| Good morning, Welcome to your daily newsletter for The Scotsman. Don't forget we are now offering 21 per cent off all our monthly or annual digital subscription packages when you use promo code 21NEWYEAR. Try us out today for as little as £2.74 a month. You can cancel anytime. Support trusted Scottish journalism before this offer ends on 17 January 2021. 'Scotland's Covid detection rate the worst of all UK nations' Scotland’s coronavirus detection rate is the worst of the UK nations, according to a report from former prime minister Gordon Brown’s think-tank. Even though the tracking and tracing programme is working relatively well, only around 32 per cent of cases are being picked up by tests, Our Scottish Future says. Read the full findings and what they say about Scotland here. The 11 areas in Scotland with the fewest coronavirus cases The latest public health data has broken down the number of positive covid-19 cases per 100,000 people, according to council area from January 2- January 8. The islands have been keeping Covid at bay the most successfully but there are a number of surprises in the data with several mainland regions bucking national trends. Find out how your area is doing here. 'Languages are a beautiful way to connect' We were quite chuffed we made banana bread during lockdown, but one Scot has put us to shame and learned a new language from scratch. Meet the 22-year-old Gaidhlig speaking Scot who learned Chinese in lockdown. Grant Swanson started learning Mandarin in February 2020 when lockdown started and became “totally obsessed” spending up to ten hours a day memorising vocabulary. Here's how Grant mastered Chinese while staying at home. Soaring funeral costs It's incredibly tough to say goodbye to a loved one at any time, but the lockdown has made things harder. To make things worse the bill for the average funeral in Scotland has risen by 5.7 per cent - one of the highest increases in the UK and taking the average cost above £4,000 for the first time in 17 years, a report has found. Read the full costs associated with funerals and the story here. Thanks for reading, more headlines below. Stay safe, Sam Shedden | 
