HOLIDAYS may be temporarily on hold, but planning magical trips is still possible. Spontaneity shapes thrilling travel escapades, but there's also a case for careful, methodical planning. Often, the preparation – deciding on a route, reading up about a destination – can be just as enjoyable as the trip itself.

Inverness Botanic Gardens

A family of 10 in Cambodia experience God's love through the provision of a new home.

Bulgaria coach Luboslav Penev and his staff encouraged over 120 children taking part in a grassroots event in Sofia designed to increase participation in football and other sports.

The latest UEFA KISS workshop on the further development of women's football looked at ways of improving clubs' infrastructures as well as bolstering the foundations of the game.

The next UEFA Grassroots Workshop in 2013 will be hosted by the Football Association of Norway, an organisation renowned for its achievements in this vital area of the game.

Football players and coaches of all levels from across Latvia have been invited by the Latvian Football Federation to take part in football-based activities for UEFA Grassroots Day.

A GROUP of Glasgow-based students are working on an international project to design the building blocks of a Moon base.

SCOTTISH energy storage start-up Gravitricity has received £300,000 from government agency Innovate UK to explore the potential to use gold mine shafts in South Africa as energy stores.

OMEGA Diagnostics shares jumped 77 per cent after it announced it is part of the UK rapid test consortium working to jointly develop and manufacture an antibody test.

A BIOTECH veteran has hailed a Glasgow firm that claims to have discovered two separate potential treatments for Covid-19 patients for use before they are put on ventilators.

Police have issued more than 140 fixed-penalty notices to people flouting coronavirus lockdown rules in Scotland in the week since new powers came into force.

THIS time last year the Scottish Government, Police Scotland and the Crown Office were united in great fanfare about groundbreaking new legislation designed to tackle domestic abuse.

GUTTING news for great swathes of the Great British public - eating chips is not exercise.

Scotland's crime levels have dropped by around 25% since lockdown measures were introduced.

PRISON governors have been handed the power to veto prisoners they have concerns over being released early - as plans are pushed forward for up to 450 prisoners to be freed to allow inmates to socially distance in cells.

St Kilda

Clachan Bridge

It was 3pm on May 8 1945 when Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill addressed the nation from the Cabinet Room announcing that “we may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing,” but that message instead led to three days of partying in Glasgow’s George Square, children were given time off school and families were looking forward to being reunited again.

It dates back to1885 and started out as a fund to help military families at home while the Second Expeditionary Force set sail for Egypt. Major James Gildea wrote a letter appealing for money and a fund was set up to provide allowances.

DAVE Rennie believes that Leinster deserve to be awarded the PRO14 title, and is convinced that such a solution would be better for player welfare and the integrity of the competition than dragging this season on into late summer or autumn.

It was 25 years ago this month that the sporting world witnessed a miracle when the former pariah state of South Africa hosted what many people still consider to be the best ever Rugby World Cup finals.

THE SRU would be “very happy” to host the Scottish Cup semi-final between Heart of Midlothian and Hibernian at BT Murrayfield, the governing body’s Chief Operating Officer revealed yesterday.

TEMPORARY walking and cycling routes are set to pop-up across Scotland in a bid to improve social distancing while Scots are now being advised to wear face coverings in “enclosed spaces”.

SCOTLAND’S workers could stay put in rural communities in the post-lockdown world - boosting countryside economies and cutting commuter traffic, a Holyrood cabinet secretary has suggested.

Scotland needs to plant up to one billion trees to achieve the country’s ambitious climate change goals and help the economy recover from the coronavirus crisis, a group of environmental consultants have said.

Celtic Connections

WHEN Malian quartet Songhoy Blues performed at last year's Celtic Connections, audiences were treated to a form of music appealingly dubbed “desert blues”. A user-friendly term, it sounds like it could have been dreamed up by a marketing agency and applied equally well to a perfume, a brand of jeans or a chain of upmarket Tex-Mex restaurants.

It has been the major success story of the alcohol industry in recent years. Once thought of as a drink for the older generation, now you will find that gin, be it pink, flavoured or colour changing, has become one of the most popular spirits in the country. There have been no shortage of bars leaping on the bandwagon, to offer up drinks to connoisseurs, but where are the best places to go in Scotland? We’ve narrowed it down to 10 of the best.

IT’S been an up and down sort of day for Imran Akhtar. And in a much too literal sense, as far as he’s concerned. First, he had to clamber on top of the roof of the Ottoman Coffee House on Glasgow’s Berkeley Street, to make sure the temporary tarpaulin was still in place and keeping out the wind, rain, hail and snow. (It’s been one of those typical Scottish afternoons, with the weather behaving like a plump maiden aunt’s two-layered chocolate box. In other words, way too many delights

In “Painting Nationalism Red?”, an engaging new pamphlet published by Democratic Left Scotland, the journalist Neal Ascherson pays tribute to Tom Nairn as Scotland’s “pre-eminent political intellectual”.

“Scotland”, declared a young Alex Salmond in May 1975, “knows from bitter experience what treatment is in store for a powerless region of a common market.”

In his new book, “The End of British Party Politics?”, the political scientist Roger Awan-Scully captures the paradox of last year’s general election in Scotland.

The sight of Scottish ministers boarding flights to far-flung destinations in order to “sell Scotland to the world” has been a familiar one for more than half a century.

Today in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister will explain her decision to authorise airstrikes against Syria alongside France and the United States.

Scotland’s golf courses have been urged to close in the wake of the Government’s latest measures to combat the coronavirus.

Chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association Karen Betts explains why she thinks the Scottish 'water of life' is so special.

Construction work on the NHS Louisa Jourdan will conclude today with the hospital standing operationally ready to treat patients from tomorrow.

NICOLA Sturgeon has suggested the coronavirus lockdown in Scotland could end later than the one in England and that she might seek powers to close the Border.

It crosses one of the most scenic waterways in Scotland and is the second busiest by volume of passengers in the country.

THE SCOTTISH Government has been urged to empower the country’s towns and cities can be transformed into healthier hubs for walking and cycling amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

LOCKDOWN may start easing soon, but it seems likely to be a long time yet before any of us find ourselves in an actual physical pub. It’s not of course the booze we’re missing – we can get plenty of that – but the company, the conviviality, the atmosphere, the feeling that, in the late hours, almost anything might kick off. So, for those who cry inside every time they walk past their closed-down local, or wake-up having dreamed of standing with a pint at the bar, here’s a few ways you

It was set up by tourism leaders to create an authentic picture of Scotland during the coronavirus lockdown by opening a window to people’s experiences while they stay at home.

If Scotland really does have such fabulous seafood, why do ordinary citizens find it so hard to tap into this much eulogised catch? The problem has been that subsequent governments have fixated on international exports, not food for citizens.

SCOTLAND's foremost angling organisation has set out a bid to allow people to take part in the sport as lockdown measures are eased saying it carries a "low inherent potential" for Covid-19 transmission.

THE 2000 film Almost Famous told the love story of a schoolboy writer tracking a rock band and falling for a teenage girl – who happens to be a groupie. Or was she?

WE start at the low point. “It’s hard doing music,” Jill O’Sullivan admits. “I love it. I feel compelled to sing and play and write. But I was thinking of quitting.”

At first glance, it could seem that teenagers just really, really hate high school. But Yale researchers found deeper student engagement issues.

The Scottish political world is holding its breath this weekend.

The Meadowbank Stadium was one of the shabbier landmarks in east Edinburgh until it was knocked down last year. A new one is rising from the ashes, looking like one of those massive cruise liners that appear in the Forth.