In your briefing today:

📣 MSPs have rejected proposals to legalise assisted dying after an emotionally-charged four-hour debate at Holyrood. The vote, which had been touted as “too close to call” throughout the day, was not whipped along party lines: in the end, 69 MSPs voted against, and 57 in favour. Only one MSP - Neil Gray, the Health Secretary - abstained. (Daily Record)

📣 Donald Trump’s had a big 24 hours - the Mirror’s Mikey Smith says this morning he’s “unhinged” - lashing out “at Nato, Keir Starmer, European allies, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all for failing to bail him out” of the continuing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, which remains closed to most shipping. (Mirror)

📣 Glasgow Central Station partly reopened this morning, ten days after the devastating Union Corner fire. Travellers will find a chunk of the station cordoned off, with only platforms seven to 15 open. (BBC)

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📣 The grieving mother of a promising young footballer who took his own life is calling for proper funding of suicide prevention training. Sharon Johnstone thinks early intervention could have saved her son’s life. (Daily Record)

📣 A surgical cleaning unit in Aberdeen, which has had £2 million spent on repairs in recent months, must be completely replaced, health bosses have decided. (BBC)

📣 Former Scotland rugby star Stuart Hogg was arrested last month for allegedly harassing his ex-wife, it has emerged. (The Sun has the exclusive)

📣 Alarm is growing over the meningitis outbreak in the south of England, with a baby girl fighting for her life and concerns that students returning home from Easter could set off a “second wave” of infections. (Mail)

📣 Volodymyr Zelensky came to London this week, “offering the West the tools for victory - building alliances while Donald Trump was simultaneously shattering them in Washington”, says Sam Kiley. (Independent)

📣 Polling guru Professor Sir John Curtice says there’s no doubt Reform’s popularity is on the slide, after Nigel Farage accused a pollster of underplaying the party’s standing. (Independent)

📣 Cuba is sliding into the Trump administration’s sights: the President and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have both called for a new regime to run the country, as it slides into an economic crisis. (AP)

⚽️ English clubs didn’t enjoy their Champions League evening: except Arsenal, who swept to an impressive win over Bayer Leverkusen with one of the hardest-hit goals you’ll see this season, from Eberechi Eze.

⚽️ Tonight’s games include Barcelona v Newcastle (at 5.45pm, poised at 1-1 after the first leg), Liverpool v Galatasaray (8pm, with the Turkish side 1-0 up), and Tottenham Hotspur v Atletico Madrid (the visitors 5-2 up after that catastrophic evening last week in Spain). All the games are on TNT Sports.

⚽️ Morocco are the new Afcon champions after Senegal, the actual winners of the final, were stripped of the title for walking off the pitch during the game. (BBC)

🗣️ Scottish Labour’s deputy leader, Jackie Baillie, explains why she voted against the Assisted Dying bill last night. This was not a vote that divided down party lines, of course, and Baillie’s rationale reflects personal research and reflection, and a concern about safeguards.

“The debate touched on many questions, including the role of doctors and nurses, the definition of a terminal illness, and the risk of coercive control,” she writes.

“It also took place against a backdrop of pressures on palliative care – leaving the uncomfortable question of whether terminally ill patients will be able to make a completely free choice.

“One thing is certain,” she concludes. “We need better end-of-life care and the Assisted Dying Bill has brought this into sharp focus.” (Scotsman)

🗣️ It’s time to regulate social media in the same way as traditional media, suggests Neil Mackay. The Greens want to make social media publishers subject to the “laws of defamation and libel just like publishers, newspapers and broadcasters”, and thinks “every journalist in Scotland and the rest of Britain, including the National Union of Journalists, should do the same.”

“We either act to rein in companies, like X and Facebook, or we continue a spiral of impunity, disinformation and societal damage,” he writes. (Herald £)

🗣️Euan McColm has been having challenging conversations with his son, who gets to vote for the first time in the forthcoming Holyrood elections. “When I was a teenager in the 1980s, to be interested in politics was to declare oneself an oddball,” writes McColm. Not so, now.

“My son’s love affair with politics has developed quickly,” he writes. “A year ago, I’d have struggled to interest him in the subject of elections but now he’s becoming obsessed.

“‘Would you rather,’ he asks, ‘Have Nigel Farage or Zack Polanski as Prime Minister?’

“I tell him the thought of either the Reform or Green leader at the top of government fills me with dread.

“‘But if you had to pick?’”

I’ll let you click through to find out how the conversation developed… but suspect it’ll strike a chord with any readers having political conversations over the dinner table with their soon-to-be-enfranchised teens.

Zack Polanski is, for sure, achieving some cut-through with that demographic - for which you can thank, or blame… social media. (Mail)

🗣️ Rebecca McQuillan zooms in on the SNP’s promises - made last weekend - for more help with childcare costs. That might reduce costs for families and help more parents back into work, she says. But they come from “an electioneering First Minister without any detail on how it would be paid for or delivered,” she writes.

“Two things trouble me. The first is the ‘who’ of all this extra childcare, and the second is the ‘how’”, she writes. There are big issues around opening hours, the times of year nurseries are available (many close during school holidays), and staffing for any expansion of provision.

Tim McLachlan, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association Scotland, surprises nobody when he tells McQuillan he supports childcare expansion. But he says “the system is broken” and wants the Scottish Government to “fix the myriad of existing issues first, otherwise the current problems just become bigger problems”. (Herald £)

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