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 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.

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.

A new computerised cancer screening system planned for Scotland is unreliable and “dangerous to patient care”, according to GPs. Doctors are calling for the cervical cancer screening system, which is due to be launched in Scotland on May 28, to be delayed so technical issues can be ironed out.

Scotland’s justice system is failing to protect the growing number of women who are victims of stalking, an investigation by The Scotsman can reveal. Ten years after a specific law on stalking was introduced south of the Border, Scotland still has not introduced an equivalent piece of legislation.