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LONDON — Scotland has become the first country in the world to make period products freely available to all who need them, after final approval was given to a landmark piece of legislation in Parliament on Tuesday. The measures are intended to end “period poverty” — or the circumstances, and in some cases, prohibitive expense that have left many without access to sanitary products when they need them.

Nicola Sturgeon today announced parts of Scotland that are home to millions of people will be moved into its toughest coronavirus level at the end of the week as she warned infection rates remain 'stubbornly high'. The First Minister said 11 council areas, which include the city of Glasgow and have a combined population of approximately 2.3 million people, will be subject to Level Four restrictions from 6pm on Friday. People living in Level Four areas are banned from meeting with other households indoors while all non-essential shops must close.

In countries across the globe, people reported fireworks, cheering and the sound of church bells ringing after President-elect Joe Biden was named the winner of the 2020 presidential election. Locals in the United Kingdom, where many had leftover fireworks from Guy Fawkes Night this week, reported fireworks going off in London. There were videos of church bells ringing in Paris and fireworks in Edinburgh, Scotland, and reports of celebrations in Germany.

Technology in sports is a beautiful thing, but sometimes even the greatest inventions can go wrong. This happened over the weekend in a soccer game in Scotland, when an AI-controlled camera got confused, and thought a lineman’s bald head was the ball. ...To make matters worse Scotland is under strict social distancing measures. With no fans in attendance this was the only ways for fans of Iverness and Ayr United to watch the match, and instead they were treated to 90 minutes of head watching.

Remains of the Ancrum Old Bridge, which stood during the 14th Century, has been found in the River Teviot after being hidden underwater for hundreds of years. Dating of the oak bridge timbers has confirmed a date of the mid-1300s, making the remains the oldest scientifically dated bridge ever found in its original position across one of Scotland’s rivers.

Conversations at home that incite hatred must be prosecuted under Scotland’s hate crime law, the Scottish justice secretary has insisted. The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill has been opposed by the Scottish Catholic Church, police representatives, academics and artists, but is set to introduce an offence of ‘stirring-up hatred’ against certain groups, including on the grounds of disability, sexual orientation and age. The Public Order Act 1986, which currently outlaws threatening, abusive or insulting words and behaviour, includes a “dwelling defence” that states threatening language cannot be prosecuted if spoken at home. The new bill will be based...

This is incredible. The Scottish government has brought forth a new hate crimes law that stands to criminalize speech uttered within the privacy of one’s own home. I kid you not: However critics fear the Hate Crime and Public Order Bill, which centres around plans for a new offence of “stirring up hatred”, will stifle freedom of expression. BBC Scotland, Catholic bishops, the Humanist Society of Scotland, and the Scottish Police Federation are amongst those to have raised concerns, along with Mr Bean star Rowan Atkinson and writer Val McDermid. Because of this, Mr Yousaf was forced to amend the...

The Isle of Tiree Coastguard Rescue Team were called to a report of an object in the water on September 28. Members of the public were quick to help out the team and identify the object as an autonomous wave glider, which could easily have traveled miles from home. As of last week the boat's owner had not yet been found. The boat's appearance is identical to the surface element of the Boeing Liquid Robotics Wave Glider. The surfboard-shaped object has large solar arrays fore and aft, a large handle at the bow and three hard points for launch and...

We hear all the time about how COVID shut down the economy. That is incorrect; COVID did not shut down the economy, the political response to COVID shut down the economy. There were a series of policy choices at all levels of state and local government across the land. The economic damage from those choices is immense. This is not a natural disaster, it is a man-made disaster. National data show that U.S. real GDP fell at an annual rate of 5% in the first quarter, and was followed by 32% decline in the second quarter. This is the worst...

Genetic markers for the Clan MacDougall... descends from Dougall, King of the Isle of Man and founder of the ancient Scottish Kingdom of the Isles and Lorn. Dougall (c1140-c1207) was the eldest son of Somerled, the ancient warrior sea-king and progenitor of the MacDonald, MacAllister, and MacDougall clans. Somerled expelled his Scoto-Norse rivals from Argyll, Kintyre and the Isles but was himself a Norseman paternally, having a genetic signature that is more common in Scandinavia than in Scotland. The first genetic signature for Somerled was discovered and published in 2005 by researchers at the University of Oxford, and since then,...

...the research team extracted and analysed DNA from the remains of 442 men, women and children... from archaeological sites in Scandinavia, the U.K., Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Estonia, Ukraine, Poland and Russia, and mostly date to the Viking Age (ca. 750-1050 AD). The team's analyses yielded a number of findings. One of the most noteworthy is that contrary to what has often been assumed, Viking identity was not limited to people of Scandinavian ancestry -- the team discovered that two skeletons from a Viking burial site in the Orkney Islands were of Scottish ancestry. They also found evidence that there was...

