Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 13 November.

Top stories

The former ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie has accused the former chairman Justin Milne of touching her inappropriately weeks before he sacked her halfway into a five-year term. Guthrie told the ABC’s Four Corners program Milne had engaged in “inappropriate touching” but would not detail whether it was sexual harassment. “I felt icky, it was inappropriate, it was unprofessional and inappropriate,” Guthrie said in an interview with the reporter Sarah Ferguson for Bitter End, a Four Corners investigation of what happened at the ABC when both Guthrie and Milne lost their jobs within days of each other.

Milne, who resigned after revelations of alleged political interference were leaked, denied he ever behaved inappropriately towards Guthrie and insisted she had been sacked because she was failing to lead the ABC. He denied a specific allegation he had rubbed Guthrie’s back at a board dinner at Billy Kwong’s restaurant in Sydney in November 2017. Later, on Q&A, the former Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs referenced the allegations and said many women felt let down by the handling of complaints within organisations. “The woman concerned will raise the issue at particular levels, perhaps test the waters, see what kind of response she’s getting, and very rapidly retreat and not make a formal complaint.”

Energy companies have questioned whether government can legally force their break-up for price gouging, as the sector continues to push back against the Coalition’s drive to deliver lower prices for voters before the next election. Legal advice for the Australian Energy Council queries the basis for the use of powers of divestiture, which could in theory see companies dismantled for breaching the government’s planned new rules which would also involve imposing price regulation. The sector has also been heavily critical of government plans to indemnify new fossil fuel generation against a future carbon tax, a move it says will reduce investment and competition.

The comic writer Stan Lee, co-creator of Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Daredevil and the X-Men, has died aged 95. Lee revitalised the comics industry with his superheroes, giving them complex emotional lives to colour their all-action adventures. As a writer and editor charged with keeping multiple stories going at the same time, Lee wove them together into a seamless fictional world where Iron Man could join forces with the Fantastic Four, and Captain America could find himself a wedding guest alongside Doctor Strange. The Marvel Universe he created crossed from page to screen in a series of TV and movie adaptations and changed the face of popular culture.

Israeli forces have killed seven Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in an apparently botched undercover raid and ensuing firefight that has threatened to destroy a precarious, unofficial ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. An Israeli lieutenant colonel was killed and another officer wounded in the operation on Sunday night in south-east Gaza, the first known ground incursion there by Israeli forces since the last war in 2014. In two apparent responses to the gunfight, rockets and mortar bombs were launched deep into Israeli territory, hitting a bus and severely wounding a 19-year-old, according to Israeli media.

Researchers will use DNA mapping to try to stop hawsksbill turtle poaching. The population of the critically endangered species has declined by more than 75% in the Pacific Ocean in the last century with demand for their illegal use in jewellery a key threat to its survival. Researchers are planning to take DNA from products such as earrings and bracelets and trace the source back to where the animal was poached. Hawksbills are the only sea turtles hunted for their shells, despite international trade in hawksbill products being banned more than 20 years ago.

Sport

The Matildas take on Chile again in Newcastle tonight. After this weekend’s loss – and with this week’s games marking the final international window before Fifa announces its final rankings of the year, a day before the Women’s World Cup draw is made on 8 December – Mike Hytner asks how costly the Matildas’ loss to Chile threatens to be.

Real Betis’s Barcelona tribute act is even better than the real thing, writes Sid Lowe. Before Sunday’s La Liga match, Real Betis’s manager had to apologise for his admiration for Barça. After beating them, Barcelona’s players spoke of their admiration for him.

Thinking time

The biggest driver of Australia’s expanding carbon emissions isn’t coal – it’s liquefied natural gas, known as LNG. A report has found that, between 2015 and 2020, the emissions growth from LNG will effectively wipe out the carbon pollution avoided through the 23% renewable energy target. Yet discussion about the impact of the rapidly growing industry has been all but absent from our national debate about climate policy. In the latest investigation in Our wide brown land series, Adam Morton takes a closer look at LNG and why the rapid rise in the associated emissions is a problem-in-waiting – both domestically and internationally.

The fall in housing finance has been led by a drop-off in investor activity on the back of regulatory crackdowns and pressure on banks to curb excessive debt. Lending by owner-occupiers slipped by its biggest margin since January 2011. It adds up, writes Greg Jericho, to a sign that house prices have some way to go before they bottom out. But affordability as measured by the average size of home loans has not improved. For that to change, he says, “we need wages to start growing strongly, and we need them to do that for some time yet before the reduction in unaffordability of the past few years is undone”.

Since his first day on the job, Trump’s interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, has exhibited a flair for ostentation. He rode through Washington DC on a white-nosed horse named Tonto. He also commissioned commemorative coins emblazoned with his name to hand out to visitors and staff. He replaced the doors in his office to the tune of more than $130,000, and installed a hunting-themed arcade game in the department’s cafeteria. Some longtime civil servants working at interior headquarters believe this flashy behaviour is a distraction from graver concerns. Zinke has been remaking the agency tasked with protecting public land into an ally of big energy.

What’s he done now?

He’s been criticised by Neil Young for his response to the California wildfires. In a statement on his website, Young wrote: “Imagine a leader who cares more for his own, convenient option than he does for the people he leads. Imagine an unfit leader. Now imagine a fit one.” Donald Trump has also claimed of the Florida recount: “An honest vote count is no longer possible – ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”

Media roundup

The Australian has spoken to the spiritual leader of the Islamic youth centre where the Bourke Street attacker Hasan Khalif Shire Ali attended prayer sessions, who has accused “the bloody prime minister” of making the Muslim community a scapegoat for the police. Major universities have launched “an extraordinary attack” on the Morrison government, the Sydney Morning Herald reports, after new cuts to academic research. A thinktank has used satellite images to identify 16 secret North Korean missile bases, the New York Times reveals.

Coming up

The federal court in Canberra will hear the latest twist in the battle between Gina Rinehart and two of her children over the control of the family’s multibillion-dollar trust.

Scott Morrison departs for the Asean summit meeting in Singapore and from there he will continue to Port Moresby for the Apec summit at the weekend.

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