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The flower of the free, the heather, the heather, The Bretons and Scots and Irish together, The Manx and the Welsh and Cornish forever, Six nations are we, Proud Celtic and free. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=w3VLoe6YEBU#t=4

Divers in Madagascar have found a silver bar weighing about 50 kilograms (110 pounds) that they believe was part of the treasure of pirate Captain Kidd. The bar was presented to Madagascar's president, Hery Rajaonarimampianina, in a ceremony Thursday on the island of Sainte Marie, near the country's northeast coast. The bar was found in a bay off the island, the diving team said. The team was led by Barry Clifford, an American undersea explorer who has been searching for pirate treasure for many decades. Clifford believes there could be more treasure on the bay floor where he found the...

Underwater explorers in Madagascar say they have found what is thought to be the treasure of notorious Scottish pirate William Kidd. Soldiers on Sainte Marie island have been guarding the 50kg silver bar after divers brought it to shore. Madagascar's president as well as UK and US diplomats received the suspected treasure at a ceremony on the island. Capt Kidd was executed in 1701 for piracy after returning from a voyage to the Indian Ocean.

SNIPPET: "A federal grand jury has issued an eight-count indictment against a central Arkansas man accused of damaging electric cooperative and other power facilities. Jason Woodring, 37, was indicted on charges relating to sabotage of high-voltage power lines and power stations earlier this year in several cities. Among them: a terrorist attack against a railroad carrier and destruction of energy facilities, including a 115,000-volt transmission line owned by First Electric Cooperative in Jacksonville. Woodring faces up to 20 years in prison on the energy facility destruction charges, and life in prison if convicted on the terrorism charge. According to an...

Started tonight. I will be there tomorrow with my Galway Girl. I will be wearing my Rattler Hat (I don't do kilts). There is a Scot Village BTW. Good Music and Food. Dallas Fair Park. C ya there. Call me by my screen name and I'll buy you some haggis.

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.

LONDON: British prime minister David Cameron apologized on behalf of his country Tuesday for the 1972 slaughter of 13 Catholic demonstrators in the Northern Ireland town of Londonderry, an outrage that became known as "Bloody Sunday." In a solemn statement to the British House of Commons, Cameron said that a mammoth, 12-year investigation into the killings left no doubt that the soldiers confronting crowds of Catholic demonstrators in Londonderry's hard-line Bogside district mowed down unarmed protesters without provocation. "What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong," Cameron said, as a crowd watching him from Londonderry...

The shock story of the sinking of the luxury cruise liner The Titanic is something that still sends a chill down the spine today, but for the author of a new book based on the tragedy, the story is one that truly strikes a personal note. Yvonne Hume is the great nice of Scottish violinist John Law Hume, who died after the liner struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912. He drowned after continuing to play the violin while the ship sank, as he tried to ease the huge panic onboard. And Yvonne, who has been fascinated by the story...

Professor Ferenc Szasz argued that so-called rap battles, where two or more performers trade elaborate insults, derive from the ancient Caledonian art of "flyting". According to the theory, Scottish slave owners took the tradition with them to the United States, where it was adopted and developed by slaves, emerging many years later as rap. Professor Szasz is convinced there is a clear link between this tradition for settling scores in Scotland and rap battles, which were famously portrayed in Eminem's 2002 movie 8 Mile. He said: "The Scots have a lengthy tradition of flyting - intense verbal jousting, often laced...

Yesterday on the floor of the Senate, as some news outlets have reported, Sen. Arlen Specter said he is "now in the process of drafting legislation" that would "require the administration to take the program" of eavesdropping on our enemies when they communicate to and from the United States "to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court." (See here for a PDF of the Congressional Record of Specter's remarks.) I have been a Specter-watcher for some years now, and I have long since come to the conclusion that he is not a clear thinker on matters constitutional. But this embryonic proposal of...

IKNOW, I know, so many things going on, but perhaps I could just tell you that on the Feast of Corpus Christi, I almost literally bumped into the Pope. In Rome for a few days, that Thursday afternoon I decided, by chance, to visit the cathedral of St John Lateran, Omnium Urbis et Orbis Ecclesiarum Mater et Caput, to give it its grand title, a title which, believe you me, it deserves. The present vast basilica was built over the ruins of other basilicas, the first of which was constructed by the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century. I wish...

Please Freep this poll!Do you think Scot Peterson will get the Death Penalty?

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire: Why Scott Peterson Deserves to Frey By Karen H. Pittman © August 14, 2004 On one point at least, the pundits have it right: We all know Scott Peterson’s breeches were burning, long before now. We all know he was hot as a firecracker for Amber Frey. We all know he’s a heinous creep, a complete and total cad, a dirty double-dealing rake. But what we don’t all know, the lone remaining riddle tied tight like a Gordian Knot at the heart of this whole rotten affair, is the inconceivable dark truth this mum bum...

SANDY Mitchell, the Scot placed under sentence of death in Saudi Arabia, has revealed he was due to be executed by crucifixion, writes Christopher Claire. Mitchell said he was told by his Saudi lawyer that the sentence called for the victim’s head to be "partially" severed and the body fixed to an X-shaped cross in public view for three days. Public beheadings are routine in Saudi Arabia, but crucifixion is reserved as an exemplary punishment under sharia (Islamic) law for crimes of the utmost severity. Two highway robbers have been executed in this way in the past 20 years. Mitchell...

THE ALLIANCE Party appears to be exercising some muddled thinking over the origins and the legitimacy of the American Confederacy flag which is being flown in some loyalist areas of east Belfast in the runup to the Twelfth.For Alliance to summarily dismiss the Confederate flag as a racist emblem is to grievously insult the memory and the sacrifice of men and women of great courage, who fought a noble but unsuccessful fight against the numerically stronger and better equipped Union Army in the American Civil War of 1861-65.The Confederate flag - the distinctive Stars and Bars - has, admittedly, been...

The jets? The seats? The meals? The maids? "I sacrificed millions of dollars," John F. Welch Jr., the former chief executive of GENERAL ELECTRIC, offers in defense on PBS this weekend in his first interview since divorce court papers alleged a retirement lifestyle fit for a lord. In 1996 ..."the [GE] board came to me and offered me tens of millions of dollars in a package, in a retention package," Welch said. "Instead I said I didn't need that. What I wanted was to continue to use the plane, have use of GE's plane, and have use of GE's apartment...