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LONDON (AP) — Restaurants, ride-hailing apps and food delivery services are backing Britain’s COVID-19 vaccination drive, offering discounts and even free slices of pizza to persuade young people to roll up their sleeves and get the shot. The program, announced Sunday by the Department of Health and Social Care, is designed to boost the vaccination rate among adults under 30 as Britain races to inoculate as many people as possible before colder weather arrives. While more than 90% of adults in Britain have received at least one dose of vaccine, the rate for people between the ages of 18 and...

Kat Berrie from Stirling had been walking her dog near Mugdock Country Park in East Dumbartonshire when she spotted the 'beast'.A Scots jokester warned the public that Covid is 'making haggis braver' after stumbling across one near Glasgow. Kat Berrie from Glasgow had been walking her dog near Mugdock Country Park in East Dumbartonshire when she spotted the 'beast'. The 29-year-old jokester actually stumbled across abandoned faux fur but took the opportunity to prank Facebook users. She snapped pictures of the object and warned others to 'watch their step' after her sighting of the 'creature' Kat shared the hilarious pictures...

FOUR workers employed by a world famous haggis firm have been sacked just days before Burns Night following a blunder on the factory floor. Disciplinary action was taken against the employees after a production error at Macsween’s factory in Loanhead led operations to be temporarily suspended. Bosses at the firm said a potential production error - involved the wrong type of meat being taken out from a store room and on to the factory floor - was picked up during stringent checks before any products could be affected. But Mick Malone, who joined the company just days previously and was...

A change of the old order in Hollywood is long overdue, according to Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning film-maker behind the hit films Crash and Million Dollar Baby. The Canadian screenwriter and director said many of the established rules of big-budget showbusiness should be re-examined in the light of falling box-office receipts and the recent scandalous claims and revelations about the enduring influence of the casting couch. “Los Angeles is a town run by a group of powerful corporations, the studios, and they inevitably want to make what they know they can sell. This means they often lag a few years...

Traditional Scottish haggis has been banned in America since the 1970s. But now, along with black pudding, Scottish lamb and beef, the dish could be back on the menu stateside. The US Department of Agriculture has long objected to one of the key ingredients in the Scottish delicacy – sheep’s lung.

Burns Night, held in honour of Scotland's most famous poet Robert Burns, is celebrated at the end of January every year – but what is is all about? The night is a way to remember the life of the 18th century bard and it falls on his birthday – January 25. Robert Burns wrote Auld Lang Syne ... sort of Robert Burns didn't invent "Auld Lang Syne" as we know it, rather he was the first person to write down a much older Scottish folk song. The full ritual of the night involves whisky, haggis and poetry readings. Once all...

EDINBURGH, Scotland, - Scottish butchers have compiled a number of extravagant ingredients to create the world's most expensive haggis. The recipe of the traditional Scottish dish crafted by Macsween butcher shop in Edinsburgh cointains Wagyu beef, from a farm where all the cows have names, French white truffle, tellicherry black pepper from India and a decorative sprinkle of edible 24-karat gold. The one-of-a-kind dish is made to order by the shop for the price of $5,687. "At Macsween we're passionate about offering all of our customers only the best high-quality, delicious products made to the family recipe," managing director James...

Earlier this week, USDA secretary Tom Vilsack met in Washington with representatives from the British government. Atop the list of issues UK environment secretary Owen Paterson was to bring up in his meeting with Vilsack is the continuing US ban on the sale of authentic Scottish haggis. Haggis, Scotland’s national dish, has been unavailable in the United States since 1971, when the USDA issued a succinct rule: “Livestock lungs shall not be saved for use as human food.” But sheep lungs are a key ingredient in haggis. The reasoning behind the USDA’s ban on lungs is generally couched in terms...

'Traditional Scottish haggis is banned in the United States. With Burns Night looming, how do fans satisfy their taste for oatmeal and offal? For aficionados, it is the "great chieftain o' the pudding-race". To sceptics, however, it is a gruesome mush of sheep's innards - and for decades American authorities have agreed. Authentic Scottish haggis has been banned in the United States since 1971, when the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) first took a dim view of one of its key ingredients - sheep's lung. While millions of people around the world will enjoy, or endure, a Burns Night helping...

CATALONIA may be the catalyst for a renewed wave of separatism in the European Union, with Scotland and Flanders not far behind. The great paradox of the European Union, which is built on the concept of shared sovereignty, is that it lowers the stakes for regions to push for independence. While a post-national European Union may be emerging out of the euro zone crisis, with a drive for more fiscal union and more centralized control over national budgets and banks, the crisis has accelerated calls for independence from member countries’ richer regions, angry at having to finance poorer neighbors. Artur...

