Morning Mail: One Nation election finances face scrutiny, Trump’s new Iran threats, why your super already invests in AI
Electoral officials examine One Nation expenses; fresh strikes threaten Middle East peace talks
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Good morning. One Nation’s finances are in the spotlight as we reveal that the Australian Electoral Commission is examining whether the party breached laws in its public funding claim after the last election.
Overseas, Donald Trump has again threatened Iran with devastation as escalating strikes undermine the truce. And mortuaries are being overwhelmed in Venezuela as the quake death toll rises.
In the World Cup, the round of 32 is underway. And in cricket, Ben Stokes has marked his retirement test in style and Australia have dumped rivals India out of the Women’s T20 World Cup in spectacular fashion.
Australia
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AI boom | Unbeknownst to most Australians, AI technology stocks are a growing part of their retirement savings – now making up as much as 12% of most balanced super funds.
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Election spending | Electoral officials questioned Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party over more than $800,000 of claimed electoral expenditure for the last election, documents reveal. In other Hanson news, Paul Hogan reached for an obscure Australianism in reaction to her call for a monoculture.
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The Agenda | It’s the last week of parliament before the winter break, and not a minute too soon. But, Josh Butler writes, Labor may make one more gamble in their push for reform.
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Explainer | A bump to minimum wage, a change to how often superannuation is paid and more paid parental leave days are among changes coming into effect on 1 July.
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Eyes in the sky | Shark-spotting drones will fly from dawn to dusk throughout the year at 70 beaches in NSW under an expanded $34m monitoring program aiming to restore confidence to beachgoers.
World
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Middle East crisis | Escalating strikes by Iran and the US have continued, further undermining their fragile interim peace agreement; Donald Trump has threatened to annihilate Iran over the renewed violence; fresh hostilities suggest the US-Iran memorandum was too broadly worded, Patrick Wintour writes.
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Venezuela quakes | Mortuaries in Caracas are overwhelmed as bodies turn up on motorcycles, in the backs of cars or the load beds of pickup trucks days after the Venezuela quakes. There is video of rescuers saving a boy and a mother with a baby, but at the macro level, Venezuela’s quakes are a test of US power after the gutting of USAID, Andrew Roth writes.
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Murder charge | An Australian man has been charged with the murder of a teenage girl whose naked body was found in a suitcase after she disappeared in Thailand.
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Feeling the heat | Poland, Czechia and Slovakia are braced for record temperatures of over 40C as a heatwave linked to hundreds of deaths in western Europe spreads east.
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Skydiving tragedy | A skydiving plane has crashed after falling suddenly near an aerodrome north-eastern France, killing all 11 people onboard, according to the region’s prefect.
World Cup
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Socceroos latest | Marketing stunts, murals and bandwagon-jumping politicians point to one thing: Australia is invested in football (for a few weeks at least), Jack Snape writes.
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Match catch-up | Lionel Messi came off the bench to score as Argentina beat Jordan; late drama sent Austria and Algeria into World Cup knockouts to break Iran hearts; Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane scored as a creaky England beat stubborn Panama.
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Off the pitch | We shared the good food, nervous energy and pandemonium in Sydney’s Algerian community.
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What to watch today | South Africa are taking on Canada today. Brazil take on Japan and Germany face Paraguay tomorrow.
Full Story
The dawn of the designer baby
Meet Cathy Tie: serial entrepreneur, self-described “Biotech Barbie”, and the woman aiming to revolutionise reproduction by using Crispr to edit human embryos. But, as Jenny Kleeman tells Helen Pidd, all is not quite as it seems.
In-depth
The Victorian Greens’ idea for a new land tax bracket on investment property holdings worth more than $5m is straight out of the Zohran Mamdani playbook. State leader Ellen Sandell says her party offers a “hopeful and bold” alternative for voters – but will it combat rising rightwing populism?
Not the news
As a teenager in the mid 2000s, Billy Bain would ride waves around Sydney’s northern beaches, having travelled the world watching his champion surfer father. But he was often made to feel an unwelcome outsider. For a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Dharug artist has made sculptures that represent a counter-image to the bronzed Aussie beachgoer.
Sport
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Cricket | Australia won by six wickets in a record run chase to dump India out of the Women’s T20 World Cup; Ben Stokes marked his England retirement in extraordinary fashion.
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AFL | Zak Butters zigs, zags and rips Adelaide apart to show why he’s the most sought-after AFL player in the land, Jonathan Horn writes.
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Motorsport | George Russell held off Max Verstappen to win the Austrian F1 Grand Prix, with Oscar Piastri in fourth place.
Media roundup
Dozens of Australian Rules footballers have been diagnosed with the degenerative brain disease CTE, exposing the scale of the AFL’s brain trauma crisis, ABC News reports. A Tasmanian town has raised concerns over “secret plans” for an AI data centre, the Mercury reports.
What’s happening today
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ACT | Parliament is sitting this week in Canberra.
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NSW | A new block of hearings in the royal commission on antisemitism and social cohesion is due to begin today in Sydney.
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Queensland | Queensland’s treasurer, David Janetzki, is due to deliver a state budget address at the Committee for Economic Development of Australia.
Sign up
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Brain teaser
And finally, here are the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

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