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The SNP’s three leadership candidates engaged in a fiery clash during a live Sky News debate as they failed to agree on several issues.

Ash Regan, Kate Forbes and Humza Yousaf are battling it out to replace Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon after she announced she was stepping down last month.

Taking part in a live debate on Sky News, hosted by political editor Beth Rigby, the trio tried to win over SNP voters moments after an exclusive Sky/YouGov poll found 54% of Scots want to remain part of the UK.

These are the key moments from the hour-long debate on Monday evening:

Independence

The whole reason for the SNP’s existence – but the trio could not agree on whether it is top of their agendas.

Asked if it was their top priority, Ms Regan said Scotland was suffering disproportionately from being in the UK while Ms Forbes said her priorities are the cost of living and public services.

Mr Yousaf, seen as the continuity candidate, was the only one who answered with a straight answer, saying: “Yes, independence is my top priority.”

Regan’s Scottish currency plans

Ms Regan was grilled on her plans for establishing a Scottish currency after saying earlier in the campaign one could be introduced quickly after independence.

But she struggled to explain exactly how that would come about and what other issues would have to be addressed if Scotland becomes independent.

She said she would set up a commission to establish plans for a new monetary system but pressed on what institutions are needed for that she only said a central bank.

Ash Regan on Sophy Ridge on sunday
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Ash Regan

Ms Regan admitted she could not give “the full details at this point” and insisted she only meant she could introduce a new currency within two months of independence if all the plans had been established beforehand by a commission.

Asked by Mr Yousaf what she would do if she became first minister in two weeks, Mr Regan said she would make the A9 road a dual carriageway but admitted she could not determine how much that would cost.

Polls, polls, polls

The trio, especially Mr Yousaf and Ms Forbes, bickered over who was more popular with the public.

Mr Yousaf insisted the momentum is behind him, despite some polls making for pretty grim reading.

He put himself over as the candidate that is popular with SNP voters, while Ms Forbes claimed she had the backing of more Scots overall.

But, in the end, it is only the SNP members who matter as they – not the wider voters – will determine who wins the leadership of their party.

Mr Yousaf accused Ms Forbes of losing SNP supporters as he boasted about overtaking her in the polls but she said she was “ahead in key metrics”.

Read more:
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How will Nicola Sturgeon’s successor be chosen?

Humza Yousaf speaking in the SNP leadership hustings at Rothes Halls, Glenrothes. Picture date: Friday March 3, 2023.
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Humza Yousaf

The Sky News poll released on Monday afternoon found 44% thought Mr Yousaf would be a bad leader, while Ms Regan came in at 39% and 36% for Ms Forbes.

But he batted off suggestions he had been a bad health minister, saying finance minister Ms Forbes had not been in a service delivery role while he has had “the most difficult and toughest jobs” in government for decades (health, transport and justice).

He defended his record as health secretary, which he started in 2021, saying waiting times were down due to the pandemic and Scotland had a speedy COVID booster roll out.

Ms Regan admitted her name is not so well-known but said she is “far from a rookie”, having been in government for nearly five years.

“I’m definitely less well known than the others but a good first minister does not depend on how well known they are but on their abilities, their plan and a good team,” she said.

Gloves came off in Sky’s SNP debate

The SNP’s facade of unity and discipline imploded live on Sky News this evening, writes Connor Gilles, Scotland Correspondent.

Outgoing First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will have been watching the drama through her fingers as the three candidates vying to replace her came to blows over their record in government.

Humza Yousaf, seen as a party favourite, pivoted his message to the members while Kate Forbes took advantage of the exclusive Sky News poll suggesting she is seen in a more favourable light with the wider electorate.

Big holes were exposed in Ash Regan’s plans for setting up a currency in the initial months of independence.

During her Beth Rigby interrogation she failed to provide details. Yousaf’s stinging retort about Regan “not having a single plan for the economy” is far from what her camp wanted to hear.

Kate Forbes has endured repeated questions over social issues and this debate was no different. She failed to fully commit to banning all forms of conversion therapy in a painful exchange.

Yousaf was hit with a barrage of statistics on his missed NHS targets. He was robust in his responses, but the reality is he can’t dodge the facts. The Sky polls suggest the majority of Scots feel the NHS is handled badly by the SNP.

