As peace talks offer a rare glimmer of hope in the Middle East, Scotland finds itself caught between footballing dreams and political delusions. With the SNP’s latest independence paper stretching credibility, it’s time to separate fact from fiction, says Herald columnist Guy Stenhouse

This week the news has, rightly, been all about the progress in bringing peace to Gaza and Israel. There is much further to go but the agreement which was achieved was a real step forward and a genuine success for Donald Trump.

If you cast your mind back to the previous week three things of interest happened.

First, Scotland won the football World Cup. Well, almost. We beat Greece rather handsomely against the run of play and then edged past Belarus. We have a real chance of being at the next World Cup for the first time since 1998.

Second, the Pope made an excellent speech in which he urged journalists to act as "a bulwark of civilization against the quicksand of approximation and post-truth". He also quoted the 20th century German........

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