After the devastation caused by the storms and flooding in January, the Galley Inn in St Margaret's Hope reopened on Saturday night.

Two feet of salt water flooded the premises on January 12, ruining all the fixtures and fittings and putting the inn out of business for months.

But now, the renovated premises, run by Sheona Macgregor and Tom Broadhurst, is open for business again, and, say the proprietors, regulars and visitors can expect to see a few changes.

Archive story: Flood misery follows night of storms

Nick Card examines the geophysics results at the site of the Brodgar newhoose

The hidden archaeology on the Ness of Brodgar was under the spotlight on Saturday , with a talk and walk led by archaeologist Nick Card and geophysicist Sue Ovenden.

An ongoing project to survey the Ness, the thin strip of land between the Harray and Stenness lochs, has led to a detailed picture of geophysics anomalies in the area.

The archaeology of the area, and the geophysics results, will be discussed on the talk, which was open to all and began at the Standing Stones of Stenness at 2pm.

See also:

• New questions raised by geophysics surveys of Brodgar peninsula
• Ongoing geophysics project continues to reveal secrets of Brodgar

The first of the season's visiting cruise ships arrived on Saturday, with a return visit of the Statsraad Lehmkuhl.

The Norwegian sail training ship, a regular visitor to Orkney throughout the summer, arrived early in the morning and sailed again at 2pm for Orkanger, Norway.

The number represented a 0.8 per cent increase at Kirkwall on 2003/04.

He said: "The lack of broadband connection, in particular for people in the outer isles but also for the country areas of the Mainland in both Orkney and Shetland is a hindrance for businesses and a frustration for many."

He added that he was pleased the Scottish Executive was prepared to commit to enabling non-commercially viable exchanges, adding: "It is unfortunate, however, that they are to be the last to be connected. In my view they should be the first."

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Speaking during a visit to Firth School on Thursday, SNP Candidate John Mowat claimed that the Scottish National Party was the only party serious about reducing the financial burden on Scotland's students.

Mr Mowat said the SNP would abolish the Graduate Endowment, adding that decisions on studying should not be made on financial grounds, but on the ability of the student, and future employment prospects.

Mr Mowat is due to begin campaigning in Shetland on Sunday.

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Representatives from Voluntary Action Orkney visited the island on Thursday night to help residents choose three issues they felt were essential to the future of the island.

At the meeting in the Rousay school, residents chose retaining a GP, a fixed link to Orkney mainland and encouraging new businesses to the island

This was the first of a series of meetings set to be held throughout Orkney to find out what people would like to see put in place to improve the community.

The Stromness Hotel - home of the Orkney Jazz Festival

The annual jazz festival kicked off in Stromness on Friday, as performers rolled into the town for a weekend of rhythm and ragtime.

This year sees the Stromness Hotel based festival in its ninth year.

Among this year's performers are Bill Salmond's Louisiana Ragtime Band and the Diplomats of Jazz.

The event runs until Sunday and features the usual chapel service in the St Magnus Kirk, Birsay.

Click here for programme details.

From a worst case scenario of £600,000 in the red, NHS Orkney staff have managed to claw back enough savings to leave them with a possible surplus at the financial year end.

The exact position will not be known until July, the health board¹s director of finance, Iain Crozier revealed at Thursday's board meeting.

Thanks to several late allocations from the Scottish Executive, NHS Orkney is set to achieve their forecasted break even, he explained.

Patients in Orkney are bypassing the NHS24 helpline and calling the hospital switchboard to be put through to a GP, it was revealed last week.

The national service provides out-of-hours cover to the 6,000 patients on the books at the Scapa practice in Kirkwall ­ at a cost of £6,500 to NHS Orkney.

Health board members have called for a report to come back to the next meeting on how NHS24 is working in the county.

A smoking ban will be introduced at Kirkwall¹s Balfour Hospital, following a recommendation from health board members on Thursday.

On August 1, patients and staff will not be allowed to light up on health board premises, or in the hospital car park and grounds.

However, there will be some exceptions ­ people using the place of safety bed, patients who have a terminal illness and those who look upon the hospital as their home.

