Free Republic

Three Viruses Threaten Watermelon, Squash, Pumpkins, Cucumbers And Now Green BeansCucurbit Leaf Crumple Virus, a major problem of cucumbers, was found in green beans in Florida for the first time. (Credit: USDA) ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2008) — Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in Florida have made recommendations to help growers deal with several whitefly-transmitted viruses that threaten cucurbits and other crops in that state. In recent years, the number of whitefly-transmitted viruses in cucurbit fields, home to crops like cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins, melons and watermelons, has increased to almost epidemic proportions in Florida. Researchers led by plant pathologists Scott Adkins...

PHOENIX (AP) -- An Arizona bookstore owner charged in the firebombing of a government wildlife lab in Washington committed suicide in his jail cell Thursday, officials said. William C. Rodgers, 40, of Prescott, Ariz., suffocated after placing a plastic bag over his head while in a one-person cell in Flagstaff, the Coconino County medical examiner said. Rodgers was one of six people arrested earlier this month in connection with ecoterror attacks in Oregon and Washington in recent years. He was accused of setting fire to the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services facility in Olympia, Wash., in 1998....

Superheated July matches whole summer's 90-degree days By JESSE GARZA and TOM HELDof the Journal Sentinel staff Last Updated: July 31, 2002 Much of Wisconsin remained in the grip of sweltering heat Wednesday, ending a month in which Milwaukee saw the mercury reach 90 degrees nine different days, about the same number of days above 90 the state's largest city sees during a typical summer. Even upstate, in Chippewa Falls, it got so hot Tuesday that a traveling load of yeast-filled pizza dough expanded, breaking out the back of a semitrailer truck and creating a 25- to 35-mile oozing, intermittent...

'Watermelon bomb' transporter gets 18 years Etgar Lefkovits Jun. 17, 2002 A Palestinian sentenced to 18 years in prison by the Jerusalem District Court yesterday for transporting a bomb stuffed in a watermelon last year in a failed terror attack, was also behind a thwarted plot to bomb a restaurant in Jerusalem's Ein Karem neighborhood, according to court papers released yesterday. Balal Odeh, 24, of east Jerusalem, a graduate of Bethlehem University, received the watermelon bomb last July 27 from an activist in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Using his Jerusalem identity papers to travel freely into...