Students at Edinburgh, Dundee and Nottingham face a term without any teaching as sector struggles with rising financial uncertainty

Welcome classes for students at the University of Edinburgh this year didn’t focus on the lectures, seminars and essays expected. Instead, students were told about how their education was going to fit in around the strikes planned for this year, which for many will effectively wipe out a term of teaching.

“This term I’ve got two courses and my dissertation. Currently, I’ve got no teaching for five weeks,” said Theo Warshaw, 22, in his final year studying geography at Edinburgh, where staff are striking over budget cuts and compulsory redundancies needed to bridge what the university’s leaders have said is a £400m shortfall.

Demand for Scotland’s most famous export has slumped, with industry facing job cuts and closures

Obscured by the Scottish countryside on the outskirts of Kirkcaldy, Cluny bond is, in effect, a small town built to store whisky. By the time the latest set of warehouses are finished on the former opencast coal mine, Diageo’s 220-hectare (544-acre) maturation campus will be able to store almost 3m casks of Scotch. The drinks multinational needs the space.

After a 15-year boom turbocharged by the Covid-19 pandemic, demand for Scotch whisky has slumped around the world. Distilleries have paused production across Scotland to avoid adding to the glut of supply, known as a “whisky loch” – the equivalent of a “wine lake”.

Ein SZ-Redakteur lernt vor einer Skulptur in Tegernsee, was Multiperspektivität in der Kunst wirklich bedeutet. Drei Anekdoten aus aller Welt.

Workers who blame algorithms for lowering their earnings are getting help from academics to find out how the system works

Gig economy workers are urging delivery platforms to open up the “black box” of computer-driven algorithms that determine the jobs they are offered and how much they are paid, blaming increased use of AI for lowering wages.

A group of food delivery riders in Edinburgh say their rates of pay have fallen and their working conditions have deteriorated at the same time as Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat, the three dominant gig economy platforms in the UK and Ireland, have increased their use of automation.

Opposition mounts as at least 20 projects proposed, including one in Fife billed as second largest in world

Kat Jones may be the closest thing Scotland has to Erin Brockovich in 2026. Standing in the shadow of Arthur’s Seat outside Holyrood, the 52-year-old is revving up the crowd of protesters around her. “Who is here from Lammermuir? Ayrshire? What about Aberdeen?” she calls to the crowd.

On Thursday, hundreds travelled to Edinburgh to call for an immediate moratorium on Scotland’s datacentre boom, which includes one project in Auchtertool, Fife, that has been billed as the second largest in the world.

The 80-seat venue at Edinburgh fringe combines sauna rituals with theatre, music, storytelling … and sweat

Tucked away behind the Summerhall arts centre is the hottest new venue at the Edinburgh fringe … quite literally. The Sauna theatre has proved popular among theatregoers at the world’s largest performing arts festival, with shows inside its purpose-built, 80-seat sauna drawing sweaty, swimwear-clad crowds.

Visitors may be forgiven for thinking the sauna is a gimmick, especially at the fringe where absurd, experimental and ludicrous performances are not uncommon. This year they include a man drinking his own urine, someone singing the same song over and over, physical feats of exertion and several fully naked shows.

Restaurant critic and award-winning food writer Jimi Famurewa travels from Belfast to Edinburgh and London to meet the inventive DIY chefs stretching US, Italian and British pizza styles to come up with delicious new flavour combos

‘A great deal of public opposition is likely’ to a proposed datacentre near Edinburgh, the force says

Police in Scotland have issued a stark warning about the need for “robust security measures” to stop proposed AI datacentres from being attacked by protesters.

There has been mounting opposition to AI infrastructure globally, including in the US where such projects have become a significant political rallying point.

With its marching bands, billowing flags and precision drills, the Tattoo has never exactly been cutting edge. But now an experimental theatre-maker has been let loose on it …

Dusk has settled on Edinburgh Castle and now a laser beam is scribbling a route across its ramparts and high into the sky. The voice of actor Richard Rankin is talking solemnly about lonely soldiers answering a call, while a ferocious light rises in the gatehouse. Out of it emerge scores of drummers and pipers, their sound both melodic and awe-inspiring. They crisscross the esplanade to the stirring lament of The Skye Boat Song.

This is the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, an event often overlooked amid the festival cacophony – and yet its popularity eclipses any other event in the city. Last year, it played to 230,000 and raised £1.5m for charity. Like an outsize variety show, it is a formidable spectacle: fireworks, projections, flags dragged over the audience and a soundtrack that ranges from Carmen to Star Wars.

Jimi Famurewa, restaurant critic and food journalist, travels to Edinburgh, London and Manchester eating at the female-fronted cafes and bistros reviving regional comfort food favourites, passed down through generations. Starting with soda bread and a fry-up cooked by Irish-born owner Claire Hanrahan at her bistro Norah, named after her late grandmother. Onwards to Bara, where Cecily Dalladay and Zoë Heimann are celebrating the Welsh ingredients they grew up with and feed Jimi a hearty Caerphilly cheesesteak. Finally he visits Auntie Lou’s, where Emily Witts recreates her grandmother’s recipe for scones with apricot jam and cheese.

