An influential group of ministers in Scotland’s largest Protestant church has said that its clergy and congregations have been “sinfully” intolerant of gays and lesbians in its ranks.

A man who punched a crying six-week-old baby in the face has been jailed for nine months. Darren Ashmore, 25, was told by the judge that only a prison sentence was appropriate for the offence.

THE NHS in Scotland must learn from the oil and nuclear industries to cut the tens of thousands of mistakes made each year when caring for patients, experts said yesterday.

The number of murders in Scotland has jumped by nearly a third in the past year, with an even bigger rise in fatal stabbings, according to new figures which deal a serious blow to the Scottish Executive’s record on violent crime.

Management at a care home where one resident allegedly sexually assaulted another have been branded “neglectful”. Managers and staff at Camphill Blair Drummond, a Stirlingshire home for disabled young adults, took three days to phone the police after the incident in June last year.

Four people have appeared in custody at Paisley Sheriff Court charged with arranging sham marriages to avoid immigration laws. Derek Burns, 27, of Glendower Way, and Maureen Campbell, 26, of Morar Drive, Foxbar, both Paisley, were charged with offering to arrange marriages.

The latest research from Capability Scotland’s 1 in 4 Poll on voting intentions suggests that over 90% of disabled Scots and their carers are set to vote in the Scottish elections on May 3rd 2007 – bucking the predicted low turnout for the electorate as a whole. 

Social care charity Quarriers is to call on the next Scottish Executive to do more to back community-based work with children and to encourage integrated working.

A ban on the sale of 10-pack cigarettes is among a range of tough measures recommended in a report to protect children from the “tobacco trap”. The British Medical Association report also called for a rise in the cigarette purchase age to 18 from 16.

Engineers were fighting to stem the flow of millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh last night as a health alert was issued for ten miles of coastline.