Sheep’s head is not for wimps. Until now very few of us have been tempted by this traditional Norwegian dish."It's a pity, because you will really have to look far and wide for a more tasty traditional dish," says Professor Reidar Mykletun at the Norwegian School of Hotel Management at the University of Stavanger. "With good potatoes, rutabaga mash, beer and aquavit sheep’s head is a tempting experience for genuine lamb enthusiasts. But sheep’s head is an example of a dish that is scary for many of us. With both ears, mouth, teeth, tongue and eyes looking at you from...

From launching tomatoes to heaving tunas, people love to throw food, and some of the most spirited annual events offer an excuse to do so. Rumored to have originated as a local brawl (possibly an attack on city council members by disgruntled townspeople), La Tomatina in Buñol, Spain, is the world's largest food fight. In late August, the event attracts some 45,000 people who throw more than 250,000 pounds of overripe tomatoes at one another. “Participants have a wonderful time throwing tomatoes at anything that moves,” according to the Tourist Office of Spain. A horn signals the start of the...

A US government delegation has been invited to Scotland in a bid to overturn its 40-year ban on haggis. Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead's invitation comes two days ahead of Burns Night, when suppers are held in honour of poet Robert Burns.

CHARLOTTE, N.C.- Scotland's national delicacy, haggis, will soon be available to American snack hounds in potato chip form, a North Carolina importer said. Great Scot International announced this week it would have Mackie's Haggis and Cracked Black Pepper chips on display at its booth at the annual Fancy Food Show in New York next month. "We know that flavors with a Scottish twist are popular because Haggis and Cracked Black Pepper is our best-selling flavor," Kirstin Mackie, managing director of Mackie's, said in a written statement. Haggis is the legendary blend of various sheep organs and parts traditionally simmered in...

I'm toying with the idea of traveling to England after Christmas and staying a couple of weeks. I have always dreamed of driving from London to Glasgow and wonder if anyone has any perspective of doing so that time of year.

One in five people in Britain thinks that haggis, the traditional Scottish dish made from the lung, liver and heart of a sheep, is an animal that roams the Highlands, according to a survey on Friday. Commissioned by the online takeaway food service Just-Eat.co.uk, the survey found that 18 percent of Britons believe that haggis is a hilltop-dwelling animal. Another 15 percent said it is a Scottish musical instrument while 4 percent admitted to thinking it was a character from Harry Potter.

Smuggled and bootlegged, it has been the cause of transatlantic tensions for more than two decades. But after 21 years in exile, the haggis is to be allowed back into the United States. The "great chieftan o' the puddin-race" was one of earliest casualties of the BSE crisis of the 1980s-90s, banned on health grounds by the US authorities in 1989 because they feared its main ingredient ‑ minced sheep offal ‑ could prove lethal.

Thankfully, you don't have to make your own haggis; you can get it straight from the chill cabinet at your local Sainsbury's, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer - in fact, you can even get a lentil-packed vegetarian version if you so desire. In the run-up to Burns Night, Macsweens of Edinburgh exports up to 800 tonnes around the world, from Canada to Kazakhstan, which is an awful lot of haggis by anyone's standards. And Americans will go to extraordinary lengths to lay their hands on a haggis (importing sheep's lungs is banned in the States), even smuggling them through Customs...

Scots ask US to lift haggis ban   Haggis, traditionally eaten on Burns night, is banned in the US The Scottish Government is considering asking the United States to rethink its ban on haggis imports. Imports of Scotland's iconic dish were banned by the US in 1989 in the wake of the BSE scare because it contains offal ingredients such as sheep lungs. Only an offal-free version of haggis is available in the US. The move would be backed by renowned haggis maker Macsween, which believes the American market could be a very lucrative one. A Scottish Government spokeswoman...

And the fun from the Venice Film Festival continues.... Here's Paul Haggis on his film, "In the Valley of Elah" (based upon a Playboy article, "Death and Dishonor", by Mark Boal, regarding the stabbing death of a soldier by his fellow soldiers): Haggis said he had tried not to allow his personal opinion about the war in Iraq to influence "Elah" too heavily."We set about to make a political film certainly, but not a partisan film," he told a news conference in Venice, where the film has its world premiere on Saturday. Um...yeah....kind of like how Bill Moyers, Dan Rather,...