In your briefing today:

📣 Global oil prices have climbed once more after a muddled message from US President Donald Trump during a televised address overnight.

He said the US would hit Iran “extremely hard” in the weeks ahead, but also said the US mission was close to being accomplished. “We will bring them [Iran] back to the Stone Ages where they belong,” he said. (Guardian)

📣 First Minister John Swinney has signalled a shift in the SNP’s position on oil and gas, caused by the “huge volatility” created by the war with Iran.

While the final decision on the new Rosebank and Jackdaw developments will be made by the UK Government, Swinney said the war had changed the dynamics of the debate.

A “climate compatibility assessment” had still to be undertaken on the projects, he said. But he added: “I think we've got to look at the geopolitical situation we now face and recognise that we are experiencing much greater risk to our energy security.” (Scotsman)

📣 Nasa’s Artemis II mission has blasted into space, launching the first lunar mission in 50 years. Although astronauts will not land on the moon this time, the research on board and some of the tech developed for the mission is considered vital preparation for future crewed missions to the Moon’s surface. (Live coverage: BBC)

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

Learn more

📣 A nuclear submarine commander was investigated last year over allegations of an inappropriate relationship with Scottish MP Joani Reid. He was not found to have broken any rules. Reid stepped down from the Labour Party last month after her husband was arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia. (BBC)

📣 An SNP candidate and council leader has been dropped by the party over her friendship with convicted sex offender Jordan Linden. (Express)

📣 Bus maker Alexander Dennis is seeking millions more in taxpayer support while also planning to cut a quarter of its workforce. (The Herald has the exclusive)

📣 Scottish election candidate Tommy Sheridan is the subject of a complaint to Police Scotland after he said he was “on the side of the IRA, Hamas and Hezbollah” during an event in Northern Ireland. (Daily Record)

📣 Stella McCartney has won her three-year planning battle to build a £5 million “dream home” in the Highlands. The Mail has details of that - and pictures of the sleek, modernist home she wants to build. (Mail)

📣 Prime Minister Keir Starmer has called for closer ties between the EU and UK after criticism from Donald Trump. He warned the coming weeks “won’t be easy.” (Independent)

📣 The BBC sacked presenter Scott Mills after learning the alleged victim in a police investigation involving him was under 16. Mills has released his first statement since losing his job, saying he had cooperated with the investigation, and it was then closed. (BBC)

📣 Social media users are becoming less active on the platforms amid fears posts could come back to haunt them, new research from Ofcom suggests. (Guardian)

⚽️ Who were Scotland’s winners and losers from the international break? A few players will be sweating over their World Cup invite this summer after the two friendly defeats. (BBC)

⚽️ There’s a lot of talk that Wales boss Craig Bellamy could be the next permanent manager of Celtic, a club he served with distinction as a player. But he’s going to be a man in demand, the Parkhead club is being warned. (Mail)

🗣️ Might the Artemis II lunar mission prove a unifying moment for humanity? It might seem far-fetched in this time of war and bitter division, but that’s the hope of author Dr Christopher Riley, writing in the Guardian this morning.

“More than 50 years ago, the Apollo astronauts’ photographs of Earth seen from the moon had a jolting effect on a society distracted by division and conflict,” he writes.

“Then, as now, they came in ‘an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance’, as President John F Kennedy had put it. But what he hadn’t predicted was that on the way to the moon, we would discover the Earth.”

This wasn’t, at the time, seen as an achievement only of the United States. “For a brief moment, as the first moonwalkers toured the world, everyone who greeted them referred to their accomplishment as something that ‘we’ did – ‘we the human race’ instead of an American achievement.”

But it’s been a long time since “we” attempted anything like this, and it’s been a long road to launch, says Scott Pace, an expert in space policy. The 2003 Columbia accident led to a series of design decisions - for a capsule with an escape system, for a rocket that could get us to Mars, eventually - which extended the hiatus, he says.

There is certainly much to admire about the mission, which is packed with innovation - and risk - as it unfolds over the next ten days.

It won’t land on the moon - that’s something planned for future missions.

Instead, the astronauts will become the most remote travellers ever, notes PBS, sailing 5,000 miles beyond the moon to examine and photograph the less-seen far side of the moon, and its south pole, which will be the site for a planned Nasa moon base in the years ahead.

To the Artemis II astronauts, the moon will appear “the size of a basketball held at arm’s length during the closest part of the roughly six-hour flyby”.

They’ll also conduct a range of experiments, including examining how microgravity and irradiation affect the cardiovascular and immune systems.

But, really, the flight is a stepping stone to future missions, testing an array of systems and methods ahead of crewed missions which will actually - once again - set foot on the Moon, as retired astronaut Leland Melvin explains on NPR.

The flight is already mildly famous for innovations around the on-board toilet design. There are early reports of a glitch with that - those have been resolved just before send time, according to reports.

And one of the most striking features of the mission is its use of the Earth's and the Moon’s gravity to set its trajectory. That’s the method used by the Apollo 13 mission to get home, and it reduces the need to carry vast amounts of fuel to get home.

The flight will end with a splashdown into the Pacific - but not before all eyes watch, with a little concern, the performance of the Orion capsule’s heat shield, which “took a beating” during a 2022 test flight, “with charred chunks gouged out”.

Nasa is rethinking the shield for future flights - but for this one, it’s the old version. They are limiting heat exposure instead by shortening the capsule’s descent.

The astronauts will return changed, thinks Riley: they’ll have experienced something “almost sacred” in seeing the world far behind them, the first to witness such a sight in 50 years. “Sharing this experience will change them more than they can imagine,” he says.

“But perhaps the knowledge that there are other people up there again looking back from so far away will also change us,” he says. It’s a hope.

Sent this by a friend?