Good morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 14 June.

Top stories

A gynaecologist who performed invasive and unnecessary surgeries on numerous women has been found guilty of professional misconduct and banned from practising medicine for three years, with a health district official also apologising to the affected patients.

Over a six-year period at least seven women received inappropriate medical treatment from Emil Shawky Gayed at the Manning rural referral hospital in Taree, NSW, including a hysterectomy that was performed on a woman without consent, even though, as a tribunal heard, a treatment of painkillers and bed rest may have been appropriate. A dozen other women and their families have come forward to allege poor treatment at the hands of Gayed since Guardian Australia broke the story last week.

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The school chaplains program has been labelled discriminatory by secular and atheist groups in a test case that could fundamentally alter the program. Access Ministries, one of the groups that provides pastoral care, requires that potential employees must be Christian, a point that will be challenged in the Victorian civil and administrative tribunal under anti-discimination laws. “If the case succeeds,” explains Assoc Prof Luke Beck, “the practical outcome will be that school chaplain jobs will need to be open to all qualified applicants regardless of religious belief. Religious discrimination is wrong. This case seeks to vindicate that important principle.”

An all-out assault on a rebel-held port in Yemen by Saudi-led coalition forces has aid agencies concerned about a potential humanitarian disaster, despite assurances from a coalition spokesperson that the mission won’t disrupt vital humanitarian supply lines or directly endanger the lives of more than 600,000 people living near the city. The attack marks the first time troops have tried to capture such a heavily defended major city since it entered the war against Houthi rebels three years ago. UN diplomats, backed by Britain and the US, have spent days pressing the UAE and Saudi Arabia to delay the attack, with an estimated 8.4 million people in Yemen facing pre-famine conditions.

Italy’s “ghost” politician, who ran for office anonymously after mafia threats, has revealed her face publicly for the first time in 25 years after winning her parliamentary seat. Endangered since she witnessed hitmen assassinate her husband in 1991, Piera Aiello stood as an anti-mafia candidate for the populist Five Star Movement in Sicily, and won her seat despite having to campaign anonymously. “After all these years spent behind the scenes, today I can finally look at the world in the face without fear of showing mine,” Aiello told the Guardian. “It’s like coming back to life.”

Ice in the Antarctic is melting at a record-breaking rate, posing catastrophic consequences for low-lying cities around the world, two new studies have found. The first report involved 84 scientists from 44 international organisations and claims to be the most comprehensive account of the Antarctic ice sheet to date, and found the rate of melting has accelerated threefold in the last five years. A co-author of the second study, Prof Martin Siegert, from the Grantham Institute, said: “Some of the changes Antarctica will face are already irreversible, such as the loss of some ice shelves, but there is a lot we can prevent or reverse.”

Sport

The 2026 World Cup will be jointly hosted by USA, Mexico and Canada after their bid defeated their only rival, Morocco, in the vote for the first expanded 48-team tournament. The Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, appeared visibly relieved about the joint bid, declaring a promise of netting Fifa $11bn in profit. Meanwhile, Spain’s World Cup campaign in Russia has lurched into crisis with their coach, Julen Lopetegui, being sacked just two days before their opening game.

The decision to unveil a statue of the Australian rules footballer Nicky Winmar outside Perth’s new stadium has caused a minor ruckus but, as Sean Gorman writes, criticism is symptomatic of mainstream Australia’s enduring failure to completely embrace and understand the importance of country and connection for the proud Noongar man.

Thinking time

Meet Amethyst DeWilde – 14 years ago her life took a turn for the worse when she quit her job in a toxic workplace and was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Now she’s one of almost 3 million Australians who live below the poverty line. Here she writes for the Guardian’s Life on the breadline project about her day-to-day challenges, about how she is often housebound by not having enough money for a bus fare, how she scrounges for food, and how her dog, Mojo, sometimes saves her life.

Language can shape the way we think, and the bombastic rhetoric of Donald Trump is reframing how statesmen operate. As George P Lakoff and Gil Duran explain, Trump has turned words into weapons – and he’s winning the linguistic war. “By faithfully transmitting Trump’s words and ideas, the press helps him to attack, and thereby control, the press itself. Trump knows the press has a strong instinct to repeat his most outrageous claims, and this allows him to put the press to work as a marketing agency for his ideas. His lies reach millions of people through constant repetition in the press and social media. This poses an existential threat to democracy.”

The housing market is cooling. But don’t crack the champagne just yet, writes Greg Jericho. “The latest housing finance figures from the Bureau of Statistics released on Tuesday show that investors continue to flee the housing market, but owner-occupiers are also taking out fewer mortgages than they were a year ago. Even with interest rates at, or near, record lows, right now the decision to buy or invest in property is being put off. Real estate, perhaps more than any other industry, is subject to peaks and troughs. And right now it is in a trough.”

What’s he done now?

Donald Trump has declared there is “no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea” after yesterday’s summit with Kim Jong-un, proclaiming his historic achievements and claiming that people can “sleep well tonight”. He has also fired broadsides at “Fake News”, Opec and congratulated USA for winning the rights to host the 2026 World Cup.

Media roundup

The Chinese telco giant Huawei appears set to be excluded from providing equipment for Australia’s soon-to-be-built 5G wireless networks, reports the Financial Review. The Sydney Morning Herald writes that the NSW government has earmarked $6bn to upgrade public school facilities with a surge in enrolments of more than 20% expected by 2031. “We are in the midst of a school building program NSW has never before experienced,” said the premier, Gladys Berejiklian.

Coming up

A judgment is expected to be delivered in Bauer Media’s appeal against the record $4.5m defamation payout awarded to Rebel Wilson.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics will release its labour force data, including the unemployment rate for May, at 11.30am.



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