Free Republic

A man has admitted assaulting a woman by pouring a basin of vomit over her head in Aberdeen. Father-of-three James Russell, 40, carried out the attack following an alcohol-fuelled argument at a house. The victim was holding the basin when Russell took it from her and tipped its contents over her head, Aberdeen Sheriff Court was told. Sheriff Kenneth Stewart deferred sentence on Russell for six months to allow him to be of good behaviour. Senior fiscal depute Jim Craigen said: "Before this incident took place a fair amount of alcohol had been taken." Russell claimed it was in the...

DNA test can detect Picts' descendants By Auslan Cramb, Scottish Correspondent (Filed: 14/08/2006) A geneticist has created a DNA test for "Scottishness" that will tell people whether they are direct descendants of the Picts. The test, expected to cost about £130, checks a sample of saliva against 27 genetic markers linked to some of the earliest inhabitants of Scotland. Dr Jim Wilson, of the public health sciences department at Edinburgh University, said: "We started this work a few years ago, looking at the Norse component, and we proved that a large proportion of people on Orkney are descended from Vikings....

SEATTLE-September 19, 2005 - Picture a cargo skirt – for guys. That's the idea behind the Utilikilt. Steven Villegas created the first Utilikilt for himself while restoring a motorcycle. He says pants were too uncomfortable to wear. So, he fashioned a kilt out of some old army pants. Now, he's making cargo kilts for guys who are willing to be different and show off their legs. The Seattle entrepreneur says he's selling about 12,000 Utilikilts a year at prices up to $230 each. There's nothing frilly about the Utilikilts. They have tool pockets and a loop for a hammer. Of...

Scots can now marry mothers-in-law Feb. 9, 2005- Scottish men can now marry their ex-mothers-in-law following legal changes by the Scottish Executive. Scottish women are also free to marry their former fathers-in-law as a result of the changes, reports the Herald. The family law reforms change laws dating back to 1567, based on the Old Testament, which said that if a man takes a wife and lies with her mother, all three should be burned alive. The new law draws a new distinction between the continuing ban on marrying a blood relative, and the centuries-old ban on marrying those related...

Deep-fried Mars bar taking Scotland by storm PARIS (AFP) - The deep-fried Mars bar, a nutritionist's nightmare that surfaced in Scotland about a decade ago, is now an established part of the Scottish culinary scene, according to a letter published in The Lancet. Dipped in batter and then cooked in hot oil, the Mars bar is now on sale in more than a fifth of Scotland's 627 fish-and-chip shops, it says. The average sale is 23 bars per shop per week, but some shops say they sell up to 200 a week, it records. The deep-fried Mars bar first surfaced...

LONDON (Reuters) - A tiny Scottish firm has teamed up with a U.S. company to start the first industrial-scale production in America of Scotland's national dish -- haggis. Stahly Quality Foods, which employs just four people in the industrial new town of Glenrothes, believes the joint venture with a Chicago-based food processor can move 300,000 tins of the offal-based delicacy in its first year. The estimated 10 million Scots and people of Scottish descent that live in North America offer an appetizing market. But founder Ken Stahly's first venture into the United States was crushed by an import ban following...