In your briefing today:

📣 Energy company bosses say they’ll press ahead with more applications to develop existing North Sea fields after the UK government approved the Jackdaw gas field, and confirmed it would fast-track applications tied to existing infrastructure.

A joint venture between Shell and Equinor, called Adura, said it would look “beyond Jackdaw and Rosebank” for new development. (Scotsman)

📣 Websites worldwide, many in Scotland, went offline overnight after a serious vulnerability was found in a programming language used to build much of the web.

A furious scramble is now underway to patch the weakness in PHP, which powers almost 70% of websites worldwide. Organisations are being urged to move quickly to fix a flaw that has existed since 2014 but was only recently uncovered by AI tools. (Guardian)

📣 MPs have warned the Royal Navy lacks the resources to counter the Russian threat in the high north because it lacks warships and submarines. (Guardian)

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📣 Questions are being raised about the quality of palliative care at Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Children and Young People: parents have described a crassly insensitive argument breaking out at a child’s bedside as medics discussed the type of pain relief she should be getting. “It was barbaric,” one parent tells the BBC. (BBC)

📣 Traffic wardens say they are being ordered to spy on drug dealers and violent thugs in one of Scotland’s most dangerous crime hot spots. (Daily Record)

📣 Controversial plans for a golf course in Sutherland - the Coul Links - have been blocked again by Scottish Ministers. (BBC)

📣 A mummified male head has been removed from display at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum… because the display lacked “informed consent from the deceased individual”. (Daily Mail)

📣 Chancellor John Healey has promised his budget will support Britain’s “bloody-minded entrepreneurs” as he prepares to cut regulations and “back business in Britain making a profit”. (Times has the exclusive)

📣 The US and Israel have drawn up plans for strikes in Iran after the US midterm elections, which take place on Tuesday 3 November. (New York Times)

📣 Scientists have discovered a way to predict, years in advance, who might develop aggressive prostate cancer later in life. (Sky News)

📣 Oscar-winning actor Dame Judy Dench says an eye condition has left her unable to perform, a decade after it was first diagnosed. (BBC)

📣 The Pope needs no further treatment for cancer, doctors say, after a recent operation removed part of his lung. (New York Times)

⚽️ Manchester United were humbled 4-1 by Como in the Champions League, piling pressure on Michael Carrick - pressure made only worse by captain Bruno Fernandes rounding on his boss after the game, saying his tactics were at fault. (BBC) (🎥 Highlights)

⚽️ Celtic venture back into Europe once more tonight, and could be forgiven some trepidation given events in the Europa League so far. They welcome La Liga stars Celta Vigo to Glasgow tonight in a must-win game. But they go into the game on the back of a commanding 7-1 win over Hearts at the weekend. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Hearts, meanwhile, have travelled to Turkey for their early kick-off against Trabzonspor this afternoon: they boast former Liverpool star Mo Salah in their ranks, but have just seen their club president banned amid a betting scandal. (Sun)

⚽️ There are some other decent Europa League games tonight, including…

🗣️The BBC, long protected by its stream of licence fee funds, now looks vulnerable, writes the Corporation’s former Scottish business editor Douglas Fraser. Needing to make £500 million in cuts, largely because licence-fee non-payment is growing, up to 2000 jobs are at risk.

Closing the BBC Scotland channel will save only £2 million, from closing the channel itself and cutting 10 jobs as its 30-minute evening news programme ends.

But BBC Scotland’s director, Hayley Valentine, said more is to come. And, points out Fraser, as programming from the old channel moves to iPlayer, you can expect more cuts to come quietly there. “It’s harder to spot the gaps there,” he points out.

“The loss of the BBC Scotland Channel means a lot more than jobs and savings. It signals a profound challenge to the Corporation to explain how it intends to serve Scottish audiences in future,” he writes. It has to understand what it is for: Fraser clearly isn’t certain it knows. (Douglas Fraser’s Ledger - Substack)

🗣️ Alex Massie takes aim at the Scottish Greens after co-leader Gillian Mackay struggled to answer when asked if Israel has a right to exist. “Eight seconds of excruciating silence ensued before this weighty verdict was returned: ‘It’s a difficult one,’” writes Massie. “But, on further reflection, ‘they absolutely should have the right to have somewhere to be’. Just not, one assumes, where Israel actually happens to be.”

Watching her answer questions about the Middle East “felt like an act of cruelty,” he writes: “Honestly, one might as well ask a bag of Winalot to explain trigonometry.”

More broadly, Massie asks why the SNP continue to work with the Scottish Greens: in Westminster, he points out, Labour have said they will “have nothing to do with a political party that believes the vast majority of the world’s Jews are racists”.

“Truly, it is amazing the tolerance favouring Scottish independence may purchase,” he writes. (Times)

🗣️ More on the buses: Rebecca McQuillan points out John Swinney’s plan to nationalise Scotland’s bus services by 2031 is “an opportunity to improve the bus network for the good of people and economy.

“But it’s also,” she warns, “an opportunity, done badly, to mess up good services in places where they currently exist.

“It’s difficult and complex to build a network that connects people across rural communities and small towns in a way that will last. It will require listening to all those affected, including those currently running the buses, and avoiding taking action that could unintentionally push out good operators, some of whom will be smaller firms.

“The intention is good. The real question is whether this harassed and overburdened government has the expertise or the bandwidth to pull it off effectively.” (The Herald)

🗣️ The news BBC Scotland is to make a two-part documentary about the life and times of JK Rowling gets Jenny Lindsay thinking about legacy. “JK Rowling has said repeatedly she doesn’t think about her ‘legacy’”, she notes.

That’s “a sensible stance for any writer, but worthwhile for everyone, public figure or not. The sorry reality is none of us get a say on how we’re remembered after our small slice of forever is over. I tend to content myself with the knowledge - as poet Paul Birthill imagines will be etched on his gravestone - that I’ll be ‘sadly missed, by some.’”

“Due to the ghastly immediacy of social media reaction to breaking news – and though few of our obituaries will hit the headlines – some of us already know our demise will be greeted, at least in part, with online glee,” she adds.

“I’ve an allergy to cruelty amongst the living about all but the worst of humans in the immediacy of them meeting their maker, passing into stardust, or going to the Good or Bad Place - delete according to your belief system. Alas, the digital world makes seeing this a regular occurrence.” (Scotsman)

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