The health secretary pushed the discussion back to his varied ministerial roles in an attempt to undermine his opponent’s inexperience.

The big test in the short term is who can win over the SNP voters before the much bigger job of governing a country and appeasing a restless independence movement begins.

Conversion therapy, same-sex marriage and JK Rowling

Ms Forbes made headlines early in the campaign after saying her faith means having children outside of marriage is “wrong”.

Asked about unmarried and gay married couples, she told the debate “I certainly don’t disapprove” and said she would “defend the rights of everybody in Scotland to live without harassment and fear”.

She went in strong on whether a plan to ban conversion therapy should go ahead, saying: “Conversion therapy is abhorrent.”

But she got a bit tangled up when asked about people who wanted it done to themselves, saying people “should be allowed to live freely as they choose, I do not think there should be conversion therapy in Scotland”.

Scottish National Party leadership candidate Kate Forbes during a visit to the Cairngorm Brewery in Aviemore, part of her Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituency. Picture date: Monday February 27, 2023.
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Kate Forbes

Mr Yousaf tried to exploit Ms Forbes’ perceived weakness with SNP voters on social issues by suggesting she is “abandoning the progressive agenda” of the party.

He claimed: “With SNP voters, the momentum is with me.”

However, Sky News polling suggests Ms Forbes is most popular with Scots, if not with SNP members.

All three were asked if JK Rowling is a national treasure following her remarks about trans people, with Ms Regan and Ms Forbes agreeing she is and was “very brave” to talk out.

Mr Yousaf agreed she is a national treasure for her books “but I disagree vehemently with her view on trans rights”.

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Is JK Rowling a national treasure?

Labour?

The candidates were asked if they would work with Labour if they were to win the next general election as polls suggest.

Ms Regan and Ms Forbes said they would while Mr Yousaf said he would “work with anyone to kick out the Tories”.

Mr Yousaf said his price to work with Labour would be if they gave him the power to hold another referendum.

The other two also agreed on that but differed in their opinions of the Labour Party.

Mr Yousaf called Sir Keir Starmer a “pale imitation” of a Tory and Ms Forbes said she would “always side with fellow progressive parties”.

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

Four more arrests have been made by French police investigating the Louvre museum heist.

Two men and two women from the Paris region were detained on Tuesday, prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.

Ms Beccuau’s statement did not say what role the quartet are suspected of having played in the robbery. The two men are aged 38 and 39, and the two women are aged 31 and 40.

They are being interrogated by police, who can hold them for questioning for 96 hours.

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Louvre: How ‘heist of the century’ unfolded

The latest arrests come after investigating magistrates filed preliminary charges against three men and one woman who were arrested last month.

Some of the French Crown Jewels, worth an estimated £76m, were stolen in the audacious October raid.

The haul – which included a diamond and emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels linked to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amelie and Hortense, and Empress Eugenie’s pearl and diamond tiara – has not been recovered.

The heist was pulled off in mere minutes last month – and took place while the Louvre was open to visitors, raising doubts over the credibility of the world’s most-visited museum as a guardian for its priceless works.

On Sunday 19 October, two men used a stolen furniture lift to access the second floor Galerie d’Apollon.

They then cracked open display cases with angle grinders before escaping with their loot and fleeing on the back of two scooters driven by accomplices.

Read more:
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Moment thieves escape Louvre in jewel heist

The Paris prosecutor previously said the robbery appeared to be the work of small-time criminals rather than professional gangsters.

Speaking shortly after the heist, art detective Arthur Brand told Sky News that detectives faced a “race against time” to recover the stolen treasure.

“These crown jewels are so famous, you just cannot sell them,” Mr Brand said. “The only thing they can do is melt the silver and gold down, dismantle the diamonds, try to cut them. That’s the way they will probably disappear forever.

“They [the police] have a week. If they catch the thieves, the stuff might still be there. If it takes longer, the loot is probably gone and dismantled. It’s a race against time.”

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump’s peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump's peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

Washington woke up this morning to a flurry of developments on Ukraine.

It was the middle of the night in DC when a tweet dropped from Ukraine’s national security advisor, Rustem Umerov.

