Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 9 October.

Top stories

As many as 20 homes may have been lost in an out-of-control bushfire burning in northern NSW. The blaze at Busbys Flat, south of Casino, was one of two that were still at emergency warning levels on Tuesday night. The NSW Rural Fire Service said a number of homes in the village of Rappville, with a population of about 250 people, were destroyed when the fire ripped through the town. “I’ve lost the bloody sheds, the house, lost everything,” a resident, Danny Smith, told reporters on the scene.

Donald Trump has said he prevented the US ambassador to the EU from testifying to congressional impeachment hearings, calling them a “kangaroo court”. Democrats leading the impeachment investigation said ambassador Gordon Sondland’s lawyers had been called by a state department official after midnight, leaving a voicemail message ordering him not to attend Tuesday’s hearings. The late-night call came after Sondland handed over WhatsApp messages and other communications from his personal devices to the state department, which was refusing to provide them to the House committees holding the impeachment hearings. House Democrats have responded by moving to subpoena Sondland.

Christopher Pyne’s firm is lobbying for a company that won more than $2m in contracts from the defence department in the past year. Tender records show Saber, in the 12 months before it engaged the former defence minister’s lobbying firm GC Advisory, won three contracts with the defence department worth about $2.7m. The contracts were all awarded through an open and competitive process and there is no suggestion of impropriety, but concerns have been raised about the engagement of Pyne’s firm. The lobbying code prohibits former government ministers from engaging “in lobbying activities relating to any matter that they had official dealings with in their last 18 months in office”.

World

Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel. Photograph: Annegret Hilse/Reuters

Talks aimed at reaching a Brexit deal are on the brink of collapse, as a No 10 source said Angela Merkel was making a deal impossible and Brussels accused Boris Johnson of trying to play a “stupid blame game”.

Turkey has vowed to press ahead with attacks on Kurdish-led forces in Syria, despite confusion over US policy after officials appeared to backtrack on Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from the area.

At least 13 women have died and eight children are missing after a boat capsized in rough seas off the Italian island of Lampedusa on Sunday night as a patrol vessel attempted to save it.

More than 100 children are among thousands of people detained in Egypt in an effort to prevent further protests against the rule of Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi.

Ecuador has moved its government from the capital in Quito amid violent protests over the end of fuel subsidies.

Opinion and analysis

Tony Abbott at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Military buff Tony Abbott is the wrong choice for the Australian War Memorial, writes Paul Daley. “Peter Stanley, the winner of the 2011 prime minister’s prize for Australian History, says it has been too long since a professional historian was on the war memorial council and that Abbott is no substitute. Stanley is among many notable Australians who have opposed the controversial plans – hatched by the current memorial director, Brendan Nelson – to spend $500m on expanding the institution so that it can showcase more military hardware and mount exhibitions on current conflicts.”

Australia’s music industry is in dire need of performance spaces, writes Brigid Delaney. “Only a few years ago, Tim Heath was playing bass in the Basics and touring the world. Now he’s on the other side of the stage, running a 165-year-old live music venue in country Victoria, with his musician wife, Felicity Cripps. The pair took over the lease of the 1854 heritage theatre in Castlemaine in 2016, and have transformed it from a dilapidated building into a cultural hub. But when they signed the lease in 2016, Cripps and Heath had only 10 days until they had to open – so a small team worked 18-hour days. ‘It was filthy – centuries of crap we had to try and take to the tip,’ says Heath.”

Sport

The Premier League faces losing one of its automatic Champions League places under proposals being floated by the European Leagues.

Football fans in Australia can be quick to point out everything that’s wrong with the domestic scene, write Richard Parkin and Jonathan Howcroft. But on the eve of another A-League season, there are reasons to be cheerful.

The Socceroos will seek to cash in on resource-poor Nepal in World Cup qualifier on Thursday, writes John Duerden. “The visitors have just one usable pitch back in Nepal and anything other than a comfortable home win is unthinkable.”

Thinking time: Up the Duff

An illustration by Kaz Cooke, author of Up the Duff

“It makes me emotional, knowing that hundreds of thousands of pregnant women over the last 20 years have had my ‘voice’ in their head for the journey,” writes Kaz Cooke, author of Up the Duff and its sequel, Babies & Toddlers. “Readers tend to read it week by week as they progress in pregnancy, and they say, “How did you know I’d have a stuffed nose that week?” or, “ I started to cry watching the news the exact same time you mentioned it.” Partly it’s because I took notes during my own pregnancy, about physical hassles, but also about feelings – something largely ignored by pregnancy books at the time. They assumed you lived in England or America, were married, white and terrified about carrot cake making your foetus too fat.

“A lot has changed since the first edition of Up the Duff in 1999. Talkback callers are no longer scandalised by the title. Male book-page editors ignore it, rather than dismissing it in a paragraph, as one did then. My stretch marks have faded to silvery badges of honour.”

Media roundup

The Australian leads with the news that Joel Fitzgibbon will call on Labor to reach a “sensible settlement” on climate change and adopt the Morrison government’s 2030 emissions reduction target, arguing that the policy shift would lift the party’s support in working-class and regional areas. The Australian Financial Review reveals that Angus Taylor will in a speech today “double down” on “a push to extend the life of coal power generators and provide incentives for new gas and pumped hydro plants, setting the Morrison government on a collision course with its top energy policy adviser”. The ABC reports that the Australian chapter of a white supremacist group will host a concert at a secret location in Melbourne this weekend because there are no laws to stop it, Victoria’s premier, Daniel Andrews, has said.

Coming up

The former NSW Labor boss Jamie Clements will give evidence to an Icac inquiry into political donations.

Scott Morrison will meet with his Netherlands counterpart, Mark Rutte.

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