JULY

Charlie Gard, the baby at the centre of a legal row over his treatment, dies aged just 11 months. The infant, who suffered from an extremely rare genetic condition which caused progressive brain damage and muscle weakness, was moved to a hospice following a contentious High Court ruling. Conservative MP Anne Marie Morris is suspended from the party after it emerges that she used a racist expression dur- ing a public discussion about Brexit. Scotland’s chief inspector of prisons calls for jail terms of less than a year to be phased out as they do nothing to cut crime. A failure to plan for the longterm future of the NHS in Scotland has led to a staffing “crisis” as the service struggles to recruit senior medics and nurses, a report by Audit Scotland warns. The UK government announces that Britons born between 1970 and 1978 will have to wait an extra year, until they are 68, to claim their state pension. Sir Vince Cable becomes the new leader of the Liberal Democrats after no-one stood against him.

0 Charlie Gard was at the centre of a legal row She describing the opportuni- ty as “completely overwhelm- ing”. One of the biggest icebergs ever recorded breaks away from Antarctica. The vast block is estimated to cover an area of roughly 6,000 sq km. North Korea says it has carried out its first successful test of an inter-continental ballistic missile. The state says the Hwasong-14 could hit “any part of the world”, but initial US estimates put the range as shorter than that. Tributes are paid to Lord Mccluskey,a former High Court judge, Labour peer and Scotsman columnist, who dies at the age of 88. Roger Federer becomes the first man in the history of the Wimbledon Championships to lift the title eight times. Kezia Dugdale resigns as leader of the Scottish Labour Party, saying that was the right time to “pass on the baton” to someone else and that a new leader was needed with “fresh energy, drive and a new mandate”. The new Queensferry Crossing officially opens to traffic. The bridge is later closed to allow 50,000 people to walk across it before it is officially opened by the Queen The Scottish Conservatives are branded “disgraceful” by their political opponents after allowing two councillors suspended over anti-catholic and racist tweets back into the party fold.