ABC Managing Director Issues Apology to Gina Rinehart Over Crude Program Comments

Good afternoon.

The ABC’s managing director, Hugh Marks, has issued an apology to Gina Rinehart after she threatened the public broadcaster with legal action over crude comments aired in its Race Around the World program.

The show featured a short work by film-maker Kate McGuinness which included crude and offensive comments about Rinehart.

Marks said the film had been edited on the ABC’s platforms to remove the material in question, and the broadcaster will now change its policies after Hancock Prospecting said the crude joke posed “serious risks” to Rinehart.

McGuinness also issued an apology last Thursday, saying it wasn’t her intention to promote violence: “My writing is cartoonish and always satirical. Unfortunately, jokes do not land with everyone. Its purpose was never to be taken literally,” she said in a statement uploaded to the ABC’s website.

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In pictures

Yuwaalaraay designer Lucy Simpson won the top prize for wearable art at the National Indigenous Fashion awards for her glass river-mussel shell necklace. It was made in response to the grief she felt walking the dry bed of the Murray-Darling River during severe drought in 2009.

“The idea is to create something beautiful,” she said. “As a freshwater woman, I have no right to say I belong to a place unless I’m giving back.”

What they said …

“We took on a machine … And what we showed is that the power of our many is greater than the power of their money.” – Abdul El-Sayed

In the final stretch of the state’s Democratic primary for US Senate, Abdul El-Sayed challenged voters at a small event in rural Michigan to think about the message they could send the rest of the country when they cast their ballots.

“Who are we? Who do we want to be?” El-Sayed said. “Do we want a state that’s defined by how much money corporations brought in to tell us what we couldn’t have? Or do we want to be a state where we demonstrate to the rest of the country what’s possible when you build a movement of, by and for the people?”

Podcast

‘The guards just opened the door’: what happened in Ceuta?

Journalist Javier Jennings Mozo reports from the Spanish enclave, speaking to some of those who had travelled across from Morocco, asking what prompted them to try, the dangers of the journey – at least 70 died in total – and how they were treated on arrival. Nosheen Iqbal also talks to the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent, Jennifer Rankin, about the fierce political rows that have erupted across the EU.

Listen to the episode here.

Before bed read

For Yalkun Uluyol, growing up in the Chinese region of Xinjiang meant romance – as well as their Uyghur culture – was frowned upon.

But one forbidden book changed his destiny for ever.

Daily word game

Today’s starter word is: MOO. You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply.