The NS Champion oil tanker, majority-owned by the Russian state, is due to berth in Orkney on Tuesday
The UK government is considering restricting Russian ships from using British ports after it emerged that a Russian-owned oil tanker is due to dock in Orkney this week.
The NS Champion, operated by Sovcomflot, a large shipping company majority-owned by the Russian state, is due to berth at Flotta oil terminal in Orkney on Tuesday to collect crude oil.
Continue reading...UK watchdog says app was not clear about how data is used and it may consider ‘further regulatory action’
The Scottish government and NHS Scotland have been rebuked for breaching data privacy laws on a Covid vaccine status app downloaded by millions of people.
The Information Commissioner’s Office, which polices the UK’s privacy laws, said it had warned the Scottish government and NHS last year that there were serious privacy problems with the app, but not all those problems were fixed before it was launched.
Continue reading...Discovery shows pterosaurs with a 2.5-metre wingspan existed about 25m years earlier than previously thought
It might be best known today for its otters and puffins but 170m years ago the Isle of Skye was home to an enormous flying reptile with a wingspan bigger than a kingsize bed, researchers have revealed.
Fossil hunters in Scotland say they have recovered the remains of the world’s largest Jurassic pterosaur, adding the creature – known informally as a pterodactyl – also boasted a mouthful of sharp teeth for spearing and trapping fish.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Dens being installed on east coast and A9 after predator’s return was found to reduce numbers of greys
Pine martens are to be deployed as wildlife bouncers along the east coast of Scotland and the A9 corridor to halt the northward march of grey squirrels.
More than 35 artificial pine marten dens are being installed by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) at strategic locations on the grey squirrels’ path of northward migration in an attempt to save the Highland red squirrel populations.
Continue reading...Major bridges closing and millions told to batten down and not go outside as authorities warn of ‘significant disruption’
The east of England including London has been added to the red weather warning for wind issued by the Met Office because of Storm Eunice, which has prompted rare danger-to-life warnings, with millions of people told to stay indoors at home to avoid 90mph winds.
The rare highest alert – meaning a major impact is very likely – was widened just before 4am, to run from 10am until 3pm on Friday, due to fears of the storm “causing significant disruption and dangerous conditions due to extremely strong winds”, the Met Office said.
Continue reading...‘The couple were just strangers blocking my view. But as they reached out and embraced each other, it seemed an optimistic image representing the young people of a city that had suffered’
I first visited and photographed Sarajevo in 1996. I had been volunteering in neighbouring Croatia and managed to hitch a ride in to Bosnia in a UN vehicle. The war and siege had ended a few months before and the city was enjoying its long-awaited peace. Sarajevans took to its scarred streets in huge numbers, meeting with friends and drinking coffee safe in the knowledge that they wouldn’t be struck down by a sniper or shell.
The destruction of the city at that time was jaw-dropping, surreal and seemingly total: rows upon rows of broken, bombed-out high-rise flats; shell craters and explosion indents everywhere; hospitals, offices and factories all in ruins. This was urbicide, a late-20th-century Dresden or Stalingrad. Everyone who lived through the nearly four-year siege had a nightmare to share.
Continue reading...Archaeologists excavating the windswept Ness of Brodgar are unearthing a treasure trove of neolithic villages, tombs, weapons and mysterious religious artefacts, some to be displayed in a blockbuster exhibition
If you happen to imagine that there’s not much left to discover of Britain’s stone age, or that its relics consist of hard-to-love postholes and scraps of bones, then you need to find your way to Orkney, that scatter of islands off Scotland’s north-east coast. On the archipelago’s Mainland, out towards the windswept west coast with its wave-battered cliffs, you will come to the Ness of Brodgar, an isthmus separating a pair of sparkling lochs, one of saltwater and one of freshwater. Just before the way narrows you’ll see the Stones of Stenness rising up before you. This ancient stone circle’s monoliths were once more numerous, but they remain elegant and imposing. Like a gateway into a liminal world of theatricality and magic, they lead the eye to another, even larger neolithic monument beyond the isthmus, elevated in the landscape as if on a stage. This is the Ring of Brodgar, its sharply individuated stones like giant dancers arrested mid-step – as local legend, indeed, has it.
