Good morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 19 December.

Top stories

Donald Trump is just hours away from being formally impeached, with Nancy Pelosi saying Democrats have “no choice” but to sanction the president. House representatives are debating the articles of impeachment, but Trump himself is set to headline a re-election campaign rally in Michigan as the vote is cast. Protests across the US have unfolded as Trump faces becoming just the third president to suffer impeachment. If charged, he will continue to serve as president before a Senate trial next month, where it’s likely Republicans will block the two-third majority needed to remove the 73-year-old from office.

Chronic water shortages could have a deadly effect on remote Aboriginal communities over summer, where hundreds rely on live-saving kidney treatment. A single dialysis treatment for renal failure requires 600 litres of clean, cold water – something increasingly in short supply as central and northern Australia endure another heatwave. “People are getting worried for their lives,” says Dadu Corey, an Alice Springs elder. At least nine communities are running out of water, with the Northern Territory’s Power and Water Corporation reporting that most of the 72 communities in the arid region are “faced with some level of water stress”.

Sydney is bracing for extreme temperatures with forecasts of 44C in store in Penrith, with volatile winds posing an “enormous challenge” for firefighters across NSW. “We’re going to have a number of wind fronts escalating the fuel, the fires burning, and the potential to have spot fires and embers travelling very long distances,” Gladys Berejiklian confirmed. A statewide total fire ban has been in place since Wednesday morning and will remain until midnight on Saturday.

Australia

Scott Morrison with Martin Parkinson. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Governments in Australia and around the world are not doing enough to avoid 2C warming, according to the former head of the prime minister’s office, Martin Parkinson. The nation’s former top bureaucrat also heavily criticises the Greens for their historical opposition to Kevin Rudd’s carbon pollution reduction scheme.

The Norwegian energy giant Equinor has cleared the second of four regulatory hurdles to begin oil exploration drilling in the Great Australian Bight. Environmental groups have expressed themselves as “gobsmacked”, calling it “madness” to be opening up new oilfields.

Australia’s business community has backed a net zero emissions target by 2050, with 96% of those companies surveyed urging governments not to delay the transition to a decarbonised economy.

The Australian Tax Office has had a major win in corporate taxation, with Google agreeing to pay $481.5m in tax, covering its 2008-18 earnings. The long-running campaign launched in 2015 by Joe Hockey delivers a near half-billion-dollar boost to the federal budget.

The world

European commission president Ursula von der Leyen. Photograph: Piroschka Van De Wouw/Reuters

The president of the European commission has warned a cliff-edge Brexit “will impact the UK more than us”, promising to make the most out of an “extremely challenging” year ahead. Meanwhile, the former UK shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry has declared her intention to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.

One of China’s top universities has removed the phrase “freedom of thought” from its charter, with a pledge to follow the Communist party’s leadership sparking rare outbursts of student defiance.

Indian authorities have passed an emergency law banning large gatherings in Delhi, amid escalating protests after a controversial citizenship law passed last week which Muslim leaders have called discriminatory.

Police in Brazil have raided the house of a longstanding friend of Jair Bolsonaro in connection with a major corruption investigation centred around the president’s son, Flavio.

Recommended reads

‘In my experience the adult posses of Sex and the City and Friends are as unrealistic as the giant New York apartments’

Deep, fortifying, true friendship is for the young. So the 80s classic film Stand By Me tells us, writes Josephine Tovey. Getting older, especially crossing into your 30s and beyond, means forgoing all that intimacy and connection, at least with people outside your family or your marriage. Data supports this but even if your close friendships get fewer they also get more resilient: “There is a lot of elasticity in these relationships. They can stretch, occasionally go slack, sadly, but often they snap back better than you might think.”

It’s a buzz term that was used across the 2010s but what will the “new normal” be for Australia’s economy in the 2020s? Despite emerging from the GFC in a more robust state than most other nations, Australia has been hugely outperformed by OECD rivals in terms of household incomes, writes Greg Jericho. Which could spell high underemployment next decade, as well as ongoing stagnant real wages.

Listen

It is literally the burning topic across Australia – but have the nation’s leaders done enough to anticipate the future threat of climate change? On this episode of Australian Politics Live, Katherine Murphy speaks to the former secretary of the PM’s office Martin Parkinson to discuss Australia’s policy history on the issue.

Sport

Mikel Arteta, seen here during his time as an Arsenal player, is set to be unveiled as the club’s next manager. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

Mikel Arteta appears set to be the new Arsenal manager, with the club holding final talks to secure Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City assistant. The news comes less than 24 hours after Carlo Ancelotti was revealed to be taking over at Everton.

With a Twenty20 World Cup on home soil less than a year away, it’s intriguing that Australia’s men’s team will head into 2020 with a 50-over team that looks much closer to the Test line-up than a 20-over outfit, writes Geoff Lemon.

Media roundup

A massive expansion of coal-fired power in China is pushing the world’s climate change targets out of reach, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. Victorian police will be armed with semi-automatic rifles next year as part of a hardline response to armed offenders and suspected terrorists, writes the Age. And high winds could cause the 400,000 hectare monster inferno north of Sydney to combine with a second blaze south of the city, warns the Daily Telegraph.

Coming up

Chris Dawson, who was the subject of the Teacher’s Pet podcast, returns to court on a murder charge.

Total fire bans remain in place across Australia including all of South Australia, all of NSW and the northern and north-east districts of Victoria.

And if you’ve read this far …

It’s one of the few places at work you can pop to for a cheeky social media session. But kiss long toilet breaks goodbye – thanks to a new seat design that claims it will reduce time spent in the bathroom by 25% thanks to being designed for discomfort.