Attempt to call off Nauru bribery case; Byron Airbnb cap delay; death at flooded Burning Man

Good morning. The prosecution of a Queensland company over alleged systematic bribery of Nauru officials for favourable mining contracts is in the headlines today. Getax Australia has accused Australian authorities of mishandling the case and applied to the court to permanently halt the company’s prosecution.

Meanwhile, capping short-term rentals such as Airbnb has been touted as a way to help alleviate NSW’s housing crisis. But a move to install such measures in Byron won’t come into effect until the middle of next year – if at all.

And overseas, there’s been a death at the Burning Man festival where thousands are stranded by floods.

Australia is placing a lot of chips on the red, white and blue, making its big bet on the US based on the assumption that Asia really matters to the movers and shakers in Washington. But how does that assumption stack up? Sam Roggeveen from the Lowy Institute believes that if US motivations to maintain leadership in the region are waning, then Australia will have made a historic mistake by putting it at the centre of its security strategy.

Andy Griffiths is a big kid, an ex-punk rocker and a former teacher rolled into one, all of which has shaped his view of books as a final frontier: a place of anarchy and danger where children have permission to imagine the wildest, funniest, scariest things they can conceive. The “bum-poo-fart author” talks to Sian Cain about why the newest Treehouse book will be the last in the series.

New data exposing the severity of the Victoria’s ambulance ramping crisis shows how paramedics have spent a cumulative 120 years waiting for sick or injured patients to be admitted to overcrowded hospitals, reports the Age. New modelling suggests that the reliable supply of energy in NSW would be boosted if Australia’s largest coal-fired power station was kept partially open for an extra two years, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. The conventional path of millennials leaving the bush to head into the big smoke chasing better opportunities has flipped in the past five years, with more 25- to 39-year-olds moving to regional areas than the other way, says the Australian.

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