As authors from Chaucer to Hollinghurst have shown, sex reveals our emotions, instincts and morals. The question is not why write about sex, claims author Garth Greenwell, it’s why write about anything else?

There is a widely held belief, among English-language writers, that sex is impossible to write about well – or at least much harder to write about well than anything else. I once heard a wonderful writer, addressing students at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, say that her ideal of a sex scene would be the sentence: “They sat down on the sofa …” followed by white space. This is a prejudice I can’t understand. One of the glories of being a writer in English is that two of our earliest geniuses, Chaucer and Shakespeare, wrote of the sexual body so exuberantly, claiming it for literature and bringing its vocabulary – including all those wonderful four-letter words – into the texture of our literary language. This is a gift not all languages have received; a translator once complained to me that in her language there was only the diction of the doctor’s office or of pornography, neither of which felt native to poetry.

More than this, surely it is absurd to claim that a central activity of human life, a territory of feeling and drama, is off-limits to art. Sex is a uniquely useful tool for a writer, a powerful means not just of revealing character or exploring relationships, but of asking the largest questions about human beings.

In the past year Australia’s energy minister has been swept up in two scandals. The past week has brought developments in both. Anne Davies explains what questions he has yet to answer

You can read Lisa Cox’s and Anne Davies’ latest updates on the Jamland grass poisoning here and more on the doctored document saga here.

8 May marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the second world war in Europe. Parts of the destruction that resulted from the fight for Berlin are still visible decades later

A selection of archive photographs to mark the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day

With comedy festivals cancelled around the world, Amazon Prime is releasing 10 original Australian standup specials to tide you over. Filmed at Melbourne's Malthouse theatre during the Before Times, the biweekly series has featured names like Celia Pacquola, Zoë Coombs Marr and Dilruk Jayasinha – with Tom Gleeson and Anne Edmonds  coming up soon. A few minutes of each is being published exclusively on Guardian Australia, and this week we have the exceptionally odd new show from Tom Walker, which was directed by Zoë Coombs Marr.

• The full version of Tom Walker's Very Very is released today. Amazon Prime is offering a 30-day free trial here

With comedy festivals cancelled around the world due to the coronavirus crisis, Amazon Prime is releasing 10 original Australian standup specials to tide you over. The biweekly series was filmed at Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre and has featured Celia Pacquola, Zoë Coombs Marr and Dilruk Jayasinha. A few minutes of each is being published exclusively by Guardian Australia and this week we have eventual Gold Logie winner Tom Gleeson's show Joy. Come to hear about the disgusting wonders of parenting; stay for the killer punchline 

• The full version of Tom Gleeson's Joy is out now. Amazon Prime is offering a 30-day free trial here

NSW Health assessment the cruise ship was ‘low risk’ introduced ‘an unfortunate element’ into his decision-making

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A New South Wales harbour master has told an inquiry he “did not understand” an email that told him to treat the Ruby Princess “as if it has a positive Covid-19 result” when it came into Sydney Harbour on 18 and 19 March.

Cameron Butchart, who was the duty harbour master on 18 March, said NSW Health’s assessment that the ship was “low risk” introduced “an unfortunate element” into his decision-making.

Victoria Cross recipient’s suit against Nine newspapers can’t be held until in-person hearings resume after coronavirus

The highly anticipated defamation trial brought by Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith against the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald will not go ahead next month after the federal court ruled a remote hearing under Covid-19 rules may breach national security.

The delay in the case came as justice Anthony Besanko said he had to consider whether to delay the trial despite a submission that Roberts-Smith and his family are suffering from the ongoing publication of articles by the Nine newspapers.

Australian National Audit Office evidence to Senate appears to contradict Morrison’s claim that he provided no authorisation

The prime minister’s office asked Bridget McKenzie to seek Scott Morrison’s “authority” for intended recipients of $100m of sports grants and coordinate the announcement with Coalition campaign headquarters, according to new evidence to the sports rorts inquiry.

The evidence from the Australian National Audit Office to the Senate inquiry contradicts Morrison’s claims that McKenzie, the former sports minister, was the ultimate decision-maker for the grant program, and that changes were not made after parliament was dissolved.

Three decades on, the controversy-courting concert tour is still shaping the ways female artists express their sexuality

• Modern Toss on Blond Ambition tour ...

In Toronto, Madonna simulated masturbation on a velvet bed under the watchful eye of the Canadian police, who threatened her with arrest if her show went ahead. In Italy, unions called for a general strike if Madonna performed, and Pope John Paul II declared her concert “one of the most satanic shows in the history of humanity”. The Blond Ambition tour, which turned 30 years old last month, remains among the most controversial tours of all time.

