Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 8 April.

Top stories

Two polls show Scott Morrison will be going into the election campaign facing an uphill task to overhaul Labor, after he delayed calling the poll over the weekend. Ipsos gave Labor a 53-47 two-party-preferred lead, while Monday’s Newspoll has the ALP ahead 52-48. That was an improvement from the 54-46 result a month ago, giving the Coalition hope that last week’s budget had resonated with voters. On Sunday Morrison defended his right to call the election when he deemed it best, dismissing criticism from Labor that the delay would allow him an extra week of taxpayer-funded advertising.

Theresa May faces intense cabinet pressure to avoid the prospect of a long Brexit delay, amid increasing expectations that last-ditch cross-party talks on a compromise departure plan will not produce anything concrete. Before a crucial EU summit later this week, the prime minister is left with a fast-diminishing range of options that could split the Conservative party and prompt a mass cabinet walkout, or could result in the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal on Friday. Meanwhile, allies of the cabinet minister Amber Rudd played down rumours she plans to join Boris Johnson in a leadership “dream ticket” to unite the Brexiter and remainer wings of the party, as the manoeuvrings to succeed Theresa May gained pace. So, can May keep her Brexit deal alive?

Australian stories are at risk of disappearing as local television drama is swamped by reality TV and Netflix, the former ABC managing director Mark Scott has warned. “One of the ways we understand each other as a society is by telling each other’s stories,” Scott said. “We develop insight and empathy; compassion and understanding.” Scott says forcing Netflix to make Australian drama is not the answer because that would result in Australian stories that appeal to international audiences rather than Australians. “The road does lead back to the ABC on this. It is the one guaranteed home of Australian stories and Australian culture and conversation. It may well be the market cannot deliver that anywhere else and a well-funded ABC is more important than ever.”

World

Members of the self-styled Libyan National Army head for Tripoli. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

The battle for Tripoli has escalated as a military assault on the city by the eastern Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar led to 21 deaths, and international calls for calm were ignored.

Donald Trump and Fox News have come under fire for contributing to a climate of Islamophobia, following the arrest of a supporter of the president who threatened to kill the Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories if he wins the Israeli election on Tuesday. The move would bury the two-state solution, writes Simon Tisdall.

A week of memorials has begun in Rwanda to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1994 genocide, when 800,000 people were killed in three months.

Snake hunters have captured what they say is the largest python ever found in the Florida Everglades: a pregnant female more than 5.2m long, and weighing 63.5kg.

Opinion and analysis

Stella prize shortlistees Jenny Ackland, Melissa Lucashenko and Jamie Marina Lau. Composite: Stella prize

The Stella prize, awarded to Australia’s best book by a female author, will be announced on Tuesday. The contenders include Melissa Lucashenko’s defiant, searingly funny novel Too Much Lip, and Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s memoir – her first book – which went out of print when her publishing house closed, only to be brought back when she was longlisted for the Stella. “They share an attitude that is daring, sometimes darkly funny, always serious and thoroughly unsentimental,” writes Camilla Nelson. “These books are difficult to sum up or pin down.”

The Queensland University of Technology made history in March when it achieved the first export of a small quantity of clean, green hydrogen produced in Australia from renewable energy. Hydrogen is increasingly being seen as an alternative to LNG and other fossil fuels and Australia has a lot to gain from a new export industry, writes Royce Kurmelovs. The only thing holding it back is the pace at which it embraces the technology and builds its industrial capacity over the next few years.

Sport

Watford have reached the FA Cup final for only the second time in their history, after a stunning comeback to beat Wolves 3-2 at Wembley. Gerard Deulofeu turned the game with a remarkable goal 10 minutes from time, then scored the winner after a Troy Deeney penalty in the final minute of normal time had brought the scores level.

The Brisbane Lions have moments when it all comes together in a wave, writes Craig Little. For the third time in three weeks, the surprise package of the AFL season overran a suddenly subdued opponent in the dying minutes.

Thinking time: Game of Thrones, cancer and me

‘Once I’d thought about Game of Thrones, all the other things I might never finish rushed through my mind.’ Illustration: Phil Hackett/phil hackett

The strangest thing about getting bad news is that your mind doesn’t quite act in the expected ways, writes Sarah Hughes. “When my oncologist told me that my triple negative breast cancer, diagnosed in 2017 when I was 44, had metastasised, spreading to my liver and was now stage 4 and incurable, the first thought that popped into my head, after the initial throat-closing “I don’t want to leave Kris and the kids,” was what if I never find out how Game of Thrones actually ends?

“I covered the press junket for the first series in 2011 and was asked by the Guardian to write a series of weekly recaps of the show. The request came at a very difficult time in my life – three days after the junket my third child was stillborn – yet it also gave me something to cling on to. Barely capable of work, there was a bleak comfort in losing myself in the power struggles of the Seven Kingdoms, this graphically brutal world where no one could be trusted and where words were the sharpest weapons of all. It might seem like an overstatement, but writing those recaps helped restore life to me. I loved arguing with the commenters about what had happened and what might happen next. I relished the pressure of having to get each recap online in such a short space of time, as well as the chance to truly lose myself in a fictional world.”

Media roundup

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that finding out who leaked the transcript of Donald Trump’s 2017 phone call with Malcolm Turnbull is the focus of one of eight criminal referrals announced by Devin Nunes, the highest-ranking Republican member on the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee. An IMF analyst says Australia’s housing market contraction is worse than first thought, the Australian Financial Review writes, and that interest rates are likely to be cut in the next few months. The West Australian reports that the former Labor minister for international development, Melissa Parke, will run for the ALP in Julie Bishop’s former seat of Curtin, in what the paper calls “a dramatic change of strategy” aimed at diverting the Liberals’ resources from more marginal seats such as Cowan, held by Labor’s Anne Aly.

Coming up

The results of the 2018 Naplan school tests will be released by the federal government today.

Residents of Melbourne suburbs surrounding the Campbellfield factory fire will rally to call for a crackdown on the toxic waste industry.