Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 10 January.

Top stories

The director of the collapsed flight booking service Bestjet has told a meeting of the company’s creditors he was forced to put the company into voluntary administration after he did not receive a promised $3.2m payment from its former owners. With thousands of Australian travellers at risk of losing money from the company’s collapse, the current and former owners have pointed the finger at each other. Robert McVicker, who bought Bestjet only a month before its collapse, told the creditors’ meeting he was expecting a payment from Bestjet Singapore, a company in which Bestjet’s former owner, Rachel James, is still listed as a director. But James has claimed she is “distraught” over the collapse and blamed McVicker’s management for it.

Australia is considering Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun’s request for asylum after the Saudi teenager was found to be a refugee by the United Nations on Wednesday. The 18-year-old woman barricaded herself in a Bangkok airport hotel room on Sunday to prevent her forcible return to Saudi Arabia, where she claims her family will kill her because she has renounced Islam. On Wednesday, the UN high commissioner for refugees assessed Qunun, found her to be a refugee and referred her to Australia for resettlement. A UNHCR spokeswoman told the Guardian Qunun would remain in their care until a long-term solution has been found. “She remains in a safe location in Bangkok for the time being,” she said. The home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, has warned there will be “no special treatment” for Qunun.

Nearly 800,000 federal workers remain without pay in the US after Donald Trump used his first Oval Office address to reiterate his demand for a border wall and stoke immigration fears using dubious claims. Top congressional Democrats accused him of fearmongering and using rhetoric “full of misinformation and even malice”. The shutdown is now in its 19th day and the president remains at an impasse with congress, saying he has an “absolute right” to declare an emergency if a deal can’t be made. The shutdown has forced the closure of national parks, placed certain food and drug inspections on hold, and sparked concerns over air travel and healthcare.

World

Theresa May in parliament on Wednesday. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images

Theresa May will be obliged to present UK MPs with a new Brexit plan within three days if her current proposal is voted down next week, after a procedural amendment to the plan’s progress through the Commons was passed amid chaotic scenes.

A Cambodian court has jailed a man for three years for insulting the king in Facebook posts, the second known conviction under a new lèse-majesté law enacted last year that rights groups fear could be used to stifle dissent.

Fresh investigations have been launched into allegations of sexual and physical abuse against R&B singer R Kelly. Prosecutors in Chicago and Atlanta have appealed for new information after the airing of Surviving R Kelly, a documentary that contained claims of abuse by the R&B singer.

Iranian state TV has for the first time broadcast images of the April 2016 arrest of the imprisoned Iranian-UK dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe at Tehran airport. The pictures of her shocked face were shown during a lengthy documentary that claimed the BBC was trying to undermine the Iranian state by training reporters opposed to the regime.

The wife of a Norwegian multimillionaire missing for 10 weeks has probably been kidnapped, police have said. There is no proof that 68-year-old Elisabeth Falkevik Hagen is dead or alive, but a ransom of nearly $15m has been demanded for her return, to be paid in the cryptocurrency Monero.

Opinion and analysis

Tourists pose for pictures at Arizona’s Grand Canyon this month. Photograph: Anna Johnson/AP

Is Instagram ruining travel? The short answer is that claim is a bit hysterical, writes Bridie Jabour. “But the longer answer: well, maybe Instagram is ruining some things. It is easy to lament the sensation of visiting places just for the ’gram as a sign of an increasingly self absorbed society at worst, and unoriginal at best. But we cannot just blame Instagram for these places being mauled by people.”

Far from reassuring a troubled nation, Donald Trump’s televised address from the Oval Office on the border wall tried to scare the living daylights out of them, writes Richard Wolffe. “Televised addresses from the Oval Office have marked historic moments of national anxiety: JFK and the Cuban missile crisis, Ronald Reagan and the Challenger disaster, George HW Bush and the start of the Gulf War. To that august list we can now add Donald Trump and the most pressing crisis facing this commander-in-chief: the disastrous damage already inflicted on his own ego by his dopey idea of a beautiful border wall.”

Sport

The former world No 1 Andy Murray is struggling with fitness and form. Photograph: Patrick Hamilton/AFP/Getty Images

There are growing fitness and form concerns over Britain’s leading hope for the Australian Open, as former world No 1 Andy Murray struggles to return to peak form following hip surgery. Murray and Johanna Konta carry Britain’s slim hopes in Melbourne.

The International Cricket Council has announced an unprecedented 15-day amnesty for anyone who has failed to report a corrupt approach in Sri Lanka. The country’s sports minister recently disclosed that the ICC had told him Sri Lanka was considered the most corrupt country in world cricket.

Thinking time: Cate Blanchett on theatre as a provocation

Cate Blanchett stars in When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other. Photograph: Steven Chee

London’s National Theatre has been overwhelmed by demand for tickets for Cate Blanchett’s latest appearance, the controversial When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, which looks like being one of the UK’s biggest plays of the year. It is – at least on paper – a loose adaptation of Samuel Richardson’s 1740 proto-novel Pamela, relating the story of a young maidservant’s relationship with her employer. It’s been called everything from tawdry S&M to a set of case notes for Stockholm syndrome.

“A lot of the things the play brings up is stuff I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” Blanchett says. “The boundaries of gender, how language constantly fails us and confines us, keeps us in paradigms and frameworks which are frustrating and confounding.” How will a play about the relationship between a predatory, all-powerful man and a woman being employed as a sexual plaything be received in the atmosphere of #MeToo? “I always see theatre as a provocation,” Blanchett says. “You’re not up there running for office, you’re asking a series of questions. Some people might be enraged, some perplexed, some people might be excited. Hopefully it’s the conversation afterwards that’s the most important.”



Media roundup

Sweeping overhauls of superannuation could add as much as $500,000 to some accounts, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The government plans to weed out under-performing funds and force regulators to put the consumers’ interests first. The West Australian says record grain prices in WA mean farmers are in for a rare windfall. The $6.5bn harvest is the most valuable in the state’s history. And the ABC reports that 2018 was Australia’s third hottest year on record, and the sixth driest year for NSW.

Coming up

The foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, will lobby for the release of the Melbourne-based refugee soccer player Hakeem Al-Araibi when she makes an official visit to Thailand.

Hundreds will converge on Sydney’s Central station today for the trip to the annual Elvis Festival in Parkes.

Supporting the Guardian

We’d like to acknowledge our generous supporters who enable us to keep reporting on the critical stories. If you value what we do and would like to help, please make a contribution or become a supporter today. Thank you.