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With no national pay agreement in place as yet, strike action is set to go ahead in a number of local authority areas, including Orkney, from Friday through to Monday 26-29 August.

The disruptions will most likely affect the county’s waste and recycling collection services on the Friday and Monday.

On Friday this could see disruptions to area 5 for recycling and areas 13 and 15 for waste and on Monday, Westray could be affected alongside Mainland areas 1 and 6 for refuse and area 9 for recycling.

There will be short periods of delay and road closures in central Kirkwall, Stromness and St Margarets Hope during the week starting Monday 29 August as the Council carries out safety tests on the fixings and anchors points for festive lighting.

Folk with an interest or connection to Egilsay are being invited to play a part in developing how the island’s heritage is shared more widely.

The Egilsay Community Association has received North Isles Landscape Partnsership Scheme funding (NILPS) to host “A Day in Egilsay” community event, which will include heritage talks, discussions, and a walk on Saturday 10 September.

Valerie Dawson, NILPS Project Officer, said: “We have allocated funding to the Egilsay Community Association to assist in the development of heritage displays and interpretation at the community centre. To kick that off they are hosting an event to get people together and start to gather ideas, stories and content for a website and some displays.

There’s been a new “pupil” at Papa Westray Community School for some time now – and Max the autonomous – or self-driving – vehicle has proven to be a star student!

While Max has been trained to carry out different tasks – pupils and staff have also been on an exciting new journey thanks to being part of the international pilot research project exploring the use of autonomous vehicles (AVs).

Head Teacher Tim Ross said: “We were fortunate to receive one of the three robots that came to Orkney as part of the trial. The main targets were to demonstrate the principle and viability of the technology. The children spent the year progressively learning how he worked, training him to do simple 'routes' and eventually trained him to drive to and from the local shop without assistance, resulting in the delivery of school lunch ingredients one day! It has been a great achievement.”

Local residents are being urged to check their electoral registration details or risk losing their chance to vote on decisions that affect them.

The Electoral Registration Officer will be getting in touch with every household to check that the electoral register is up to date, and to identify any residents who should be registered but are currently missing.

Darryl Rae, Electoral Registration Officer for Orkney & Shetland, said: “Keep an eye out for our letter. The annual canvass is our way of making sure that the information on the electoral register for every address is accurate. To make sure you don’t lose your say at the next election, look out for instructions from us.

Orkney Islands Council has welcomed an announcement that additional funding will be made available for the roll out of broadband to properties in Orkney - but warned that some households will still miss out and more needs to be done.

The Scottish Government has announced today (19 August) that an additional £36m is to be invested in the R100 programme, which will see another 2,637 rural properties across Scotland able to access gigabit-capable connections - faster speeds than were initially proposed when the programme was launched.

It is understood that around 1000 of those properties will be in Orkney.

The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) has issued a safety warning relating to the use of gas grills on certain Belling, Stoves and New World gas range cookers manufactured by Glen Dimplex Home Appliances (GDHA).

Delays and disruptions are expected on parts of the Council website on Thursday evening (18 August) as essential maintenance and testing works are carried out on the Council network.

The NSPCC’s Pantosaurus would like to say a roarsome “thank you” to everyone who stopped by the stall on County Show Day.

The friendly dinosaur says all the new pants designs created by children, who entered the competition to win Grooves vouchers and copies of The Power of Pants books, were simply “T-rexiffic”!

There were almost 200 entries and eventually the “dino-mite” colourful artwork by seven-year-old Dorrie Fry was chosen as overall winner of the £50 Grooves voucher and a copy of the book.