The scene on Junction Road on Thursday morning

Traffic on Kirkwall's Junction Road was brought to a halt on Thursday morning, after an accident left a car on its side across the road near the Castle Street junction.

It is understood that around 10am, the driver of the car lost control after colliding with a lorry. The car mounted the kerb before striking the sloped wall at Castleyards and coming to rest on its side in Junction Road.

There were no injuries and police inquiries are ongoing.

The organisation were reacting to claims an HS employee informed a tour group that plans were afoot to spend £1.5 million on a new roof for the 5,000-year-old cairn.

However, a spokesman from Historic Scotland said this week that this information was incorrect and there were no plans to alter the structure of Maeshowe.

According to one of the visitors to Maeshowe on Sunday, the guide said the extensive work was to counteract ongoing problems with water leaking from the roof into the central chamber.

None of Orkney’s 22 schools have put themselves forward for the first round of a new Scottish Executive project to help set national standards in excellence.

However, a spokeswoman from Orkney Islands Council said that Kirkwall Grammar School has expressed a strong interest in putting in a bid to specialise in expressive arts in the second tranche.

Over 40 schools from throughout Scotland are in the running to become the first “schools of ambition”.

Selected schools will receive at least £100,000 a year, with further possible support from private benefactors.

Scottish Water has admitted that the situation regarding the processing of Stromness sewerage is not ideal - but is an improvement, they claim.

A container of "sludge" has been transported to the Scottish mainland for final treatment from the Stromness waste water treatment works.

A spokesman said: "Because the Stromness waste water treatment works is not fully operational we have been giving the waste water from households in Stromness basic treatment and using a storage tank to hold the sludge.

He added that the existing collection system was being upgrade to ensure the treatment works at the Bu of Cairston is operational as soon as possible.

Cameron Stout at the Ring of Brodgar with the new stamp

Cameron Stout joined forces with Royal Mail on Tuesday to help launch a new set of stamps featuring UK and Australian World Heritage Sites.

Cameron made his way to the Ring of Brodgar, which is featured on the 68 pence stamp of this eight-stamp set.

The stamps are to be issued on Thursday, to coincide with the Pacific Explorer stamp exhibition in Sydney.

A spokesman said: "The inclusion of the Ring of Brodgar in this stamp issue underlines both its significance as a World Heritage Site and the beauty of this part of Scotland which can be shared around the world on the face a stamp! "

The Longhope lifeboat assisted a diver in difficulties in Scapa Flow on Tuesday morning.

Although the Stromness hyperbaric chamber was put on alert, the 55-year-old man did not require treatment following a GP's examination.

The dive boat, Sunrise, contacted Shetland Coastguard at 10.50am and said they had a "diving incident" near the German wreck, Dresden.

A coastguard spokesman added: "There were other divers in the water so Longhope lifeboat offered assistance. The male diver was transferred on board the lifeboat and they took him to Houton pier where an ambulance and a local GP met him.

NHS Orkney has appointed an assistant director of primary care.

Karen Moir, who is currently practice manager with Moray community health and social care partnership working across three GP practices, takes up the post on May 9.

A regular visitor to the county, she said: "I have a very solid background in primary care management and hope to make a significant contribution to the senior management team at NHS Orkney."

Five motorists have already been issued with £30 fines after being stopped by officers for flouting the vehicle-access bye-law.

Sergeant Jim Pryde said: "We would like to remind folk that between 11am and 3pm on any day, a section of Albert Street from Laing Street is pedestrianised and any other time Bridge Street and Albert Street are access only."

With the temporary roadway to the Arts Centre pier at Stromness Harbour complete, the second phase of the work began this week.

As can be seen in the photograph, work driving piles into the sea-bed has begun.

This will allow the landward area behind to be filled in and used for the art gallery's extension.

Click here for more pictures.

The rare square pot fragment from Quanterness, St Ola

A team of archaeologists from Edinburgh are to travel north to investigate human remains found near Quanterness in St Ola.

There, ploughing unearthed a rare item of suspected Bronze Age pottery, in an area of cremated human remains.

The pot sherds form the corner of a square vessel, which makes this a uncommon find. Of the many thousands of pot sherds recovered in Orkney over the years, only four or five have come from square pots.

