Bleary greetings from Leipzig. In your briefing today:

📣 The aftermath of Peter Murrell’s admission of embezzlement continues to spread: Kirsten Oswald, the newly appointed victims minister, is the latest to be dragged in, with her conduct during the scandal called into question.

Oswald would “routinely obstruct scrutiny of party finances as chair of the ruling body’s meetings,” according to former party officials. Although there’s no suggestion she knew of Murrell’s crimes, they say her conduct helped him cover his tracks. (Times)

📣 The ceasefire in the Middle East is looking increasingly shaky: the US military has carried out new strikes on Iran, targeting a military site in the port of Bandar Abbas and drones there which, they said, posed a risk to shipping. (BBC)

📣 Details of Peter Mandelson’s vetting file are starting to emerge: multiple sources tell the Guardian that his associations with senior figures in China, Russia and Israel, plus a “very close relationship with a fourth individual, who is British”, could be compromising. (The Guardian has the exclusive)

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📣 A former pet shop owner has been jailed for a minimum of eight and a half years after being convicted of a string of sex attacks on women and girls. Paul Patrick attacked some of his victims at Pawz N Klawz Pet Supplies in Aboyne, in Aberdeenshire, and police have urged other victims to come forward. (STV)

📣 The backlash against vast new data centres continues: campaigners have now hit out at a plan for a “hyperscale” data centre in Fife, describing it as a “blot on the landscape” and expressing concern over its energy use. (Herald)

📣 The Royal Highland Centre may be renamed to make it clear it’s not actually in the Highlands. (Herald)

📣 Ukraine is turning the tables in its war against Russia, with western experts agreeing with Ukrainian officials that the country’s military is stronger than at any time since Trump’s return to office, and that the canny use of drones at scale has been a huge factor. The FT has a long read (£).

📣 More evidence of the blizzard of cocaine use sweeping the UK: drug driving is now outpacing drink driving in the UK, with horrific consequences. (🎥 Sky News)

📣 The White House has “quietly” told federal prosecutors to stand down on their investigations into Venezuela’s stand-in President, in a move that’s being taken as a sign of warming relations. (AP)

📣 Jill Biden thought her husband was having a stroke during his notorious 2024 debate appearance. (BBC)

📣 If you think it’s been hot these last few days… the next five years are going to smash more records, according to the UN, as global temperatures surge past the threshold set as a “safe” limit. (AP)

⚽️ Crystal Palace won the UEFA Europa Conference League last night with a 1-0 win over Rayo Vallecano of Spain, Jean-Philippe Mateta scoring the winning goal. It was a trophy in Palace’s first-ever European campaign, and came only a year after its first-ever major trophy - the FA Cup, which won it a place in Europe. (Guardian)

⚽️ Celtic goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel has retired at the age of 39, with the Denmark international unable to recover sufficiently from a serious shoulder injury which hampered his performances this season, and kept him out entirely since February. (BBC)

⚽️ Scotland fullback Andy Robertson is on the verge of leaving Liverpool for Spurs. (BBC)

🗣️ I'm in Leipzig, and I can't sleep. I've not slept since Crystal Palace lifted the Europa Conference trophy just before midnight local time. I'm typing in the dark: my two teens now staggered off to bed, exhausted after a night's mostly figuratively riotous celebration. We'll never do this again, I know.

Many of you will arch an eyebrow. What is a Scot, living in Edinburgh, doing in Leipzig, following the third-most distant Premier League team he could? (Bournemouth and Brighton, on the south coast, are further away).

Some of you, who might also measure their life in seasons not years, might be able to hazard a guess.

For everyone else, I’ll try to explain. It's a long story, and also a short one. When my wife and I, living in chic London Docklands, wanted more space, we ended up in less chic - but better value for money - South Norwood, in south London, in the shadow of Crystal Palace's Selhurst Park.

That, inevitably, meant I'd adopt Palace, my new local side. And when our kids came along, it was at rickety old Selhurst Park that they fell in love with the game, even from the least promising start.

Alan, the eldest, witnessed his first 0-0 draw in his first game, in the second-tier Championship, and threw a wild, tearful tantrum on the stairway coming out of Selhurst's hulking Holmesdale End. “Why couldn't they score?” he demanded.

Generations of men filed by eyeing him, and then eying me, with an air of: "Are you telling him what lies ahead, or shall I?"

Palace, then, were in a mess: they'd only just clung on to existence, only just clung on to membership of England's second flight, and expectations were low for a pieced-together side playing in a tatty old ground.

But then the miracle of promotion in the 2012-13 season, and - us all season ticket holders now - they took us on a rollercoaster that ran for a decade and a half. Relegation scraps, great scalps claimed, a cup near-miss. A bond was formed, football friendships made. I got involved with the club’s wonderful charity, Palace for Life. An actual - the first! - cup win last year.

And then all the way to, last night, a European final - the first, again! - all despite selling England's best defender (Marc Guihi off to Manchester City) and two generationally-good forwards in Eberechi Eze (off to Arsenal to win the league) and, the year before, Michael Olise (off to Bayern Munich to win the league).

Big sporting occasions can feel surreal: they’re familiar from TV, but also highly choreographed - for TV - and typically happen in places you don’t go often - a national stadium, a foreign ground. They can leave you feeling discombobulated: an extra in your own story.

So I told my lads to drink it in: the mandatory morning trip to the city’s museum, with the fans chanting outside, the jolly, chaotic hours with old football friends in Leipzig’s hot, narrow lanes, packed deep with Palace fans singing and boozing, the walk to the Red Bull Arena - built, strikingly, within the bowl of the old communist-era stadium it superceded, the nervous chatter of the build-up.

The game itself wasn’t exactly an exhibition: finals rarely are. Cool heads were in short supply in front of goal, apart at the moment of Jean-Phillipe Mateta’s vital, opportunistic strike. And while we couldn’t be sure the win was in the bag - you never can - we all muttered that we’d seen enough of this Rayo side to know they were beaten.

Eventually, they were.

The win, when it came, was received with joy, but not the giddy disbelief of last year’s FA Cup win. Success gets easier to believe. And I took a little mental note: it was the last game my eldest son and I will attend before he leaves home, for an academic and sporting adventure of his own making, far away.

There will be other games, God willing, but never quite like this one.

In the end, I reflected, I didn’t need to tell him what supporting Palace was going to be like. I’d never guessed all this, anyway. He found out for himself, and it was all fine.

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