Good morning, this is Stephen Smiley bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 10 September.

Top stories

Britain’s parliament is to be formally suspended for five weeks, with a bill to force Boris Johnson to ask for a three-month extension to Brexit if there is no deal agreed by 19 October set to receive royal assent. But Downing Street is still insisting that neither Johnson nor any member of his government will under any circumstances ask the EU for an extension to article 50. An official spokesman stressed that the prime minister would abide by the law but also refuse to request any delay. Eurosceptic MPs are insisting that Johnson still has options for “sabotaging” any request for an extension, such as making it clear separately that he does not really want one. But the former supreme court judge Jonathan Sumption said it would be in contempt of court if Johnson applied for an article 50 extension while simultaneously trying to get the EU to reject it. In an attempt to prove Johnson misled the House of Commons, MPs ordered Johnson hand over the private messages of his most senior aides relating to prorogation, and papers detailing Downing Street’s preparations for a no-deal Brexit.

Australians are increasingly concerned about droughts, floods, extinctions and water shortages, according to new research. The annual Climate of the Nation survey, conducted by YouGov/Galaxy for the progressive thinktank the Australia Institute, has found most people think all levels of government aren’t doing enough to combat the effects of global warming. The research, which will be launched in Canberra today by the independent who unseated Tony Abbott, Zali Steggall, also finds concern about climate-related extinctions has risen from 71% in 2017 to 78%, but notes there has been a drop in the percentage of people who thought coal power stations should be phased out gradually, down to 52% this year compared with 65% in 2017.

Labor’s Linda Burney is demanding that the federal government take steps to sort out what she has described as a “secret agreement” that controls the use of the Aboriginal flag in public, saying it is now unclear whether her own tattoo of the flag is consistent with intellectual property law. The flag’s designer, the Luritja artist Harold Thomas, holds copyright over use of the flag and has entered into a number of licensing agreements, including one with the non-Indigenous company Wam Clothing. Burney wants the terms of the arrangement made public.

World

A tearful John Bercow reveals he will step down as Speaker by 31 October. Photograph: House of Commons/PA

The Speaker of the House of Commons has announced he will step down after 10 years in the role. John Bercow, a former Tory MP who has faced criticism from Brexiteers, said he would go by 31 October but could stand down sooner if MPs vote for an early election.

CNN is reporting that the US extracted “one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government” in 2017, in part because of concerns that mishandling of classified intelligence by Donald Trump and his administration could jeopardise the source’s safety.

The collapse of talks about a tentative agreement between the US and the Taliban has triggered fears of a spike in violence in Afghanistan in the run-up to presidential elections.

Rescue workers in the Bahamas are continuing their grim search for bodies, as relief agencies work to deliver food and supplies. At least 44 people died when Hurricane Dorian hit.

And a 77-year-old Briton has become the oldest person to sail around the world alone, non-stop, and unassisted. Jeanne Socrates completed the voyage in 320 days.

Opinion and analysis

What if Australia’s record low standard variable home rate fuels house prices, but nothing else? Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

It’s official: the average standard variable home rate of 4.94% is the lowest recorded by the Reserve Bank. But, Greg Jericho asks, what if the record low rates fuel nothing but house prices? “The latest housing finance figures released by the ABS show that the slashing of the cash rate to 1.0% has had an immediate impact on home loans. But while this will likely lead to increased house prices, we are yet to see the rate cuts lead to any substantive improvement in actual economic activity. Given that, you can understand why the governor of the Reserve Bank might be hoping the government would lend a hand with infrastructure spending. At some point the government needs to realise the RBA cannot do it all.”

Critics have slammed plans to drug test people on Newstart. But what does the scheme involve? And what does the evidence say? Luke Henriques-Gomes has been asking the experts. The drug-testing trial would take place in Logan (Queensland), Canterbury-Bankstown (NSW) and Mandurah (Western Australia), and new welfare recipients would be selected for testing at random. Those who fail a test would have 80% of their welfare benefits quarantined for two years using a controversial cashless debit card. In New Zealand, about 40,000 welfare recipients undergo drug tests each year as part of a similar scheme; consistently, less than 1% of those tested have recorded a positive test. Ross Bell, the executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, says the NZ policy is “all a bit silly”. He thinks the Australian trial could be worse.

Sport

David Pocock at Saturday’s Wallabies match against Samoa. Photograph: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

Michael Cheika has hinted at employing a “horses-for-courses” selection policy for the Wallabies at Rugby World Cup. The options for the Australia coach are seemingly limitless, but picking the right combinations is crucial.

England have opted to defer any reboot of the Test team until after the final Ashes match. The urn has been secured by Tim Paine’s tourists who are 2-1 up with one match to play.

Thinking time: using maths to find love

Can maths help you find love?

They say love is a numbers game, and Bobby Seagull is taking them literally. A few years ago, the mathematician sat down to try to work out why he had been unlucky. Inspired by Peter Backus – a Manchester University economics lecturer who in 2010 wrote a paper titled Why I Don’t Have a Girlfriend – Seagull used the Drake equation, developed to estimate how many intelligent alien civilisations there might be in the galaxy, to determine his number of potential partners. “You start by assuming there’s infinitely many, then you keep on making the pool smaller and smaller.”

Like the Drake equation, online dating can present you only with a pool of suitable partners you could potentially meet. Speaking to Elle Hunt, Seagull admits he has only been on seven or eight dates since doing the equation. Maybe his mum was right when, on seeing his formula, she told him he was being ridiculous, and “to go out and meet people”. “I’m terrible,” he admits. “I leave a long gap between dates. After a date, if you didn’t have a good time, you feel despondent. I had another date, where I liked her and she didn’t like me. As a human, you get upset. That’s why scientists trust the maths: keep going.”

Media roundup

Ten homes have been lost at Peregian Beach on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, the ABC reports, and police have declared an emergency situation owing to the rapidly escalating bushfire threat. Residents from Sydney’s cracked Mascot Towers have asked for the NSW government to help fund remediation works because a third of them can’t afford to pay a special levy, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. And Asic has called out PwC over the quality of its auditing work, the Australian reports, after the regulator triggered a writedown of more than $500m at Myer.

Coming up

Parliament continues, with the Labor caucus meeting in the morning as well as meetings of cabinet and the Coalition party room.

Zali Steggall will launch the Climate of the Nation report in Canberra.

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