In your briefing today:

👋 Good morning Early Liners! Apologies once more for the very late delivery of your edition yesterday. Mystery surrounds exactly what went wrong: it’s the first time an Early Line hasn't dispatched, in hundreds of attempts, and it appears to have been down to an issue with the tech platform I use. I hope today has gone more smoothly. And thankyou to those who emailed in concern I’d fallen off my perch: all was well, apart from the obvious… Best, NM

📣 A former gamekeeper has been found guilty of the murder of an ex-colleague at the High Court in Glasgow, and jailed for 19 years. Police have apologised for missing the fact the victim had been shot dead, meaning a post-mortem was not ordered for five days, and some evidence was potentially lost. (Daily Record)

📣 The Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain, continues to struggle to explain her briefing of First Minister John Swinney about the case against former SNP Chief Executive Peter Murrell. Bain appeared again in the Scottish Parliament yesterday, where she said she was “not aware” Swinney had been given details of the Murrell case a year ago, despite having seen it when it was sent. In essence, she appeared to be telling MSPs she had forgotten it had been sent. (Herald)

📣 Maternity services in England are riven by racism, staffing and accountability issues and a lack of compassion, among other failings, an interim report has found. There are problems “at every stage” of the maternity journey, it says. (BBC)

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📣 The Scottish Government has announced a public inquiry into grooming gangs after pressure from victims and opposition parties. The probe will be led by Professor Alexis Jay, who previously led the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham. (Daily Record)

📣 The permanent closure of the M8 through Glasgow is one of the options as planners consider what to do about the 55-year-old viaducts which carry the road through the northern edge of the city’s centre. (Scotsman)

📣 Anas Sarwar wants to “tear apart” bureaucracy, cutting Scotland's health boards to three and combining Holyrood's economic bodies into the national investment bank if he becomes first minister. (Scotsman)

📣 Voters go to the polls in Gorton and Denton today: Politico offers a guide on how to “watch it like a pro” (Politico)

📣 Police have apologised for "inadvertently revealing" the Commons Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, was the source of concerns that Lord Mandelson could be a flight risk. (BBC)

📣 Mumsnet is calling for a social media ban for under-16s, launching a campaign featuring health warnings in the style of those on cigarette packs. (Guardian)

📣 Cuba says four people have been killed in the seas off its coast after they tried to infiltrate the country. (AP)

📣 Bill Gates has spoken candidly about his Epstein connections in a meeting with staff at his nonprofit Gates Foundation. He “took responsibility for his actions," a spokesperson said. (AP)

📣 The US and Iran will resume talks in Geneva today, amid mounting threats of US action against Tehran. (Independent)

⚽️ Matters were tied up in the Champions League play-offs last night, with Atalanta salvaging some Italian pride after an otherwise disastrous European campaign for the nation’s teams, and a grudge match being settled decisively in Madrid.

⚽️ Celtic head to Germany tonight trailing 4-1 against Stuttgart, with hopes among most fans largely extinguished after a humbling first leg last week. Boss Martin O’Neill could choose to ring the changes, given his side has a big game against Rangers this weekend. (Daily Record)

🗣️The case of John Davidson, the Tourette’s campaigner left "deeply mortified” after blurting out racial slurs at the Baftas last weekend, has sparked a largely unedifying online storm - what us old net hands used to cause a “flame war".

It’s also revealed something of a UK vs US dynamic: Brits defending Davidson, saying he simply can't help his outbursts because of his coprolalia - the involuntary verbalising of taboo words - and a largely American outrage that has far less sympathy for his condition, and is more keen to label him a straightforward racist.

You'll find an example here if it’s the sort of thing you want to read: a bit of hot-take sanctimony about the incident first, and furious reaction - led by controversial Scottish indy blog Wings over Scotland - following up.

As one wag put it on X this week, the episode has done more to bring the nation together than anything since the 2012 London Olympics.

Clearly, some people need to educate themselves about the condition, writes Nina Welsch amid the calmer pages of The Scotsman. And the BBC has a lot to answer for, she adds: “The ceremony aired two hours after being filmed and why the broadcaster did not edit out this moment is anyone’s guess.

“The incident was bound to make the press regardless and generate offence but had it not been so explicitly audible, the volume of this online cacophony of misplaced outrage could have been spared.” (The Scotsman)

🗣️Emma Brockes comes close, I suspect, to nailing the mystery of Jeffrey Epstein's hold over rich, successful men.

They were, she says, all, in some way, insecure about their status: in general (Andrew, Sarah), or about their status with women (late MIT professor Marvin Minksy). In the case of the latter, “Epstein allegedly offered this man an opportunity to play out a fantasy version of himself that – Google the guy – is wildly out of line with reality, and, my God, he grabbed it."

“This is where the late sex offender excelled,” writes Brockes: “in milking influence and protection from powerful people by identifying and exploiting their weaknesses.

“As such, he understood something better than anything else: that no matter how different they were in their particulars, these men, masters of the universe all, still fundamentally felt that life had short-changed them; that they were entitled to more than they had. (Guardian)

🗣️ I hadn’t seen all of “quad god” Ilia Malinin’s performance until I read Gabriella Bennett’s column on the US skater's failure at the Milano ice rink at the Winter Olympics: video of the full performance is included among her words. He’d not been beaten in two years, the commentary reminded us again and again.

He was clearly devastated by his terrible - by his standards - performance - “I have never seen someone’s raw emotions expressed so clearly through their eyebrows as Malinin aborted a quadruple axel, then fell, and then aborted a second, then fell again,” writes Bennett. “I felt it in my body as I hid behind my fingers and watched as years of hope were dashed in two minutes.”

And yet, she adds, failure has its benefits. “As soon as the scariest thing imaginable actually happens, nothing is ever as frightening again. It’s why the best athletes — as well as artists, entrepreneurs and scholars — have often experienced failure and loss, the profound, life-altering kind.”

Her column - a celebration of failure that later becomes great success, including in her own life - is an uplifting read, whether you’re having a difficult day or not. (The Times - 🎁 gift link)

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