Alex Salmond: Scotland’s first nationalist leader and a tireless campaigner for independence

By Murray Leith, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Migration, Diaspora, Citizenship and Identity, University of the West of Scotland

Alex Salmond, possibly one of the most famous Scottish politicians of recent decades, and certainly the best-known face of the Scottish National Party (SNP), has died at the age of 69.

The former first minister of Scotland, a long-standing member of the Westminster parliament and a member of the Scottish parliament, he led the SNP from a small, fringe party within Westminster to become the ruling party of the Scottish government. He was the first Scottish nationalist first minister of Scotland, a post he would hold from 2007 to 2014.

Salmond was born, raised and educated…

Read complete article

~	News blues: study reveals why 60% of Kiwis avoid the news at least some of the time

~	Reporting from a psychiatric ward housing Russian soldiers who fought Ukrainians

~	Caribbean environmental experts call for more collaboration to meet 30×30 goal

~	Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is a Halloween visitor from the spooky Oort Cloud − the invisible bubble that’s home to countless space objects

~	Atmospheric rivers are shifting poleward, reshaping global weather patterns

~	Nobel Increases Pressure on States to Join Nuclear Weapons Ban

~	A Chinese mining company relocated a whole Peruvian town. Now, they are struggling to survive

~	World Mental Health Day: In Trinidad & Tobago, a call to deal with bullying after a student's suicide

~	Tunisia’s young democracy flounders as its president wins a second term

~	New technologies could help destroy persistent ‘forever chemicals’