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In your briefing today:

• Rangers finally sack their hapless head coach, Russell Martin

• As Gaza peace talks begin, protests across the UK spark a plan by the Home Secretary to restrict demonstrations

• The clean-up continues after Storm Amy - thousands of Scots remain without power

📣 Scotland will miss its child poverty reduction targets “by a large margin” unless radical action is taken in the next Scottish Parliament, according to a new report.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that 23% of children in Scotland remain in poverty - a level that remains “largely the same” as it was in 2021. The foundation is calling for all the parties standing in the Holyrood elections to back increasing social security spending and expanding free nursery places for low-income households. (Herald)

The Foundation’s report confirms what it calls “the endemic features of poverty in Scotland,” including 10% of Scots living in “very deep poverty” and growing “in-work poverty”, with 60% of those in poverty live in a household where someone works.

• Read the full report

📣 Hopes for a ceasefire in Gaza are growing as Israel and Hamas prepare for indirect negotiations in Egypt today. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a hostage release could be announced this week, as the second anniversary of the Hamas attack that sparked the war approaches. (AP)

• Donald Trump has warned Hamas it faces “complete obliteration” if it clings to power (Independent)

📣 He lasted only 17 games: Rangers sacked their head coach Russell Martin last night, with a statement from the club saying that “while all transition periods require some time, results have not met expectations”.

That was to put it gently: in those 17 games, he’d enjoyed only five wins. The final straw was yesterday’s disappointing 1-1 draw, away to Falkirk. Angry fans stopped the Rangers team bus leaving, and Martin left the stadium through a back door. (Daily Record) (The Sun) (Scotsman) (Herald)

• Keith Jackson: Rangers crisis is only just beginning (Daily Record)

• Tom English: Martin’s excruciating Rangers era finally at a chaotic conclusion (BBC)

• Muscat and Dyche are bookies’ favourites to become new head coach (Herald)

• Read Rangers’ statement in full

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Prosecutors are looking into the death of a university student who took his own life on graduation day after he was wrongly told by the University of Glasgow that he’d not passed his degree. The family of Ethan Brown have called for a fatal accident inquiry after the “catastrophic grading failure”. (Daily Record)

📣 Around 17,000 homes were still without power this morning after Storm Amy hit over the weekend: 71,000 homes had their electricity returned, however, as the clean-up continues. (BBC)

📣 John Swinney was heckled as he addressed an event for Israeli hostages yesterday, after he used the event to defend his support for recognition of a Palestinian state. (Express) (Mail)

• The family of a Scottish activist detained by Israeli forces say they haven’t heard from him in four days. (STV)

📣 Scotland’s NHS is in the grip of a “sexual assault crisis” with nearly 300 attacks taking place over the last five years. Campaigners are demanding an end to mixed sex wards. (Mail)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Palestine Action protestors have promised a “major escalation” in their campaign of civil disobedience after the home secretary said police would be given greater powers to restrict demonstrations. (Independent)

• Civil liberties groups have expressed concern over the home secretary’s plans (Guardian)

📣 Rescuers are racing to bring 200 hikers to safety after a snowstorm hit Mount Everest, leaving them stranded. (BBC)

📣 The Conservatives will promise a £5,000 national insurance rebate for young homebuyers today, in their first big offer to young people since Kemi Badenoch became leader. (The Times £)

• Kemi Badenoch told the Conservative party conference that every candidate at the next election would have to sign up to her pledge to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. (The Times £)

📣 One in four people in the UK fear a loved one drinks too much according to a new poll. Experts are concerned about a growing “epidemic” of drink and drugs addiction. (Guardian)

SPORT

⚽️ Brendan Rodgers celebrated his 200th win as Celtic manager after coming out on the right side of a five goal thriller against Motherwell at Celtic Park. Daizen Maeda scored the late winner. (BBC) (See the highlights)

• Aberdeen got their first league goals - and their first win - against Dundee, winning 4-0. (BBC)

• See highlights from all the weekend’s Scottish Premiership games (BBC iPlayer)

⚽️ After last night’s dramatic news at Ibrox (covered above) the next manager to be glancing nervously over his shoulder may be Ange Postecoglou, who has gone seven games without a win since taking over at Nottingham Forest. He’s expecting talks with the club’s board this week. (Guardian)

