TODAY’S WEATHER

☔️ Rain’s on its way: for Glasgow from around 2pm, tipping it down into late afternoon, in Edinburgh from around 4pm and heavy through the evening. It arrives in Aberdeen later this evening, while London will be be wet all day. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Qatar hits out at Israeli attack | Swinney meets Trump on whisky | Poland shoots down Russian drones

📣 Qatar has hit out at an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders in Doha, calling them “cowardly” and illegal, and saying it “will not tolerate such reckless Israeli behaviour”.

Israel confirmed it was behind an attack which Hamas said killed six people, including the son of its exiled Gaza chief, Khalil al-Hayya. But it said its top leadership, including a negotiation team, had survived.

The attack came as Hamas’ political leadership gathered in Qatar to consider a US proposal for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. US President Donald Trump said later he learned of the attack from the US military, rather than Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. (AP) (BBC live coverage) (Guardian)

• Middle Eastern and leaders around the world condemned the Israeli attack (Al Jazeera)

• Jeremy Bowen: Diplomacy is in ruins after these strikes. “Israel's swift declaration of what it had done immediately fuelled speculation on social media that the latest American proposals were simply a ruse to get the Hamas leadership in one place where they could be targeted.” (BBC)

• Trump appears sidelined as US is caught unawares by Israel’s unprecedented strikes (Guardian)

• Once again, Israel leaves Trump in the dark as it conducts a military attack (The New York Times)

• Bel Trew: The Middle East is on the brink of an abyss (Independent)

📣 First Minister John Swinney said he had a “constructive discussion” with Trump about tariffs on Scotch whisky during a whirlwind visit to the United States. Swinney was pictured in the Oval Office meeting Trump, accompanied by the UK ambassador to the US, Lord Mandelson, after staying at his residence in Washington, DC. (Mail) (Scotsman)

📣 Poland has shot down Russian drones flying voer its territory, saying its airspace has been violated repeatedly. The action is the first direct clash between Nato and Russia since the Ukraine war began, with US aircraft involved in an operation to shoot down around 10 drones. (BBC Live coverage)

IDEAS
The synthetic drugs bringing “a crisis on top of a crisis” to Scotland’s streets

🗣️ Scotland’s drug death figures rarely offer good news, so the fall revealed last week - a 13% reduction in fatalities in 2024 - got some attention.

But Scotland remains the drugs death captial of Europe, and by a long way: we see 191 drug misuse deaths per million inhabitants, with second-placed Estonia at 135 deaths per million.

And there is now growing alarm about new synthetic opioids, known as nitazenes, which experts in the field warn could create a “crisis on top of a crisis”. Prepare to hear a lot more about them in the months and years ahead. Figures released in August linked them to 38 deaths in Scotland in the space of only three months.

According to a report from Cranstoun (PDF), a Scottish charity, the emergence of synthetic opioids into the UK drug supply is linked - ironically enough - to a successful campaign against heroin production. In Afghanistan, which has traditionally supplied nearly all the UK market, the Taliban has moved to stamp out poppy cultivation, creating a supply gap.

The synthetic replacements taking the place of heroin are much more potent, and evidence from North America - which is further down this path than the UK - is that this strength will lead to more overdoses and, inevitably, more deaths. You may have heard of America’s fentanyl problem: that’s another synthetic opioid, used in cancer care and anaesthesia, and it killed more than 72,000 people in the US in 2023, up from 3,105 a decade earlier.

Nitazene, the stuff hitting Scotland, is even stronger: between 250 and 900 times stronger than morphene, with the most potent version 4,300 times stronger than morphine. There’s now real concern that we could see a similar mushrooming of drug deaths in Scotland.

Dame Jackie Baillie sounds the alarm on nitazenes in today’s Scotsman, noting that even the life-saving medicine used to treat overdoses - naloxone - struggles to work on nitazene users, requiring multiple doses.

Baillie - deputy leader of Scottish Labour - criticises the SNP government’s drugs policy, pointing to cuts in funding for alcohol and drug partnerships and a lack of provision, and data on, rehabilitation for drugs users.

“The SNP government likes to point to its pilot drug-consumption room in Glasgow to show that it is tackling the problem. But the whole point of such rooms should be to go out of business by directing users to the rehabilitation they need so they never come back,” she writes.

The SNP, for its part, has also warned of the dangers of nitazenes, and urged people who carry the life-saving naloxone kits to have extra with them and follow advice published on the Public Health Scotland and Scottish Drugs Forum websites.

Drugs minister Maree Todd said last month that she was “determined to do more to tackle the harm caused by drugs and that is why we are providing record levels of funding for drugs and alcohol programmes, including widening access to treatment, residential rehabilitation and life-saving naloxone.”

But what of a wider solution? In today’s Daily Record, we warn of another problem in this crisis: apathy, because solving this problem won’t be easy. It requires the steady application of far-reaching policy across multiple areas.

“What’s clear is that there is no silver bullet to end Scotland’s drug death spiral. Poverty, poor housing and a lack of job opportunities are the key reasons why thousands turn to drugs in the first place,” says the title’s leader column.

“Tackle those evils and we might just start to see an improvement to our shocking drug deaths record.”

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Backers of Edinburgh’s newest concert hall are grappling with a funding gap, after a board meeting yesterday reviewed a tender from contractor Balfour Beatty. The Dunard Centre has embarked on another round of fundraising as construction costs spiral “significantly” above the £114 million previously quoted. (The Scotsman has the exclusive)

📣 A council has been criticised by a fatal accident inquiry after a 13-year-old girl died after her mum left her in pain to go to the pub. North Lanarkshire Council did not comply with social work policies and procedures in place at the time, the FAI found. (STV)

📣 Mourners have been asked not to leave alcoholic tributes at graves, because underage drinkers are sweeping through cemetaries to collect and drink the booze. (Daily Record)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 More than one in four children are living in homes where people are skipping meals because of financial concerns, research from food bank network Trussell has found. They say Britain’s hunger crisis is deepening, with more than 14 million people now going without food because they can’t afford it. (Independent)

📣 Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is being urged to immediately apply rules to double the time migrants must wait to qualify for permanent settlement in the UK, as new figures show a “Boriswave” of hundreds of thousands will qualify from next year. (The Times £)

📣 Boris Johnson is under pressure to explain how his private office uses public funds, which he gets as a former prime minister - but only for public work. A leak of data from the Office of Boris Johnson appears to show staff, partly funded by public cash, overseeing his global commercial operations. (The Guardian has the exclusive)

• Putin views, Queen stories and a boss’s birthday bash: Boris Johnson’s £5 million worth of paid speeches (Guardian)

📣 Contactless card payments could become unlimited, with the £100 cap scrapped. (BBC)

📣 Apple has unveiled an ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air - along with its first £2,000 iPhone model, the iPhone 17 Pro Max. It also revealed a series of updates to its AirPods line of headphones and its Apple Watch line. (Telegraph)

SPORT

⚽️ Norway romped to an 11-1 win over Moldova last night, with Erling Haaland doing the greatest damage with a remarkable fiv-goal haul. But Rangers fans would note that one of their new stars - Thelo Aasgaard - hit four goals, including a hat-trick in 11 minutes. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Celtic new man Kelechi Iheanacho says he hopes to make his debut against Kilmarnock on Sunday, having signed on a free transfer last week, and praised manager Brendan Rodgers - for whom he played at Leicester City. (The Sun)

⚽️ Scotland’s under-21s struggled again last night: they sank 2-0 to a “classy” Portugal side at Fir Park. It’s their second successive defeat. (The Scotsman)