Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service and Orkney Islands Council have agreed to a pilot scheme which will see safety advice delivered from the Council's One-stop-shop in Kirkwall.

Advice will be available on protecting homes from fire and arranging Home Fire Safety Risk Assessments.

It is hoped that the service can be targeted at the most vulnerable householders through partnership working with colleagues in Housing and Community Social Services.

The pilot scheme will operate every Tuesday from January 13 until the end of March.

A deadly salmon virus has been discovered in Shetland, prompting fears that it could spread to Orkney.

Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA) was found at a fish farm and two other sites in Burra.

An outbreak of ISA in Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles in 1998 and 1999 was estimated to have cost the industry £100 million.

The salmon farm where the disease was discovered has been empty since December 21, and one of the other two sites was emptied six weeks ago.

The Fisheries Research Service is sending a team of fish health inspectors to Shetland to investigate the affected sites and advise the industry.

An Orkney woman has teamed up with life-saving leukaemia charity The Anthony Nolan Trust, to issue an appeal to people across the county, aged between 18-40, to join its bone marrow register.

Judy Gale joined the register in 2007 and later that year, she became a donor after it was discovered that she was a perfect match for someone who urgently needed a bone marrow transplant.

She hopes to encourage others to sign up to the trust's register.

The trust has organised a donor recruitment clinic which will be open to the public on Saturday, January 10, at the Pickaquoy Centre in Kirkwall between 11am and 2pm.

A Scottish Harvest in Bohemia - Edwin Muir’s Return to Hope is the title of an essay by Clarice Cloutier, which has just won a prize of £300 in a writing competition run by the British Czech & Slovak Association.

The essay is an analysis of two beautiful and thoughtful poems by Orkney poet Edwin Muir, set in the Bohemian countryside. He wrote Autumn in Prague while staying in the new state of Czechoslovakia between 1923 and 1925, and The Cloud while serving as Director of the British Council in Prague in the turbulent period from 1946 to 1949. The essay studies his style and evocative imagery and suggests the deeper meanings underneath.

Clarice Cloutier has studied at Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, Oxford and Charles Universities. She lives in Prague, where she currently teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses on Central European literature and culture.

Orkney Islands Council will start their Christmas tree collection service on January 7. The service will run for two weeks for households within the 30mph limits of Kirkwall and Stromness.

Anyone wanting to use the service must pre-book it by phoning the council on 01856 873535.

Those who live outwith Kirkwall and Stromness can visit their local recycling centre at Hatston, Bossack, Garson, Cursiter, St. Margaret’s Hope and Dounby, where trees can be placed in the green waste skip or designated Christmas tree skip.

The council stress that trees should not be left out with normal domestic refuse, as the regular refuse vehicles are unable to deal with them and they will be left behind.