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

The comic essayist on crying over Olive Kitteridge, his love for Richard Yates and the books that make him laugh

The book I am currently reading
Hidden Valley Road. It’s a nonfiction book about a family with 12 children, half of whom turn out to be schizophrenic. In the opening pages the mother sews a live bird’s eyes shut. And she’s one of the few who isn’t mentally ill!

The book that changed my life
Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. A friend read it out aloud to me when we were hitchhiking across America in 1976, and it made me think: “That’s right – books!” After high school I had forgotten about them. As soon as I got a stable address, I secured a library card, and started making up for lost time.

Word of mouth turned the riches-to-rags show into a sleeper hit. Its creator and stars explain why it is going out at its peak

Schitt’s Creek was always going to be a hard sell. There is that title for a start; an off-putting pun that instantly sets the comedy bar below ground level. Couple that with a hackneyed fish-out-of-water premise involving a rich family forced to slum it in a backwater town and you’ve got a one-season sitcom at best. Co-created by and starring Dan Levy, best known as a presenter on MTV Canada, and his dad Eugene, most famous for playing Jim’s embarrassing dad in the American Pie films, it was rejected by HBO and Showtime, eventually finding a home on the little-known US pay-to-view channel Pop. Even its main draw, the great Catherine O’Hara, was initially unenthused by the project, turning down the role of the Rose family’s self-obsessed matriarch Moira, citing her own laziness.

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

Ugly makeup is imperfect, sloppy, chaotic – and only worn to please the wearer, against social expectations

In 2018, Rosanna Meikle felt like a failure. She was toiling through beauty school, and she hadn’t been able to find much work nor garner much attention for her creations online. She was exhausted from the sameness she saw around her, “a sea of beautiful girls, smoky eyes and plumped lips”, she remembers. “My school was in an expensive area of Auckland, which made me feel so out of place. I couldn’t afford the products or the clothes, my kit wasn’t ‘professional’ enough and neither was my look.”

Related: ‘It makes me feel human’: 11 women share their lockdown beauty regimens

Weekly meat tray giveaways, craft beer deliveries and trivia held over Zoom. As pubs stand empty, those that run them look to the internet

Across Australia, pubs stand empty because of the Covid-19 lockdowns. Some venues have shut entirely, others have pivoted to takeaway businesses, and the majority have had to make changes to their staffing.

While the future of physical pubs remains very uncertain for the coming months, the entertainers, brewers and chefs that rely on pubs for their livelihood are finding ways to recreate pub experiences in patrons’ homes.

Is it all moot because of the deadly virus infecting Australia and no I don’t mean the National party ahahaha

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Those less convinced in Australia cast doubt on source of Wuhan lab ‘intelligence’. Plus: Trump and Jennifer Hawkins

The origin of the coronavirus has opened up a new battlefield between the Murdoch press and just about everyone else – and given the Daily Telegraph’s Sharri Markson an international platform on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News.

Following in the footsteps of her colleague Miranda Devine, who also made it onto Fox News, Markson told Tucker Carlson Tonight the “bombshell dossier” she had uncovered showed some of the world’s foremost intelligence agencies were investigating whether the virus was linked to a lab in Wuhan.

• Ronaldo Souza pulled from event after positive coronavirus test
• UFC 249 scheduled for Saturday night with no fans in building

The Ultimate Fighting Championship has withdrawn a bout from Saturday’s card in Jacksonville after middleweight Ronaldo ‘J’acare’ Souza and two of his cornermen tested positive for coronavirus, the mixed martial arts promotion said.

Related: UFC 249: Ferguson faces Gaethje as Dana White touts only game in town

A Derek Underwood-inspired England – assisted by the Oval’s resourceful spectators – beat the final-day flood, clock and Australian resistance to start my lifelong obsession with cricket

I was clearing out some old papers a while back when a small pink slip fell out. Even after 50 years I knew instantly what it was because it had been stuck to my bedroom wall when I was a teenager: indeed the old brown shadows of the tape were still there. It was the ticket for my first day’s Test cricket: the fifth Test against Australia at the Oval on 22 August 1968: Derek Underwood’s match and the game that started a lifelong obsession.

We joined my friend Matthew and his mother – two teenagers, what were we thinking of, taking our mothers? – and caught an early train from deepest Berkshire. London was a big, strange place where we rarely ventured and never as far south as SE11. We were square to the wicket and the players were so distant as to be indistinct, almost lost against the crowd.

