Did you get through your beach picnics unscathed this summer? Or did you return from a swim only to find a "seagull" (most likely a herring gull if in the UK) rifling through your bags in search of ...

Shouting at seagulls makes them more likely to leave your food alone, research shows. The paper, "Herring gulls respond to the acoustic properties of men's voices," is published in Biology Letters.

Commission chairwoman Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, threatened to eject Republican commissioner Bob Spindell for bringing up a topic that was not on the meeting's agenda and refusing to stop. Spindell ...