In your briefing today:

📣 Police Scotland are investigating the activities of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell during their time at Balmoral Castle.

The enquiries - said to be at an “early stage” - relate to claims that women were “trafficked” to the monarch’s private estate in the Highlands.

The force had previously appealed for information after it had emerged the former Duke of York had flown into Edinburgh Airport, on Epstein’s private jet, in September 2006. (The Express has the exclusive)

📣 First Minister John Swinney refused seven times to say whether he backed oil drilling at the Rosebank field in the North Sea: Labour, Tory and Scottish Green leaders asked him to state his position.

Russell Findlay, the Scottish Conservative leader, took advantage of a new format at First Minister’s Questions, where leaders are given time, rather than a set number of questions, to quiz the First Minister.

Findlay accused Swinney of being happy to opine on issues such as the Middle East, Ukraine and Europe, but not a crucial issue for Scotland’s energy sector. (Times)

📣 It could be the biggest hack in history: Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, says a cyberattack has affected $6.3 billion in funds with $3 billion in funds now frozen. It has suspended all withdrawals and says it will cover losses. “User funds are safe”, it said.

Early checks suggest the incident may have involved a compromised engineer's laptop, which allowed an attacker to make unauthorised withdrawals, Binance said. Investigators say clues point to North Korean hackers. (Sky News) (BBC)

Particle Face Cream is a 6-in-1 formula engineered specifically for men's skin. It reduces eye bags, dark spots, and wrinkles, restores firmness, hydrates deeply, and revives dull tone. Multiple premium anti-aging ingredients, clinically researched, built into one product that actually fits your routine.

Over 1,000,000 men have added Particle to their daily routine. Easy, effective, and worth the two minutes. Try it risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

20% Off With BH20

📣 A riot at the young offenders institution at Polmont last month was the worst disorder in one of Scotland’s jails in a decade, the prison service has said. (BBC)

📣 A Scot arrested in Thailand after being accused of stealing a phone in March faces a six-week wait for a trial verdict. Father-of-one Rory McColl said he accidentally picked up the wrong phone in a Bangkok bar: he’s now lost his flat and his job back home. (BBC)

📣 The Glen Rosa CalMac ferry - originally due for completion eight years ago - has had its delivery date put back another two months. (BBC)

📣 Sir Ian McKellen has led tributes to Sir Patrick Stewart, the Shakespearean actor turned Star Trek star, who has died aged 86. McKellen said Stewart was a “man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love”. (BBC Live coverage)

📣 After the budget, the backlash: John Healey has been accused of leaving himself facing a “brutal” spending review next year after ducking big decisions on spending and taxation in this year’s budget.

The Chancellor backed away from cutting welfare costs in this parliament, amid warnings of a £28 billion shortfall in public finances. (Guardian)

📣 Vladimir Putin says Russia is prepared for a potential war with Europe, but claims Moscow does not want one. He said there “would be no winners” if tensions escalated too far. (Independent)

⚽️ Celtic have accused the SFA of creating a “false equivalence” with Rangers after their appeal against a stadium closure was dismissed. The Scottish Cup holders were upset by the punishment handed to them, and to Rangers, after trouble at Ibrox following last season's Old Firm quarter-final.

Both clubs were told to play their next Scottish Cup home game behind closed doors, and pay the opposition £100,000 to cover lost revenue. But Celtic felt they should not have had the same punishment. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Ahead of the Scottish League Cup semi-final with Aberdeen, Rangers manager Derek McInnes was in spiky form defending his team against accusations they lack character. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Darcy Graham will miss Edinburgh’s game against Benetton tomorrow but should be available for Scotland duty - he has a tight calf. (Scotsman)

📣 I think we’ve had enough budget coverage? Every weekly magazine has interesting and earnest analysis of John Healey’s announcements, if you fancy more than we’ve had here this week. But here’s some other stuff. (And if you think I’m wrong, do hit “reply”: I appreciated my sometimes-jaundiced eye can dismiss subjects too early).

🗣️ The United States goes to the polls next week, offering a midterm referendum on Donald Trump. “Rarely has an incumbent so wilfully put himself in the spotlight in defiance of his own unpopularity,” notes the Economist in a leader.

“The curse of American politics is its bitter partisanship,” it notes. Entrenched positions and a hostility towards the “other” side leads to “a style of politics that tugs public life towards the extremes, punishes compromise and puts getting people angry above getting things done.”

In that context, meet two blocks of voters who offer hope of arresting this “baleful” trend: Hispanic and Asian-American voters who, compared with other blocs, are growing faster, have more fluid ideology, and less divisive priorities.

While white voters have picked their side and stuck to it, Latinos and Asians lurched hard to the right in 2024. They’ve also been the fastest to turn against President Trump - with support for Democrats surging 17% among Latinos and 14% among Asians. Their support for Democrats will decide House races across the country.

Why? Partly, these groups - the “epitome of striving Americans who want to work hard and get ahead” - are hit hardest by food and fuel price rises. Also, they are the children of immigrants: their political views haven’t hardened along party lines.

“All Americans should therefore welcome these new swing voters,” the Economist says, as people who can de-polarise politics, force politicians to focus on more productive arguments and goals, and de-escalate their rhetoric. (Economist (£))

🗣️ A long read on Britain’s paedophile vigilantes appears to be a rare non-political feature for The New Statesman: reporter Florence Ingleby sets out with on group of vigilantes as they expose another alleged predator one evening, and tells their story along the way.

The vigilantes, taking their cue from the NBC Dateline series To Catch A Predator, draw huge online audiences for their stings, which are videoed - sometimes livestreamed. They catch their pray through long stings in which they pretend to be girls, allowing the targets to be reeled in through their own requests for pictures and meet-ups.

The hunters are often victims themselves: “Within these groups, abuse is understood as more than simply a “bad thing”, he tells me. It is a moral scourge that must be confronted and rooted out. That conviction takes on an almost “religious zeal” – a sense of absolute duty to prevent what happened to them from happening again.”

But they sometimes use violence in their operations - for which they appear not to be prosecuted - and have their own criminal pasts. And - for there are politics involved, eventually - they have their links to the emerging far right, too. It’s a gripping, if slightly unsettling, read. (The New Statesman (£))

🗣️ Britons now pay a greater share of the nation’s health costs out of their own pockets than Americans do: about 14 per cent against 11 per cent, according to the World Health Organisation.

That’s the startling statistic that leaps out, at least for me, from Michael Simmons’ Spectator piece about the rise of the private alternative to state services: private health, education, even security.

The US health figure does not include insurance premiums, “but that’s the point,” writes Simmons: “once they pay their insurer, they are pretty much covered. Once we pay our taxes, we aren’t.”

A bargain is breaking down, he writes. Postwar Britain was defined by the deal with the middle classes: pay for public services, but benefit from them too. But, now, the same group - once “content to send their children to the same schools as everyone else and use the same GPs, hospitals and dentists,” is not. The bargain is breaking down.

Whether its private dentists, private tuition (private schools having been dinged by Labour’s introduction of VAT on fees), social care and even policing, the rise of private appears unstoppable, and has created a “freemium economy”, he says.

We should be honest about this new bargain, writes Simmons. The end of the bargain, he implies, places some of our most-loved institutions at risk. (Spectator (£))

Sent this by a friend?