Misty West Coast, Hoy Bay, Orkney, sold for £36,000

Two oil paintings by Orkney artist Stanley Cursiter sold for a total of £60,000 by Sotheby's in Edinburgh on Monday night.

Misty West Coast, Hoy Bay, Orkney, sold for £36,000 - £1,451 short of the record price for a Cursiter work, £37,450 paid in August 2002 for his Two Girls By A Window.

Stromness in Orkney with Hoy in the Background sold for £24,000 but a third painting, Breaking Waves, Orkney, failed to sell.

The Italian Chapel stands today as a visible reminder of Lambholm's Camp 60

Orkney's Italian Chapel has been named as one of Scotland's top ten churches by the author of a new book on ecclesiastical architecture.

John Hume, the author of Scotland's Best Churches, selected ten of the 183 buildings covered in his book for The Scotsman newspaper.

His list included the Italian Chapel, on the island of Lambholm, created from converted Nissen huts by Italian prisoners of war in 1943.

Archive feature: The history of the Italian Chapel

Alistair Carmichael, Orkney and Shetland Liberal Democrat Parliamentary candidate, has published figures indicating that residents in the Northern Isles pay 11 per cent more for unleaded petrol than residents in Edinburgh.

His survey of 36 petrol stations revealed that the average cost of unleaded petrol in Edinburgh is 84.3 pence per litre, compared to 92.7 pence per litre in Orkney.

Mr Carmichael said: "It is simply not fair that businesses and individuals in Orkney and Shetland have to pay on average over 10 per cent more for petrol than people on the British mainland."

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Stromness residents are being asked not to flush sanitary waste, including nappies, down the toilet.

The Scottish Water request follows repeated incidents of raw sewage back ups and overflows at the Graham Place pumping station in Stromness, where engineers are repeatedly called out to remove items that have built up, as well as cleaning up the raw sewage.

The only things which should be flushed down the toilet are human waste and toilet paper.

A spokesman said: "We are urging our customers in Stromness to change habits of a life time and to Bag It and Bin It - Don't Flush It."

Flotta-based company, Opus Plus Ltd, have received their award for achieving an excellent review as part of their Investors in People (IiP) assessment.

In recognition of the company's high standards, the IiP assessor's report suggested Opus Plus were one of the most effective organisations he had ever assessed in terms of meeting and complying with the spirit of the IiP Standard, and in his opinion the company was an example of how it should be done.

Brian Kynoch, chairman of Orkney Enterprise, presented the award.

We would like to point out that the story posted on Saturday relating to the delay in launching the sea snail tidal device contained an error.

The project team are waiting for licences from FEPA/Fisheries Research Services, and not SEPA, as was written. We apologise for the error.

A Westray dog was found safe and well on Saturday, after being buried alive for nearly a week.

The seven-year-old Border Collie, Barry, belonging to Sinclair Foulis of Jericho, went missing on Sunday of last week. Daily searches by the family were fruitless.

But on Saturday, 'bag the brucker', Graham Maben, heard whining while working on the beach at Grobust. He began to dig and discovered the animal buried in a collapsed rabbit-hole.

Speaking after the reunion on Saturday, Jock Foulis, Sinclair's father, said: "We are thrilled that the dog was found safe and well. We thought she must have been dead after all that time."

Police were called out to a chimney fire in Kirkwall on Saturday. But the policemen were not required to assist - they had to try and clear a 'traffic jam' caused by motorists stopping to watch.

Kirkwall fire brigade were called to the routine chimney fire at a four-storey property at the bottom of the Strynd in Kirkwall on Saturday at 12.25pm.

The fire was extinguished within 20 minutes.

Orkney score their only try at Pickaquoy on Saturday Click here for more pictures

Orkney Rugby Club are out of National League Division Four after being beaten 13-7 by St Andrews University at Pickaquoy on Saturday.

In a tight game, watched by a large crowd of spectators, the half-time score was 3-0 to St Andrews. In the second half, and with three minutes to go, Orkney looked like they had clinched the match, scoring a converted try and bringing the score to 7-6.

But a missed tackle allowed St Andrews through to score in the final minute of the game earning them a victory.

Orkney will now play in Regional Division Five next season.