In your briefing today:

📣 Keir Starmer’s parting present to Andy Burnham may be a £4.7 billion funding gap for the new defence investment plan. An ally of the PM-in-waiting has described this week’s four-year funding boost for the UK’s armed forces as an “unexploded bomb” awaiting Burnham if, as expected, he becomes Prime Minister later this summer. (Guardian)

📣 New filings show a vast windfall for Donald Trump in his first year back at the White House, with the US President pulling in at least £2.2 billion in total. That’s up from $622 million in 2024, with incoming flooding in from a range of enterprises - from real estate to cryptocurrency.

“One of his biggest hauls in 2025 came when an investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates bought nearly half of the Trump family’s main crypto company, World Liberty Financial, a transaction that blurred the line between foreign policy and private enterprise,” reports the New York Times.

The revelations will raise further concerns about potential conflicts of interest between the President’s public responsibilities and private enterprise. (New York Times)

📣 Scotland’s benefits bill has risen by almost £2.3 billion in the last year, with the number of people receiving benefits jumping from 976,320 in 2024-25 to 1.9 million people in 2025-26. More than half of last year’s spend on benefits went towards those receiving the adult disability payment.

Opposition politicians claim the SNP has created a “light touch” benefits regime that is wide-open to abuse. “The SNP is bankrupting Scotland with a ballooning and completely unsustainable welfare bill,” said Scottish Conservative Craig Hoy. (Times)

In 1990, after years of practicing medicine and reviewing Van Gogh’s case history via his hundreds of letters, Arenberg published a paper in JAMA diagnosing Van Gogh as suffering not from epilepsy, as the artist’s physician claimed a century earlier, but from Ménière’s disease, an inner-ear affliction that can cause vertigo, of which Van Gogh complained, and tinnitus, a persistent ringing in the ears. Ménière’s, to Arenberg, could better explain Van Gogh’s decision to slice off his ear. After retiring, in 2017, Arenberg recommitted himself to studying Van Gogh and became convinced that art historians had made an even more alarming mistake: Van Gogh had not committed suicide. He’d been murdered.

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📣 There were concerns yesterday that a patient at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital had Ebola: they have since tested negative, and it’s been confirmed there were “no confirmed cases of Ebola” in Scotland. (BBC)

📣 The gang of masked thugs who roamed Glasgow last month during an anti-immigration protest have been identified as members of a new right-wing group called Scots Active. Its leader is a man called Darren Docherty, a joiner who is believed to have been inspired by the fascist “active clubs” in the US and Eastern Europe. (Daily Record has the exclusive)

📣 Shetland councillors have backed plans to connect islands with a network of undersea tunnels, which could be in place within eight years at a cost of £1.5 billion. They say they’d be cheaper than new ferries and harbours. (BBC)

📣 Scotrail has started charging ticket dodgers a minimum £10 fare. (BBC)

📣 The V&A in Dundee will host the debut of an exhibition of David Bowie’s archive, including clothes and guitars, from November this year. (Scotsman)

📣 Millions of households across the UK could face fuel poverty as annual energy bills rise by more than £220 a year from today. The cap on electricity and gas prices will rise to the equivalent of £1,862 a year for the typical household, meaning the number of households spending more than 10% of their income on energy will rise to 13.5 million. (Guardian)

📣 Russian troops on some parts of the Ukrainian frontline can expect to live for between 20 and 35 minutes once they reach the front because of the rising number of Ukrainian drone attacks, according to estimates from Russian military bloggers. (Independent)

📣 Europe is facing an industrial crisis, under assault from a flood of cheap exports from China. But EU leaders can’t decide what to do about it. (Politico)

📣 A Harvard professor with “splashy” theories on aliens has been hired by the White House to lead a team of scientists studying the security risks posed by UFOs. (AP)

⚽️ It’s getting harder to look beyond France for the World Cup at the moment: they continued their strong form by sweeping past Sweden 3-0 last night, Mbappe breaking a World Cup scoring record by bagging a brace, Michael Olise pulling the strings and supplying two assists. (Report & highlights)

Tonight’s World Cup menu

⚽️ Goalkeeper Jack Butland has confirmed he’s leaving Rangers, penning an emotional farewell to the Ibrox fans. The former Crystal Palace stopper is off to Hull. (Daily Record)

📣 Highlighting a few columns from the Scottish press which you might have missed…

🗣️ Former Army Officer Stuart Crawford is unimpressed by the UK Government’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP), dismissing it as too little, too late, and obsessed with drones. “The UK spends nearly six times as much on welfare (£360 billion) as it does on defence (£65bn),” he complains.

“‘Drone mania’ seems to have taken over the collective mind of non-expert military commentators,” he writes. “They have been trumpeted as the answer to our prayers. In fact, they are but another club in the golf bag, having expanded into a threat vacuum where they had no natural predators. That vacuum has now rapidly filled up with counter systems.” (The Scotsman)

🗣️Holyrood is falling well short of being the legislative powerhouse its founders hoped for, writes Professor James Mitchell, Professor of Public Policy at the University of Edinburgh. Devolution, he writes, addressed a “legitimacy deficit” - a system that saw Scotland governed without a Scottish “mandate” by successive Conservative governments.

“But it would be wrong to assume that devolution has entirely closed the legitimacy gap. Distrust in politics and politicians has reached levels that ought to cause concern,” he writes.

“Failure to offer serious policy responses to mounting social and economic challenges is whittling away at trust and feeding support for easy populist responses.

“The fiction that Scotland is exempt from the appeals of right-wing populism should by now be obvious. We have gone beyond the point where spin and the highly selective use of evidence and statistics can cover the tracks of policy failures.” (Holyrood)

🗣️ Neil Mackay got to London to see the ABBA Voyage holographic show and left both loving it, and being perturbed by it. “The big tell of the evening was this: there’s a live band accompanying the holograms - what a weird phrase to write - and the ABBA ‘phantoms’ looked as real as the real people,” he writes.

The trouble is, the “demonic” technology opens up a back catalogue of the best artists ever to walk a stage. “New acts – even existing acts – would be smothered. Evidently, we all love live music, but we’ve all limited money and need to be choosy.

“Who would most folk opt for? Resurrected Elvis? Or that new band your mate recommended?” (Herald)

🗣️ Gabriella Bennett has also been south, and writes about the value of being alone for a few days. “For much of my life I have craved my own solipsistic company,” she says. “Recently the need has amplified. My social battery drains more quickly, and when it does there is only one cure. But I’ve also learnt to line up alone time as a method of energy preservation. A solo weekend means I can manage a busy few weeks of work without needing time out.

“In Foyles bookshop I spend two glorious hours with my heroes. I go back twice to the poetry section in case I’ve missed anything. A few days later, a book idea of my own suddenly evolves and I rush to commit the thoughts to page before I forget them. This is what happens when you give your brain space to breathe.” (The Times)

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