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NHS Highland says it has "successfully" and "safely" completed the transition to a new model for maternity services at Caithness General in Wick.

A new midwife-led community maternity unit was introduced in January this year.

Maternity services were previously led by consultant obstetricians.

However, Caithness General has no facilities for on-site specialist neonatal paediatric support or adult intensive care.

NHS Highland has said that the majority of births at the hospital in Wick can be handled by midwives only.

Read more here.

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Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie raises the issue of the downgrading of the maternity unit in Caithness General Hospital.

Mr Rennie calls on the first minister to intervene and reverse the decision.

The first minister says the decisions taken there were on the basis of patient safety.

Ms Sturgeon says no politician should run against patient safety advice.

It was following the death of an infant in the unit in 2015 that the board took its decision, she says.

The first minister welcomes Hospital Watch to the chamber and congratulates their petition, which has been written on a bed sheet.

Ms Sturgeon says it is the responsibility of any health board to provide services safely, and that is the case in the Vale of Leven.

She says it is her government that delivered certainty with the Vision of the Vale after 10 years of uncertainty.

Labour MSP Jackie Baillie raises the issue of the Vale of Leven hospital.

Ms Baillie asks the first minister to welcome Hospital Watch to the chamber, who are campaigning against closures.

The Labour MSP says no one from the government is available to meet Hospital Watch today and asks the first minister to meet with the organisation in the future.

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Tory MSP Maurice Golden says a pupil with cerebral palsy has essentially been penalised by the SQA because of his disability.

Ms Sturgeon says the pupil sounds like a remarkable young man and she will look to it.

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The first minister conveys her heartfelt condolences to the family of the dead cyclist.

Ms Sturgeons says it is a tragic incident, "sad beyond words".

She says the Scottish government will assist with the investigation in any way it can.

Ms Sturgeon says the minister will meet with cycling groups.

A cyclist has died after her wheel became stuck in tram tracks and she fell into the path of a minibus in Edinburgh city centre.

The 24-year-old woman was struck on Princes Street, at its junction with Lothian Road, at about 08:30.

Police Scotland is appealing for witnesses to come forward and telling motorists to avoid the area.

The Rabbie's Tours bus had been taking passengers on a trip to the West Highlands when the incident happened.

Read more here.

Green MSP Alison Johnstone says the first minister and all members will wish to send sympathy to the cyclist that lost her life in Edinburgh yesterday.

Ms Dugdale says standards are down, staff are underpaid and patients are waiting longer.

Ms Dugdale says is that not what happens when the SNP spend more time on independence than running the NHS.

Ms Sturgeon says the NHS is doing better than the NHS in Wales under a Labour government by almost every indicator.

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MSPs passed a motion, in March, warning that patient safety is at risk amid a "recruitment crisis" in the NHS.

Holyrood backed a series of opposition amendments following a Scottish government debate on patient safety.

They included a Lib Dem mention of a "recruitment crisis" and Labour warnings that services are "near breaking point".

This left the SNP voting against Shona Robison's amended motion, but they were defeated by opposition members.

Read more here.

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Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale says 38,000 patients waited longer than 12 weeks in the latest figures and patients had a better chance of being seen in the target time before the SNP introduced the guarantee.

She says A&E targets and cancer waiting times have been missed again.

The first minister acknowledges the challenges facing the NHS, adding that health services are facing these issues across the world.

Ms Sturgeon says the performance of NHS Scotland outstrips the performance of Labour run Wales.

She says staffing in the NHS has increased by over 12,000 and the budget has increased by more than £3bn.

NHS Grampian has said it cannot guarantee that patients will be given surgery within 12 weeks of diagnosis - unless it is an urgent case.

The health board admitted it was unable to meet the Scottish government's target timescale and has started classifying adult elective surgical patients according to their clinical need.

NHS Grampian has suffered from difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff in several areas.

But it says the current approach is a "pragmatic" one while waits are longer than it would like.

Read more here.

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Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale says the SNP's treatment time guarantee gives a 12 week guarantee for knee surgery and eye surgery.

Ms Sturgeon says there is increasing demand and more patients are waiting longer than the government would like.

She says this week's figures show a 20% reduction in outpatients waiting for treatment.

The education committee took evidence about workforce planning from more than a dozen trainees and more experienced teachers, the day after figures were published showing literacy skills of pupils had fallen over the past four years.

Halla Price, who is in her final year of a BEd at Moray House at the University of Edinburgh, said initial literacy training was "very valuable", but was critical of training around numeracy.

She said: "We spent a lot of time going over ideas of activities we could do. However, there wasn't enough focus on the teachers themselves having the skills to teach numeracy other than a maths audit we completed ourselves in second year, which did very little in all honesty to improve our own knowledge and mathematical understanding."

Read more here.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says we need to make sure we don't end up with a Conservative government that will push an additional one million children into poverty.

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson says her party set out its report into the Curriculum for Excellence.

Ms Davidson says the key was the teaching of core skills.

She asks if the SNP government agrees with comments by John Mason.

The first minister says the government is already doing much that is in the Tory document.

Ms Sturgeon says there are now new benchmarks in place and the attainment fund is going straight to headmasters.

She says there will be comprehensive data telling how schools are performing in numeracy and literacy.

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