In your briefing today:

📣 Scotland’s World Cup qualification chances are hanging by a thread this morning after a disappointing 3-0 defeat to Brazil overnight: despite the raucous backing of tens of thousands of Scots in Miami, Steve Clarke’s side made early, game-defining errors, and struggled to assert themselves in any way. They’re now relying on results elsewhere going their way, in the hope they can qualify as one of the best third-placed nations. (Report & highlights)

📣 Venezuela has been hit by powerful back-to-back earthquakes overnight, leaving at least 32 people dead and at least 700 injured, the nation’s acting president said. Trustworthy information at send time is scant, but it’s known that communities across the South American country sustained damage. The death toll is expected to rise significantly. (Guardian)

📣 Scotland’s Auditor General has published a scathing probe into the Scottish government’s plans for post-school education and skills reform, with opposition MSPs saying his report should be a “wake-up call” to ministers.

Post-school education and skills provision covers college, university, and apprenticeship provision. Stephen Boyle’s report says the plans suffer from inadequate resourcing, weaknesses in governance arrangements, and a lack of understanding of costs, impacts and outcomes. (Scotsman)

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📣 Nicola Sturgeon has been urged to publish the written statement she submitted to Police Scotland after her arrest and “no-comment” interview. (Daily Record)

📣 The boss of Edinburgh Trams walked away from his job with a £327,000 “golden goodbye”: there are calls for an investigation into an “abuse of public funds”. (Times)

📣 Construction work has started on the University of Edinburgh’s £750m national supercomputer, which will be one of the most powerful in the world. (BBC)

📣 Britain experienced its hottest June day ever yesterday, with parts seeing temperatures above 36 degrees, and even hotter temperatures expected today and tomorrow. A red extreme heat warning issued by the Met Office across parts of south and central England and south Wales remains in place until midnight. (BBC)

📣 The relationship between Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers is becoming ever more fractious: the President spent much of the day yesterday haranguing his supposed allies. The arguments were sparked by his demands for funding for the war against Iran. (WSJ)

📣 More information on that train crash last week in Bedfordshire: the train driver killed in the crash passed a red signal moments before the collision, according to investigators. (BBC)

⚽️ In domestic football news… Rangers officially unveiled Derek McInnes as their new manager, and he immediately acknowledged he wouldn’t be in the chair long if he didn’t start winning things. (BBC)

⚽️ Other results at the World Cup in the last 24 hours:

⚽️ And there’s more to come (late, late) tonight…

🗣️ Yesterday I wrote about Andy Burnham’s (potential) attitude towards Scotland - and his taste for devolution, maybe even fiscal autonomy. Kenny Farquharson takes a similar starting place but goes in a different direction: what if the alliances Scotland needs to form aren’t with the other devolved nations, but with the North of England?

That’ll prove a challenge to John Swinney, acknowledges Farquharson. “In fact Swinney will be all too aware that such solidarity is an argument often deployed against Scottish nationalism.,” he writes.

“How often has he heard from Labour politicians that the dockers of Glasgow have more in common with the dockers of Liverpool than with the rural toffs of Perthshire?”

Indeed, notes Farquharson, “Any discussion about what differentiates a nation from a county quickly gets into weird territory.

“Is Yorkshire’s history — the Viking ridings, the rise of York Minster, the Wars of the Roses — any less ancient or storied than Scotland’s? Is our nation status somehow God-given? Is it because we had kings and queens?” (Times)

📣 Marissa MacWhirter met Andy Burnham last year and found him chatty and charismatic. She’s not surprised he won Makerfield. And she thinks his ideas about putting more power in the hands of local people is a good idea.

“Over the last decade in Glasgow, I have watched people start with a grievance about their local area, campaign tirelessly for change and see no results, then end up joining the ranks of Reform because everyone else made them feel abandoned or forgotten,” she writes.

“Putting power into the hands of local government gives people someone to hold to account nearby, rather than some elite down in Westminster. It’s a lot harder to scapegoat minorities when there is visible local leadership to hold to account. (The Herald)

📣 The attention was on Makerfield… but what should we make of last week’s byelection result in Aberdeen South? For Chris Deerin, it should be read as a mini referendum on the oil and gas industry - which it won.

“If the voters of Makerfield delivered a message and possibly a new prime minister to Labour on Thursday, the voters of Aberdeen South were sending a message of their own to the Westminster and Holyrood governments,” writes Deerin.

“As [victorious Tory candidate Douglas] Lumsden put it, “we said at the start of this campaign that it is a referendum on the oil and gas industry and the people of Aberdeen have given a resounding answer that we back the oil and gas industry”. (New Statesman)

📣 Regular readers will know I’m a football fan, and I’ve been treated dreadfully enough by police and football authorities as part of a large crowd to know that Dr Fergus Neville’s views, set out today in The Scotsman, are far from universally applied.

Notions of crowd control, he says, are outdated: crowd management is what we saw with the Tartan Army in Boston, and it worked.

“A crowd management approach based on an understanding of social identity represents a fundamentally different way of working with crowds,” he writes.

“If fans are going to march to the stadium anyway, help them do so safely. Clear communication of how this behaviour will be enabled – and the limits of acceptable behaviour – is vital.

“Finally, if an issue does arise, authorities should clearly differentiate between fans causing trouble, and the peaceful majority who are not. This encourages fans to self-police their behaviour, enabling those seeking conflict to be easily dealt with.”

Enlightened stuff. Let’s hope it catches on. (The Scotsman)

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