In your briefing today:

📣 Holyrood returns from its summer recess this week, and John Swinney’s unveiling of the Programme for Government tomorrow is the first set-piece event. Published alongside a five-year plan, he could finally set out how the Scottish government plans to make the vast savings required to plug a £5 billion funding gap.

The First Minister is also expected to explain how he will compel supermarkets to cap the prices of essential foods, with warnings the policy is likely to backfire. (Scotsman)

📣 The UK Parliament also returns from its six-week summer break tomorrow: Politico says Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who spent the first 42 days as Prime Minister “in his comfort zone” talking about domestic issues, will now have to turn to foreign affairs - and, specifically, how to deal with US President Donald Trump.

The site helpfully ranks the biggest foreign policy problems facing Burnham, having spoken to “more than a dozen UK government political aides, civil servants and ministers”. Top of the list: North Sea oil and gas drilling. (Politico)

📣 The Governor of the Bank of England has warned of a severe downturn in global stock markets if the AI bubble bursts. In a letter to G20 finance ministers, Andrew Bailey raised concerns over wider economic fallout if the debt-fuelled AI investment boom begins to unravel.

“If the valuation of AI companies starts to plummet, then investors face the prospect of losing trillions of dollars overnight. This could trigger a dangerous chain reaction if they are then forced to sell other assets,” reports Luke Barr. (Telegraph)

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📣 Both Scottish Labour leadership candidates have backed drilling for more oil and gas in the North Sea. (BBC)

📣 A Nazi sympathiser is a key player in attempts to link the Scottish far-right with banned Ulster terrorism groups. (Daily Record has the exclusive)

📣 Schoolchildren have discovered the remains of what is thought to be a 1,000-year-old Viking church on Swona, a tiny and uninhabited Orkney island. (Scotsman)

📣 England’s early prisoner release scheme is “one major event from disaster” after the Prime Minister intervened to prevent the killers of PC Andrew Harper from being set free. (Guardian)

📣 Grim scenes in Nepal, as survivors of the floods return to the remains of their homes, and an overwhelming number of dead. (Guardian)

📣 The US and Iran have traded strikes for the first time in weeks, after American forces attacked two rocket launchers near the Strait of Hormuz. (BBC)

📣 The Sun goes inside the “terror town” home of the joyriders killed in a crash with a police car last week. The title says “gangs are rife and all hope is lost”. (Sun)

📣 Google Maps now shows Lake Ontario as “Lake America” for users in the US: the tech giant is being accused of bending the knee to US President Donald Trump. (Independent)

⚽️ Rangers managed a “bitty” win in Aberdeen, Lawrence Shankland converting a second-half penalty to secure the three points. There was little pretty about the victory, but Derek McInnes said he enjoyed watching it nonetheless. (BBC) (🎥 Highlights)

⚽️ The biggest drama of the Premiership weekend was in its final minute, as Motherwell debutant Jardell Kanga came off the bench to score a wonderful equaliser in their game against St Mirren. (BBC) (🎥 Highlights)

⚽️ Hibs secured a 2-1 win away at Dundee to secure their second win of the season. (BBC) (🎥 Highlights)

⚽️ Manchester United fought back from a goal down to beat Ipswich 5-2 - all thanks to a huge performance, again, from captain Bruno Fernandes (Report & highlights)

🎾 Time waits for no man: an emotional Novak Djokovic broke down in tears during a first-round defeat in the US Open to Argentina’s Mariano Navone. (BBC)

🗣️ It’s a tough read, but Neil Mackay’s interview of Loretto abuse victim Angus Bell was one of the standout pieces of Scottish journalism over the weekend.

Bell tells a horrific tale of abuse at the fee-paying boarding school outside Edinburgh, what he describes as “a factory for sadists and sociopaths”.

Bell has now written a book about his schooldays, called The Lost Boys. It looks at what he suffered - but casts the net wider to look the social issues created by boarding schools in the UK.

“The story is emotionally devastating,” writes Mackay. “It’s an account of both monstrous suffering and enduring humanity. At heart, it’s about good triumphing in a brutal world. Anyone who works with children or trauma survivors should read it.”

Mackay also draws the line from school into the wider world for children damaged by that experience. “Given so many ex-boarding school pupils assume powerful positions in British society, [abuse] has consequences. Would you want someone who beat children to a pulp running your company or country?” (Herald)

🗣️ Did the Edinburgh Festival Fringe have a terrible final week? Some artists are claiming tickets in the final week have been very poor indeed, with performances being pulled or going ahead in front of tiny crowds.

Taking the blame is the timing: the Fringe ran late this year because of the calendar: the English bank holiday Monday (today) is at the latest possible point of the month, meaning the Festival started only a week before some Scottish schools went back.

But some performers say there’s more afoot: combined with criticism of a poor ticket booking app and soaring hotel prices, some performers now say they’ve been let down.

Shows failing at the Fringe is hardly a new story. But Fringe veteran Steve McLean offered a particularly trenchant assessment of the situation on social media (beware the language): he says the Festival Fringe has “killed the golden goose”.

It’ll be interesting to see if official data supports the performers’ claims.

🗣️ How low is too low? Rugby giants South Africa and New Zealand met on Saturday in Cape Town. To mark the occasion, the airline Airlink sent two of their Embraer E-Jets over the DHL Stadium in a low flypast.

It was undoubtedly a dramatic scene, but was it too low to be safe? One plane cleared the roof by no more than 50 feet. Social media was lit up by the argument.

Footage from inside and on top of the stadium made it appear the jets flew very low indeed. Official footage from the airline made it all look a little safer, and it insisted the exercise had been approved by regulators.

But at least one professional pilot said he “had no words”, having originally thought the footage was AI.

🗣️ Statins reduce the risk of dementia. The cholesterol-lowering drugs were proven to reduce the risk by up to 15% in the largest study of its kind. The news is likely to lead for calls for millions more people to start taking them. (Telegraph)

🗣️ Life aboard the giant US aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, has become a living nightmare, according to multiple reports, after more than 260 days at sea without respite. Most of those on board see very little daylight. Add in crappy food, cramped conditions and homesickness, and you see the issue.

Anthropologist and documentary maker Chris Terrill has spent time aboard a Royal Navy carrier, and thinks things are different there. During his time aboard - and despite plenty of action and a Covid outbreak that restricted port visits - things remained quite jolly.

He thinks the Royal Navy’s smaller ships and more informal, less hierarchical atmosphere help build an atmosphere of “relaxed professionalism”. It’s in stark contrast to “rank and rigid protocol” on a US warship.

“Food, of course, is also a vital component of a ship’s morale,” he writes. “USN ships run massive, round-the-clock industrial galleys with 24-hour options like ‘midrats’ (midnight rations) tailored to heavy American comfort food served on tin trays like in prisons.

“The Royal Navy focuses on traditional home-style British meals at set times and always served on china plates.”

It’s the small details. (Independent (£))

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