Festival organisers defend show after criticism from sister of Meredith Kercher, Knox’s murdered former flatmate

The Edinburgh festival fringe has said it is “not afraid of controversy” after it faced calls to cancel a sold-out show by Amanda Knox, who was wrongfully convicted for the 2007 murder of her flatmate Meredith Kercher in Italy.

Knox’s comedy show, Cartwheel, has been condemned by Kercher’s family, with her sister, Stephanie, saying it “normalises and trivialises violence against women”. A petition calling for it to be cancelled has been signed by more than 9,000 people.

Muslims in the UK, Europe and the US are increasingly fearful and frustrated as targeted attacks rise. Others must speak out

The chilling attacks that injured five men in Edinburgh at the weekend, including two who were struck as they left a mosque, have deepened the fear that many Muslims in Britain feel today. The case received remarkably little attention south of the border. A man has now been charged with five counts of attempted murder, allegedly “aggravated by reason of having a terrorist connection”. The facts of these attacks must now be examined in court in due course.

What is beyond doubt is the real and growing fear experienced by Muslim communities in the UK, Europe and elsewhere. The US president has said that “I think Islam hates us”. Increasingly open Islamophobic rhetoric from political figures, and a muted response from others, as well as violence towards Muslims, have left many feeling vulnerable and frustrated.

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Minnie the Minx and Macbeth feature in National Library’s exploration of how rainfall has shaped Scottish science, literature, history and identity

It seems fitting that, 250 years ago, one of Scotland’s foremost scientists took a close interest in what is arguably the country’s most famous feature: rain

James Hutton, celebrated by Scots as the father of modern geology, went so far as to write a formula for “a theory of rain”. In 1784, he sketched out the key principles for the “condensation of aqueous vapour contained in the air”.

Works of Ali Smith, Kathleen Jamie and more to feature in celebration of literature’s interplay with other art forms, says director

This year’s Edinburgh book festival is expanding its slate of genre-busting musical events, including staging Japanese Noh theatre at one of the city’s oldest religious sites, Greyfriars Kirk.

Jenny Niven, the Edinburgh international book festival’s director, said such events broke away from the traditional formula of authors sitting in tents, and aimed to attract new audiences and celebrate literature’s interplay with other art forms.

Experimental tablet produces encouraging results in patients with world’s most common forms of disease

• ‘I was getting ready to say goodbye’: patient’s hope after smart drug success

A smart drug that stops cancer cells “hiding” from treatment can shrink tumours by at least 30% in six of the world’s most common forms of the disease, early trial results show.

While immunotherapy treatments have improved survival rates for many patients, their effectiveness can stall or fail when tumour cells hide and then spread.

A large scrub fire broke out in Holyrood Park, near Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Monday evening. The blaze started in vegetation near the ruins of St Anthony’s chapel. Plumes of smoke were seen over the city, as the Scottish fire and rescue service worked to contain the blaze

Liza Tobay, who lives in UK, was told her settled status had been ‘red flagged’ after trying to make a connecting flight from Munich to Edinburgh

A German woman has been separated from her two-year-old daughter in Edinburgh after a Home Office mistake left her stranded in Dusseldorf earlier this week.

Liza Tobay, who has lived in the UK for 15 years, had taken her oldest child, a six-year-old boy, to visit his grandfather and some other relatives over Easter when confronted with what she said appeared to be “a serious administrative error”.

Tiny eateries such as the award-winning Gwen in Wales, which holds just eight customers, are spreading across the UK

It started with the portion sizes, as all-you-can-eat buffets were reduced to bite-size small plates. Then the menus started to decrease, with pages of dishes shrinking to an A5 sheet of paper.

Now restaurants are undergoing another round of downsizing. Micro-restaurants, which usually seat fewer than 20 people, are gradually spreading across the UK.

August festival presents largest-ever jazz programme alongside full-scale operas and Scottish folk music

This year’s Edinburgh international festival will showcase American art that celebrates the creativity and energy of the US, while also exposing its cruelty and hypocrisy, its director has said.

Nicola Benedetti, the Grammy-award winning violinist now presenting her fourth festival, said Donald Trump’s explosive second term as president made that quest more important than ever.

Tour guide reports drawing of naked woman pointing knife at baby and coded writing at Old Calton burial ground

The tomb of the philosopher David Hume and two other memorials at a historic cemetery in Edinburgh have been vandalised with “disturbing occult-style paraphernalia”.

A tour guide made the discovery at the Old Calton burial ground. It included a drawing of a naked woman pointing a bloodied knife at a baby with a noose around its neck, and coded writing on red electrical tape attached to the David Hume mausoleum and two nearby memorial stones.