In your briefing today:

📣 The Middle East ceasefire is at risk of unravelling amid a flurry of Israeli strikes on Lebanon, which have killed “at least” 254 people, and a continuing impasse over shipping being able to transit the Strait of Hormuz. There are growing calls - including from UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper - for Lebanon to be included in the ceasefire deal. She also called for shipping through the Strait to be toll-free. (Guardian) (BBC)

📣 The latest opinion polling shows the SNP well out in front, with John Swinney seeing his personal rating rise ahead of next month’s election. The Ipsos Scotland poll, for STV, shows the SNP on 39% of the constituency vote - up 3% and 24% ahead of Labour, on 15%. Reform is also on 15%. But four in ten voters also say they may change their mind ahead of polling day. (STV)

📣 Acclaimed wildlife cameraman and photographer Doug Allan has died while trekking in Nepal. Allan, from Dunfermline, died “immersed in nature and surrounded by friends” while trekking in Nepal, his management company said.

If you’ve watched any major British-made nature documentary in recent decades, you’ve seen his work: he was the principal cameraman for programmes including The Blue Planet and Frozen Planet, and spent much of his career working alongside Sir David Attenborough.

He won eight Emmy Awards, and was made an OBE in 2024. (BBC) (Scotsman)

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📣 Most Scottish GPs believe patient safety is being compromised because of excessive workloads, a survey from the Royal College of GPs has revealed. Almost half reported a decline in their own mental well-being over the last year. (The Herald has the exclusive)

📣 Plans for a £480 million hotel and golf course on farmland in Angus have been unveiled. An investment firm, Mocca Capital, is behind the plans: Hyatt would operate a hotel on the development. (STV)

📣 Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson is unimpressed by the BBC’s apology after it found it had breached its own editorial standards in broadcasting a racial slur involuntarily uttered by him during its Bafta coverage. The coverage sparked a global firestorm, with Davidson a target of abuse. (Daily Record)

📣 Billionaire Ben Delo is returning to the UK from Hong Kong to donate millions to Reform, having accused Keir Starmer of creating a “rigged game” by restricting foreign donations to political parties. (Independent)

📣 Genetics could determine how well weight-loss jabs work for people - with some having genes which both ensure greater weight loss, and worse side-effects from some of the medicines. (BBC)

📣 “Ketamine Queen” Jasveen Sangha, who supplied the drugs that killed Friends actor Matthew Perry, has been jailed for 15 years over charges related to his death. Sangha told the court she regretted her “poor choices” and “horrible decisions that ultimately proved tragic.” (NBC News)

📣 A mystery surrounding a famous 300-million-year-old fossil of an octopus may have been solved: it’s not actually an octopus, scientists think. (Independent)

⚽️ Liverpool have it all to do to save their season next week: they sank 2-0 to PSG in Paris last night in a performance “devoid of ambition” and will need to be a lot better in the second leg to stand a chance of progress in the Champions League. (BBC report & highlights)

⚽️ Hearts boss Derek McInnes says he’s excited by the season finale with Celtic that has some of his supporters hopping mad. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Celtic’s “Green Brigade” ultras group has been re-admitted to Parkhead - but are now claiming “vindication” and demanding an apology from the club after their five-month lockout. (Daily Record)

🗣️ One pound in every seven spent by the Scottish Government is on benefits, notes Kenny Farquharson. “Vast” amounts of public spending were switched to the fight against poverty over the last Scottish Parliament. “The birth and growth of the Scottish welfare state is perhaps the biggest single thing to happen in Scottish society in recent years,” he writes.

You won’t hear much about it among Scotland’s middle classes, he writes, because so few receive any benefits.

But one in three children in Scotland receives the Scottish Child Payment. The disability payment regime has been liberalised. And there are a host of issues which our politicians could be debating, related to this boom in support - the “overmedicalisation of anxiety and stress”, the “cliff-edge effect of the child payment,” the potential “disincentive to work”.

It’s a huge shift in our politics - and if the SNP and Labour are not willing to be candid about it, and discuss its impact, the door is left open for the centre and hard right to make the running, he warns. (The Times)

🗣️ The world is finally waking up to “foul-mouthed bully Donald Trump”, writes former First Minister Henry McLeish. “A line from playwright Alan Bennett’s The History Boys seems apt,” he writes, “based on the rhetoric and chaos emanating from the White House: ‘History is just one f***ing thing after another.’

“‘Operation Epic Fury’ – the US name for its attacks on Iran – has been more like ‘Operation Epic F***-Up’,” he says.

“The last 15 months of Trump feel more like 15 years, but there are signs that the real world is weary of crisis and chaos, and is now responding. Our fragile planet cannot be run from the White House.” (The Scotsman)

🗣️ Is it finally time to buy an electric car? Vicky Allan watches diesel prices creeping up towards £2 a litre and says “yes”. She listened to Professor Tim Lenton backing that view, too, at a talk at the Edinburgh Science Festival. He told Allan: “We are getting to the point where it’s not only the better technology but also the cheaper one, and with fuel prices going crazy with another war happening, that can only convince us further that running around on dirt-cheap electricity is the better option.”

There may be clouds on the horizon, though: EV drivers aren’t totally immune from the Gulf crisis, as electricity prices are likely to go up. Those on standard electricity tariffs, or those who rely on public chargers, “are likely to feel more of a pinch” than those on off-peak tariffs. You still need to do your homework. (The Herald)

🗣️Malcolm Offord has, indeed, succeeded in taking Reform “to a new level” in Scotland, reflects Euan McColm. Unfortunately for him, that’s some way south of where it was a year ago. “The political graveyard is littered with the failed careers of men – and it’s always men – like Malcolm Offord who try to make the transition from business to politics,” notes McColm.

“These guys, with their Thomas Pink shirts and their signet rings, built their success in a world in which nobody ever stood up to them.

“Politics brings with it a level of scrutiny for which Mr Offord and others like him are unprepared.” (Mail)

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