Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 3 July.

Top stories

Chinese border police are secretly installing surveillance apps on the phones of visitors and downloading personal information as part of the government’s intensive scrutiny of the remote Xinjiang region, the Guardian can reveal. The investigation found that border guards were taking the phones of travellers and installing an app that extracts emails, texts and contacts, as well as information about the handset itself. Tourists said they had not been warned by authorities in advance or told about what the software was looking for, or that their information was being taken.

The booming liquefied natural gas industry will play at least as big a role as new coal investments in bringing on a climate crisis if all planned projects go ahead, US-based energy analysts and campaigners say. The report by the Global Energy Monitor appears at odds with comments by Australia’s emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, who has said the country could be proud that the rapidly expanding LNG export industry was displacing coal power overseas. Government analysis identified LNG as the main reason Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen each year since 2015, but the minister and industry say Australian gas deserves credit for lowering global emissions.

Systemic corruption remains rife in Queensland, according to the former attorney general who implemented many of the recommendations of the landmark Fitzgerald inquiry. Dean Wells spoke to Guardian Australia to mark 30 years since Tony Fitzgerald handed down the most wide-ranging and significant anti-corruption findings in Australian history. Having watched the evolution of the state’s corruption watchdog, now the Crime and Corruption Commission, he believes the state needs a new inquiry to address creeping problems with oversight of police and the public sector. “Process corruption is still rife in Queensland,” Wells said.

World

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cattle grazing in an embargoed area of the Amazon. Photograph: João Laet/The Guardian

The rampant deforestation of the Amazon is being driven by global greed for meat, a Guardian investigation has revealed. The investigation found hundreds of cattle grazing on land embargoed by the Brazilian government for illegal deforestation.

Syria has accused Israel of “heinous aggression” after alleged Israeli airstrikes killed several civilians. Strikes south of Damascus and in Homs province near the border with Lebanon overnight on Sunday killed at least 15 people.

Russia has revealed a fire onboard a top-secret navy submersible has left 14 sailors dead in a after they inhaled poisonous gas while serving in one of the country’s most shadowy military projects.

A West Papuan independence group says it is “ready to take over the country”. Three rebel armies have joined forces under the control of the independence movement, led by the exiled leader Benny Wenda.

Nike has withdrawn a pair of shoes featuring an early version of the US flag that has been embraced by white nationalists, after the former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick reportedly pointed out that the symbol was offensive.

Opinion and analysis

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Karen Nettleton and the orphaned children of Khaled Sharrouf. Photograph: ABC News

What can Australia do for children forced to live under Islamic State? “When the Australian terrorist Khaled Sharrouf proudly posted a photo of his young son holding the severed head of a murdered Syrian solider in 2014, it seemed to confirm the world’s worst fears about the children of Islamic State,” write Michael McGowan and Helen Davidson. “Sharrouf’s photo demonstrated in the most shocking way possible how children living with Isis were being exposed to a world of almost unimaginable barbarity. Now, governments of these nationals are scrambling to deal with them – how to get them home, if they even should, and what to do about them when it happens.”

When doctors injure patients, transparency is the best medicine, writes Ranjana Srivastava. “Hospitals and insurers remind doctors that being open and demonstrating remorse is the way to not get sued by an angry patient,” she writes. “Experienced clinicians say the forgiveness that follows is the most powerful, and possibly the only, catharsis. Nonetheless, the fear of litigation, damage to reputation and diminished income looms large in the minds of concerned doctors.”

Sport

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The US celebrate after Steph Houghton’s penalty is saved. Photograph: Alessandra Tarantino/AP

The US are through to the final of the women’s World Cup after beating England 2-1 in a thrilling semi-final. England crashed out in traditional style, with Steph Houghton missing a late chance to equalise from the penalty spot.

Ash Barty has sailed through the Wimbledon first round in straight sets. The new world No 1 began her quest for a first Wimbledon title with a straightforward 6-4, 6-2 win over Saisai Zheng of China on Tuesday. The biggest shocks of the day were the departure of Maria Sharapova through injury and defeat for Garbine Muguruza.

Australia beat England by two wickets in the opening ODI of the women’s Ashes, taking two points after edging a low-scoring match littered with batting errors.

Thinking time: Why are we fascinated by places of death and disaster?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Abandoned buildings in Pripyat, Ukraine, near the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Photograph: Jessica Alice

Visiting the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site is a strange experience. You are body scanned at the border to test radiation levels and required to sign a waiver acknowledging the risks associated with encountering radiation. The theatre of that aside, the levels within the zone are safe – given that you stay only for a short time.

There has been a slew of stories about Chernobyl selfies, snapshots taken against macabre backgrounds that give the impression that tourism to these places is suddenly booming, heightened in the wake of the acclaimed HBO dramatisation of the disaster. Last year David Farrier’s TV series Dark Tourist captured narco-tourism in Colombia and Mexico, nuclear tourism in Fukushima, shooting ranges in Phnom Penh and tours of the Manson family murder sites in the US. But this kind of tourism is not new. Early examples of dark tourism – travel to places where death or tragedy has taken place – are familiar in the form of medieval public executions or pilgrimages to cemeteries and battlefields.

Media roundup

The Reserve Bank’s interest rate cut is prominent on this morning’s front pages, with the Australian Financial Review saying the RBA will go lower if needed, the Australian predicting the cut will lead to a jump in house prices, and the Sydney Morning Herald reporting that the RBA “has made a rare public appeal to the Morrison government to do more to boost a sliding economy after it sliced official interest rates to one of the lowest levels in the world”.

Coming up

Parliament sits to hear condolence motions for Bob Hawke, who died on 16 May.

The royal commission into Victoria’s mental health system will hold its second day of public hearings.