Lessons learned from the Rosepark Nursing Home tragedy were crucial in saving the lives of care-home residents trapped in a fire, it emerged last night.

{mosimage}Eighty-nine residents of the Douglas View Care Centre in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, were evacuated yesterday when a blaze broke out in the upper floors just before 7am.

Although police and staff managed to help some residents to safety, firefighters were forced to enter the smoke-filled building to complete the rescue.

Nine residents and a female staff member were taken to nearby hospitals suffering from the effects of smoke, but none suffered serious injuries.

A growing number of primary-school children in Scotland are troubled and unhappy, it was claimed yesterday.

The last of the six fingerprint specialists at the heart of the Shirley McKie scandal has been sacked, prompting another legal action which could lead to a compensation bill of hundreds of thousands for Scottish ministers.

Police in Inverness have set up a new unit which will concentrate on domestic violence, cases involving vulnerable adults and child protection inquiries.

A woman in a wheelchair who was indecently assaulted by a man posing as a doctor yesterday spoke for the first time about her ordeal.

A report into Scotland’s most notorious child sex abuse scandal has concluded that Orkney Islands Council was negligent and an eight-year-old girl should not have been taken into care, The Scotsman has learned.

Twenty years ago the idea of using tiny balloons to inflate blood vessels as a treatment for heart attack may have seemed pure science fiction.

Pupils will take the plunge in the north-east this month with a sponsored swim to raise funds for their caring friends. While most youngsters enjoy free time after school, for many others homework means just that – they are the young carers who look after ailing or disabled parents or relatives.

Deaths from severe heart attacks after hospital admission have nearly halved in six years due to advances in medical treatment. In the largest study of its kind, reseach led by Edinburgh University analysed more than 44,000 patients in 14 countries.

A scientist will tell delegates at a major asthma conference in Glasgow today that a mother’s diet in pregnancy could affect a child’s chance of developing asthma.