In your briefing today:

📣 There was violence across Northern Ireland last night amid protests over immigration and agitation by far-right activists, following a stabbing attack in Belfast that was captured on video and went viral on social media.

Masked thugs burnt vehicles and houses, blocked roads in and around Belfast and hijacked a service bus in the unrest, which came hours after a 30-year-old asylum seeker from Sudan was charged with attempted murder. He is due to appear in court later today.

A man remains in a critical condition in hospital with injuries to his eyes, face and back following an attack in Belfast on Monday night. (Guardian) (BBC Live updates)

📣 Hundreds of Scotland fans have discovered that vital travel paperwork to enter the US has changed status without warning, placing their expensive trips to the United States at risk of cancellation.

The first reports about concerns about changing ESTA statuses appeared on Monday - since that coverage, hundreds more have found they’re in the same boat. Some are facing expensive round trips for interviews at the US embassy in London: for others, it’s too late to do anything. (Daily Record)

📣 Holyrood is likely to reject Labour calls for an inquiry into SNP finances, with First Minister John Swinney continuing to insist there “can be no higher investigation” than Police Scotland’s Operation Branchform, which uncovered Peter Murrell’s embezzlement and has now closed.

Labour’s proposals are due to come to a vote this afternoon in the Scottish Parliament. If they are rejected, it could well be that MPs in Westminster choose to step in with an inquiry themselves. (PA via standard.co.uk)

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📣 Residents evacuated from their homes in Coalsnaughton, because of movement in the ground under their properties, have been promised £1 million in support by the Scottish Government. (STV)

📣 Scotland’s taxpayer-funded film and TV agency, Screen Scotland, has called for BBC Scotland to be given more power to decide how money is spent for Scottish audiences. (Herald has the exclusive)

📣 The RSPB has bought Bass Rock, the distinctive island off North Berwick, ending 320 years of ownership by the Hamilton-Dalrymple family. (BBC)

📣 The US launched military strikes against Iran overnight, in retaliation for having one of its Apache helicopters shot down near the Strait of Hormuz. (WSJ)

📣 Only one in 10 Europeans see the US as an ally, research has found, with “deep mistrust” and growing doubt about the willingness of the US to aid Europe should it be attacked. (Guardian has the exclusive)

📣 A car bomb in Moscow has killed the Russian general who oversaw the nation’s ammunition supplies. (Independent)

📣 Former David Cameron aide Steve Hilton has won the chance to run in November’s general election to become governor of California. (WSJ)

⚽️ Scotland goalkeeper Craig Gordon has dropped a hint that he might retire after the World Cup. The 43-year-old, battling for a starting place in Steve Clarke’s side, is the oldest player at this year’s tournament. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Scotland’s women finished top of their World Cup qualifying group as they thumped Israel 5-1, in a thrilling conclusion to their qualification campaign. (BBC report & 🎥 highlights)

⚽️ Atletico Madrid have “laughed off” Real Madrid’s £130 million bid for their star striker, Julian Alvarez. They cited his release clause - which is for £430 million. (BBC)

🗣️ Jenny Lindsay is astonished that party loyalists have rallied round the SNP to help fill its coffers - donating £25,000 in the aftermath of Peter Murrell’s admission of embezzlement - despite the SNP refusing to engage with concerns about how it has been run.

“It’s a bleak truth that it’s easier to con people than it is to convince them they’ve been conned,” she writes.

“As the fireworks factory enters its third week ablaze, the true believers continue to insist there’s nothing to see.

“The Murrell affair has done nothing to humble a party in urgent need of some humility. First Minister John Swinney has displayed a childish triumphalism during First Minister’s Question Time,” she says.

Lindsay suggests there is history to the SNP’s approach today. She campaigned for a “yes” vote in the independence referendum, but was “turfed out” her campaign group two weeks before the vote for “having asked far too many awkward questions about its directorship, opposing what I thought were too-cosy relationships between us and both Yes Scotland and the SNP.

“Most of us are neither staunchly nationalist nor enthusiastically unionist, and never have been. Surely what we all want, though, is competent, devolved governance, and not to be taken for granted – or for mugs.(The Scotsman)

🗣️ Euan McColm is unimpressed by Scottish Greens co-leader Ross Greer, “the most ridiculous man in Scottish politics”, and his refusal to support an inquiry into SNP finances.

“The Scottish Greens’ co-leader is the perfect manifestation of that great comic archetype, the clueless middle-class revolutionary,” writes McColm.

“Mr Greer is an exhausting man who rages about struggle despite having been born within the sound of lawn sprinklers: he’s Wolfie 'power to the people' Smith; he’s Rick from The Young Ones, declaiming 'Neil! Neil! Orange Peel!'; he’s every member of all those Judean fronts in one.

“The Murrell scandal represents a political open goal for Mr Greer whose mission, surely, is to build support for his party.

“His failure to exploit the SNP’s misery is just bad politics.” (The Mail)

🗣️Vicky Allan has been totting up the Tartan Army’s carbon footprint, and has discovered it would take an awful lot of trees to offset World Cup travel. Scots, she reckons, will make a round trip of 6,000 miles each if they travel to Boston - and closer to 8,000 if they go to Miami.

Using Offset Britain’s carbon calculator, she finds a return flight to Boston “costs” 82 mature trees to offset, because the carbon emissions from those two flights would add up to a third of an average person’s total emissions for the year.

If 10,000 Scottish fans make it to Boston (and estimates suggest three times as many will go), then you’re looking at planting a forest of 800,000 trees - and more than a million if you count those heading for (more distant) Miami. That’s around 25% more trees than currently exist in the entire City of Edinburgh.

🗣️ Gabriella Bennett writes engagingly about a pastime of hers: travels around the highways and byways of Scotland (and some of northern England too) motivated by bargains available on Facebook Marketplace. “Forget Munro-bagging,” she writes. “This is how I enjoy the Scotland you don’t read about in guidebooks.

“Part of the thrill is meeting people,” she continues. “I probably don’t get out enough. But through Facebook Marketplace I chat to other rookie renovators, admiring whatever it is they want to show me.

“‘Have you tried it like this?’ I say to a guy in Berwick-upon-Tweed who can’t figure out how to get a tub and a shower to fit in his bathroom. My house is the same. When the floor plan is small you need to shoogle. I like to imagine he took my advice.” (The Times)

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