A FIRE has broken out near a hospital in a town near Glasgow.

TEAR down the bunting, cancel the cake, and tell the DJ not to bother. “Freedom Day”, the long-awaited moment when Scotland bids goodbye to the mandatory wearing of face masks, has been postponed by order of the First Minister.

ONE in eight Scots are missing meals in the cost of living crisis as they prepare to spend an estimated extra £1,100 on energy and food a year.

MINISTERS have ploughed £750,000 of taxpayers money into a new initiative to support the post-Covid recovery of Scotland’s live music industry through the staging of over 300 live concerts.

By Scott Wright

GLASGOW has been ranked 42nd out of 50 of the UK’s largest population centres in a league table based on indicators including jobs, health, and income.

It’s hard to tell what looks worse on a 77-year-old man: fluorescent visibility vest or fluorescent leopard-skin leggings but it doesn’t matter in the end because Sir Rod Stewart has been doing his bit for his local community and the message coul...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has upended markets and fanned the flames of inflation that were already kindling as the world began to emerge from the Covid pandemic. This is fuelling a cost-of-living crisis that has many people alarmed for their fin...

STRATHMORE Foods, the Scottish ready-meal manufacturer, has increased pre-tax profit by six per cent to £2.23 million despite coronavirus creating an “extremely challenging operating environment for the company”, new accounts show.

A prominent Scottish restaurateur “exploited” migrant staff and threatened to withdraw support for a chef’s immigration application unless he signed an agreement to pay £4000 if he ever left the business.

LGBT members of Scottish Labour have expressed concerns after a lobbyist for an organisation that supports conversion therapy was selected to stand for the party in May’s council elections.

Users have been reporting issues accessing Twitter on Thursday morning.

Tears of joy were shed as the families of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori were reunited with their loved ones in the early hours of Thursday morning after years of a “long and cruel separation” caused by their detention in Iran.

A Scot fighting the Russian invasion with troops in Ukraine has revealed the horrors seen on the streets of Kyiv.

AMID fresh indications that the green jobs boom the Scottish Government has said is in prospect remains distant, a North Sea visionary has underlined the value of domestic gas production.

NORTH Sea-focused IOG has started production from a second field in the space of three days amid the surge in gas prices fuelled by Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

By Ian McConnell

CAMPAIGNERS have warned that clinically vulnerable patients will be forced to “return to some form of shielding” in April as routine access to free lateral flow tests comes to an end.

Gangsters in Scotland are switching from “cocaine and meth labs to canines and pet labs” MSPs were warned yesterday.

THE Penderyn Music Book Prize – once called The Mercury Prize of Books by the NME – has just announced its 2022 longlist for the year's best music books. Now in its eighth year, the prize has named 16 books from which it will name a winner on Mar...

AUDITORS say they’ve been unable to properly analyse nearly £5 billion of Scottish Government Covid-19 funding because of a “data gap”.

Farming

School meals are too expensive for those who qualify for free lunches and banning sugary snacks may be encouraging youngsters to eat more of it elsewhere, a study suggests.

IT is disappointing, and not a little insulting, to see correspondents such as John Jamieson (Letters, March 16) ascribe a reluctance to plunge into independence to "fear". It would benefit us all, and perhaps replace some of the heat of debate with ...

Hints and answer for today's Wordle.

All of Newsquest's titles across the UK are united in our efforts to support the people of Ukraine.

Our cartoonist Steven Camley's take on the search for oil.

Loopy letters

MY teenage idiocy knew no bounds. I once tap danced on the edge of a railway bridge to entertain a girlfriend. We both thought it pretty cool until I fell off and plummeted 50 feet towards the tracks. Luckily, some trees broke my fall and I just ende...

IT was a two-for-one double bill at Holyrood’s economy and fair work committee yesterday.

These are all the runners and riders for the seven races taking place at Cheltenham Festival on Thursday.

Generally, people are reporting milder Covid reactions however many patients have noticed they are different to Alpha, Beta and Delta.

THE Ukrainian MP who said she will shoot to kill after the Russian invasion is on the panel as BBC Question Time airs on Thursday night.

The UK Government should become a partner in the Scottish National Investment Bank, former prime minister Gordon Brown has said.

THOSE still failing to grasp the permanent nature and the scale of the damage – a camp which seemingly includes members of the Johnson Cabinet –

GORDON Brown has led calls for the Chancellor not to increase national insurance contributions as part of a package of measures to keep families out of "extreme poverty" as a result of the cost of living crisis.

MORE than twice as many Scots believe remaining in a reformed UK may be better than independence, according to a new poll.

Analysis By Gavin Mochan  

THREE more people have been executed by the Saudi regime on the day of the Prime Minister's visit .

AN SNP policy adviser has been suspended and accused of racism after saying Priti Patel should be ‘sent back to Uganda’.

NICOLA Sturgeon hopes to start sheltering thousands of Ukrainian refugees in temporary shelter from this weekend and is drawing up plans to offer “long-term sustainable accommodation” to those fleeing war.

NICOLA Sturgeon has repeated calls not to rule out a no-fly zone over Ukraine, saying the world should not be “writing Vladimir Putin blank cheques of assurance” that he can escape “military consequences”.

THE HUSBAND of Zananin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has said he will make his wife a cup of tea and do some tidying up to celebrate her arrival home.

A NEW DNA investigation is being conducted into the unsolved murder of a student amidst fears she was one of serial killer Peter Tobin's victims A coroner is currently considering whether Sussex art student Jessie Earl was unlawfully killed 30 years ...

The former offices of Petrofac at Wellington Circle south of Aberdeen are being sold at auction later this month.

BATGIRL has been blasted in the Scottish Parliament after venues and shops in Glasgow lost thousands of pounds following widespread road and footpath closures for the filming of the Hollywood blockbuster.

OPAQUE Scottish business structures used to launder billions of pounds will be reformed in the next Parliament, the Scottish Secretary has told MPs.

FORMER Scotland rugby international Lewis Carmichael has swapped the oval ball game for a career in broadband.

NICOLA Sturgeon has claimed that refugees fleeing war in Ukraine could arrive in Scotland as early as this weekend.

THE BRITISH-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has boarded a plane in Iran as she prepares to come back home for the first time in six years.