Steve Clarke watched Scotland take a step closer to Euro 2024 with a 3-0 win over Cyprus but claimed the best part of the night was a late Ryan Porteous block to keep a clean sheet. Scott McTominay opened the scoring in the sixth minute in Larnaca with his sixth goal in five qualifiers before defender Porteous volleyed in his first international goal nine minutes later. McTominay set up midfielder John McGinn for a third after 29 minutes and although the Scots cruised the second half, Porteous dived full length in stoppage time to stop a Cyprus shot testing Angus Gunn. “For me, the best moment of the game,” said Clarke “That tells everybody what we are about. We didn’t want to concede. “We spoke at half-time about maybe we can get four, maybe we can get five but the most important thing is Cyprus gets nil and that block at the end tells you everything about this team and the mentality they have got. “It was good, another step on the road to what we want to do, which is qualify. “It was a good performance, goals in the first half, well-controlled the second half. We have to be pleased. “It showed they were keyed up for the game. It was nice on a night like this when it was hot and humid, you get yourself in front so you don’t have to chase the game. ” The Scots have five wins out of five Group A qualifiers to sit nine points ahead of Spain having played two fixtures more. Scotland host England in a special 150th anniversary heritage match on Tuesday night and if Norway and Georgia draw in their qualifier the same evening, then the Scots will have reached their second successive European Championships. Clarke’s side still have games against Spain, Georgia and Norway to come and the manager remains reluctant to look any further forward than Tuesday. He said: “I’m pleased that fans can enjoy another win. Pleased that they think they can book their flights. It was a good performance, goals in the first half, well-controlled the second half. We have to be pleased. Steve Clarke “Fans can do what they want, they can be excited, they can get carried away “We have to focus on what we are at. If 15 points is enough we will find our later down the line. “I am pleased for the players and obviously it is good for me to be the head coach of a bunch of talented players. But lets’ make sure we qualify then we will work on the next target. “We have played five games and have 15 points, that is good. “I’d like to think in the last three games we would pick up more points. We just keep trying to push ourselves and not be complacent. We are in a good position.” Cyprus boss Temuri Ketsbaia had no complaints about the defeat which left his side with no points from four Group A fixtures. The former Newcastle, Wolves and Dundee player, speaking through an interpreter, said: “We lost to a better team, everything was finished in a 10-minute spell in the first half. “It was a fair result. “We managed to improve in the second half but the match was finished at half-time. “We lost to a high-level team. We needed a bigger effort from all the team, not just from four or five players, you need more.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Netherlands carry same threat as France – Republic of Ireland’s Chiedozie Ogbene Harry Kane hopes for club and country delight in bid to end trophy hoodoo Connor Roberts knows Wales may not qualify for every major tournament

Alabama executed a man on Friday for the 2001 beating death of a woman as the state resumed lethal injections after failed executions prompted the governor to order an internal review of procedures. James Barber, 64, was pronounced dead at 1:56 a.m. after receiving a lethal injection at a south Alabama prison. "Justice has been served. This morning, James Barber was put to death for the terrible crime he committed over two decades ago: the especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel murder of Dorothy Epps," Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement. Barber was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2001 beating death of Epps. Prosecutors said Barber, a handyman, confessed to killing the 75-year-old with a claw hammer and fleeing with her purse. Jurors voted 11-1 to recommend a death sentence, which a judge imposed. Before he was put to death, Barber told his family he loved them and apologized to Epps' family. "I want to tell the Epps' family I love them. I'm sorry for what happened," Barber said. "No words would fit how I feel." Barber said he wanted to tell the governor "and the people in this room that I forgive you for what you are about to do." It was the first execution carried out in Alabama this year after the state halted executions in November. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey announced a pause on executions to conduct an internal review of procedures. The move came after the state halted two lethal injections because of difficulties inserting IVs into the condemned men's veins. Attorneys for inmate Alan Miller said prison staff poked him with needles for more than an hour as they unsuccessfully tried to connect an IV line during Miller's aborted execution in September, at one point leaving him hanging vertically on a gurney. State officials called off the November execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith after they were unsuccessful in connecting the second of two required lines. Advocacy groups claimed a third execution, carried out after a delay because of IV problems, also was botched, a claim the state has disputed. Barber's execution came hours after Oklahoma executed Jemaine Cannon for stabbing a Tulsa woman to death with a butcher knife in 1995 after his escape from a prison work center. Alabama's governor announced in February that the state was resuming executions. Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said prison system had added to its pool of medical professionals, ordered new equipment and conducted additional rehearsals. The last-minute legal battle centered on Alabama's ability to obtain intravenous access in past executions. Barber's attorneys unsuccessfully asked the courts to block the execution, saying the state has a pattern of failing "to carry out a lethal injection execution in a constitutional manner." The state wrote in legal filings that it was using different IV team members. The state also changed the deadline to carry out the execution from midnight to 6 a.m. to give more time for preparations and to carry out last-minute appeals. Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said the two intravenous lines were connected to Barber with "three sticks in six minutes." The Supreme Court denied Barber's request for a stay without comment. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent from the decision that was joined by Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. She said the court was allowing "Alabama to experiment again with a human life." "The Eighth Amendment demands more than the State's word that this time will be different. The Court should not allow Alabama to test the efficacy of its internal review by using Barber as its 'guinea pig,'" Sotomayor wrote. The Alabama attorney general's office had urged the Supreme Court to let the execution proceed. The state wrote that the previous executions were called off because of a "confluence of events including health issues specific to the individual inmates and last-minute litigation brought by the inmates that dramatically shortened the window for ADOC officials to conduct the executions." In the hours leading up to the scheduled execution, Barber had 22 visitors and two phone calls and ate a final meal, a prison spokesperson said. After his last words, Barber spoke with a spiritual adviser who accompanied him into the death chamber. As the drugs were administered, Barber's eyes closed and his abdomen pulsed several times. His breathing slowed until it was no longer visible.

