Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 5 January.

Top stories

Donald Trump’s lawyer has issued a “cease and desist” notice to the publisher of the explosive Michael Wolff book in an attempt to halt its imminent release. Excerpts of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House threw the administration into a frenzy on Thursday, portraying a constant state of chaos and dysfunction at the highest level, with multiple sources claiming Trump was unfit to serve as president. The book is due to be released on Tuesday, but Trump’s lawyers have demanded publication be stopped. The lawyers sent a similar letter to Steve Bannon, accusing the former chief strategist of violating an employee agreement and defaming the president. Wolff’s publisher Henry Holt is understood to be in discussions to move forward publication of the book, with 250,000 copies already dispatched.

Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s speech, privacy and technology project, said Trump’s lawsuit had no chance of success. “Even Donald Trump’s lawyers aren’t crazy enough to present this to a court,” he said. “It would be extraordinary and unprecedented for a court to respond to these claims by blocking publication. That is not going to happen ... I think there is an audience of one for these legal threats and that’s Donald Trump.”

Mass bleaching of coral reefs is happening on a larger scale and more often due to global warming, a new study has found. A team of international scientists, whose report is published in Science today, studied 100 reefs around the world and found a “dramatic shortening” of the time between bleaching events was “threatening the future existence of these iconic ecosystems and the livelihoods of many millions of people”. The scientists analysed existing data on coral bleaching events as well as new field research conducted on the Great Barrier Reef after the longest and worst case of bleaching caused by climate change killed almost 30% of the shallow-water coral. A separate study has found ocean dead zones with zero oxygen have quadrupled in size since 1950, threatening mass extinctions of marine life.

Climate change caused by fossil fuel burning is the cause of the large-scale deoxygenation, as warmer waters hold less oxygen. The coastal dead zones result from fertiliser and sewage running off the land and into the seas.

The Institute of Public Affairs has labelled the government’s bill on foreign donations “potentially very dangerous”. The libertarian thinktank joins Labor, the Greens and GetUp in opposing changes in the bill that may force third-party campaign groups to register as associated entities. The IPA’s John Roskam told Guardian Australia he was worried the changes might affect civil society groups, professional organisations such as the Australian Medical Association, the National Farmers’ Federation and even the churches. Unlike the Greens and Labor, who support a ban on foreign donations in principle, the IPA rejects that part of the bill too, calling it “unnecessary”.

The largest prime number has been discovered and contains more than 23m digits – one million more digits than the previous record holder. The new largest prime number is the 50th rare Mersenne prime ever to be discovered and known simply as M77232917. The figure is arrived at by calculating two to the power of 77,232,917 and subtracting one, leaving a gargantuan string of 23,249,425 digits. “I’m very surprised it was found this quickly; we expected it to take longer,” said Chris Caldwell, a professor of mathematics at the University of Tennessee. “It’s like finding dead cats on the road. You don’t expect to find two so close to one another.”

Serious security flaws that could let attackers steal sensitive data, including passwords and banking information, have been found in processors installed in virtually every modern computer. The flaws, named Meltdown and Spectre, were discovered by security researchers at Google’s Project Zero in conjunction with academic and industry researchers from several countries. Meltdown is “probably one of the worst CPU bugs ever found”, said Daniel Gruss, one of the researchers at Graz University of Technology who discovered the flaw. It could allow hackers to bypass the hardware barrier between applications run by users and the computer’s core memory.

Sport

Australia took late honours on the first day of the fifth Ashes Test, snatching two vital wickets in the dying minutes. Paceman Pat Cummins added two scalps earlier in the day and can look forward to his first year of uninterrupted Test cricket after an Ashes series that looks to have laid to rest an injury-plagued start to his career, writes Adam Collins.

Andy Murray is heading home after pulling out of the Australian Open. Murray is now contemplating surgery on his injured hip, which could keep him out of the game for months, but could also save a career that has been imperilled since his painful exit from Wimbledon in July. He has not played since.

Thinking time

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Papua New Guinea highlands. Photograph: Helen Davidson/The Guardian

In 2008 a man died of malaria in Togoba in Papua New Guinea. But the residents of Togoba didn’t believe in malaria. He was killed by sorcerers, they said. Villagers captured two women and tortured them until they confessed, then set them alight in a horrific dispensation of summary justice. In a rapidly modernising PNG, traditional beliefs in sorcery remain, writes Helen Davidson. Changes in the law have failed to prevent gruesome murders and torture. “Nothing will change as long as those who perpetrate accusation-based violence continue to be allowed to carry out their barbaric acts with impunity,” says Ruth Kissam, director of the PNG Tribunal Foundation.

Christian Bale has made a career out of playing brooding, damaged men, and now he’s back in Hostiles, playing, well, another brooding, damaged man in the gritty western. He talks to Rory Carroll about why the film industry has to change, balding up to play Dick Cheney and why he will never, ever, do a romcom. “The fact anybody hires me is surprising,” says the Oscar winner, who appears to be at least partially motivated by insecurity. “That could be really short-lived.”

When Brigid Delaney was researching her book on the wellness industry, she subscribed to a heap of self-improvement podcasts and listened to none of them. Until now. In 10 days over the holidays, she listened to 75 podcasts to glean the best tips for helping us keep our New Year resolutions. Here are the five most useful things she learned – be warned, you may want to finish your morning coffee before you contemplate pre-dawn exercise, IV infusions or ditching social media for good.

What’s he done now?

Two days before the NFL playoffs Donald Trump has retweeted a picture of a women lying prone on a grave, her face buried in her hands, a baby in a capsule beside her, commenting: “So beautiful....Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel!” According to US media, the picture shows a military widow grieving for her young husband in a San Diego graveyard.

Media roundup

The Canberra Times reports that the national black spot program is a “Band-Aid” road safety solution that should be scrapped, according to an expert who says years of inertia by successive federal governments has contributed to poor progress in reducing the road toll. The NT News reports on calls by a long-time tourism industry figure who says the government should subsidise airfares to the Territory in a bid to entice more people to settle there permanently. And SBS has an interview with a Sydney-based refugee of Sudanese background, who discusses how his adopted city used sport to get young people off the streets and tackle youth crime.

Coming up

The 7th Aacta International awards will be held in Los Angeles. Australians nominated are Craig Gillespie, Hugh Jackman, Margot Robbie, Ben Mendelsohn, Abbie Cornish and Nicole Kidman.

It’s the second day of the fifth and final Ashes Test in Sydney.



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