Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Thirty-piece collection was bequeathed to museum in 1948 and recently rediscovered
An unusual collection of 2,000-year-old glassware is providing Syrian refugees in the Renfrewshire town of Paisley with a connection to their homeland, five years after they settled in Scotland.
The 30-piece collection, dating back to Roman times, was bequeathed to Paisley Museum in 1948 by Elizabeth Spiers Paterson, the daughter of thread manufacturers, and is believed to have been acquired from antiquities dealers in Syria, known as the birthplace of glass-making.
Ruth Davidson, the former Scottish Conservative leader, and current Tory leader in the Scottish parliament, is confident that Boris Johnson was making a concession to Scotland (and the other devolved administrations too, presumably) on furlough. See 5.34pm.
Under questioning from @Douglas4Moray, PM gives reassurance that furlough is available to devolved administrations now and in the future https://t.co/2aE8rEtEDj
In the Commons Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, asked if Scotland could access the furlough scheme beyond November.
Johnson said the furlough scheme was a UK-wide scheme.
It was less licence to kill and more dramatic licence. Donald Trump’s claim that the late Sean Connery assisted him in getting planning applications passed in Scotland fell apart quickly on Sunday when the chair of the planning committee said the James Bond star was not involved.
In a series of tweets, two days prior to the US election, Trump paid tribute to Connery, saying he was “highly regarded and respected in Scotland and beyond”. It was announced on Saturday the James Bond actor had died aged 90.
The Scottish actor enjoyed a long and varied career but will for ever be associated with the role of James Bond
Sean Connery, one of Britain’s greatest screen stars, has died at the age of 90. The Scottish actor, forever linked with the role of James Bond and regularly saluted as the best to play the famous part, was mourned by the entertainment industry and his many fans on Saturday as the news broke.
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said she was “heartbroken” to learn of the loss of the actor, also one of the most prominent campaigners for an independent Scotland: “Our nation today mourns one of her best loved sons. Sean was born into a working-class Edinburgh family and, through talent and sheer hard work, became an international film icon and one of the world’s most accomplished actors.”
Multiple award-winning Scottish actor best known for 007 role in seven spy films
Sean Connery, the Scottish actor best known for his portrayal of James Bond, has died aged 90. His son, Jason, said he had died peacefully in his sleep, having been “unwell for some time”.
He was admired by generations of film fans as the original and best 007, and went on to create a distinguished body of work in films such as The Man Who Would Be King, The Name of the Rose and The Untouchables.
One-year-old Adriel was found with his mother’s body in their Glasgow flat in August
The son of Mercy Baguma, who was found in a distressed state next to his mother after she died in her Glasgow flat in August, has been granted asylum along with his father, who is now the boy’s sole carer.
Baguma’s death caused a national outcry as it emerged that the Ugandan, who had applied for asylum in the UK and was not able to work at the time of her death, had struggled to provide for herself and her baby during lockdown.
Experienced fell runner Chris Smith, 43, missing in Perthshire hills since Tuesday
The family of Chris Smith, an experienced fell runner and Team GB member who has gone missing in the Perthshire hills, have appealed for help to find him.
Smith, 43, was last seen on Tuesday afternoon when he left his family’s holiday accommodation to go running in the Glen Lyon and Loch Tay area and had been due to return that evening.
The idea of a normal Christmas this year with large family gatherings is “fiction” and people should be “digital-Christmas ready”, Nicola Sturgeon’s public health adviser has said.
Jason Leitch, the Scottish government’s national clinical director, who regularly flanks Sturgeon in her daily coronavirus briefings, told BBC Radio Scotland it was too early to say what the situation would be in late December. But Christmas would “absolutely” not be normal.
From my colleagues Pamela Duncan and Niamh McIntyre
From tonight over half the population of England will be living in areas classed as “high risk” or “very high risk” under the government’s three-tier system, equivalent to 28.4m people.
All of Lancashire county (Lancashire, Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool council areas) are to move from tier 2 to the higher tier 3 category from midnight, meaning more than 3m people are now living in the highest-risk areas.
Trade negotiations often involve threats to walk away, and dire forecasts, before both side agree to compromise, and Brexit-watchers have been waiting for the UK-EU trade talks to this moment. It came this morning, when Boris Johnson used a TV statement (see 12.29pm) to say that there would no deal without a “fundamental change” in the EU’s approach.
But threats only work if people take them seriously and Johnson’s comments do not seem to have been taken as a sincere statement of intent to talk away. It was telling that, despite being asked twice if he was saying the talks were over, he would not use those words. (See 12.41pm.) If the foreign exchange markets thought Johnson was abandoning hopes of a deal, the pound would have fallen (as it has repeatedly in key moments in the Brexit drama since 2016). But it didn’t. “Market participants see comments from Boris Johnson as mainly political posturing at this stage,” an analyst told Bloomberg.