Hall Toledano said that he never had a real connection with Kaitlin Tufts and has found the one for him on the island

'Wore a wedding dress to a wedding just so I could make a joke about it in my toast,' Wilde captioned a post

Healthcare providers caring for pregnant patients in the months after the US Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v Wade have been unable to provide standard medical care in states where abortion is effectively outlawed, leading to delays and worsening and dangerous health outcomes for patients, according to an expansive new report. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year, individual reports from patients and providers have shed some light on the wide range of harm facing pregnant women in states where access to abortion care is restricted or outright banned. But a first-of-its-kind report from the University of California San Francisco captures examples from across the country, documenting 50 cases in more than a dozen states that enacted abortion bans within the last 10 months, painting a “stark picture of how the fall of Roe is impacting healthcare in states that restrict abortion,” according to the report’s author Dr Daniel Grossman. “Banning abortion and tying providers’ hands impacts every aspect of care and will do so for years to come,” he said in a statement accompanying the report. “Pregnant people deserve better than regressive policies that put their health and lives at risk.” The report collected anonymised narratives from providers who observed complications facing their patients. The most common scenario involved preterm pre-labor rupture of membranes (PPRM), in which the amniotic membrane surrounding the fetus breaks. In several of the cases, patients developed a severe infection, including cases that put patients in hospital intensive care units. Patients in many cases were instead sent home and told to return to a hospital when labor started or when they experienced signs of an infection. In one case, a patient returned to a hospital’s intensive care unit two days after her water broke at roughly 16 to 18 weeks of pregnancy in a state where abortion is banned. “The anesthesiologist cries on the phone when discussing the case with me,” the physician wrote, according to the report. “If the patient needs to be intubated, no one thinks she will make it out of the [operating room].” The report notes that “miraculously” the patient survived. Following the termination of the pregnancy, the patient asked the doctor whether any of them broke the law. “She asks me: could she or I go to jail for this?” the doctor said, according to the report. “Or did this count as life-threatening yet?” Providers also described other cases where patients showed evidence of inevitable pregnancy loss, but their care teams had their “hands tied” under state laws. Health providers also submitted stories of patients experiencing ectopic pregnancies. Delays to treat one patient resulted in a ruptured ectopic pregnancy that required surgery to remove her fallopian tube. Another patient was denied an abortion for a Caesarean scar ectopic pregnancy, a life-threatening condition where a pregnancy implants in the scar of a prior Caesarean section. Other physicians reported the inability to treat patients with fetal anomalies and patients who faced delays receiving treatment for miscarriages. “Unfortunately, this report confirms that our fears about abortion bans are valid,” said Dr Chloe Zera, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School. “As someone who cares for patients who have high-risk pregnancies, I need to be able to provide care consistent with evidence-based guidelines,” she said in a statement accompanying the report. “This research underscores the completely preventable harm that is now happening to our patients because of barriers to abortion care.” The report also outlines the moral dilemmas facing physicians operating in states or treating patients from states that have outlawed the potentially life-saving care they previously provided. Some physicians said they were considering quitting or relocating, or noted the immense coordination required between health providers in multiple states to treat patients, and outlined the ways in which restrictive state laws have complicated other care unrelated to abortion. In one case, a physician refused to remove an intrauterine device for a patient who was between 10 and 12 weeks pregnant, despite the partially expelled IUD posing a risk for infection or miscarriage. “The doctor did not feel comfortable” removing the IUD, one physician wrote, according to the report. “The context provided was concern over the recent changes in law that create [the] possibility for felony charges for providers causing abortion in our state shortly after the Roe decision was overturned.” During a “heated exchange” among health providers, “the doctor [said] the patient had... been examined by the nurse practitioner, who was unable to visualize the IUD, and that ‘even if I could see it and it was easily removable, I wouldn’t remove it because of the law,’” according to the physician’s description in the report. “Abortion bans that block providers from offering standard medical care have the greatest impact in states like Texas that have some of the poorest indicators of maternal health,” according to Dr Kari White, lead investigator of the Texas Policy Evaluation Project at The University of Texas at Austin. “Pregnant people should be able to rely on their healthcare provider to provide the best possible care, regardless of where they live,” she said in a statement accompanying the report. More than a dozen states, mostly in the South, have effectively outlawed or severely restricted access to abortion care after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization last June. Read More Alabama Republicans would charge abortion patients with murder under proposed legislation Louisiana Republicans refuse rape and incest exceptions to state’s sweeping anti-abortion law North Carolina governor vetoes 12-week abortion ban, launching Republican override showdown A Texas man sued his ex-wife’s friends for allegedly helping her with an abortion. Now they’re suing him Supreme Court preserves abortion drug approval as legal case plays out

Jay Williams reflects on JJ Redick's point about the shortcomings of NBA media.

By Guy Faulconbridge and Gleb Stolyarov MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday asked the state-owned VTB bank to

The new Valorant Patch 6.01 has been released, and it includes a numerous amount of bug fixes to Lotus and some gameplay mechanics. Replication has also been removed from Modes queues.

TikTok owner ByteDance stole content from Snapchat and Instagram to boost TikTok engagement, according to

His ouster as Speaker could throw an unruly US House of Representatives into even further disarray.

By Sudarshan Varadhan SINGAPORE Oil prices looked set to snap a seven-week winning streak on Friday as concerns

The San Francisco 49ers have gotten off to shaky starts to the season too often under coach Kyle Shanahan