• Alex Wurz calls measures to deal with coronavirus ‘immaculate’
  
• ‘F1 can be pioneer’ for other sports to follow, says GPDA chief

The Grand Prix Drivers’ Association is confident the precautions being taken by Formula One mean the sport stands every chance of resuming as planned in Austria on 5 July.

Alex Wurz, chairman of the GPDA, will reassure his members that Formula One has put the safety of everyone involved at the forefront of its plans to return to racing after attending a meeting with F1 and the FIA on Friday.

Is Australia flattening the curve? We bring together all the latest Covid-19 confirmed cases, maps, stats and graphs from NSW, Victoria, Queensland, SA, WA, Tasmania, ACT and NT to get a broad picture of the Australian outbreak and track the impact of government response.

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Due to the difference in reporting times between states, territories and the federal government, it can be difficult to get a current picture of how many confirmed cases of coronavirus there are in Australia.

Here, we’ve brought together all the figures in one place, along with comparisons with other countries.

Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has detailed a gradual opening up of society with the timing the stages to be determined by the states

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• Coronavirus Australia maps and cases: live numbers and statistics

Scott Morrison and the chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, have laid out a three-step plan to reopen Australia after the coronavirus crisis. Morrison said he hoped step three could be achieved in July, but it would be up to each state and territory when they moved from one step to the next.

Below are some of the areas that will be opened up at each stage, according to the plan – and you can see the timeline for easing restrictions in each state here.

The morality brigade loathed the hit teen horror on release but hockey mask-wearing villain Jason Voorhees has been with us ever since

Before production on the teen slasher A Long Night at Camp Blood had even started, before a final draft of the screenplay had even been submitted, thirtysomething writer-producer-director Sean S Cunningham decided to make an audacious statement. Not only would he use an advert in the industry paper Variety to confirm an inarguably ingenious title change but he would also use it to declare that his next film would be the most terrifying ever made, after a decade that saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Last House on the Left (which he also produced), The Exorcist and Halloween.

Related: Final Destination at 20: the bleakest teen horror film ever made?

Harry, 32, a TV producer from London, meets Jayson, 25, a journalist from Hong Kong, in our latest virtual date

What were you hoping for?
A fun chat that didn’t involve a quiz.

In this extract from her Griffith Review essay the author wrestles with ageing and the deep need to keep writing

Why did they ask me for an essay about stopping writing? And why did I say yes? Did I tell someone I’d stopped? Have I stopped? I could, if I wanted to, couldn’t I? I’m 77 and I’m pretty tired. And lately I think I’ve copped what the French call “un coup de vieux”: a blow of old. I’ve got arthritis in my left wrist, my right knee gives twinges, and my left foot sometimes aches and stabs all day. Other days, nothing hurts at all. I don’t know what this means.

I am an old woman.

With more Australian artists being asked to play for free in the lockdown, many are asking if it might do more harm than good

If live music died in mid March, it’s sure been noisy at the funeral. On platforms old and new, live gigs performed at home have streamed from trickle to tidal wave, breaking over the mobile devices of captive audiences. Global gig guide aggregator Bands In Town has added a livestream dropdown, and a new Australian state has been ceded by Eventfinda and tucked alphabetically between Victoria and Western Australia: the state of “Virtual”.

For fans it’s been fun. We’re loving seeing musicians’ pets and plants and enormous fingers fumbling for the flip screen button and, unless we’ve bought a URL ticket, there’s scandalously little to lose by dropping into, and out of, a show.

From accidentally making money due to currency fluctuations, to paying down debt, for some Australians cancelled overseas trips have had surprising windfalls

From June 2018 to June 2019, the Australian Bureau of Statistics says Australians made a record 11.3 million trips overseas – double the number of trips just 10 years ago. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of Australians have been forced to cancel or alter their international travel plans.

This has left many Australians struggling to get refunds from travel providers. Flight Centre was charging $300 in processing fees per person, in some cases leading to fees that cost more than the value of the refund, until the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission stepped in and threatened legal action, causing the company to waive fees for trips cancelled by travel providers. The ACCC also warned travel providers against retroactively changing their cancellation policies after tour companies including Topdeck and Intrepid attempted to retrospectively apply updated refund policies that would force customers to take credit rather than cash for cancelled trips.

When the coronavirus crisis hit, Yolngu elders moved back to east Arnhem Land homelands where they found freedom, peace, and power

• This is part two of a four-part series about Indigenous caretakers of culture in the time of coronavirus
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Adapting to change is something Yolngu are good at, senior Rirratjingu songman Witiyana Marika says.