He said that the US and Ukraine had reached a “common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva.”

He added that Volodymyr Zelenskyy would travel to America “at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump”.

Ukraine latest: ‘Delicate’ deal details must be sorted, White House says

By sunrise in Washington, a US official was using similar but not identical language to frame progress.

The official, speaking anonymously to US media, said that Ukraine had “agreed” to Trump’s peace proposal “with some minor details to be worked out”.

More on Donald Trump

In parallel, it’s emerged that talks have been taking place in Abu Dhabi. The Americans claim to have met both Russian and Ukrainian officials there, though the Russians have not confirmed attendance.

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Peace deal ‘agreement’: What we know

“I have nothing to say. We are following the media reports,” Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, told Russian state media.

Trump is due to travel to his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago tonight, where he will remain until Sunday.

He set a deadline of Thursday – Thanksgiving – for some sort of agreement on his plan.

We know the plan has been changed from its original form, but it’s clear that Zelenskyy wants to be seen to agree to something quickly – that would go down well with President Trump.

Read more:
US hails ‘tremendous progress’ on Ukraine peace plan

In full: Europe’s 28-point counter proposal

My sense is that Zelenskyy will try to get to Mar-a-Lago as soon as he can. Before Thursday would be a push but would meet Trump’s deadline.

It will then be left for the Russians to state their position on the revised document.

All indications are that they will reject it. But maybe the secret Abu Dhabi talks will yield something.

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid distribution group, has said it will permanently cease operations.

Set up as an alternative to United Nations aid programmes in May, GHF’s executive director John Acree said on Monday that it “succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans”.

The foundation had already closed down aid distribution sites after US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan was agreed by Hamas and Israel in October.

The GHF which began operations in Gaza after an Israeli blockade of food deliveries, lasting nearly three months, was criticised by Palestinians, aid workers and health officials who said it forced people to risk their lives to reach the sites.

File pic: Reuters
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File pic: Reuters

According to witnesses and videos posted to social media, Israeli soldiers repeatedly opened fire at the sites, killing hundreds. The IDF denied this, saying it only fired warning shots as a crowd-control measure or if its troops were in danger.

In July, analysis from Sky News’ Data and Forensics team found that aid distributions by GHF were associated with a significant increase in deaths.

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Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open

MSF – also known as Doctors Without Borders – said in a report in August that the GHF sites “morphed into a laboratory of cruelty,” and described scenes there as “orchestrated killing”.

More on Gaza

‘We are proud,’ says GHF director

Mr Acree said in a statement through the GHF’s website that “from the outset, GHF’s goal was to meet an urgent need” and to hand over a successful aid operation to “the broader international community”.

The GHF would hand over its work to the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center in Israel overseeing the Gaza ceasefire.

“We are winding down our operations as we have succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans,” Mr Acree said.

File pic: Reuters
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File pic: Reuters

The GHF director added: “At a critical juncture, we are proud to have been the only aid operation that reliably and safely provided free meals directly to Palestinian people in Gaza, at scale and without diversion.

“From our very first day of operations, our mission was singular: feed civilians in desperate need. We built a new model that worked, saved lives, and restored dignity to civilians in Gaza.”

According to the GHF website, the group distributed more than three million food boxes, totalling 187 million meals, and supplied 1.1 million packs of Ready-to-Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) for malnourished children.

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Hamas welcomes GHF closure

In a statement, Hamas welcomed the closure of GHF and accused it of being a project that “engineered starvation” in partnership with Israel.

A Hamas spokesperson said: “Since its entry into the Gaza Strip, this foundation was part of the occupation’s security system, which adopted distribution mechanisms entirely disconnected from humanitarian principles, and created dangerous and degrading conditions for the dignity of the starving Palestinian people during their attempts to obtain a piece of bread, resulting in the killing and injury of thousands, through sniper operations and deliberate killing.”

They also called on international legal bodies to hold “this foundation and its officers accountable for their crimes against our people”.

US state department deputy spokesperson Tommy Piggot also said on X that the aid group “shared valuable lessons learned with us and our partners”.

“GHF’s model, in which Hamas could no longer loot and profit from stealing aid, played a huge role in getting Hamas to the table and achieving a ceasefire,” he added.

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