In your briefing today:

📣 The war in the Middle East continues to escalate, with Iran retaliating against Gulf energy facilities and saying it will offer “zero restraint” should its own sites be attacked again.

📣 Two new Aberdeen hospital facilities are having wall panels and insulation ripped out because of a problem with mould - before the first patients have even moved in. Infection control teams became concerned when they found mould in a new family hospital and cancer care unit, caused by construction materials becoming wet.

Dormant spores could have reactivated when the facilities - already late and overbudget - finally opened, “posing a health hazard for the lifetime of the buildings”. (The BBC has the exclusive)

📣 Reform UK has unveiled its list of candidates for its first Scottish Parliamentary elections, offering a list heavy on former Conservative politicians, as well as those who haven’t run for office before. The party’s leader, Nigel Farage, was at the unveiling to promise that, if elected, the party would cut tax, reduce the number of MSPs and “shut down” quangos. (BBC)

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📣 Loganair made aviation history yesterday when an all-electric aircraft flew from Glasgow to Dundee in 20 minutes. It was hailed as a “landmark day for European aviation”. (Mail)

📣 Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon offered her final speech to Holyrood yesterday. “Her voice cracked three times but did not break,” reports Catriona Stewart. (Scotsman)

📣 Prisoners at Scotland’s “most violent” jail are posting TikTok videos from inside, showing them consuming drink and drugs and enjoying parties. (Daily Record £)

📣 Sir Chris Hoy says his terminal cancer diagnosis has taught him how to live. (BBC)

📣 Russia lost more than 1,700 troops on Tuesday - the deadliest day of its war against Ukraine, and a sign a planned offensive has failed. (Independent)

📣 Members of Donald Trump’s team tried to stop the appointment of Peter Mandelson, and tried to prevent former ambassador Karen Pierce being replaced by the peer. (Politico)

📣 The UK’s net zero strategy is “wearing thin” with the public, a report has found. An analysis by academics from Strathclyde and Aberdeen universities found policies “haven’t always empowered people or improved their day-to-day lives”. (Scotsman)

📣 A real possum hid itself on a toy animal shelf in an Australian airport. (BBC)

⚽️ Rangers are being urged to clamp down on their ultras after the violent scenes at Ibrox when their side played Celtic in the Scottish Cup. (Mail)

⚽️ Hearts boss Derek McInnes says Hearts can still “catch fire” in the title race, with key players returning from injury soon. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Callum McGregor could be back in time for Celtic’s trip to Dundee United on Sunday. (Sun)

🏉 Three Scotland players were named in the Six Nations “team of the championship”. (Scotsman)

🗣️ How does GB News get away with it? It’s a question that those of us who’ve worked in and around UK broadcasting have asked for years of the news channel’s output, which seems routinely - and heavily - skewed towards the right, and specifically towards Reform UK’s talking points.

And, this week, The New World is asking the same question in a much more systematic way - and pointing the finger at Ofcom, the UK’s broadcasting regulator.

“The UK news ecosystem is both special and unique,” explains Alan Rusbridger, the former Guardian editor who led The New World’s investigation. “Newspapers have, for 200 years, often been wildly opinionated in their approach to journalism. But parliament decided that broadcasting would be different: in return for a licence, there’s an obligation to be accurate and impartial. Broadcasters are required to offer appropriate challenge and context, and are supposed to promote a range of viewpoints.

“GB News routinely – you might almost say systematically – disregards these requirements,” he writes.

To prove the point he asked 20 reviewers, drawn from a range of journalistic backgrounds, to watch GB News’s output and score shows, out of five, against Ofcom’s rules on impartiality and accuracy. The average overall is 1.5. And those damning results raise another question - what is Ofcom up to? (The New World)

🗣️The Reform theme continues in The Spectator, which depicts Nigel Farage as Jaws, ready to devour a swimming Kemi Badenoch. The party intends to replace the Conservatives come May 8th: Nigel Farage is said to have texted Lord Ashcroft, who was claiming a “Kemi comeback” in a newspaper piece, to ask him what he thought he was doing.

Farage is said to have told the pollster: “I think we wake up on 8 May and realise that the Conservative party’s gone, that the ‘Kemi bounce’ was nothing more than a Westminster myth and that the Tories have been obliterated in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex. The only real opposition to socialism, leftism, Islamism is Reform.”

Farage was said to be building the party’s plan based on a “Blue Ocean” strategy - popularised by a business book - where he’s positioning Reform in an entirely unique position, away from rivals and “entirely unique”.

But that strategy has continued to evolve, driven - ironically enough - by the party’s polling success. (Spectator £)

🗣️The war in Iran is making Donald Trump weaker - and angrier, warns the Economist. And, while you should “never bet against Donald Trump,” warns the newspaper, “it is hard to imagine a crisis more precisely engineered to intercept the trajectory of his presidency than his ill-judged, heedless war against Iran. Even a short war will alter the course of his second term. One that lasts months could bring it crashing to earth.

“The reason is that the fight against Iran diminishes Mr Trump’s three political superpowers: his ability to impose his own reality on the world, his remorseless use of leverage and his dominion over the Republican Party. Even without Iran, the potency of these Trumpian strengths was likely to wane after the midterm elections. Wars accelerate change.”

The concern, warns the newspaper, is that he may turn out to be a very bad - and unpredictable - loser. (Economist £)

🗣️The battle for Iran and Ukraine is “coming for us all,” warns Will Lloyd in the New Statesman’s gloomy, but sweeping, cover story. “You are talking about this like it’s over,” the author Oleksandr Mykhed tells Lloyd when they meet in a cafe in central Kyiv. “People think this is the third act,” he said. “But you should think of this as the first act,” he warns.

Lloyd concludes that war, now spreading to the Gulf energy infrastructure which supports our way of life, is “nowhere near over”, but will “plunge the world into another recession, toppling governments, immiserating millions.

“They would learn what it felt like to be Ukrainian. They may come to understand that the Ukrainian experience is the key to global security now. The world would transform again, and not necessarily to our advantage in sleepy, barely defended Britain.

“I began to fear that we would not understand the new reality until it was crashing down towards us from a hostile sky.” (The New Statesman £)

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