The University of Edinburgh in Scotland announced that it would rename a university building after George Floyd on Thursday. The Hume Tower was previously named after Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume, who is thought of as a notable classical liberal political philosopher. The Hume Tower will now be known as 40 George Floyd. The prestigious university, located in Scotland’s capital city, explained in a statement that the renaming was taking place because “of the sensitivities around asking students to use a building named after the 18th century philosopher whose comments on matters of race, though not uncommon at the time,...

The paper said that Hijjawi was arrested at Heathrow airport and the 62-year-old's house in the Blackhall area of Edinburgh was searched by Scottish police. Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, also known as BDS. British authorities arrested the former chairman of the Association of Palestinian Communities in Scotland  Dr. Issam Hijjawi on Saturday for allegedly committing preparatory acts of terrorism in connection with the New Irish Republican Army. He was the 10th person to be charged in a joint Police Service of Northern Ireland and MI5 investigation called Operation Arbacia, The Irish News reported Tuesday.

BORIS JOHNSON has been urged to ignore Nicola Sturgeon's demands for a second Scottish independence referendum, an Express.co.uk poll has found. Nicola Sturgeon has repeatedly warned anti-Union sentiment is on the rise in Scotland and she claims support has accelerated for independence during the coronavirus pandemic. As a result the First Minister is demanding a second referendum on the matter, but Express.co.uk readers have urged Boris Johnson not to head to her demands.

The argument for Scottish independence has historic overtones. On April 6, 1320, the Declaration of Arbroath was proclaimed. Written in Latin, it was really not a declaration, but a private letter, perhaps the most famous letter in Scottish history, by 39 Scottish barons addressed to Pope John XXII, who had excommunicated Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, who had murdered a rival to the throne in a church. The context was that England under King Edward II had attempted to conquer Scotland in 1296, an invasion that continued in spite of the victory of William Wallace at Stirling Bridge in...

On this date in 1305, Scottish knight Mel Gibson — er, William Wallace — was hanged, drawn and quartered at Smithfield for treason to a British crown he refused to recognize. Well, close enough. Some wags have alleged one or two historical liberties in Braveheart. Among the lesser (but more pertinent here): that they weren’t — you knew this already — offering the former Guardian of Scotland the opportunity to reduce his suffering with a public submission, or use the stage for theatrical defiance. Hanging, drawing and quartering was a brand new execution Edward I was experimenting with for emasculating,...

NOT everyone saw The Shot Heard ‘Round The World. Frank Sinatra was just one of a clutch of celebrities packed inside the Polo Grounds on October 3, 1951 to watch his beloved New York Giants clinch baseball’s National League pennant against local rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers. When Bobby Thomson, the Glaswegian batter, struck his three-run home run to send the Giants to the World Series, however, Sinatra was temporarily distracted. His friend, the actor Jackie Gleason, had just been sick all over his lap. “Here is one of the all-time classic games and I don’t see Bobby Thomson hit that...

30 emergency service vehicles - including air ambulance support - have been called to the scene. Smoke was seen coming from the area, where landslips have been reported. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it was an "extremely serious incident" and there were reports of serious injuries. The incident - involving the 06:38 ScotRail service from Aberdeen to Glasgow Queen Street - took place at about 09:40 at Carmont, near Stonehaven. The train was made up of two locomotives - at the front and back - and four carriages. It is understood that the front locomotive and three passenger carriages have...

Did the Battle of Lewes, which saw King Henry III defeated 750 years ago, lead to England's first tentative steps towards representative democracy? As bloodied bodies littered the South Downs, the King hid in a priory. His father, King John, had been forced to sign Magna Carta by England's rebellious barons, now Henry had suffered even greater humiliation at their hands. His victor was Simon de Montfort, the French-born Earl of Leicester, who was fighting for the rights of England to be governed by the English. After the battle, where de Montfort's forces were outnumbered by two to one, he...

In June the world will celebrate 800 years since the issuing of Magna Carta. But 2015 is also the anniversary of another important, and far more radical, British milestone in democratic history, writes Luke Foddy. Almost exactly 750 years ago, an extraordinary parliament opened in Westminster. For the very first time, elected representatives from every county and major town in England were invited to parliament on behalf of their local communities. It was, in the words of one historian, "the House of Commons in embryo". The January Parliament, which first met on 20 January 1265, is one of the...