In your briefing today:

📣 Thousands of people across Britain may have died from the exceptionally hot weather of May and June, analysis has claimed. More than 2,700 people could have lost their lives, suggests a group of experts drawn from Imperial College London, the Met Office and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The June heatwave would have been the most deadly, they say. (BBC)

📣 Police say there’s no suggestion of a political motive in the killing of Ann Widdecombe as they continued to question a man arrested in connection with her death. Police are not looking for anyone else after the arrest of the 28-year-old white British man in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. A number of titles claim today that the suspect is a “loner” who drove nearly 300 miles to the ex-MP’s home with “a foot-long pole” on the day of her death. (Mail) (Mirror)

📣 Scottish GPs say their new Vision software, used to manage prescriptions and see test results, is so slow they’re having to cancel appointments to make time to use it. One GP says it is “like wading through treacle”. (Times)

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📣 Reform UK’s Scottish deputy leader has warned protestors to “be very careful” about online disinformation after a series of incidents in Glasgow, where posts online had accused locals of crimes, and mobs turned up at their door. (BBC)

📣 Yet more homes have been evacuated in Coalsnaughton after being told their properties are unsafe due to ground movement. A total of 256 people have now been told to move out since May. (BBC)

📣 A Labrador fell ill after eating “discarded” cannabis left near a path up Ben Nevis. The dog, Tokyo, lost the use of his legs, drifted in and out of consciousness halfway up the mountain, and had to be rescued. He’s made a full recovery. (Guardian)

📣 Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will set out a plan later to deport the freed ringleader of a Rochdale grooming gang. The move may require a change in law. (BBC)

📣 At least 27 people died in a Bangkok pub blaze after emergency exits were blocked. (Independent)

📣 Two men died after trying to rescue children who got into trouble in the sea off Hartlepool. The children got ashore safely. (Mirror)

📣 Senator Lindsey Graham, one of President Trump’s closest allies, died after a tear in his aorta, according to a preliminary medical finding. (AP)

🎾 In an incredibly tight Wimbledon men’s final, Jannik Sinner prevailed over Alexander Zverev to retain his crown, his second title win. “The manner of his fifth Grand Slam success suggested normal service had resumed,” writes Harry Poole. “Because, for a brief moment, Sinner had appeared vulnerable.” (Report & highlights)

⛳️ It was also an emotional win for Tom Kim at the Genesis Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club, after he turned in a magnificent 64 to finish 17 under and reverse a dire period of form. The South Korean “shed tears of joy and relief” afterwards. (Report and highlights)

⚽️ I enjoyed Thomas Tuchel’s obsessively focused and very un-English reaction to England’s scrappy win (notwithstanding the goals) over Norway in the wee hours of Sunday morning: rather than bathe in platitudes about character and grit, he criticised his players for not playing as well as they could.

🏉 Scotland were both “scintillating and sloppy” against South Africa, writes Tom English: in defeat, they still managed one of the great scoring moves of any Scotland team, ever. (BBC)

🗣️ We might be failing to spot a small business boom. That’s the fascinating thesis of Robert Colvile, who brings three bits of evidence to the table.

First, that AI is shrinking the minimum size of a firm: instead of employing people, many people use AI to complete tasks they can’t. That makes it easier to start new businesses.

Second, there’s a boom in the number of people using Stripe, the small-business payments service, to accept online payments. Lots of people are selling stuff online.

Third, despite that boom in people selling goods and services, there’s no corresponding boom in official government data about the number of new businesses. That’s despite soaring numbers of new businesses in the US… and France.

The problem? Our official data, he suggests: it’s laggy and flawed. It could be counting the number of self-employed by 600,000. That, he points out, could be the best news on the economy we’ve had in years. (Sunday Times)

🗣️ Scotland’s women’s rights groups are full of remarkable people, writes Euan McColm, despite their being traduced by an Amnesty International report - now withdrawn - as being “anti-rights” for their biology-based views of gender.

“From the memberships of Scottish organisations traduced in the new Amnesty report,” writes McColm, “you could create, by some distance, the highest calibre cabinet of the devolution era. These are serious, accomplished, and devastatingly effective people. They are, to a woman, more impressive than the vast majority of MSPs.

“And if you met them, you’d like them,” he says. (Scotland on Sunday)

🗣️ Peter Murrell “called the shots” behind the Yes campaign and its cash, a former senior member of its team has claimed. Ian Dommett, Yes Scotland’s marketing director until early 2014, said the convicted fraudster controlled high-value donations intended for the Yes campaign, which was supposed to be a separate legal entity from the SNP.

The revelations will add yet more pressure on John Swinney to agree to an inquiry into Murrell’s actions. (Sunday Mail)

🗣️ A record number of Scottish school pupils are missing more than half of the school year. 12,402 pupils were absent for at least half of the last school year - double the number of five years ago. And that’s only part of the picture, reports Rebecca McCurdy, because several significant local authorities - including Edinburgh, Fife and Aberdeen - didn’t provide any figures. (Sunday Herald)

🗣️ The influential book The Making of the Crofting Community marks its 50th anniversary, continually in print since it was published and - unusually, notes Brian Wilson - its author, John MacEwen, is still around to talk about it.

The book was an important contributor to a 1970s debate about land ownership in the Highlands and Islands, a time when “long-buried stories had started to emerge”. An establishment view of the Clearances was being challenged by MacEwen’s book.

“When I went to university in 1967, to study history in Aberdeen, it was bearing in upon me that the received academic take on the 19th-century Highlands and the Clearances was not in accord with what I had heard from my grandfather and my family more generally. There was a real divide,” says MacEwen.

Recalls Wilson: “When The Making of the Crofting Community appeared, it was greeted with immediate interest and appreciation – but certainly not by Scotland’s most prominent historians.”

The radicalism of that time, suggests Wilson, now needs revisited. (The Stornoway Gazette)

🗣️ Finally, a thought-provoking post on X (it can happen). It’s a riff based on the question Amazon’s Jeff Bezos posed in 2019: “What’s not going to change in the next 10 years”? A real estate investor, Amanda Orson, has a shot at answering. It’s below: her answer is… perhaps a little soulless? Or maybe it’s just brutally rational, and focused on how to make some money? It got me thinking, at least, and I hope it might do the same for you.

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