Morning Mail: Endeavour Hills shooting fallout, leaders vow to destroy Isis
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Version 0 of 1. Good morning folks, and welcome to the Morning Mail – sign up here to get it straight to your inbox before 8am every weekday. Endeavour Hills As government ministers and police called for calm after the shooting of a terrorism suspect in Melbourne after he stabbed police officers on Tuesday, attorney general George Brandis has warned that Australia faces a greater security threat than during the cold war. 18-year-old Abdul Numan Haider, from Narre Warren, had made no specific threat in the lead-up to his death but was said to be a person of interest to security agencies who had displayed concerning behaviour. There were bipartisan calls yesterday to reach isolated young people at risk of being radicalised, and the grand mufti of Australia called for calm and condemned the “horrors committed overseas” by extremist groups. Islamic State in Iraq and Syria A coalition of western leaders has vowed to destroy the Islamic State extremist movement, as the UN adopted a “historic” resolution to crack down on the recruitment, transportation and equipping of “foreign terrorist fighters”. We have live coverage of events overnight including the UN security council meeting and Pentagon announcement that new air strikes are under way. The UK parliament is to be recalled from its break tomorrow to endorse British air strikes in Iraq, and Australian fighter jets and air force personnel have arrived in the UAE. US president Obama has called for a meeting of major powers in the Middle East to try to negotiate a longer term solution that could bring peace. A French tourist has been beheaded in Algeria by a group calling itself Jund al-Khilafah, believed to be linked to Isis. We have a special report on the subterfuge used by the social media arm of Isis to hijack topics and spread extremist views. Australian news and politics • Scott Morrison will sign a deal to resettle refugees from Nauru to Cambodia on Friday; the details have not been shared with the UN refugee agency despite serious concerns it may break international law. • Kevin Rudd has dismissed Julia Gillard’s book as a work of “fiction”; Katharine Murphy analyses her “insightful, unflinching and revealing” memoir. • A fresh push to change the Racial Discrimination Act is set to be introduced in the Senate, removing the words “insult” and “offend” from section 18C. • Peter Slipper has avoided a jail sentence for dishonestly using taxpayer-funded taxi vouchers. • Gay asylum seekers on Manus Island have written of their fears of persecution in Papua New Guinea, where homosexuality is illegal: “I am so sorry that I was born gay ... I wish our boat had sunk in the ocean.” Around the world •Reported threats to release nude photos of actor Emma Watson after her UN speech appear to be a hoax created by an online marketing company, which itself does not seem to exist; James Ball writes that the affair shames the global news culture, which can be held hostage by small bands of loud but tech-savvy idiots. • Water has been discovered in the atmosphere of a small, warm planet for the first time. • Indonesia’s Aceh province is debating making homosexuality a crime punishable by public flogging. • Apple has withdrawn an update to iOS8 hours after release – thought to be the first time the company has pulled a software update from its App Store.Users have also been complaining that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus can bend in pockets. • A house-to-house search for Ebola victims in Sierra Leone during the three-day curfew has revealed 358 new suspected cases and hundreds of unburied corpses. More from around the web • Among the most read on the Guardian today: cartoonist First Dog on the Moon on Isis’ reaction to the west’s military involvement. • The Age leads on analysis of the Endeavour Hills incident, balancing the threat of extremism with concerns over branding whole communities with the “reprehensible actions of a few”. • The Australian reports that the former president of Australia’s peak Islamic body has hit out at “a toxic subculture” in Australia’s Muslim schools. • Vandals have defaced a Muslim prayer centre in Brisbane with abusive messages, the Brisbane Times reports. • The government has seized the foreign passports of some people with dual citizenship, effectively stranding them in Australia, news.com.au reports. One last thing Neil Gaiman writes about his friend Terry Pratchett: “anger is the engine that drives him, but it is the greatness of spirit that deploys that anger on the side of the angels, or better yet for all of us, the orangutans”. Have an excellent day – and if you spot anything I’ve missed, let me know in the comments here or on Twitter @newsmary. Sign up Get the Morning Mail direct to your inbox before 8am every day by signing up here. |