SUSAN Boyle made chart history yesterday by soaring straight to No 1, with her album selling more than 410,000 copies - the best first week's sale for a debut release sinc

SNP ministers are considering taking responsibility for social care for the elderly away from local authorities and handing it to the NHS.

A LEADING cancer charity has called for legislation banning children from using sunbeds to be rolled out across the UK.

ALEX Salmond will today claim that the only chance for constitutional change in Scotland will be for politicians in Holyrood to back his party's independence referendum b

TWO former Labour health ministers have fiercely criticised their party's leadership in Scotland for opposing the introduction of minimum pricing for alcohol.

THE UK Government yesterday welcomed Rwanda as the newest member of the Commonwealth.

PUPILS are being forced to drop out of Higher exams because teachers are under pressure to maintain pass rates, a senior academic has claimed.

THE culminating event of St Andrew's Day/Night/Weekend - held in the atmospheric, chilly moonlit grounds of the cathedral and St Mary's Quad in St Andrews - was powe

GORDON Brown sent a tough challenge to Pakistan yesterday to step up action against the al-Qaeda terror network and "take out" its leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman Z

AN INFLUENTIAL Commons committee has thrown its weight behind calls from Holyrood that asylum-seekers' children should not be locked up.

A FORMER aide to a Holyrood minister could face legal action after he used the internet to attempt to smear political rivals.

THE Labour Party is to enlist the advice of Barack Obama's campaign team in a bid to improve its image ahead of next year's general election.

SCOTS author Iain Banks has joined MPs and church leaders in accusing the government of failing to push banks to adopt ethical investments.

THE Scottish Government must rethink its plans to eliminate fuel poverty, a charity insisted last night.

SOME public sector jargon is so confusing that its victims should have the right to have those responsible investigated for maladministration, MPs said yesterday.

SCOTTISH Conservatives have dismissed calls to break away from the UK party and reinvent themselves as a Scotland-only body.

ONE of the Conservative Party's leading parliamentary candidates has defended his non-domiciled tax status.