London, Aug 23 : Seagull nests will be destroyed in a pilot scheme to stop aggressive urban birds threatening Scottish towns and cities, it has emerged.

The plan was announced by Mike Russell, the environment minister, who has promised to be "tough on seagulls and tough on the causes of seagulls".

Despite criticising the "over-the-top rhetoric" of the minister''s announcement, RSPB Scotland has said it supports the scheme as long as it is long term and sustainable.

London, Aug 22 : A Scottish man, who threw a message in the bottle into the sea when he was 11 years old, has reunited with it – 23 years later.

Donald Wylie, now aged 33, had thrown the bottle into the sea off Orkney in 1985 with a message asking its finder to pass it onto a boy of similar age.

The bottle was discovered by a team of volunteers cleaning up a beach at West Sands in St Andrews.

The group, which included students and staff from the University of St Andrews, were startled to find the message inside, and launched a search for the sender, which took them to Wylie still living in Orkney and working as a house builder.

Edinburgh, July 20 : Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a massive stone tower which could have been the biggest Iron Age building on Orkney, an archipelago in northern Scotland.

According to a report in the Scotsman, the structure, which has been uncovered at the Cairns, South Ronaldsay, was created around 2,500 years ago and would have been about 70ft wide.

The three-week dig has revealed a complex of buildings, with the remains of the stone tower, or broch, at the centre.

On the outside, the tower would have been around 70 feet wide – bigger than Orkney''s best preserved brochs at Gurness in Evie and Midhowe in Rousay. 

Edinburgh, June 18 : A mysterious crop circle that emerged overnight in a barley field in England has baffled scientists, as it depicts the mathematical formula pi.

Edinburgh, June 16 : Four souvenirs from the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 have been found at the famous Scottish historical novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott’s home at Abbotsford in Scotland.

London, J