Good morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 15 August.

Top stories

At least 23 people have been killed in the Italian city of Genoa after a bridge collapsed, with the debris from an 80m section of the Morandi Bridge being described by eyewitnesses as an “apocalypse”. A violent and sudden storm is believed to have caused the collapse, with about 30 vehicles on the bridge as it fell roughly 100m on to rail tracks below. Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, has expressed his condolences to families of victims and said: “A serious investigation into the cause of what happened must follow. No authority can evade an exercise of full responsibility.”

The disaster occurred on a major artery to the Italian Riviera and to France’s southern coast. Traffic would have been heavier than usual as many Italians were travelling to beaches or mountains on the eve of a public holiday, Ferragosto. “The scene is apocalyptic, like a bomb had hit the bridge,” Matteo Pucciarelli, a journalist for La Repubblica who lives in Genoa, told the Guardian.

Australia’s most vulnerable Centrelink recipients will no longer be excluded from a controversial automated debt recovery system, in a move that’s been condemned as “deeply irresponsible” by the Australian Council of Social Service chief executive, Cassandra Goldie. She has written to the human services minister, Michael Keenan, warning the move would leave those with existing mental illnesses open to “serious anxiety, depression and a sense of hopelessness”.

Found to be inaccurate in more than one in six cases, the so-called “robo-debt” system was introduced in mid-2016, and will now be extended to recipients whose files are marked with a “vulnerability indicator”. The government says it is obliged to recover overpayments and will employ added safeguards to help vulnerable people deal with the debt assessment process.



An Australian crossbench senator has been strongly condemned for an inflammatory maiden speech, in which he used the term “the final solution” and suggested the return of the white Australia policy. Fraser Anning, a Katter Australia member, called for a plebiscite asking Australians if they would want to end Muslim immigration, in a speech that drew the ire of the outgoing race discrimination commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane. “This is racism and bigotry openly on display in the Australian parliament,” Soutphommasane tweeted. “The use of such language risks inciting the most serious kind of hatred and violence against Muslims.”



The Turkish lira has recovered some lost ground as the nation’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, continues his offensive against the United States, calling for a boycott of electronic products from America. The lira rallied by almost 8% following days of losses, which had seen it reduced over 20% against the US dollar, following a pledge from the central bank to provide liquidity to the banking sector. Erdoğan conceded that the Turkish people have been paying a price] but warned “there will be a price [which] those who’re waging an economic warfare against Turkey will also pay”.

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority and farmers appear set on a collision course, after state and federal parliamentarians have called for governments to sell environmental water entitlements to farmers to alleviate widespread drought. New South Wales MP Pru Goward has called for access to “environmental water flows” to “keep breeding herds alive” but the MDBA has warned trying to meet farmers’ needs now may have wider environmental consequences. “The basin plan prepares us for dry times by ensuring that available water is shared across all water users, including irrigators and the river environment,” the director of river management, Andrew Reynolds, said.

Sport

Road cycling is a sport where races are often defined by challenging climbs or tricky descents but the UCI and Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee are facing criticism after the women’s road race course has been revealed to contain neither. It’s not the first time a women’s course has been noticeably tamer than the men’s but hopefully it could be the last, writes Stephanie Constand.

Cricketer Ben Stokes has been acquitted of charges of affray after a jury in Bristol handed down a not guilty verdict. Stokes and his co-defendants were all found not guilty after a six-day trial. The 27-year-old has been reinstated to the England squad and is free to play in the third Test against India on Saturday.



Thinking time

The biannual Antarctic photography exhibition is back with its chilly, majestic imagery, currently on display at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery as part of Hobart’s Antarctica festival. A solitary Adelie penguin dives into a surprisingly turquoise Southern Ocean in one image, Antarctic petrels pepper the face of an iceberg in another; but this year’s winner went to Sydney’s Sam Edmonds with his striking photo of a gentoo penguin in the snow.

Since its foundation 13 years ago, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, or BDS movement, has made many enemies. But how well do we understand the various dimensions of this campaign? Nathan Thrall outlines the deep history of boycotts in this disputed land, and how the movement has infuriated conservatives and progressives, pro-Palestinians and Zionists alike. “The chief innovation of the BDS call was not in the tactics that it advocated: boycott and divestment campaigns were already pervasive in 2005 ... What was new about BDS was that it took disparate campaigns to pressure Israel and united them around three clear demands.”

Barnaby Joyce claimed this week that people who shop at Kmart don’t care about the Paris climate agreement. But what did he mean by “people who shop at Kmart”? And has he visited a Kmart homeware section recently? “If we unpack what Joyce said, it was loaded with false class-based assumptions,” writes Brigid Delaney. “Such is the appetite for Kmart homewares – with their own Facebook fan pages and Instagram accounts – that the whisper of a side table causes a national wave of desire and disappointment.”

What’s he done now?

The open hostilities between Donald Trump and his former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman have escalated further, with the president calling the adviser a “dog” and a “crazed, crying lowlife” hours before his office announced he was suing, accusing Manigault Newman of breaching a 2016 non-disclosure agreement.



Media roundup

A ruling on sick leave entitlements by the Fair Work Commission could have ramifications for more than a million shift workers, reports the Age, with employees worried they could face massive demands for backpay. The Northern Territory chief minister, Michael Gunner, has vowed to contest a lawsuit brought on behalf of inmates of Don Dale youth detention centre, states the NT News. “This lawsuit is five years too late against the wrong government”, Gunner said. “We’re doing everything we can to fix this problem.” And the Australian Defence Force has faced rebuke from the defence minister, Marise Payne, after hiring gamers with a history of rape jokes and anti-Semitic comments to spruik air force recruitment online, the Daily Telegraph writes.

Coming up

The federal parliament’s joint standing committee on the national broadband network will hold hearings in Canberra on the business case for the network and its rollout in rural and regional areas.



The British billionaire steel magnate Sanjeev Gupta will turn the first sod on new solar farm at Whyalla, part of his takeover and turnaround plans for the town’s steelworks.

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