of their relationships.

Police have surrounded YouTube’s California headquarters, responding to reports of an active shooter on the campus. San Bruno police wrote on Twitter: “We are responding to an active shooter.” Employees posted about barricading themselves inside rooms as police and ambulances arrived at the scene. “Heard shots and saw people running while at my desk. Now barricaded inside a room with coworkers,” Vadim Lavrusik, a YouTube employee, posted to Twitter. Aerial footage shows staff leaving the building with their hands in the air.

Airborne mercury pollution from Loy Yang B power station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley more than doubled to 831kg in 2016-17, an increase of 123% over five years, according to an annual national survey of toxic emissions. The brown coal-burning power station produced more than 640 times the airborne mercury pollution of Eraring power station near Newcastle in NSW, Australia’s largest coal-fired power station. Environmental Justice Australia researcher Dr James Whelan said the pollution gap between the two power stations was an example of the failure of state-based regulators to properly and consistently control air pollution.

A Dutch lawyer has been sentenced to 30 days in prison for lying to federal agents, in the first formal conviction obtained by Robert Mueller in his investigation of Russian election interference and alleged collusion between aides to Donald Trump and Moscow. Alex van der Zwaan – who has worked with Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort – pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with another former Trump adviser, Rick Gates, and a person the FBI has assessed as being tied to Russian military intelligence. The Dutchman is the fourth person to plead guilty in the Mueller investigation.

Richard Di Natale outlines his dream for a “People’s Bank” to the National Press Club today – a nationalised, Reserve Bank of Australia-backed bank focused on mortgages and savings for everyday borrowers. The Greens leader argues the banking royal commission and the housing affordability crisis all point to a system that has failed Australians. He maintains that the only way to get things back on an even playing field is government intervention. Housing investors need not apply, though. “It’s already easy enough for baby boomers to buy their fifth rental property,” policy documents say. “The role of the People’s Bank isn’t to make it easier still.”

Sport

The Commonwealth Games is Australia’s chance to repair its damaged sporting reputation, writes Martha Kelner. Organisers are hoping the Gold Coast Games can help restore the event’s sporting and cultural relevance. But will cricket’s ball-tampering scandal add a sour note to the event?

England have drawn in the second Test in New Zealand, and lost the series 1-0. But Joe Root says England “could not have done more” against the Kiwis, and praised Jack Leach for his “encouraging debut”.

Thinking time

Employable Me – a new ABC series from the director of Changing Minds – follows a group of subjects with neuro diverse conditions as they attempt to find employment in Australia. “What a lot of people were telling us is that they couldn’t even get past the job interview,” says the director, Cian O’Clery. One of them is Cain Noble-Davis, who has a diagnosis of autism and who wants to be a film critic. “From a very early age I had a real connection with film … I’d be reciting lines from The Breakfast Club in the playground,” he told Guardian Australia’s own film critic, Luke Buckmaster.

In the era of patient autonomy, full disclosure of a terminal diagnosis is often regarded as a moral absolute. The reality, however, is more nuanced, as decisions about treatment are not just about the individual – they usually affect the whole family. “Often, there is one chance to get it right, and it ought to be the highest duty of medicine to sensitively encourage a conversation that holds so many consequences,” writes Guardian Australia columnist and oncologist Ranjana Srivastava. “But part of being a good doctor is accepting that a good patient doesn’t have to think like you.”

Dog fights and sex parties: Çağdaş Erdoğan spends his nights photographing the explosion of underground rebellion in parts of Istanbul after dark. Erdoğan, a 26-year-old Kurdish Turk, is part of SO Collective, an independent photo agency set up in 2013 by photojournalists who have been blacklisted by the authorities and marginalised by the now largely state-run media. “People have been pushed into the night,” says the photographer, who is now facing jail.

What’s he done now?

Donald Trump has threatened Honduras’ foreign aid from the US because a caravan of migrants is headed for the US border planning to apply for asylum. “The big Caravan of People from Honduras, now coming across Mexico and heading to our “Weak Laws” Border, had better be stopped before it gets there. Cash cow NAFTA is in play, as is foreign aid to Honduras and the countries that allow this to happen. Congress MUST ACT NOW!” Trump tweeted.

Media roundup

The Sydney Morning Herald reports concerns about the link between some Australian defence department scientists and China’s missile development agency. The West Australian splashes with the appointment of Kim Beazley as the state’s governor. And the ABC has a piece from the Conversation, analysing whether you really can learn a new language in three weeks, as many smartphone apps claim.

Coming up

The former NSW premier Mike Baird will give evidence at an upper house committee inquiry into museums and galleries over his government’s 2015 plans to move the Powerhouse Museum in Ultimo to Parramatta.

The Commonwealth Games opening ceremony is on tonight in Carrara Stadium on the Gold Coast. Prince Charles will open the Games.

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