Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 27 August.

Top stories

A Labor donor says he was shocked to learn his $500 donation was inflated to $5,000 on official records. “Stanley” Yip attended a fundraising dinner at the centre of an explosive anti-corruption probe. The Independent Commission Against Corruption is currently investigating a potentially unlawful donations scheme that may have helped to hide a $100,000 donation to Labor from Huang Xiangmo, a Chinese billionaire barred from donating in New South Wales due to his links to property development. Icac is examining whether “straw donors”, or fake donors, were used to hide the true origin of Huang’s $100,000 cash donation. Its inquiries have so far focused on a fundraising dinner organised by the Chinese Friends of Labor in March 2015, just weeks before the state election, where 12 separate donors gave Labor amounts that fell just below the legally allowed cap. Documents released by the Icac’s Operation Aero show at least one guest at the fundraising dinner was sent a receipt for a donation of $5,000, despite having paid $500 for his ticket.

Drug overdoses kill one Australian every five hours, according to a new report. Fatal drug overdoses are more common in regional Victoria and NSW than anywhere else in Australia, and those deaths are increasingly linked to heroin, the report has found. The overdose report by the Penington Institute, released on Tuesday, found that the number of deaths owing to unintentional drug overdose in Australia had increased 38% between 2001 and 2017 and was growing by 3.4% a year. The fastest-growing rates of death were in regional areas and among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, who died of unintentional overdose at three times the rate of non-Indigenous people.

Sydney Catholic and Anglican churches say they will not back student climate strikes, unlike the Uniting church, which has granted support to the school climate strike movement and given students support to attend the marches. Students across the country are planning to walk out of school on Friday 20 September, to protest government inaction on the climate crisis. A spokesmen for the Sydney Anglican diocese and Sydney Catholic Schools told Guardian Australia they would not go as far as the Uniting church. Sydney Catholic Schools, which oversees 152 systemic schools, said it had to abide by the NSW education department’s guidance on the strikes. “While we are thrilled to see our students passionate about the environment, the best way for young people to really make a difference is to receive a quality education,” a spokesman said.

World

Satellite data has recorded more than 41,000 fires in the Amazon region so far this year – more than half of those this month alone. Experts say most of the fires are started by farmers or ranchers clearing existing farmland. Photograph: Victor Moriyama/AFP/Getty Images

Leaders at the G7 have agreed to a US$20m (AU$29.5m) plan to help Amazon countries fight wildfires. It was announced by the French and Chilean presidents on Monday and will involve a program of reforestation, to be unveiled at the UN general assembly meeting next month. Donald Trump, who skipped G7 talks on the climate crisis and the Amazon fires, has meanwhile defended his bid to host the next G7 at his Miami resort.

French president Emmanuel Macron has condemned what he called “extraordinarily rude” comments made about his wife by far-right Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro, escalating their diplomatic clash.

Boris Johnson has repeatedly refused to rule out proroguing parliament to try to force a no-deal Brexit. The European Union, meanwhile, would refuse to negotiate a trade deal with the UK if the government reneged on the Brexit bill, EU sources have said.

A UN spokesman has called for maximum restraint after a reported drone attack in a Hezbollah stronghold south of Beirut that was blamed on Israel. “It is imperative for all to avoid an escalation,” he said.

KFC is was working with meat substitute company Beyond Meat on a one-day trial of plant-based chicken nuggets and wings. The product is called Beyond Fried Chicken and comes with the tagline “a Kentucky fried miracle”.

Harvey Weinstein has pleaded not guilty on Monday to a new indictment that included revised charges of predatory sexual assault. The revisions have forced the delay of Weinstein’s trial from 9 September to 6 January 2020.

Opinion and analysis

‘The good news is policies to make work more flexible are keeping women working, however they still face the struggles that come with going part-time.’ Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

Recent figures show just how much the working life for women has changed over the past 40 years, writes Greg Jericho: “Policy over the past 20 to 30 years to make work more flexible for women with children and to increase the availability and affordability of childcare does look to have had the impact of keeping women working. But the data also highlights that women still face the same struggles that come with being the one who goes part-time – the drop in superannuation, and the likely losing out on the promotional path and the higher pay that goes with it.”

A first-of-its-kind study of racism in Australian schools has found one in three students report being the victim of racial discrimination by their peers. Researchers from two universities surveyed 4,600 primary and secondary students at government schools in NSW and Victoria on their experiences of racial discrimination in schools. The study found that 40% of students in years five to nine from non-Anglo or European backgrounds reported experiencing racial discrimination by their peers. Close to 20% of students from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background reported experiences of racial discrimination from their teachers.

Sport

This AFL season has provided many memorable moments, but what of the vanquished? What of the teams who missed the eight, variously promising much, threatening to achieve but in the end leaving fans unfulfilled, unhappy and with no plans for September. Scott Heinrich analyses what went right for the also-rans, what ultimately went wrong, and what can be done to reverse their fortunes next year.

All Blacks coach Steve Hansen loves a punt, writes Matt McILraith. “In moving Beauden Barrett from first five-eighth to fullback just two months – and four Test matches – out from the tournament in Japan, the noted racehorse owner has already taken arguably the biggest wager of his All Blacks coaching career.”

Thinking time: The Problem with Natural Born Killers

The controversy-courting 1994 road movie about a couple of bloodthirsty killers took the media to task but failed to investigate further. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

Natural Born Killers came to theatres 25 years ago, only a few short months after OJ Simpson’s infamous flight from justice in a white Ford Bronco in June. At the time, director/co-writer Oliver Stone could not have anticipated the scale of the spectacle that the scandal would mutate into, a 24-hour news orgy of speculation and generally ghoulish exploitation of the public’s morbid fascination with carnage. The Simpson trial and the feeding frenzy of coverage surrounding it would later exemplify the sociological feedback loop that had already formed the target of Stone’s furiously delivered critiques.

Natural Born Killers took a vampiric news-industrial complex to task for the irresponsible manner in which it covered the day’s most heinous crimes. Though outlaws Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) rape and torture and kill with wanton abandon, the truest villain of the film may be Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr), an unscrupulous yellow journalist and host of the shamelessly lurid true-crime program American Maniacs. He glorifies their exploits for an audience all too eager to eat up the reckless sensationalism he peddles, which in turn motivates Mickey and Mallory to continue one-upping their own slaughters. But today, Stone’s theories – from his Freud-adjacent analysis of his characters’ dysfunctions to his portrayal of the media as the big bad boogeyman – feel simplistic and passé.

Media roundup

The ABC reports an artist and anti-Chinese government activist has accused the National Gallery of Victoria of “self-censoring” after it declined a request to host an event that will feature a talk about democracy and Hong Kong. The Australian carries the headline Electric cars “have higher CO2 emissions” on its front page. The Daily Telegraph reports that Donald Trump has refused to sign Scott Morrison’s pact against online hate speech at the G7.

Coming up

The Victorian supreme court will hand down its judgment on whether the Labor party acted lawfully when it expelled John Setka from the party in July.

Icac will continue hearings in an inquiry it is conducting into an alleged attempt by the NSW branch of the Labor party to circumvent electoral funding laws.

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