The businessman at the centre of the Wendy Alexander donation scandal was backed for an honour by senior figures in the Labour Party, it emerged last night.

Men who commit domestic violence should be taken out of the family home and sent for counselling at a "refuge", the new head of Scotland's biggest police force said last night.

He doesn't know it yet but a Scottish teenage boy will shortly be propelled from a rural existence to the Hollywood A-list. Harry Potter director Alfonso Cuaron has signed up one of the world's leading talent spotters to scour Scottish towns and villages for an as yet undiscovered star of the big screen.

They were once outlawed for being used as seditious weapons of war. Now, bagpipes have been blasted as an environmental menace.

It is a fishing port which last boomed when the herring were still running off the east coast of Scotland. But new figures reveal that Fraserburgh is enjoying a boom again - as the fastest-rising housing market in the country.