Exclusive: Uefa investigate claims Szymon Marciniak attended event in Poland organised by Sławomir Mentzen

Uefa is investigating claims the referee due to officiate the Champions League final next week was a keynote speaker at an event organised by a far-right politician.

Szymon Marciniak, who also refereed the World Cup final, spoke at an event in Poland on Monday which was organised by Sławomir Mentzen.

Hugely successful adaptation of dystopian novel began airing three months after 2016 US presidential election

Margaret Atwood was “the only person who benefited from the election of Donald Trump”, her agent told her soon after the US presidential election in November 2016.

The television drama version of The Handmaid’s Tale had begun filming in the run-up to Trump’s divisive win. “We woke up the morning after and there was Donald Trump, and we all said to ourselves, ‘we are now [working on] a different show’,” Atwood told an audience at the Hay literary festival.

As an adolescent, Tallulah Willis thought her father’s unresponsiveness was due to a lack of interest in her life – and Die Hard

One of the daughters of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore has written about her father’s dementia in a lengthy essay for Vogue.

The family of Willis, 68, announced in March 2022 that the actor would be retiring from acting on account of his diagnosis with aphasia, a language disorder caused by brain damage that affects a person’s ability to communicate.

Australia’s most decorated living soldier has lost his defamation case against the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Canberra Times. A federal court judge has found that the newspapers proved in their defence that Ben Roberts-Smith either murdered or was complicit in and responsible for the murder of unarmed civilians while serving in the Australian military in Afghanistan.

Ben Doherty reports from court, sifting through the judge’s ruling and what it means for public interest journalism

The horse has bolted in this upside-down, bad-faith discourse, but it’s worth examining how we got here

On Tuesday, Prof Kathleen Stock did a media round, following a fresh row about her appearance at the Oxford Union that day and a Channel 4 documentary, Gender Wars.

It would be repetitive and a bit Pavlovian to react again and again to everything she says – I caught her on LBC – and I question how helpful it would be. But there was one line that went unchallenged, because it always does: that “there are very vulnerable females in prison in close quarters with male rapists due to these ridiculous policies”.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

Exclusive: Study finds pests could damage crops, and households would incur costs for pesticides, veterinary bills and electrical faults

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Failure to stop the spread of an outbreak of invasive fire ants in south-east Queensland could cost the Australian economy more than $1bn a year, including damage to high-value crops, infrastructure and homes.

A previously unreleased cost-benefit analysis, commissioned by a steering committee managing the outbreak of red fire ants and obtained by Guardian Australia, says that eradication of the species provides “much higher returns” than suppression measures that simply limit its spread.

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Greens say removal would be ‘first step in correcting the official record’ after federal court dismisses defamation case

• Ben Roberts-Smith loses defamation case, with judge finding former SAS soldier committed war crimes
• Listen to Guardian Australia’s Ben Roberts-Smith v the media podcast
• Explainer: the explosive allegations of war crimes at the heart of defamation case
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The Australian War Memorial is facing calls to remove Ben Roberts-Smith’s uniform from its display, after the federal court dismissed the defamation case initiated by Australia’s most decorated living soldier.

But the Australian Special Air Service Association has argued it was “a very disappointing day” for veterans who had served in Afghanistan, saying the majority who had done the right thing were being “re-traumatised after having gone through a difficult war”.

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Exclusive: Analysis from the Alliance for Gambling Reform comes as parliamentary inquiry examines the harm caused by online wagering

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New research shows Australia is lagging behind Europe and other parts of the world in regulating online wagering, as gambling reform advocates push for the federal government to quickly bring in new regulation.

According to new analysis from the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Australia is far behind a broad range of countries including Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Spain in curbing gambling advertisements, or online gambling.

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Draft changes to party’s platform replace commitment to strengthen laws with ‘almost meaningless’ clause to ‘develop policy’, advocates say

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Labor has been criticised for proposing to ditch a commitment to strengthening legal protections for the LGBTQ+ community, with queer advocates saying the party appeared to have “backtracked”.

A consultation draft of changes to Labor’s national platform, released this week, proposes to remove a commitment from the 2021 platform to “strengthen laws and expand initiatives against discrimination, vilification and harassment on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or sex characteristics”.

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Authorities say Faye the swan was abducted, and that three suspects had been arrested for grand larceny and criminal mischief

Three teenagers in New York state were arrested for allegedly stealing a swan cherished by its local community before killing and eating the bird.

The disappearance of the well-known swan, called Faye, and her four cygnet offspring on Saturday caused concern in the village of Manlius, in upstate New York.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photo highlights from around the world

Novel, which law professor Jennifer Taub also worked on, will be released on Substack and have ‘erotic scenes’ but ‘no politics’

The columnist E Jean Carroll, who last month won $5m from Donald Trump after he was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming her, is co-writing an online romance novel with the former US president’s niece.

Carroll and Mary Trump are also working with the law professor and author Jennifer Taub, the New York Times reported.

Flood water blocked a road in north-eastern Spain on Wednesday as several provinces remain under a heavy rain alert. A powerful current flowed down to a main road in the Catalan town of Sant Pere de Ribes, forcing cars to turn around. At least 20 provinces across Spain were given a rain warning on Thursday, with the central Castile and León region the most threatened during the day, the Spanish meteorology agency said

In a democracy, this type of extortion should not be permitted – but Republican rule isn’t based on democracy

The debt ceiling drama seems to be nearing its end, as the US House of Representatives passed legislation that would lift the debt ceiling in accordance with a deal reached last weekend between Joe Biden, the president, and Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the House. The Republicans have been fighting to force cuts in spending and/or eligibility for food stamps (Snap), Medicaid, childcare and pre-schools, education and grants for higher education.

