Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 29 March.

Top stories

Ecuador has cut Julian Assange’s communications with the outside world at its London embassy, where the WikiLeaks founder has been living for nearly six years. The Ecuadorian government said it had cut internet access because Assange had breached “a written commitment made to the government at the end of 2017 not to issue messages that might interfere with other states”. His behaviour on social media “put at risk the good relations [Ecuador] maintains with the United Kingdom, with the other states of the European Union, and with other nations”.

Assange tweeted on Monday challenging Britain’s accusation that Russia was responsible for the nerve agent poisoning of a Russian former double agent and his daughter in Salisbury. He also questioned the decision by the UK and more than 20 other countries to retaliate by expelling Russian diplomats. Ecuador cut Assange’s internet access in October 2016 amid fears he was using it to interfere in the US presidential election.

The newly installed South Australian independent senator, Tim Storer, says he isn’t about backroom horse-trading but a boost to the Newstart payment is a key objective of his period in federal politics. In a broad-ranging interview with Guardian Australia’s political editor, Katharine Murphy, the economist says he wants to promote “prosperity and fairness”. This week Storer forced the government to hit pause on its vaunted big business tax cut, refusing to sign on until the Coalition countenanced broader reform.



A majority of Australians would support phasing out coal power by 2030, including half the people in a sample identifying as Coalition voters, according to a survey by a progressive thinktank. The research funded by the Australia Institute says 60% of a sample of 1,417 Australians surveyed by Research Now supported Australia joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance. The alliance is not legally binding, and its membership does not include major coal exporters and users. The survey suggests there is a core level of support across Australia’s partisan divide for signing on.

A single mothers’ group says IT outages affecting the government’s child support agency are creating anxiety, confusion and fears that payments may not be made before Easter. Pluto, the multibillion-dollar system designed to administer child support payments, has experienced significant problems. The Community and Public Sector Union said the system had been inoperative for four days and was still unstable. The government said there had only been “intermittent issues, which have been resolved”.

Scientists at Australia’s leading marine science agency say an attack on the integrity of their research into threats to the Great Barrier Reef was flawed and based on “misinterpretation” and “selective use of data”. The Australian Institute of Marine Science researchers have responded to accusations made in November in the Marine Pollution Bulletin that claimed much of their work “should be viewed with some doubt”. In November Piers Larcombe, an industry consultant affiliated with the University of Western Australia, and Peter Ridd, of James Cook University in Queensland, claimed there was a lack of “quality control” in marine science. The pair claimed to have identified flaws in nine scientific papers. An Aims scientist, Britta Schaffelke, says she led the response to the criticism because: “We wanted to set the record straight. We have laid out clearly where we disagree and how the initial findings still hold.”

Sport

Steve Smith and David Warner have been banned for a year after the ball-tampering crisis, with Cameron Bancroft banned for nine months. Warner was revealed as the architect of Australia’s plot, about which Cricket Australia said: “Cheating probably an appropriate word.” Marina Hyde has analysis on a very modern cricket crisis, while Ben Smee says Smith owes an apology to his mother.

With the second season of AFLW wrapped up, some think it’s a good time to propose rule changes in an attempt to improve the “spectacle” of women’s footy. This is pure folly, writes Kate O’Halloran, and, if the league moves to dilute its women’s product, it risks losing more young girls to other codes.

Thinking time

Formal dinners are over, but casual cooking for friends throws up a new set of dilemmas you may have to navigate this Easter. The Guardian has compiled a foolproof etiquette guide for being a good host – and an ever better guest. Quick tips? Arrive late and bring more booze than you need.

The latest Index of Relative Socioeconomic Advantage and Disadvantage shows the discrepancy of wealth across Australia. “Across the 26 seats the ALP holds with more than 60% of the two-party-preferred vote, there is a skew towards the lower ends of socioeconomic advantage,” writes Greg Jericho, adding: “But the skew in the safe LNP seats is much more obvious and much more at the other end of the scale. Nearly half of residents in 31 safe Liberal party seats are in the top 30% of advantage.” Which partly reveals why the Labor party’s policies are finding more traction within the electorate than those of the Coalition.

Have you taken the plunge yet and downloaded all your Facebook and Google data? Dylan Curran did, and found himself wading through 3m documents. Years of Google search terms (and deleted searches), everywhere he’d been through Google tracking, his entire YouTube history, which apps he used, how best to target him with advertising, his workout routine, every email he’d ever sent and streams and streams of photographs. Scared yet?

What’s he done now?

CNN has been tracking the US president’s movements and noted he has stayed out of the public eye for almost a week – this from the man who never misses a photo op. Since the Stormy Daniels allegations aired on Sunday there have been no public events held at the White House, and Donald Trump spent the weekend at his golf course. Easy to avoid reporters’ curly questions when you’re teeing off behind the secret service.

Media roundup

The Australian reports that Malcolm Turnbull has been presented with a legal blueprint for how to curb soaring rates of Indigenous incarceration, and redirect a portion of the $3.9bn spent locking up Indigenous people into early intervention programs. The ABC has an analysis piece on the rise and fall of Steve Smith, saying he could have been the best batsman since Bradman. The West Australian reports federal MPs are split on the health value of e-cigarettes.

Coming up

Today is the final day of Cardinal George Pell’s committal hearing to determine whether he will faces trial on charges of historical sexual offences.

The Murray-Darling basin royal commission will begin visiting basin communities to get feedback.

The morning mail will be taking an Easter break but will return on Tuesday.

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