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In your briefing today:

• Celebration in Israel and Gaza as ceasefire begins early

• Is BBC Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland for the chopping block amid a cull of “po-faced middle-class stuff”?

• “Chaos” at Historic Environment Scotland as CEO is suspended

• Scotland nab an unlikely - but joyous - win against Greece

📣 Images of celebrating Israelis and Palestinians adorn today’s front pages, after a ceasefire deal was agreed in the small hours of yesterday morning. The agreement came into effect overnight, earlier than expected, after Israel ratified the deal.

Hospitals in Israel are preparing to receive hostages, who are expected to be released by Hamas on Monday.

Donald Trump gets a lot of praise - with the next prize he really wants, the Nobel Peace Prize, being announced later today. (Guardian) (Mail)

• Trump gets a hostage deal - with a whole lot of help from Arab and Muslim allies (AP)

• How Trump secured the Gaza breakthrough that eluded Biden (BBC)

• “President declared a win and let others work out the details” (🎁WSJ - gift link)

• Jeremy Bowen: There’s a chance of ending the war… but it’s not over yet (BBC)

• Could Donald Trump win the Nobel Peace Prize today? (Sky News)

📣 Historic Environment Scotland is in “chaos” after chief executive Katerina Brown was suspended from her job after only a year in the job.

The organisation, which looks after around 300 historic properties including Edinburgh Castle, gets £70 million in Scottish Government funding. It has faced several controversies, including a row over hospitality claimed by senior figures and, this week, racist language used by a director.

Conservative MSP Stephen Kerr is calling for an independent inquiry into “management pratice and culture at HES”. (The Scotsman has the exclusive)

📣 Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland’s flagship show, could be about to be scrapped. The programme, which has run for more than half a century, is at risk from a big shakeup being planned by new BBC Scotland audio and events head Victoria Easton Riley.

A “BBC insider” told the Times: “Victoria is on a mission to ditch all the po-faced middle-class stuff and attract a new audience.” It could all now be wound up by the end of the month, one staffer suggests, replaced by a lighter magazine show.

Mornings, with Kaye Adams, is also facing an “uncertain” future. (The Times has the exclusive £) (Herald) (Sun)

• STV bosses have been accused of financial mismanagement and “cultural vandalism” after announcing plans to axe a north of Scotland news programme and cut jobs. (BBC)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Around 100 physical or verbal assaults a day are taking place in Scotland’s schools and colleges, according to figures obtained by the Unison Scotland union. (Scotsman)

📣 A Ryanair flight into Glasgow Prestwick was “six minutes from disaster” last week, during storm Amy, after several unsuccessful attempts to land. (Daily Mail)

📣 MSPs have voted to reject giving people with drug and alcohol addictions the legal right to treatment. The bill was tabled by former Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross, who said it would have saved lives. (BBC)

📣 A man has been charged after a drone entered airspace around Edinburgh Airport and halted flights yesterday. (BBC)

📣 Power was finally restored to the last of 90,000 Scottish homes cut off by Storm Amy a week ago. (STV)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Donald Trump continues to pursue his “enemies”: New York Attorney General Letitia James has been criminally indicted on federal charges of bank fraud by a grand jury. The New York Civil Liberties Union and American Civil Liberties Union called it "the latest in a long list of brazen abuses of power by President Trump". (BBC)

📣 Half a million children are living in households dogged by a “benefits debt cycle” where they have to borrow money to bridge the gap to the first universal credit payment, but then struggle to pay it back. (The Independent has the exclusive)

📣 Tsunami warnings have been issued in several countries around the Pacific after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake off the Philippines. (Sky News)

📣 British Universities have cut more than 12,000 jobs in the last year, according to new analysis. (BBC)

📣 The Battlefield 6 video game launches today to vast hype and decent reviews. (BBC) (Gamesradar)

SPORT

⚽️ That was jammy. Scotland somehow conjured up a win against Greece at Hampden, after long periods when they couldn’t get close to the ball, let along build moves capable of moving them towards the Greek goal.

Greece’s Anastasios Bakasetas even missed a sitter of, suggests Alan Pattullo, Chris Iwelumo* proportions.

