Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 17 January.

Top stories

Theresa May’s government has survived a vote of no confidence with a majority of 19, after rebel Tories and Democratic Unionist MPs backed her just a day after rejecting her Brexit deal. That means one more option for resolving the crisis – an early general election – has been ruled out. Instead, May reaffirmed her refusal to countenance joining a customs union, and proposed cross-party talks to establish if any kind of Brexit deal could win the backing of the Commons. But Labour and the Liberal Democrats refused the invitation until she ruled out a no-deal Brexit. Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, said May would forever be known as “the nothing-has-changed” prime minister. “No one doubts her determination, which is generally of an admirable quality, but, misapplied, it can be toxic,” he said. “And the cruellest truth of all is that she doesn’t possess the necessary political skills, empathy, ability, and most crucially, the policy, to lead this country any longer.” Unimpressed voters have described the unfolding chaos as “a shambles”.

Peter Dutton has come out on top in GetUp’s poll that asked voters which “hard right” politicians it should target to unseat in the upcoming federal election. Tony Abbott and George Christensen placed second and third in the poll. GetUp already had campaigns running in Dutton’s Queensland electorate of Dickson and in Abbott’s Sydney seat of Warringah. But it has announced it may add more politicians to its “vote out the hard right” campaign, with the marginal Western Australian seat of Christian Porter, who came in fifth spot, likely to be a late addition.

Melbourne has become the first city in Australia to have all its council-owned infrastructure powered by renewable energy. The power is supplied by the Crowlands windfarm near Ararat in western Victoria, which was funded through a power-purchase agreement with the City of Melbourne and 13 other Melbourne councils and institutions. The transition means council libraries, gyms, childcare centres and other buildings are now fully powered by renewable energy, as are the city’s street lights. The group agreed to purchase 88GWh of electricity a year, about half the energy that will be produced by the 80MW Crowlands windfarm. Under the agreement 40% of the power will be bought at a fixed price, while 60% will be a market-based price that is renegotiated every two years.

World

The scene of the suicide attack in Menbij. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

A suicide bombing claimed by Islamic State has killed at least four US soldiers in north-eastern Syria, just weeks after Donald Trump said the terrorist group had been defeated and he was withdrawing American forces. The US vice president Mike Pence reiterated in a speech hours after the bombing: “The caliphate is crumbling and Isis has been defeated.”

The first green leaf to grow on the moon has died, temporarily thwarting hopes that food and crops could be grown in space. The cotton plant, which sprouted recently on board China’s Chang’e 4 lander, relied on sunlight at the moon’s surface, but as night arrived at the lunar far side and temperatures plunged as low as -170C, its short life came to an end.

US House speaker Nancy Pelosi has requested Donald Trump delay, or deliver in writing, a State of the Union address scheduled for 29 January unless the government reopens this week. Pelosi said the annual remarks would place an undue burden on the departments responsible for security at the event.

Police and military have launched a massive crackdown in Zimbabwe after what appears to be have been a widespread breakdown of public order linked to food and fuel shortages. Civilians have been beaten and abducted in the unrest, and access to the internet was cut off.

Kenya’s president has vowed to “relentlessly pursue” anyone involved in the Nairobi hotel complex attack, confirming earlier reports that 14 civilians had died. Uhuru Kenyatta said security forces killed all four militants who stormed the DusitD2 hotel in the centre of the Kenyan capital.

Opinion and analysis

Sydney train commuters at Strathfield station. Photograph: David Moir/AAP

God bless public infrastructure, writes Greg Jericho. That and continued low interest rates have been the big drivers for economic activity in Australia. But with construction rates dropping off lately, and the Coalition government promising tax cuts, Labor has an opportunity to go to the election promising to boost spending on public projects and thus spur the economy.

In Belvoir Street Theatre’s most ambitious show in its 35-year history, the Sydney Town Hall has been reinvented and taken over by a story as epic and Australian as Cloudstreet or The Secret River. S Shakthidharan’s multilingual play Counting and Cracking features 16 actors, 50 characters and four generations of the same family, which it charts from Colombo in the 50s, through the Sri Lankan civil war, finally arriving in western Sydney in the 21st Century. Shakthidharan hopes Counting and Cracking “can help people heal”, encouraging a feeling among his community that “we’re part of the Australian story”.

Sport

Erin Osborne of the Melbourne Stars and Alyssa Healy of the Sydney 6ers during the Women’s Big Bash League. Photograph: George Salpigtidis/AAP

It has been a season to remember for the Women’s Big Bash League as the competition heads into its fourth finals series this weekend. With the state of men’s cricket in disarray and the BBL’s longer format leading to a slight downturn in crowd numbers and television ratings, the WBBL has taken the opportunity and run with it.

Alex de Minaur will face Rafael Nadal in the next round of the Australian Open after beating Henri Laaksonen in a five-set epic. Roger Federer, Angelique Kerber and Maria Sharapova all went through as well. And the American doubles champion Bob Bryan, who is back on the court after an operation just five months ago, says Andy Murray’s career could be prolonged by a metal hip implant.

Thinking time: Dunes, the lungs of the ocean

Devastation caused by 2016 storms at Collaroy on Sydney’s northern beaches.

Photograph: UNSW Water Research Laboratory/EPA

Collaroy and Narrabeen on Sydney’s northern beaches are as well known for their peerless status in Australian surfing culture as being pin-ups for rising sea levels due to climate change, writes Wendy Harmer. The beaches feature in ubiquitous news photographs of smashed houses, tangled timber and a swimming pool wrenched from its moorings after vicious storms in 2016. Residents have been in a decades-long standoff with government officials about whether a seawall is the solution to coastal erosion. But coastal scientists worldwide agree that while seawalls protect land and property in the short-term, they eventually and inevitably destroy beaches.

“Think of the dunes of a beach as its precious lungs … breathing in and out with the tides. Sand is accreted, washed away. Breathe in. Breathe out. For the vast swathes of Australia’s uninhabited shoreline it’s a dynamic, natural process.”

Media roundup

Workers on cargo ships transporting Australian livestock to overseas markets were offered money by animal advocacy groups to film and leak footage of cruelty to stock on-board, the Daily Telegraph reports. Victoria’s royal commission into mental health has been “flooded” with submissions, the Age reports, with almost 4,500 people relating stories of a system in crisis, and a growing suicide risk as vulnerable people miss out on treatment. And the federal aged care minister, Ken Wyatt, has told the ABC the use of physical and chemical restraints in nursing homes is “totally unacceptable”. In one case examined by the ABC, a resident was strapped in a chair for 14 hours and heavily sedated with antipsychotic medication.

Coming up

Labor leader Bill Shorten will hit the campaign trail in Queensland, travelling on the “Bill bus” to Beenleigh.

Scott Morrison is due to announce changes to the Pacific labour scheme during his visit to Fiji.

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