Free Republic

BOSTON (AP) -- A $75 million land sale to Harvard gives the prestigious university unusual new power - the potential to literally move the Massachusetts Turnpike, a state official complained. Documents filed on the completion of the 91-acre land deal show the property includes a toll plaza, an estimated 3,000-foot section of the turnpike and several ramps, The Boston Globe reported Saturday. "Frankly, I think this is ridiculous," Secretary of State William Galvin said. "Harvard University now owns the land on which the turnpike sits. Who has ever heard of selling an interstate for the benefit of a university?" The...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - The federal government said Friday it will add two rare southwestern Oregon plants - the Cooks lomatium and the large-flowered woolly meadowfoam - to the endangered species list. Both species grow in seasonal wetlands called ``vernal pools'' in the Agate Desert in Jackson County. Up to 90 percent of those wetlands have disappeared because of commercial development, changes in water use, livestock grazing and the unauthorized use of off-road vehicles, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Cooks lomatium, a member of the carrot family, is a small, perennial plant with pale yellow flowers. Meadowfoam,...

<p>A state agency has sold a 418-acre chunk of San Mateo County that once was part of a hotly contested piece of California coastline to a longtime farmer.</p> <p>The land sale was part of a compromise that allowed two state land agencies, the California Coastal Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land, to purchase in 1985 more than 4,000 acres of beautiful, nearly untouched land along the coast -- the point at which the Santa Cruz Mountains roll into the untamed beaches of San Mateo County.</p>