Judge rules in favour of football supporters after Uefa’s attempt to block court claims being held in Liverpool

Liverpool fans affected by the chaos surrounding the 2022 Champions League final in Paris have the right to have their personal injury claims heard in the UK, a judge has ruled, after an attempt by European football’s governing body to block it.

A number of supporters were hurt at the Stade de France in Paris during overcrowding when their club played against Real Madrid in the men’s final of the European competition on 28 May 2022.

Spain’s PM ‘deeply embarrassed’ after rival politicians create a diplomatic row with the Dominican Republic

Spain’s conservative People’s party (PP) has pulled a Temptation Island-themed video attacking the country’s socialist prime minister, his wife and his colleagues after the short, AI-generated film provoked an embarrassing diplomatic incident with the Dominican Republic.

The 30-second video – which aimed to piggyback on the popularity of the Spanish edition of the reality TV show – was the PP’s latest attempt to capitalise on the corruption allegations surrounding both Pedro Sánchez’s administration and his wife, Begoña Gómez.

With France in town, Healy, Murray and O’Mahony play final game in Dublin with third straight Six Nations in their sights

No one in Ireland needed another reason to be up for this Saturday’s match against France, not with the title on the line, and the grand slam, and the promise beyond it of a shot at becoming the first team in history to win the Six Nations back-to-back-to-back. All that, and the prospect of a spot on the British & Irish Lions tour down the line in the back of the mind. But they got three more good ones last week regardless when Cian Healy, Conor Murray, and Peter O’Mahony announced that they were going to retire, together, at the end of the championship, and that this would be the very last home game for all three of them.

Healy, Murray and O’Mahony have won 372 caps between them, which is more than you might find in a green Test XV. They have been ever-present through the era in which Irish rugby was transformed. Healy, who is the oldest of the three, won his first call-up in the spring of 2008 when they were still hopeful triers chasing their first grand slam in more than 50 years. It finally came a year later. Healy won his first cap that autumn in Brian O’Driscoll’s 100th match, a 20-20 draw against Australia.

The pattern is inescapable – with just one caveat: organised crime bosses occasionally display more honour

Behold Donald Corleone, the US president who behaves like a mafia boss – but without the principles. Of course, one hesitates to make the comparison, not least because Donald Trump would like it. And because the Godfather is an archetype of strength and macho glamour while Trump is weak, constantly handing gifts to America’s enemies and getting nothing in return. But when the world is changing so fast – when a nation that has been a friend for more than a century turns into a foe in a matter of weeks – it helps to have a guide. My colleague Luke Harding clarified the nature of Vladimir Putin’s Russia when he branded it the Mafia State. Now we need to attach the same label to the US under Putin’s most devoted admirer.

Consider the way Trump’s White House conducts itself, issuing threats and menaces that sound better in the original Sicilian. This week the president said that a deal ending Russia’s war on Ukraine “could be made very fast” but “if somebody doesn’t want to make a deal, I think that person won’t be around very long”. You didn’t need a translator to know that the somebody he had in mind was Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist