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Meet Darcy Byrne, the Labor mayor taking on pokies reform

Darcy Byrne is the Labor mayor of Sydney’s Inner West council and he’s helping lead a grassroots movement on curbing gambling harm in the community – including pushing for a reduction in the number of poker machines in licensed clubs in New South Wales. This momentum comes while the federal Labor party continues to face criticism about the scale of its commitment to online gambling reform. The rising Labor star speaks to Guardian Australia political editor Tom McIlroy about why he compares the poker machine lobby to the US National Rifle Association, and his successful motion at this month’s NSW Labor conference on gambling policy at the next state election

Back to Back Barries: The worst political gaffe of the week

Barrie Cassidy and Tony Barry examine a long list of stumbles and missteps made by politicians this week. They also discuss the prime minister’s Pacific push as China tested a long-range missile – and Nigel Farage’s resignation from politics only to stand at an upcoming byelection

Newsroom Edition: the risks and rewards of the PM’s podcast era

Anthony Albanese offered an unequivocal apology this week after making an off-colour comment about Kylie Minogue while playing a ‘shag, marry, date’ game on a podcast. Josephine Tovey speaks with Patrick Keneally, Gabrielle Jackson and Josh Butler about what the prime minister’s latest podcast appearance says about an increasingly fractured media landscape

The Telstra outage fallout

Today, Telstra’s chief financial officer Michael Ackland fronted up to the nation’s media to apologise – and answer questions about a massive outage that plunged the country into chaos. It stopped trains, turned off traffic lights and forced shops to close after Eftpos systems failed. And some calls to triple zero didn’t go through. Technology reporter Josh Taylor speaks to Reged Ahmad about what happened, who will take the blame and what can be done to make sure crucial connectivity is not lost again

Will Trump invade Cuba?

Since Donald Trump threatened to ‘take’ Cuba, the Caribbean island has been on edge. Escalating US sanctions and an oil blockade has crippled essential services, plunged the country into blackouts and ground life for its 10 million people to a near halt.Nour Haydar speaks with Ruaridh Nicoll about what life is like on the ground in Havana – and if US military intervention could be next