• Everton ended Crystal Palace’s unbeaten run, with Jack Grealish scoring a 93rd-minute winner. (BBC)

• See highlights from all the weekend’s English Premier League games (BBC iPlayer)

⛳️ Bob MacIntyre won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in dreadful conditions in St Andrews, underlining “his status as one of the world’s top players on home soil”, writes Martin Dempster. (The Scotsman)

🏎️ There’s trouble at McLaren after Lando Norris slid into his team-mate and title rival Oscar Piastri early in yesterday’s Singapore Grand Prix. “The ground rules have changed” in the title race between the two drivers, thinks Martin Brundle. (Sky Sports)

IDEAS
Five things we learnt at the weekend: Abuse of Syed, the psychology of seeing a drone, God is back, Russia and Belarus may return, and Swedish pop never went away

🗣️ Matthew Syed went to a pro-Palestine protest in Trafalgar Square, and encountered “abuse, swearing, ignorance and virulent, unthinking antisemitism”.

He’d gone to ask protesters a simple question - ““Who do you blame for what is unfolding in Gaza? Do you think Hamas bears any responsibility?”.

What he heard in return shocked him. “Go away. You are a bad faith actor. We don’t want to talk to you. Just f*** off. It’s a really boring old line. You are disgusting,” said one. Others applauded.

“I almost felt like crying,” he writes, “as another anonymous hater - perhaps 22, white, middle-class accent - started to lecture me about intersectionality and colonialist oppression. It was like woke bingo. I couldn’t help asking about the oppression of women in Gaza but her face went blank. “‘How the f*** do you know women are treated badly?’ Er, Amnesty International.” (The Sunday Times £)

🗣️The Guardian delived into the psychology of drone sightings across Europe, and found people being unsettled by what they’re seeing. “The troubling question on the mind of many who have spotted them above is: why?” writes Daniel Boffey and Miranda Bryant.

“Vegard Rabban had little doubt about what he was seeing when a strange red light appeared between his house and garage on Norway’s west coast one cold Friday night in late September.

“His sons were nervous. He tried to calmly explain. ‘As it stands now, we are far away from the war that’s happening but I think someone is watching us and trying to see how we react to drones,’ he said.” (Guardian)

🗣️Science is putting the question of “the existance of a creator God back on the table,” says Ben Spencer. “In a striking challenge to the academic consensus, two French authors, Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies, argue that the latest scientific theories lead to only one logical conclusion: an all-powerful deity created the universe and all life within it,” he writes.

Their book - God, the Science, the Evidence - was published in 2021 in their native France and sold more than 400,000 copies. An English edition is being published next week. It’s not about faith or religion, say the authors - it’s a “critique of materialism”.

“The materialist narrative for the beginnings of the universe and life on earth is so full of holes, he and Bonnassies argue, that every modern scientific advance increases the strength of the case that a “creator” is the only rational explanation.” (Sunday Times £)

🗣️Russia and Belarus are on their way back into sport, writes Ed Warner, the former chair of UK Athletics and the London 2017 World Athletics Championships. “Vladimir Putin’s path to Los Angeles 2028 is being cleared, his war on Ukraine becoming normalised in the minds of the world’s sports administrators.

“Last week’s votes by the International Paralympic Committee to readmit Russia and Belarus are, to my mind, a shameful capitulation and represent a triumph for the warmonger. All eyes now on the IOC and the ultimate prize for Russia’s president - a seat at the Olympic opening ceremony in LA.” (Ed Warner’s Substack)

🗣️Taylor Swift’s superstar producers are continuing the Swedish “music miracle”: Max Martin and Shellback are the duo behind Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, released last Friday to warm reviews. They helped her capture what she called “lightening in a bottle” in sessions, in Stockholm, crammed in between dates towards the end of her multibillion-dollar Eras tour.

But this wasn’t their first rodeo, writes Andy Bunday. “To say that Martin (real name: Karl Martin Sandberg), and Shellback (Karl Johan Schuster) have dominated the global music industry for the past three decades would be an understatement.

“The producers appear to be what the New Yorker writer John Seabrook was referring to in his 2015 book, The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory, when he wrote that Sweden had become ‘a nation of songwriters endowed with melodic gifts, and who were meticulous about craft, but who were reluctant to perform their own songs’.” (Observer)

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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