Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 23 July.
Top stories
Women who suffer a serious heart attack are half as likely to receive appropriate treatment in Australian hospitals as men, and twice as likely to die within six months of discharge, cardiac specialists and researchers have found. Those behind the study, which spanned 41 hospitals, said they were taken aback at the findings.
“I was quite surprised,” said Prof Clara Chow, the study’s senior author. “Women with serious heart attacks are being undertreated and it’s just not acceptable.” Chow said there was no conclusive cause of the discrepancy, but she suspected “unconscious bias” in the health system was likely to be a factor.
The Trump administration has released documents related to the FBI’s surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, as part of an investigation into whether he colluded with Russia to undermine the 2016 US presidential election. Page has consistently denied working as an agent of the Russians, slamming the investigation as “so ridiculous it’s beyond words”. On CNN the former foreign policy adviser and energy consultant declined to answer four times whether he had relationships with Russian officials and declined to elaborate on an academic letter he wrote in 2013, in which he described himself as an “informal adviser” to the Kremlin. Page has not been charged with any crime after almost two years of investigation.
The UK, Germany and Canada will offer asylum to some of the members of the Syrian volunteer civil defence forces known as the White Helmets and their relatives who have been evacuated to Jordan. More than 400 people were evacuated by Israeli defence forces on Saturday night at the request of a number of countries including the UK, US and Canada, including 98 White Helmets. Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, said she had “called for global leadership to support and help these heroes” at last week’s Nato summit.
The surge in revenue flowing to Australian governments will soon be undermined by a slowdown in China and a “mini-credit crunch” as banks tighten lending standards, Deloitte Access Economics has said. Deloitte has suggested rising global interest rates are combining with a bout of bank caution on lending that will accelerate the fall in property prices. Noting the federal government has cut personal income tax cut – at a cost to the budget of $144bn – Deloitte’s Chris Richardson concluded that Australia “has repeated an old mistake: spending a temporary revenue boom on permanent promises”.
A New York art dealer who bought the contents of a New Jersey storage locker supposedly full of junk says he has found six paintings he believes are by Willem de Kooning. De Koonings can attract prices in the hundreds of millions of dollars. David Killen said he had not expected much from his purchase, as “what they showed me is a bunch of junk, basically”. But when he opened the locker, he saw “these huge boxes that say De Kooning on them”. Executors, Killen said, thought the works labelled as De Koonings were prints. “What are the odds of finding a De Kooning in a storage unit?” he asked. “It’s unheard of!” The paintings have been authenticated by a De Kooning expert.
Sport
Francesco Molinari has become the first Italian to win a golf major after holding off a pack including Tiger Woods to capture the Open at Carnoustie. Woods led for much of the afternoon, holding out the prospect of an astonishing win a decade after his last major, but a double bogey on the 11th proved his nemesis.
Port Adelaide’s Robbie Gray was knocked out last week in a sickening tackle from Fremantle’s Ryan Nyhuis and stretchered from the ground. Nonetheless, Gray lined up against GWS on Sunday, again raising questions about whether the AFL is allowing players to return too early from concussion, writes Nicole Hayes.
Thinking time
The Australian impressionist John Russell spent 40 years in Europe, where he cultivated friendships with Claude Monet, Auguste Rodin, Henri Matisse, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Vincent van Gogh. The Art Gallery of New South Wales is hosting the first major retrospective of Russell’s work in 40 years, bringing together 120 paintings, drawings and watercolours from private and public collections around the world.
Entrepeneurs in Canada are rushing to invent new cannabis products as the country becomes only the second in the world to legalise the drug for recreational use in October. Dooma Wendschuh of Province Brands is working on what he describes as Canada’s first true cannabis beer – one that gets you high, not drunk. “Most cannabis beers are brewed from barley and infused with marijuana oil – that’s not what we do” says Wendschuh. “Our beer is brewed from the stocks, stem and roots of the cannabis plant.” So is it any good, when prototypes taste like rotten broccoli? “The flavour is dry, savoury, less sweet than a typical beer flavour,” Wendschuh said. “The beer hits you very quickly, which is not common for a marijuana edible.”
Sanjeev Gupta says coal power is no longer cheaper than renewables – and he intends to prove it in South Australia. The British billionaire who rescued the Whyalla steelworks believes renewables are the future of energy, on the grounds that it makes economic sense.
Media roundup
The Sydney Morning Herald reports on new data that finds Sydney is now more crowded than Chicago, Seattle and Los Angeles, despite Australia being one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. The NT News splashes with a full-page picture of Malcolm Turnbull cradling an Aboriginal child. “Future is in your hands” the paper declares. Local Indigenous leaders urged the PM to “not be afraid” in tackling NT social problems head-on during his visit to Tennant Creek.
The Australian says tension in Melbourne’s African-Australian community is peaking as police investigate the death of a 19-year-old woman at a party on Saturday night. The home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, said the “needless loss of a young life” highlighted a “major law and order problem” in the state.
Coming up
The foreign and defence ministers, Julie Bishop and Marise Payne, will meet their US counterparts, Mike Pompeo and Jim Mattis, in San Francisco on Monday.
Campaigning continues for Saturday’s five byelections, with Labor’s Justine Keay and Liberal Brett Whiteley speaking at a public forum in the hotly contested Tasmanian seat of Braddon.
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