let s start with big news here in the uk. scotland s longest serving first minister, nicola sturgeon, has resigned. she s been the leader of the scottish national party which wants independence from britain for more than eight years. she steered the country through brexit, covid, ukraine, five conservativce prime ministers and enjoyed huge ongoing public support. have a listen to some of what she had to say. in my head and in my heart i know the time is now. let s take a look back at her career. she entered politics full time in 1999 when she was elected to the new scottish parliament. she was twenty nine years old. herfirst big test in government came when she was deputy first minister and health secretary, as swine flu was declared a pandemic. she then oversaw planning for 2014 s independence referendum. the scottish people voted to stay part of the uk but today she said she remained committed to the independence cause. am firmly of the you there is no majority suppor
tribute to nicola sturgeon for her long standing public service, and i wish her well in the future. nicola sturgeon s record as an impressive vote winner is undisputed but her record in power has divided opinion in scotland. i really liked her, as a person as well as a first minister. she s not done anything for scotland. they need somebody to take over, somebody they need somebody to take over, somebody fresh to take over. also on the programme. police reveal that the missing woman nicola bulley had alcohol related issues connected to the menopause. the one year old who s received the most expensive medicine ever approved for the nhs a £3 million life saving gene therapy. ican rub i can rub and scrub this house. and the hollywood film star and model, raquel welch, has died at the age of 82. and coming up on the bbc news channel. high stakes both on the continent and domestically at the top two battle in the premier league while chelsea aim for a first leg lead in the c
well, they will, because nicola sturgeon will be remembered as one of the most successful politicians of the most successful politicians of her generation in terms of what she delivered at the ballot box, a string of landslide victories for the snp, and if you take a step back to see where she came from, she talked about the 1980s, growing up in ayrshire, and it could have been pretty lonely in those days to campaign for scottish independence when labour was dominant in scottish politics. to go from there all the way to a scottish parliament and to run the government here for eight years is no small achievement, to say the least. but she has always beenin say the least. but she has always been in politics for one thing above all, and she has not delivered to scottish independence, which leaves her successor with big challenges. first of all, immediately on the issue of gender, what to do about westminster blocking the bill that was passed to try to make it easy to legally cha
Ceasefire talks in cairo. The good news is that they are happening and that five nations, orfive parties, are at least all there in cairo. So thats hamas, israel, the us, qatar and egypt. The not so good news is that israel has only sent a fairly low level team theyre not there to negotiate, theyre there to study what hope there is of trying to bridge the gap between what is acceptable to israel and what is acceptable to hamas, and that gap is still pretty wide. The main Sticking Point, as my colleague yolande referred to there, is over how this ends. So the fundamentals of the deal are largely intact, theyre largely agreed. They can agree this that it will start with a 42 day period of calm, a truce essentially, during which hamas will give up 33 hostages. Theres a bit of dispute about whether they would be alive or dead, but 33 hostages. In return, a much larger number of Palestinians Prisoners would be released from israeli jails and palestinians who had been moved south into rafah