| | | 08/04/2024 $10m fines mooted for supermarkets; Israel withdraws from southern Gaza; fears over rooming house boom |
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| | | Good morning. Changes are needed to redress a heavy imbalance in market power between suppliers and supermarkets in Australia’s heavily concentrated supermarket industry. So says a report ordered by the federal government, to be released today, but its author, the former Labor trade minister Craig Emerson, stops short of calling for powers to break up the big supermarkets. He says heavy penalties would be “a far more credible deterrent to anti-competitive behaviour”. Meanwhile, an explosion of interest from investors in rooming houses has prompted concerns about vulnerable residents, and Israel has withdrawn troops from southern Gaza. |
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| Full Story | | Sex, drugs and credit cards: new allegations heard at Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation trial against Ten Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson reopened on Thursday, with the former Channel Seven producer Taylor Auerbach giving new evidence. Guardian Australia media correspondent Amanda Meade tells Gabrielle Jackson what the fresh evidence could mean for one of Australia’s highest-profile defamation cases. Read more on this story: Spotlight producers warned Auerbach about dropping too much money on Seven’s company card while he courted Lehrmann over several months for an exclusive interview, text messages have revealed. | |
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| In-depth | | Shortly after Charles Darwin published his magnum opus, The Origin of Species, in 1859, he started reading a little-known 100-year-old work by a wealthy French aristocrat. Its contents were quite a surprise. “Whole pages [of his book] are laughably like mine,” Darwin wrote to a friend. “It is surprising how candid it makes one to see one’s view in another man’s words.” Darwin later acknowledged Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, as one of the “few” people who had understood that species change and evolve, before Darwin himself. Buffon also put forward the idea that animals were becoming extinct at a time when most natural historians believed that “God would never allow any species to ever disappear or arise over time”, according to Jason Roberts, writer of a new book about the aristocrat. “The concept of species change and extinction was very controversial.” |
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| Not the news | | It’s 50 years since Ernő Rubik unleashed his mesmerising magic cube on the world. But why, despite the growth in digital games, is the Rubik’s Cube as popular as ever? The Observer heads to a two-day British competition in which, with clicks and clacks of sliding plastic, dozens of puzzlers race each other to solve the fiendish squares – some even blindfolded. |
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| What’s happening today | Coronial inquiry | A third inquest is scheduled to begin into the 1988 death of teenager Mark Anthony Haines, and could explore whether racism played a role in potential failures of the investigation. | Hearings | A NSW parliamentary committee will hold its final hearing in an inquiry into birth trauma. A senate committee will hold a public hearing on access to Australian Parliament House by lobbyists. |
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| Brain teaser | And finally, here are the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. | |
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| | | Lenore Taylor | | Editor, Guardian Australia |
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| | I hope you appreciated this newsletter. Before you move on, I wonder if you would consider supporting Guardian Australia. As we look ahead to the challenges of 2024, we’re aiming to power more rigorous, independent reporting.
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