Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 5 November.

Top stories

As the final countdown begins to Tuesday’s midterm elections, an already rancorous battle for Congress has erupted into open name-calling over Republican efforts to mobilise voters through racially tinged propaganda. The Sunday political talk shows were dominated by cantankerous disputes over race-baiting. Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told CNN’s State of the Union: “What you see in the closing argument is dog-whistle politics, appeals to racists, just the worst of America.” Donald Trump has also been talking up his contribution to the health of the US economy: Dominic Rushe and Larry Elliott analyse the validity of his claims and the longer outlook.

The ugliness of the campaign is mirrored by naked attempts at voter suppression and gerrymandering, above all in Georgia, where the Republican secretary of state, and candidate for governor, Brian Kemp, has announced an investigation into alleged hacking of the state’s voter registration system by Democrats. US associate law professor Ian Samuel says the American right is attempting to install permanent minority rule, guaranteeing control of the government even as the number of people who support their political program dwindles.

A wealthy Queensland family lobbied for the Brisbane-to-Melbourne freight line to run past their airport, documents reveal. The government originally announced its preferred route for the $10bn line in 2010, following an exhaustive investigation into more than 50,000 options. But significant changes were announced last year to a section running through Queensland’s Darling Downs, a decision that has infuriated farmers and landowners who have suddenly found themselves in the railway’s path. The new route diverted the line past the Wellcamp airport, near Toowoomba, which is owned by the Wagner family, and carries a single weekly freight flight to Hong Kong. The infrastructure department has said any suggestion that outside influence shaped the decision was false.

New Caledonians have voted against independence from France, in the first auto-determination vote to be held in a French territory since 1977, when Djibouti in the Horn of Africa voted for independence. Based on provisional results and with a participation rate of nearly 80%, the no vote stood at 56.9%, according to local media reports. Tensions between pro-independence indigenous Kanaks and descendants of colonial settlers who remain loyal to Paris have improved markedly over the past decade, but the no vote was well below some early polls, which could encourage nationalists to try for a new referendum in coming years.

The British Brexit campaigner Arron Banks has insisted there was “no Russian money, no interference” in the £8m ($14.5m) he gave to Leave.EU, an unofficial Brexit campaign, but refused to disclose which of his companies had generated the cash. Banks said he wanted to state “absolutely for the record, there was no Russian money or interference of any type”. Banks was referred by the UK Electoral Commission to the National Crime Agency after it found evidence to suspect the funds came from Rock Holdings, owned by Banks and based in the Isle of Man. The company is offshore and thus barred from donating.

Nine people from three generations of one extended family have been killed in Sicily after a river burst its banks and flooded a house outside Palermo. Fierce winds and rains have killed more than 30 people in Italy this week and razed thousands of hectares of forest in the country’s devastated north before moving south at the weekend. The family was spending the night in the villa in Casteldaccia, part of the Palermo district, following the All Souls holiday long weekend, when the swollen Milicia river flooded it. Three children – aged one, three and 15 – lost their lives.

Sport

South Africa cruised to victory in the first one-day international in Perth in just 29.2 overs, giving them a 1-0 lead in the three-match series. Australia have now lost 17 of their past 19 ODIs, and the team’s set-up came under fire on Sunday from Shane Warne, who said the motivational buzzwords in the team dressing room “made me want to vomit”.

Eleven of this year’s 24 Melbourne Cup runners are trained in the northern hemisphere and the foreign raiders have already won a swag of key Cup lead-up races this spring. Local hopes rest best on four-year-old mare Youngstar, trained by Winx’s mentor Chris Waller. But it’s the Brits who have a stranglehold on the race.

Ross Edgley has become the first swimmer to circumnavigate Great Britain. As he hobbled on to dry land for the first time in 157 days, his first thought was not for food, a warm blanket, or a hug. “It was so strange,” he laughed. “I was just really worried I was gonna stack it and face-plant the floor.”

Thinking time

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says America’s fast downhill slide should be a warning to other countries not to take their institutions for granted. Ahead of a visit to Australia, his warning on climate change inaction is similarly stark: “The magnitude of the dysfunction is unbelievable. And what’s remarkable about it is, some of the work I’ve done has shown the cost to our society of dealing with this is minuscule, at most 2% of GDP, whereas the cost of not dealing with it could be horrendous.”

Education needs to be about more than skills and economic utility, writes Matt Beard. The feverish drive for more Stem subjects in schools generates risks. “There is an inherent neoliberalism in reframing educational goals exclusively in terms of what’s likely to lead to secure employment. Educating people for employment is likely to provide them with skills and knowledge, but when education is restricted to mere job training, we risk closing students’ minds to matters that might not translate into employability.”

From the dentist who felled Cecil the lion to the woman who shot a goat on the Scottish island of Islay, keen hunters are happy to fork out small fortunes to kill wildlife. But why do they do it – and what is the true cost of their obsession? Elle Hunt investigates the world of trophy hunting, and the outrage it provokes when pictures of their kills are posted online.

Media roundup

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Gladys Berejiklian’s New South Wales government is planning to make “the biggest overhaul to stamp duty in 30 years”, delivering a tax break to future home buyers. The Australian covers unrest in University of Sydney student politics, where the daughter of Kerryn Phelps was heckled amid a brawl over the hotly contested women’s officer positions on the SRC. And the ABC reports that investigators have retrieved 69 hours of data from the Lion Air crash, after divers recovered the plane’s flight data recorder.

Coming up

The Australian Electoral Commission will officially declare the Wentworth byelection result in Sydney this morning.

The Melbourne Cup parade will take place from 12.45 at Federation Square.



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