Good morning. The impact of the Russian invasions of Ukraine on food prices, combined with cost of living rises, is being felt by Australians as the war enters its 28th day. Families in China are still waiting on information about what caused a plane with 132 people on board to crash.
Russian forces have “kidnapped” more than 2,300 children from the Russian-controlled territories of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts and taken them to Russia, according to the US embassy. Russian forces are now inside the besieged southern city of Mariupol, a senior US defence official said. More than 200,000 people are trapped there and Ukraine’s government has begged Vladimir Putin to let civilians leave the city, where the situation has been described as a “freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings” by Human Rights Watch.
Australian businesses finding their feet after the Covid crisis are now struggling with food price hikes, and are faced with the dilemma of whether they can pass the rising costs to customers and remain competitive. One cafe owner says the price of coffee alone has risen by $6,500 a year, another says raw ingredients are setting her back an additional $20,000 a year. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused the price of wheat to soar to all-time records as the two countries are major food exporters.
The Australian War Memorial is being pressed to stop accepting money from Lockheed Martin when its current sponsorship deal concludes next month, due to the company’s involvement in nuclear weapons and surging share price after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Veterans, historians and experts say companies that profit from conflict “have no place in a solemn memorial honouring people killed in the carnage of war”.
Australia
Newcastle residents whose homes were showered in asbestos fragments after a warehouse fire this month say they are dismayed by the NSW government’s response to the disaster. They say they have been left in the dark about the cleanup and have only heard through social media that they were required to register for public works cleaning.
Community and consumer groups are calling on the federal government to compensate victims of the Youpla Group’s collapse, which has left thousands of Indigenous Australian policyholders with nothing.
The climate crisis is the greatest threat to the future and security of Australians and the country is unprepared for its increasingly harsh impacts, a group of defence leaders has warned. In an open letter they call on politicians to make climate a primary focus and “address this clear and present danger”.
The outgoing Parramatta MP, Julie Owens, has expressed disappointment at Labor’s plans to parachute Andrew Charlton into her western Sydney seat, saying local branch preselections are “the way it should be”.
Zachary Rolfe was investigated for perjury after a judge said he had lied about his actions during the violent arrest of an Aboriginal man in Alice Springs but police found there was insufficient evidence, newly released court documents show.
The world
Chinese state media report there have been no signs of survivors from the Chinese Eastern Airline plane that crashed into a remote bamboo forest in the mountains near Wuzhou with 132 people on board. ID cards and wallets have reportedly been found at the scene but the plane’s black box has yet to be located and the cause of the crash is not yet known.
A patient with locked-in syndrome is communicating with his family after being implanted with a device that enables him to control a keyboard with his mind. The 36-year-old from Germany asked if his four-year-old son would like to watch a Disney film with him.
Police in Sweden are trying to determine why an 18-year-old student allegedly killed two teachers at a school in Malmö, as fresh details of the attack emerged.
Several European countries lifted their Covid restrictions too soon, the World Health Organization has said, and as a result are now witnessing sharp rises in infections probably linked to the new, more transmissible Omicron BA2 subvariant.
Recommended reads
“I don’t want to brag but I have an amazing garlic crusher,” says the Australian singer Sarah Blasko in our weekly interview about objects. “Look, you might have something equally or indeed more impressive, but let me just say that growing up as I did, and then living in share houses, I didn’t even know that a garlic crusher of this calibre existed.” She also tells us about her disastrous NYC stay in Sia’s loft – and the guitar she found along the way.
It was a given that the Australian spinoff of the US maritime reality show Below Deck would feature some local flair. “So when old news footage of a 45.6-metre yacht [series Captain Jason Chambers] was captaining was shown crashing into a marina, I was overjoyed,” writes Stephanie Van Schilt. “It was a perfect moment for an Australian spinoff of a popular US show: is there anything we love more than watching a slow-motion crash? And now we get one at our own marina.”
The Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Australia’s longest running survey of contemporary art, has opened for 2022 – but under a shroud of sadness. The deaths of one of the exhibition’s key artists, Hossein Valamanesh, and the biennial’s principal sponsor, Neil Balnaves, have permeated the atmosphere. Their deaths have added a layer of poignancy to the 2022 event, titled Free/State, a celebratory and cerebral examination of human freedom.
Listen
The final findings of the first national project to record mass killings on the Australian frontier have been released. In today’s Full Story, Guardian Australia’s Indigenous affairs editor Lorena Allam talks to Laura Murphy-Oates about the key things this project has uncovered and the need for justice in the wake of these discoveries.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
Australian women’s cricket Captain Meg Lanning has guided the team to a sixth-straight World Cup win, making an unbeaten 135 in a chase of South Africa’s 271-5.
Media roundup
A child sex abuse survivor has called for the resignation of two MPs who have refused to apologise after audibly groaning at a question asked in parliament on her behalf, reports the Mercury. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a Liberal-led council has threatened to not collect bins with anti-Morrison stickers featuring the PM holding a lump of coal, accompanied by captions such as “bin him” and “chuck them out”.
Coming up
Labor will decide on the Victorian Senate ticket.
The Maritime Union of Australia will rally outside Svitzer’s offices in Port Melbourne.
And if you’ve read this far …
Canadian police thought they had intercepted a drunk driver after responding to reports of a car travelling at 150km'/h on the wrong side of the road. So they were surprised to discover that the driver was in fact an 11-year-old boy.
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