There’s no point in trade talks if the EU doesn’t change its position. The EU effectively ended the trade talks yesterday.
Only if the EU fundamentally changes its position will it be worth talking.
What I would say to that is there is only any point in Michel Barnier coming to London next week if he’s prepared to discuss all of the issues on the basis of legal text in an accelerated way without the UK being required to make all of the moves, or if he’s willing to discuss practicalities of areas such as travel and haulage which the PM mentioned in his statement.
Our position is a clear one. Only if the EU fundamentally changes position will it be worthwhile talking.
Boris Johnson has told Britons to prepare for a no-deal Brexit unless the EU makes a fundamental change in its approach to the deadlocked trade and security talks.
In a televised statement, the prime minister stopped short of walking away from the talks, despite his self-imposed deadline for a deal having passed on Thursday.
The Mhoine peninsula in Sutherland will house one of UK’s first sites of its kind if it wins approval
In two years, thousands of tourists and space enthusiasts could be gathering in the far north of Scotland to watch an unlikely event, the inaugural flight of a rocket blasting off from a peat bog usually grazed by deer and sheep.
The Mhoine peninsula in Sutherland, a desolate stretch of peatland punctuated by mires and tiny lochs overlooking the Pentland Firth, has been chosen as the site of one of the UK’s first spaceports – provided it eventually wins approval from the Civil Aviation Authority.
Scotland’s nationwide crackdown on indoor drinking descended into chaos on Thursday evening, less than 24 hours before strict new regulations on hospitality are due to come into force.
Many business owners in central Scotland, where a 16-day shutdown of pubs, restaurants and cafes that serve alcohol was announced by Nicola Sturgeon on Wednesday, claimed that they were still uncertain whether they were expected to close at 6pm on Friday as trade bodies described the Scottish government’s behaviour as “dysfunctional”.
While it has been widely accepted that the closure of UK schools in March was bad for the life chances of its children, a research paper from the University of Edinburgh has gone as far as to say that the move could have contributed to a higher Covid-19 death toll.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, suggested lockdown restrictions were the most effective way of reducing peak demand for intensive care unit beds, but argued they were also likely to prolong the epidemic because, once lifted, they left a large population susceptible to the virus.
The Scottish government is facing a fierce backlash after Nicola Sturgeon announced a crackdown on indoor drinking in licensed premises, as one leading adviser said more needed to be done to ensure people were sticking to the rules in their own homes.
Scottish pub, bar and restaurant owners expressed anger and despair at “catastrophic” and “scapegoating” new regulations that are set to last for 16 days across the country, and people on online forums decried the “prohibition” that would result from harsher restrictions in central Scotland.
Boris Johnson has always been weak at PMQs, but mostly that has primarily come over as a performance problem. Today he was a bit stronger than usual performance-wise, but it was obvious that, even if he possessed the parliamentary oratorical brilliance of someone like William Hague, he would have failed to have come out on top because he’s handicapped by a fundamental policy problem; he is trying to defend a Covid strategy that just isn’t working.
Sir Keir Starmer highlighted this best in his fourth question. He asked:
In Bury, when restriction were introduced, the infection rate was around 20 per 100,000. Today it’s 266. In Burnley it was 21 per 100,000 when restriction were introduced. Now it’s 434. In Bolton it was 18 per 100,000. Now it’s 255. The prime minister really needs to understand that local communities are angry and frustrated. So will he level with the people of Bury, Burnley and Bolton and tell them, what does he actually think the problem is here?
In the prime minister’s own local authority Hillingdon, today there are 62 cases per 100,000 yet no local restrictions. But in 20 local areas across England, restrictions were imposed when infection rates were much lower. In Kirklees it was just 29 per 100,000. Local communities, prime minister, genuinely don’t understand these differences. Can he please explain for them?
For the prime minister’s benefit, let me take this slowly for him. We support measures to protect health. We want track and trace to work. But the government is messing it up and it’s our duty to point it out.
Taiwo Owatemi (Lab) says Coventry is running out of brownfield sites. So where will the new homes it needs be built?
Johnson says there is abundant brownfield space all over the country. He says as the former planning authority for London, he knows. He says rules are making building difficult. He will turn generation rent into generation buy.
University students should be able to return home to their families at Christmas if the country “pulls together” and observes the new coronavirus rules, a cabinet minister has said.
The government is under pressure to guarantee young people are not confined to their halls of residence over the festive period because of Covid-19 outbreaks on campuses.