When the coronavirus first started making news, community leadership met to plan how they would manage if Covid-19 arrived in eastern Arnhem land. Senior men and women met with the emergency taskforce, the local Miwatj health service and the Laynhapuy homelands organisation to take the most vulnerable people further away from risk.

Some people have found returning to the family home a blessing, but for others it has been anything but smooth sailing

Covid-19 has reshaped geographic boundaries. It has left many financially distressed. Expatriates have returned from overseas for indefinite periods of time, and vulnerable people require more help than usual. For all these reasons, and many more, adult children have found themselves doing something that might previously have been unthinkable: moving back in with their parents.

Some are finding the experience transformative. One woman, who left New York for her parent’s rural home, told me that the space and country air have made her reconsider whether she will ever return to the city. But there are also downsides. “I’m craving male attention more than I ever have before,” she confessed. When flirting over apps stopped cutting it, she wound up ordering a vibrator in an unmarked box, and fended off her younger siblings in order to retrieve it from the mailbox.

They’ve faced drought, extreme heat and bushfires, and now they have to deal with a new paranoia courtesy of the pandemic

Australia’s bats are turning up in increasing numbers in city suburbs. But as they search for food, they’re bringing for some a newfound paranoia thanks to a global pandemic that likely sprang from one of their overseas relatives.

In Ingham in far north Queensland, an influx of more than 200,000 little red flying foxes in January was variously described as a “swarm”, a “tornado” and an “infestation”.

Politicians have set a high bar for themselves – success on coronavirus has created community expectations that will be challenging to shift

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“Let’s not give everything back, let’s not throw away all the progress we’ve made by letting our frustration get the better of us.” This was Daniel Andrews on Friday afternoon, shortly after national cabinet resolved to gradually restart economic and social activity by July.

The Victorian premier wanted people to understand he’d be hastening slowly – the message being here in the Massachusetts of Australia, we decide how quickly we’ll remove coronavirus restrictions. We don’t apply an arbitrary national average.

Paul Kelly warns people over 70 and with existing diseases are at high risk from coronavirus as pandemic restrictions ease

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The deputy chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, is warning people to take care if visiting mums on Mother’s Day, as frictions emerge over the lockdown in Victoria.

In some states, authorities are allowing people to pay family visits on Sunday as coronavirus pandemic restrictions are eased, but Kelly has restated warnings that people over 70 and with existing chronic diseases are at high risk from coronavirus.

It's been years since Coyote Peterson was stung by a Japanese giant hornet -- a subspecies of the Asian giant hornet -- but the American wildlife educator vividly remembers how the sting immediately felt like a 'red hot fire poker' being shoved into his skin, followed by residual, almost unbearable pain that lasted for hours.

As businesses in the United States slowly begin reopening, researchers in Pennsylvania are turning to dogs to help them fend off a second wave of COVID-19.

Insect experts say people should calm down about the big bug with the nickname "murder hornet" -- unless you are a beekeeper or a honeybee.

What may be the latest hope in the hunt to develop a treatment for COVID-19 comes from an unusual source – a furry, four-year-old llama named 'Winter' that is living on a farm in the Belgium countryside.

Washington state has another bug to worry about in addition to Asian giant hornets -- gypsy moths, which the state's governor says could become an "infestation."

Bill Oddie hails Brooke-Taylor as 'true visual comic' Stephen Fry, Rob Brydon and Jack Dee also pay tribute Brooke-Taylor joins public figures to have died after contracting Covid-19 Read our live coronavirus updates HERE

Pioneering Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen has died at the age of 79.

Brooker says he's coping with the crisis "far better than I would have anticipated"

As sheltering in place stretches into weeks for many, anxiety, isolation, stress and cabin fever are common. There's free mental health help online.

In his speech, Tim Cook offered advice for navigating challenging circumstances in the years ahead and talked about his career at Apple.

Apple and Google give a first look at how public health apps will alert you if you've crossed paths with someone who tested positive for COVID-19.

Viewers will get so used to watching new movies at home, they'll go out to theaters less, and fare will shift toward all comic books, says analyst.

Apple holds 55% market share in the smartwatch category followed by Samsung and Garmin. Sales rose despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Nintendo Switches are selling out as people remain in quarantine—here's where you can still get one.

Apple will reopen stores in four states next week with precautions such as temperature checks, face masks and social distancing.

Do not fall for these ????️

The iconic Italian properties have joined forces to help end the Coronavirus crisis

The airline has also extended its change fee waiver until February 2021

From smart car insurance to virtual credit cards, these little tech tricks add up over time