In your briefing today:

📣 Comedian, children’s author and former Britain’s Got Talent judge David Walliams has been unmasked as the celebrity who had sought an injunction to prevent accusations of sexual misconduct against girls and young women being made public.

The allegations, now aired in an ITV documentary last night and published in the Guardian, allege Walliams groomed young fans as young as 15, and harassed women in the workplace over years. Walliams denies any wrongdoing and says he is “devastated” by the allegations.

📣 Edinburgh Academy pupils suffered “decades of dreadful abuse” while the school focused on protecting its reputation and ignored complaints, the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry has concluded.

The latest volume of findings from Lady Smith’s inquiry details more than 40 years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse at the school. She said that, “for decades, the school failed to look at itself through a realistic and critical lens”.

Her report talks of the sadomasochistic abuse of 11-year-olds, severe violence against even younger children, and how it was “normal for grown men to inflict psychological belittlement on children”. (Read Lady Smith’s full report)

📣 Seven people are in hospital after they were hit by a car in the west end of Glasgow. The incident took place around 3.45pm on Hyndland Road: reports say a vehicle mounted the pavement, hit a bus stop shelter and then hit scaffolding before coming to a halt. The road remains closed this morning. (BBC)

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📣 Scottish Labour leader Michael Marra has called for the UK to seek to rejoin the European Union, and wants the commitment written in to the next Labour General Election manifesto. (Holyrood)

📣 Audit Scotland will publish findings on the troubled Historic Environment Scotland quango tomorrow, a year on from describing its governance as “unacceptable”. (Herald)

📣 The Scotsman continues its series on Edinburgh Airport by looking at plans for its expansion. Phase one, costing £500 million, will enlarge the terminal by 50%. Phase two will see the front of the terminal “pushed out onto a vehicle-free plaza”. (Scotsman)

📣 A soldier in the US Army has been arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia, British counter-terror police say. (BBC)

📣 An attempt to impeach US defence secretary Pete Hegseth has failed, with Republicans largely uniting to block the vote. (AP)

📣 Labour has hit a new high in YouGov’s latest UK-wide poll, while Reform UK has sunk to a record low. (Independent)

⚽️ Scotland star Scott McTominay has revealed he had a heart procedure just 48 hours before the World Cup opener against Haiti, which may explain his subdued performances at the tournament. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Manchester United head coach Michael Carrick will learn his fate today, as the club’s leadership meet in Monaco: the smart money appears to be on him being sacked with several coaches ready to take his place. (BBC)

⚽️ Aberdeen continue their search for a manager: now it’s the Sun’s turn to run the rule on potential candidates, including Neil Lennon and Steven Pressley. (Sun)

🗣️ Scotland is vital to Andy Burnham’s future, says Kenny Farquharson. Because if he opts for a snap General Election next year, his party’s fortunes in Scotland could determine whether he has a majority or not. And, as things stand, he’s going to lose a lot of MPs from Scotland. Indeed, so bad is the situation that Farquharson speculates Scotland is the only thing stopping the PM from going to the country next spring.

“This, I suggest, puts Scotland at the heart of the biggest question in British politics,” he writes. “If Burnham wants to go early he needs to concentrate more on Scotland than he has done in recent months. He needs a more distinctive offer to Scottish voters, giving them a more compelling reason to vote Labour.”

The places shifts on four issues - “issues the Nationalists hold dear” - significant. He’s talked of devolving new powers to Scotland. He’s blunted SNP claims about being a “prisoner” in the UK by saying the same principles on a new border poll would apply in Scotland as in Northern Ireland. He’s talked about electoral reform for Westminster. And Michael Marra has - yesterday - committed his party to arguing for rejoining the EU.

“The message to Nationalist voters is simple: you are closer to Labour thinking than you realise. The gap between us is not so big after all. In fact, it is so small you could step over it without too much trouble.

“Burnham is trying to recruit Scots to his mission to transform Britain.” (Times)

🗣️ Are politicians shifting their positions, subtly, on power and AI? John McLellan thinks that, north and south of the Border, “some sense of reality is emerging, and the list of pragmatic positions on power and artificial intelligence is emerging.

“Scottish public finance minister Hannah Mary Goodlad has already resisted demands for a full data centre moratorium and last week her colleague, innovation, technology and tertiary education minister Alyn Smith, used a column in the Herald newspaper to liken AI opponents to Victorians fearful of change condemning new-fangled lightbulbs as ‘a dangerous anti-candle device’,” writes McLellan.

“Nevertheless, overall Scottish government energy policy picture is still as clear as North Sea haar on a windless day, and everyone – except anti-growth Greens and Nicola Sturgeon loyalists still wedded to Bute House Agreement, plus a few of Labour’s implacable anti-capitalists – can see the sense in exploiting the Jackdaw gas field if it means reducing reliance on imported gas.” (Scotsman)

🗣️ Communities feel they are being treated “with disdain” in that AI data centre debate, writes Vicky Allan. A freedom of information “dump” from the Green Data Centre and AI Growth Zone Crosscutting Working Group was “an eye-opener,” she says.

The group identified in March that “rising community awareness of impacts of data centres” is “a 'strategic risk for awareness’, potentially resulting in ‘delays to delivery and reputational damage to SG [Scottish Government] and loss of economic and societal benefits’”, writes Allan.

She quotes Lisa Beacham, founder of an anti-data centre group, who says “it is evident from this FOI that the Government sees us as a risk rather than an asset with knowledge and expertise to share. We demand to be invited to the table, just as the data centre developers are.

“Campaigners point out that there is no one among the more than 20 people on the cross-cutting working group from environmental or climate teams in government departments or agencies and no one from a team that could represent communities,” she notes. (Herald)

🗣️ Is it time to reassess the ethics of reality television altogether? Amid the jail term for Russell Brand, and the accusations about David Walliams, it might have been easy to miss the cancellation of Channel 4 series Married At First Sight: a show which, literally, married contestants at first sight, and then threw them together to see what happened.

What happened, notes Jenny Lindsay, was a string of allegations of sexual abuse and psychological coercion of women at the hands of their on-air husbands. All the allegations have been denied, and no charges brought.

But while an internal investigation found the show had followed procedures, it recommended producers introduce new safeguards, including separate bedrooms for the couples, “safe words” and panic buttons.

“Surely,” writes Lindsay, “we should instinctively balk at the idea any form of entertainment could possibly require such measures? Any reality show where sex – never mind assault or rape – is a possibility has always struck me as deeply disturbing in the first place.” (Scotsman)

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