Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 18 April.

Top stories

The national energy guarantee will deliver no meaningful emissions reductions in its own right unless the proposed 2030 target for Australia’s electricity sector is made more ambitious, according to research. Data on renewables compiled by Green Energy Markets and funded by the activist group GetUp indicates the capacity of renewable projects now under construction exceeds what is required to achieve the 2030 Neg target of a 26% cut on 2005 levels by 2030.

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Modelling undertaken for the Energy Security Board shows an additional 9,271 megawatts of wind and solar will be required to deliver the Neg target. The report notes that, as things stand, 9,691MW of renewable projects are waiting to be delivered – meaning the target has already been overshot without the policy taking effect.

The family of the murdered anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia believe that three men awaiting trial for the crime were acting on orders from inside Malta. In his first full interview since his wife’s death in a car bombing six months ago, Peter Caruana Galizia claimed political interests were blocking the police investigation. “My sons and I are not convinced that our government really wants to establish who sent them, for fear such persons are in fact very close to our government,” he said. “For this reason we may never know the truth.”

Australians are battling against a tide of discarded plastic at beach clean-up events all across the continent, according to two years of data analysed by Guardian Australia. For the latest in Our wide brown land series on plastic, Graham Readfearn was given exclusive access to data about the garbage collected by Tangaroa Blue, a charity focused on the health of the marine environment, and the results are startling. More than 2.5m pieces of debris were collected from beaches and recorded in a database during 2016 and 2017 – and about three-quarters of those items were made from plastics. Our interactive map demonstrates just how bad the problem is across Australia.

The Matildas have survived a semi-final scare to reach the Asian Cup final. Australia needed an injury-time equaliser and penalties to escape from a monumental scrap with Thailand overnight. Australia stood on the brink of elimination at the end of 90 minutes, trailing the minnows 2-1 after a shambolic display. But Alanna Kennedy equalised in the first minute of added time to tie the game at 2-2 before Mackenzie Arnold saved three penalties in a row. Sam Kerr netted the decisive penalty to give Australia a 3-1 win in the shootout.

Young couchsurfers report having worse mental health and greater risk of suicide and self-harm than those sleeping on the streets, a study has found. Preliminary results from a research project involving couchsurfers in Brisbane found they were twice as likely to describe their mental health as “poor” than those sleeping rough. Couchsurfing remains a pervasive form of homelessness for young Australians. About 15,836 Australians indicated they were couchsurfing when applying for homelessness benefits in 2011-12, rising to 21,028 in 2013-14.



Starbucks will close all 8,000 of its US stores in late May for racial-bias training after two black men were arrested for “trespassing” while they were waiting for a friend in a store. The announcement came after the arrests last week in Philadelphia sparked calls for a boycott. Starbucks’ chief executive, Kevin Johnson, condemned the arrests and said he wanted to apologise to the men face-to-face.

Sport

Cricket on Channel Nine has long been the pinnacle of summer. Tan slacks, straw hats, cream jackets. Richie, Bill, Tony, Ian: way less cool than the Beatles, but stars in their own milieu. But now, after 40 years, it’s RIP for the broadcaster’s coverage of summer cricket.

Rugby Australia has chosen not to sanction Israel Folau for expressing his religious views about homosexuality. But the organisation will be holding its breath about the reaction from sponsors such as Qantas.

Thinking time

A century ago this week, Michael Ward’s war ended on a muddy field in France when shrapnel tore into his left thigh during the German spring offensive. After returning to Australia, Ward placed the memorabilia of his war – 107 items – into a small brown suitcase. He died in 1962 and little is known about him, but his suitcase survives. Researchers from Museums Victoria, who bought the case at auction, are trying to find Ward’s relatives to “rescue him from obscurity”.

We are living in a gender-obsessed moment where toys, books, clothes and sport are gendered, and elaborate gender reveals are a thing. But, according to Nicola Heath, this preoccupation with gender is not serving us well. So is it possible to remove gender bias from a child’s life? “Enter ‘theybies’: children whose parents keep their babies’ sex secret and raise them in an environment free from gender bias. In the past, parents who have hidden their child’s gender have been subject to vitriolic criticism but, in an era of toxic masculinity, “misogynistic trash talk”, revenge porn and eating disorders, are we finally ready for gender-creative parenting?”

It’s been accused of killing cinema, but are cinephiles right to fear a Netflix-dominated future? Last week Ted Sandaros, the chief content officer at Netflix, announced that the streaming giant would skip Cannes. The festival had “set the tone” by banning it from competition for refusing to release its films in cinemas, he told Variety. “We are choosing to be about the future of cinema. If Cannes is choosing to be stuck in the history of cinema, that’s fine.” Simon Usborne looks at some of the potential implications.

What’s he done now?

Midnight Tuesday was the deadline for Americans to fill in their tax forms – but not in the case of the president, who has applied for an extension. After two years Donald Trump is still refusing to release his tax returns – the only modern president to do so.

Media roundup

The Adelaide Advertiser reports that a fresh application to the UN to have the Great Australian Bight heritage listed is being prepared. The listing would give it the same status as the Great Barrier Reef. The Courier-Mail splashes with a report that doctors are fed up with treating patients who present with phoney illnesses they have Googled online, and tens of millions of dollars of health funding is being wasted. Plastic bag bans are on the way in – but how will they affect you, and what can you use for bin liners? The ABC science team explores.

Coming up

The banking royal commission continues its hearings in Melbourne and will focus on the conduct of financial advice providers.

Malcolm Turnbull continues his UK visit before the opening of Chogm on Thursday.

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