It’s between these two stone circles that archaeologist Nick Card and his team are excavating a huge settlement of neolithic stone buildings. The earliest date from about 3300BC, their walls and hearths crisply intact, their pots and stone tools in remarkable profusion, the whole bounded by six-metre-wide monumental walls. “You could continue for several lifetimes and not get to the bottom of it,” says the neatly white-bearded, laconic Card as we gaze out over the site, presently covered with tarpaulin to protect it from the winter storms. “Every year it never fails to produce something that astounds us.” After nearly two decades of digging, they have excavated only about 10% of its area, and about 5% of its volume. It goes deep: buildings are stacked on the ruins of older ones; the place was in use for 1,000 years. When summer comes, they’ll dig again. When the coverings come off each July, says Card’s colleague, Anne Mitchell, “down you go and you’re among the ghosts of the past”.
Continue reading...Plan proposes two ‘green freeports’ based around low-emission industries
UK ministers and the Scottish government have reached a deal over proposed freeports in Scotland, after months of disagreement over what No 10 has billed as one of the main economic benefits of Brexit.
The Scottish government had resisted the idea of freeports – specific areas that offer tax breaks and other incentives to investors – which are intended to revitalise deprived areas but have been accused of encouraging tax avoidance and lower regulation.
Continue reading...Exclusive: presiding officer Alison Johnstone says it will be disappointing if parliament cannot attract more female politicians
It will be “really disappointing” if the Scottish parliament cannot attract more female politicians within the next five years, says Holyrood’s presiding officer, as she launches Holyrood’s first women’s audit to investigate barriers to representation and participation.
Alison Johnstone, the former Scottish Green politician who was elected last May to the position of presiding officer – the Holyrood equivalent of the Commons speaker – also suggests that political parties are falling short in selecting female candidates. She signals that the hybrid working arrangements used during lockdown and which suited working women in particular could become permanent.
Continue reading...A much-loved community space and an essential service, their days now seem numbered
The first thing Rajiv Shrikul does when he opens up his launderette in south Edinburgh each morning is pray. He says the 7am routine, which he started as a young boy in India, helps him cope with the kaleidoscope of personalities that pass through his shop. “Some people are angry, some are generous – you need to have a very stable mind. Meditation calms you down, especially in these hard times.”
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod
Continue reading...He came blazing out of Glasgow like a rocket, scoring hits and acclaim. As he returns to the stage in a hard-rapping, homoerotic Cyrano de Bergerac, the star talks about partygate, snout size – and tackling Lear when he hits 100
James McAvoy is talking about Cyrano de Bergerac, the long-nosed, lovestruck poet he first played on stage in 2019, and is now about to reprise. But every now and again he interrupts himself with off-piste observations that have nothing to do with 17th-century libertines and doomed love triangles. It slowly becomes clear that he is inside his car, which is parked at the stage door of the Harold Pinter theatre in London, ready to jump into rehearsals after our chat.
“What’s this guy doing?” he says, in his meta commentary of people-watching. “Oh my God. There’s a labourer walking down the road and he doesn’t have any trousers on. He’s just in long johns and he has got the biggest penis I think I’ve ever seen.” Wait, how can he tell? “Because he’s wearing long johns! And he’s packing a nine-inch –”
Continue reading...Over 14,000 homes in Scotland and north-east England have no electricity, and await 90mph winds in fresh storm
Thousands of homes in Scotland and north-east England are still without power after Storm Malik hit, as northern parts of the UK brace for winds of up to 90mph with the arrival of Storm Corrie.
Northern Powergrid, which supplies north-east England, confirmed 7,000 homes were still without power on Sunday evening. The Scottish government said that about 7,500 households are expected to be without power by the end of Sunday and warned they could be waiting until Tuesday before their service will be restored.
Continue reading...Winds of more than 100mph reported in parts of Scotland, with widespread disruption to travel and power supplies
Two people have been killed by falling trees as Storm Malik battered northern parts of the UK on Saturday, cutting off power from thousands and causing widespread disruption.