By linking these and other provisions to the lifting of the debt ceiling, the Republicans tried to use the threat of default on the public debt to force Democrats to accept them. The legislation, which now goes to the Senate where it is expected to pass, did not satisfy most of their desires.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC and the author of Failed: What the “Experts” Got Wrong About the Global Economy

Senate is under pressure to approve bill in time to avoid national debt default after House passes bill by 314 to 117 votes

Good morning US politics blog readers. Thursday’s going to be a busy day: The debt ceiling bill that passed the House on a bipartisan vote last night heads for the Senate, where it faces time pressure to get it approved and on to Joe Biden’s desk for signature to avoid a national default.

Republicans and the White House are both claiming Wednesday night’s 314-117 vote as a victory, to a degree. “This budget agreement is a bipartisan compromise. Neither side got everything it wanted,” the president said.

It’s potentially a huge day in the supreme court, where opinions on one or more cases of huge consequence to the nation could come as early as 10am. Justices have heard arguments covering affirmative action, LGBTQ+ equality and the future of Native American tribes. We’ll bring you the latest as the decision(s) come down.

We have details on the months of distrust inside Donald Trump’s legal team that threatens the former president’s defense against allegations he illegally stored classified material at his Florida home.

Challengers to Trump for the Republican party’s 2024 presidential nomination are coming thick and fast with reports that former vice president Mike Pence and the former New Jersey governor (and fierce Trump critic) Chris Christie are poised to enter the race next week.

Joe Biden is in Colorado, where he is scheduled to deliver the commencement address at the US air force academy later this morning.

• Harder and Eriksson join champions on deals to 2026
• Arsenal’s Maanum and Chelsea’s James sign new contracts

Pernille Harder and Magda Eriksson have joined Bayern Munich after leaving Chelsea at the end of their contracts. They have signed for the Frauen Bundesliga champions on deals to 2026.

Harder and Eriksson, who are a couple, recently won their third consecutive Women’s Super League and Women’s FA Cup double. Harder is returning to the Bundesliga after she left Wolfsburg to join Chelsea in 2020 for what the German club said was a world record fee in women’s football. “I’m happy to be back in the Bundesliga and can’t wait to play here again,” said the Denmark forward, who scored 105 goals in 114 games for Wolfsburg.

(Roswell/RCA)
On the veteran band’s first album since drummer – and Dave Grohl’s best friend – Taylor Hawkins’ death, every anguished, searching and sometimes triumphant song is about death

In 1995, Foo Fighters released their eponymous debut album, recorded by Dave Grohl alone the previous year in the months after Kurt Cobain’s suicide. The contemporary press was revealing: the album was not greeted with the universal warmth one might have expected. Interviewers and critics seemed to be suspicious and combative. There was a consensus that the album was selling well due to residual affection for Nirvana, or as a kind of mass sympathy vote; that either way, it was unlikely to be a project with legs. One frequent line of questioning involved picking over its lyrics for references to his former band and its late frontman, despite Grohl’s repeated insistence that almost all the songs predated Cobain’s death and that the album was not an act of posthumous reflection or mourning – whatever grieving he had to do was done in private.

How times change. Twenty-eight years later, Foo Fighters are enshrined as a dependable rock institution. Dave Grohl’s charm and affability mean his name seldom appears in print unaccompanied by the phrase Nicest Guy in Rock; his image long uncoupled itself from the darkness and angst that consumed Nirvana. And the death in 2022 of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins was marked with very public grieving: tribute concerts in LA and London – billed by Grohl as “gigantic fucking nights for a gigantic fucking person” – their bills featuring everyone from Rush to Liam Gallagher to Miley Cyrus, their conclusion emotionally charged performances by Foo Fighters themselves, Grohl fighting back tears as he sang.

Spills occur as Danish parliament passes law to tax petrol and diesel trucks transporting heavy loads

A 57-year-old truck driver has been detained after loads of potatoes were found on a bridge linking two Danish islands, police have said. The driver was held on suspicion of causing reckless endangerment to life.

The first spill was reported on the westbound side of the Storebaelt Bridge early on Thursday morning, a police spokesperson, Kenneth Taanquist, said. The bridge connects the island where the capital, Copenhagen, is located to the rest of Denmark.

• Maroons beat NSW Sky Blues 18-10 at Parramatta’s CommBank Stadium
• Julia Robinson scores two tries in front of 12,000-strong crowd

A more clinical Queensland team won the opening match of the two-game Origin series 18-10 in an error-riddled game at Sydney’s CommBank Stadium. A two-try haul from Julia Robinson, a dominant showing from Keilee Joseph and some sublime touches from Tamika Upton guided the Maroons to an upset victory in front of over 12,000 fans.

Both teams struggled to hold the ball but it was the Maroons who held their nerve and made the most of their opportunities to claim a famous win in the first multi-game series for the women.

One feels women are under pressure to return to work after having children, the other was keen to go back. Can they find common ground?

Gillian, 52, Altrincham

Occupation Housewife, mother of five children