And yet… Lewis Ferguson scored his first international goal to put Scotland a goal up after Ryan Christie’s strike, and Lydon Dykes cashed in on a terrible goalkeeping mistake to score Scotland’s third.

The Greeks will feel they were mugged. (Scotsman) (BBC)

• Steve Clarke: “I’ve talked before about the character of this group. The Scottish public should love to have them. They never know when they’re beat.” (Daily Record)

• * If you’ve never seen it, this video + radio commentary moment of that Iwelumo moment remains a classic.

⚽️ England enjoyed a 3-0 walk in the park against Wales, but Thomas Tuchel wasn’t happy with England’s “silent” support. “We never got any energy back from the stands,” he moaned. (BBC)

IDEAS
From the weekly magazines: The Middle East’s fresh start, Jews in Britain, migrants in Calais, and a toxic relationship with… a Land Rover

🗣️ The Economist is the only one of our weeklies to have print deadlines that allow it to reflect on the deal over Gaza.

It is, says the newspaper, “a new beginning for the Middle East.

“The path is narrow, but it is the best chance of creating lasting peace since the Oslo accords in 1993 and 1995.”

The new vision is very different from the “moribund” Oslo approach, the Economist says.

Rather than endless negotiations over the geographical and consitutional arrangements of a two-state solution, it sees success as “less like a ceremony in the White House and more like a decade of cement mixers spinning in Gaza, as violent settlers in the West Bank are curbed, the threat of missiles fade and ordinary people embrace a slowly rising belief in a safer, more prosperous future.”

Of that, and despite all the challenges, the Economist approves. (The Economist £)

• The peace deal is a triumph for Mr Trump’s transactional, bullying style of diplomacy. (The Economist £)

🗣️The Spectator leads on the fate of Jews in Britain. Douglas Murray takes issue with protestors across the country who have held “weekly, sometimes daily, parades of people celebrating the killings and spreading the libel – the lie – that the Jewish state of Israel is carrying out a ‘genocide’ in Gaza”.

Noting a doubling of hate crimes against Jews in Britain since 7 October 2023, peaking six months later, Murray writes: “Nobody in the Jewish community of Manchester was much surprised by what happened last week.

“Many had been warning the authorities in this country for two years about the increase in violence and hatred against Jews. But political leaders have been deaf to these cries.” (The Spectator £)

🗣️The New Statesman offers a bleak but revealing long read on the migrants who arrive in Britain on small boats, researched by spending time among those waiting near Calais. There, with formal camps torn down and casual emcampments discouraged by patrols and drones, “living conditions are appalling,” Miles Ellingham and Jack Jeffery report.

“Many wear worn-down sliders and broken Crocs. Rashes resembling scabies are visible on bandaged hands. The group watches over an infant girl. She’s coughing profusely; one of them brings her a cookie."

“People wonder why the migrants risk their lives crossing the Channel; 82 of them died in it last year,” they write. “But beyond it lies a sister in Birmingham, the prospect of a job in Liverpool, a room with a bed perhaps and no more police harassment. Across it lies another life. First, though, they have to traverse it successfully. Many attempt the crossing several times.” (The New Statesman £)

🗣️Flora Watkins says she’s in a toxic relationship… with her Land Rover. “My Land Rover seduced me with its size and strength, its rugged interior, how safe it made me feel when I was behind the wheel,” she writes. “Recently, however, I’ve been wondering how much more abuse I can take from my Discovery 4.”

The first blow was the £800-£1200 (plus VAT) cost to replace a broken wing mirror. Then it was “various sensors (coolant, air con, parking) giving up the ghost”. And then “red capital letters flashed up on the dashboard – ‘REDUCED PERFORMANCE’ – and the once-mighty six-cylinder engine refused to push the speedometer over 30 mph.”

It was a cracked manifold, said the garage, and it would be £1001.91 to supply and fit the part. But they couldn’t get the part… because Jaguar Land Rover has been hacked. No matter how their owners feel about them, it can be an expensive - and frustrating - business owning one. (The Spectator £)

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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