Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 12 July.

Top stories

Christian Porter has sought to allay concerns that a federal religious discrimination bill could water down protections for LGBT people in state legislation. The attorney general told Guardian Australia the bill “is not intended to displace state law nor will it import specific provisions of international law” after LGBT advocates warned that it could undermine state protections against vilification or discrimination on the grounds of sex or sexuality.

Boris Johnson has claimed that he fully supports the UK’s ambassador to the US, Sir Kim Darroch, a day after it was reported that his previous repeated and public refusals to do so had convinced the diplomat he had no choice other than to resign. Johnson came under withering attack in parliament for having refused to say he would keep Darroch on as ambassador if he became prime minister. The Labour MP Pat McFadden called Darroch’s resignation “a dark moment for our democracy” and said Johnson’s lack of support for the envoy was “a chilling warning of what is to come if he becomes prime minister”.

Australia’s peak lawyers group has warned the legal aid system is at “breaking point”, after the extraordinary derailment of a high-profile murder trial in NSW. Three men were due to face trial in the supreme court on Monday for the 2016 alleged killings of the underworld figures Pasquale Barbaro and Mehmet Yilmaz. But the court was forced to postpone the four-month trial for at least a year because the legal aid rates were woefully inadequate for suitable barristers to take on such a complex case. The Law Council of Australia president, Arthur Moses, said the case was a worrying example of chronic legal aid underfunding “undermining the criminal justice system”.

World

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Royal Navy frigate in the Gulf, where British ships have been put on high alert. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

British ships operating in the Gulf have been put on the highest state of alert, amid fears that UK-flagged commercial vessels are vulnerable to attack by Iranian gunboats.

Mandatory evacuations have been ordered in several communities south and east of New Orleans as the city and a surrounding stretch of the Gulf coast brace for a possible hurricane at the weekend.

Saudi Arabia may be planning to relax the country’s strict male guardianship laws to allow women to leave the country without needing permission from a male relative, according to reports.

The British extremist Tommy Robinson has been given a nine-month prison sentence – of which he will serve about 10 weeks – for contempt of court after he broadcast reports that encouraged “vigilante action” against defendants in a sexual exploitation trial.

A French chef has demanded his restaurant be removed from the Michelin Guide, denouncing the “profound incompetence” of the guide’s inspectors. “They dared to say that we put cheddar in our soufflé of reblochon, beaufort and tomme!” said Marc Veyrat of Le Maison des Bois.

Opinion and analysis

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Melbourne comedian Corey White. Photograph: Penguin Random House

The award-winning Australian comedian Corey White was still in preschool when his father went to prison but the old man’s shadow looms large over White’s new memoir. In The Prettiest Horse in the Glue Factory, White navigates a childhood marred by violence, drug use and neglect – but, as bad as his home life was, foster care was worse. Trauma has left him unable to piece together his memory, and revisiting the past comes at a cost. “I didn’t recover memories but I recovered emotions, I think,” he says. “Prior to the breakdown, I experienced these things as just almost like video images that I had no emotional investment in. I regained the sense of how visceral they were, and really a sense of how frightened or terrified I was.”

Psychedelic mental health treatment is expected to be approved in Australia within five years. The Victorian government is being urged to make the state a research leader in the field, which involves therapy using magic mushrooms or MDMA to treat mental illnesses. The UK, Canada, Europe and Israel are also active research hubs. Dr Paul Liknaitzky of Mind Medicine Australia – which lobbies for psychedelic-assisted treatments for mental health – said the stigma around the therapy has been lifting globally in the past 15 years.

Sport

England have thrashed Australia by eight wickets to reach their fourth Cricket World Cup final, chasing down a target of 224 with 17.5 overs to spare. It was a day of pain at Edgbaston for the Australians, who were reduced to 14-3 before Steve Smith’s 85 restored some respectability, but England’s batsmen made short work of the modest chase and now face New Zealand in the final.

Australia are the top predators of the Netball World Cup, having claimed 11 of 14 titles since 1963, but now the Diamonds suddenly look beatable, writes Erin Delahunty.

Thinking time: kd lang on being a lesbian icon

Facebook Twitter Pinterest kd lang: ostracised by the country music industry when she came out in the 1990s. Photograph: Paul Natkin/Getty Images

In 1992 Kathryn Dawn Lang came out as gay during an interview with the Advocate, an LGBT magazine, while promoting her album, Ingénue. Some radio stations stopped playing her music; she felt ostracised by the country music industry. In 1993 she appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair. She had continuously played up to, and cultivated, her androgynous looks – rocking a teddy-boy quiff and often a loosely tailored suit on stage. For the magazine shoot, she appears in a barber’s chair, her tie loosened around her neck, with her face being shaved by Cindy Crawford. The image is disruptive, beautiful and poignant: it’s no longer a man’s world. “Elvis lives, and she’s beautiful,” Madonna said at the time. “I was surprised when I heard a rumour that I’d slept with Madonna,” lang chuckles.

Now 57, the singer is about to embark on a UK tour called Ingénue Redux, in which she will perform the album in its entirety. “The first time I listened back, after 25 years, was when we were rehearsing,” she says, speaking from her home in Calgary. “I thought: ‘Ugh, this is not going to be easy. It’s a dirge, it’s so slow.’” But when she had completely relearned the album: “It felt like putting on an old pair of shoes.”

Media roundup

The Australian reports that Scott Morrison will veto any move to enshrine an Aboriginal “voice to parliament” in the constitution. The Australian Financial Review says Josh Frydenberg and the Reserve Bank are at one over the economy. And the Advertiser reports on testimony to a South Australian parliament inquiry calling for koalas on Kangaroo Island to be killed and half the kangaroos in the Mount Lofty Ranges eliminated because they are causing “irreparable damage”.

Coming up

The inquest into overdose deaths of six young people at music festivals in NSW continues in Sydney.

The LNP’s annual convention begins in Brisbane, with the state leader, Deb Frecklington, speaking this morning.

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