A nine-year-old boy died in hospital after a tree fell on him and a man in Winnothdale, near Stoke. Emergency services were called at 1pm on Saturday, and they were taken to the Royal Stoke university hospital. The man is still receiving treatment.
Continue reading...Gusts of up to 80mph forecast for coastal areas of eastern Scotland and north-east England
The Met Office has said there could be power cuts and travel chaos as Storm Malik brushes past the UK over the weekend.
Gusts are predicted to reach 80mph in coastal areas as the storm, named by Denmark, hits parts of Scotland and northern England.
Continue reading...Prince Andrew’s 30-year association with the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews has ended, after the club confirmed he is no longer an honorary member. The Duke of York informed the R&A of his decision, which should remove the potential for controversy around the 150th Open due to be staged at St Andrews in July.
The R&A, whose corporate wing presides over the Open, informed members of the situation on Friday morning. A spokesperson for the club in Fife said: “I can confirm that the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews has received notification that the Duke of York will relinquish his honorary membership. We respect and appreciate his decision.”
Continue reading...Some Trumpland observers are convinced that he is in serious legal trouble as New York’s AG investigation of Trump Organizations’s finances intensifies
When Donald Trump announced plans in 2006 to build a golf complex on ancient sand dunes on the Aberdeenshire coast in Scotland he told reporters it was love at first sight. “As soon as I saw it there was no question about it,” he said. It would be the world’s “greatest golf course”.
This week Trump International Scotland became a central element of a case that looks poised to dominate his post-presidential life, and could even put him behind bars.
Continue reading...It’s 550 years since the islands became part of Scotland, and the archipelago is still not for the faint-hearted. But it has inspired its own diverse music, where fiddles and accordions meet the sub-bass of the sea
Five hundred and fifty years ago next month, the king of Norway lost a deposit he had put down to settle a debt: more than a hundred wild, treeless islands in the sub-arctic North Sea. The Scottish king, James III, had wanted Rhenish florins, but he had to settle for Shetland instead.
The archipelago eventually became part of the UK and has since developed a diverse, distinctive musical culture. This weekend, at the annual Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow, the Shetland 550 concerts will celebrate it, bringing together experimental composers, jazz performers, poets and players of traditional tunes. The series is co-curated by the award-winning fiddler Chris Stout, who was born in the three-mile-long Fair Isle (population: 68) before moving to the Mainland at eight (population: 18,765). “Although, even there, you’re still only ever three miles from the sea,” he says.
Continue reading...Prit Buttar, who tweeted about comforting grieving woman, says he wanted to show difference in experience between ordinary people and Downing Street
When Dr Prit Buttar, a retired GP, decided to break social distancing rules and offer his embrace to a bereaved woman, it was a gesture of core humanity. “Everybody on the team would have done exactly the same, Covid or no Covid,” he said from his study near Kirkcudbright.
He did not envisage, a year on, that his recollection of that moment would inspire a cathartic outpouring of similar memories from people across the UK, or that he would become a reluctant – though passionate – advocate for the fury and dismay of ordinary people at the boozy rule-breaking in the seat of power.
Continue reading...Police Scotland said no criminality had been found after photograph of writer’s address was put online
Police will take no action against trans rights activists who posted a photograph of JK Rowling’s home online.
The author had contacted police in Scotland in November after the tweet, which showed her Edinburgh house and revealed the address. The image showed activists standing outside the property with placards carrying slogans such as “trans liberation now”.
Continue reading...Those shortlisted for job managing Tighard guesthouse warned that living on Canna can be testing
It is one of the most inaccessible guesthouses in Britain, on a tiny Hebridean island that is home to 15 people and a two-hour sail from the mainland. Undaunted, more than 100 people have inquired about running the place.
Interest about taking over Tighard guesthouse on Canna, an island south-west of Skye just 4.5 miles long and one mile wide, came from across the world. The island’s owners, the National Trust for Scotland (NTS), are now whittling those down to a shortlist of 10 applicants.
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