Free Republic

After weeks of local speculation, the purchasers of 55,000 acres of northern California land have been revealed. The group Flannery Associates – backed by a cohort of Silicon Valley investors – has quietly purchased $800m worth of agricultural and empty land, the New York Times has reported. Their goal is to build a utopian new town that will offer its thousands of residents reliable public transportation and urban living, all of which would operate using clean energy. The land bought by the firm encircles Travis air force base in Fairfield, a city of about 120,000 residents and home to the...

No one told Jack LaPant that he could be in violation of the Clean Water Act for farming his own land. That’s mostly because the federal law includes a clear exemption for “normal” farming activities. But it’s also because the government officials LaPant consulted didn’t view overturned dirt that has been tilled and plowed as pollution. In 2016, the Army Corps of Engineers, which administers the Clean Water Act with the Environmental Protection Agency, began legal action against LaPant for plowing he did in 2011 to plant wheat on a ranch property he owned in Northern California. But in March...

There’s a bumper crop of squirrels in New England, and the frenetic critters are frustrating farmers by chomping their way through apple orchards, pumpkin patches and corn fields. The varmints are fattening themselves for winter while destroying the crops with bite marks. Robert Randall, who has a 60-acre orchard in Standish, Maine, said he’s never seen anything like it. “They’re eating the pumpkins. They’re eating the apples. They’re raising some hell this year. It’s the worst I’ve ever seen,” he said. Evidence of the squirrel population explosion is plain to see along New England’s highways, where the critters are becoming...

Foreign anarchists and Palestinian Authority Arabs were caught on film Sunday setting fire to a wooded area outside the Jewish town of Bat Ayin, between Jerusalem and Hevron. The fire damaged many plants, including olive trees. Residents who witnessed the incident said they believe the group was planning to blame the arson attack on the Jews of Bat Ayin.