In your briefing today:

📣 Israel and Iran have launched new strikes overnight as the war in the Middle East enters its sixth day, and the war appears to become one of attrition.

Yesterday, a US submarine sank an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean, killing at least 87 Iranian sailors. That strike marked a widening of the war - and the first time a torpedo from a US submarine has sunk a ship since the Second World War. Live coverage: BBC | Guardian | CNN | Al Jazeera

📣 Scottish Labour MP Joani Reid says she’s not seen anything to suggest her husband has “broken any law” after he was arrested on suspicion of spying for China, along with two other men.

The Metropolitan Police said the men had been arrested in London and Wales as part of a counter-terrorism policing investigation. All three men were reported this morning to remain in custody, with searches carried out at properties in London, Cardiff and East Kilbride yesterday. (BBC)

📣 AI firm Anthropic has taken a stand against the Pentagon, which didn’t want restrictions on how it could use the company’s technology. But it’s notable, reports Semafor, that its major investors - including Amazon - don’t have its back in the argument. That’s despite widespread support among users, and a backlash against OpenAI and its ChatGPT product, which has happily stepped up for use in military applications. (Semafor)

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📣 Scottish teachers have voted “overwhelmingly” in favour of strike action over workloads. The EIS says 85% of those who voted backed a strike, while 95% backed action short of a strike. (Scotsman)

📣 First Minister John Swinney says he is “confident” Glasgow’s troubled Queen Elizabeth University Hospital is safe, despite reports that a cancer ward has been partially closed over mould and dirty water. (Sky News)

📣 Angry small investors have turned on Brewdog’s co-founder, who issued an apology on LinkedIn for the company’s sale for only £33 million, in a deal that wiped out both his and the small “equity punks” investments. (Guardian)

📣 A Pizza Hut worker in Aberdeen has won more than £11,000 in compensation after he was sacked for raising food hygiene concerns. (STV)

📣 The BBC is to call for a permanent charter and an end to political appointments to its board as part of an overhaul of its governance. (Guardian)

📣 Dentists in England are returning hundreds of millions of pounds each year because they are not seeing enough NHS patients. (BBC)

📣 Punch, the orphan macaque, is outgrowing the orangutan plushie that comforted him through early rejection from his mother - and made him a social media sensation. He’s finally making friends at zoo near Tokyo, you’ll be happy to hear. (AP)

⚽️ Celtic beat Aberdeen, even if their hosts made them work for the three points. The Glasgow side’s 2-1 win means they move above Rangers into second place, and now sit five points behind league leaders Hearts. Aberdeen were better than for much of the season… but their hopes of being in the top-six Championship group after the league split are now over. (BBC - report and highlights)

⚽️ Scotland’s women hammered Luxembourg 5-0 on Tuesday night, in the first game of their Women’s World Cup qualification. It was a brilliant start - and, with the return fixture on Saturday at Hampden - the stage is set for a strong start to what could be a long road to the finals. (Highlights)

🏉 Fraser Brown looks forward to Scotland’s big game against France this weekend and reckons “they are more than capable of winning” - but will have to cope with France’s aerial bombardment. (Scotsman £)

There’s been a lot of war, here, this week. Today, instead, a trio of columns which have caught my eye despite everything else.

🗣️ Alex Massie buried his father, the Scottish author and critic Allan Massie, this week: Alex’s “Thoughts on the loss of my father”, written in the “strange, foggy days” after his passing, are worth your time if you’re interested in Scottish words, our attitude to them, and - indeed - our attitude to life, the passage of time, and death.

Alex summons up some wonderful lines from his father’s writing. One that is especially timely: “Do you know what a soldier is, young man?” one of his characters asks. “He’s the chap who makes it possible for civilised folk to despise war.”

Or that, as Alex notes, “it is part of life’s challenges that, as he once wrote, ‘we are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible’.

Worth your time. (The Times)

🗣️Kaye Adams has been axed from her morning show on BBC Radio Scotland: the fallout has been noteworthy, in terms both of the commentary on standards in the workplace, and the ongoing changes at the radio station on which Adams used to star.

According to the Mail, a disciplinary investigation found Ms Adams had been guilty of inappropriate behaviour towards colleagues, with one of the alleged incidents said to have taken place more than a decade ago. She was cleared of two claims of bullying.

Brian Beacom’s column in the Herald (£), written after that news came to light, was an interesting defence of bad behaviour. It is claimed she used an “abhorrent swear word” at a colleague - the “c” word - in the newsroom. But, notes Beacom, “But what of context? Was it used in a newsroom, which are by their very nature a bad language crime scene where expletives are thrown around as easily as easy ideas?”

I’m not sure I can agree. I’ve mopped up too many of these newsroom “crime scenes”. It seems to me that expectations of workplace conduct have risen steeply over the last decade (although there remain, at the BBC, a few presenters who must be eying Adams’ removal with some concern: her alleged behaviour is not unheard of elsewhere, including among some even more famous names).

But listeners are upset. And process and outcome don’t leave many happy parties, it seems.

🗣️ I hadn’t spotted that a number of chain restaurants - some of which, as a family, we visit - had bailed on a commitment to use what we euphamistically call “happy chicken”.

We don’t really think they’re happy, of course: it was really just a promise to meet what you’d think were basic standards of animal welfare - a little light for the birds’ brief life, a little space to move, not using breeds that go from birth to nugget in five weeks.

Giles Coren put me right: his brief-but-coruscating notebook tells us “there just isn’t enough cheap chicken about to make the massive profits their shareholders demand”.

Read this and, like us, you might be deciding to change your casual dining-out choices. (Times - gift link)

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