Free Republic

When President Obama secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to begin arming Syria's embattled rebels in 2013, the spy agency knew it would have a willing partner to help pay for the covert operation. It was the same partner the C.I.A. has relied on for decades for money and discretion in far-off conflicts: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Since then, the C.I.A. and its Saudi counterpart have maintained an unusual arrangement for the rebel-training mission, which the Americans have code-named Timber Sycamore. Under the deal, current and former administration officials said, the Saudis contribute both weapons and large sums of...

The trees that shade, cool and feed people from Ventura County to the Mexican border are dying so fast that within a few years it’s possible the region will look, feel, sound and smell much less pleasant than it does now.“We’re witnessing a transition to a post-oasis landscape in Southern California,” says Greg McPherson, a supervisory research forester with the U.S. Forest Service who has been studying what he and others call an unprecedented die-off of the trees greening Southern California’s parks, campuses and yards. Botanists in recent years have documented insect and disease infestations as they’ve hop-scotched about the...

The troubles for the “Trinity Root” began with an inquiry about touching up the sculpture’s patina. (snip) But according to Mr. Tobin and his manager, Kathleen Rogers, the conversation about patina opened a larger discussion about the sculpture’s placement: Now, they fear it will be moved or “just disappear,” said Ms. Rogers. (snip) Ms. Rogers is unconvinced. “There’s something in the works for them to find a way to get rid of it,” she said. “Trinity Root” was inspired by the story of a massive sycamore tree that shielded—and some say helped to save—the nearby St. Paul’s Chapel from the...

The team compiled a database of plant remains extracted from Bronze and Iron Ages sites in the southern Levant, both Philistine and non-Philistine... The species they brought are all cultivars that had not been seen in Israel previously... edible parts of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) which originates in western Europe; the sycamore tree (Ficus sycomorus), whose fruits are known to be cultivated in the eastern Mediterranean, especially Egypt, and whose presence in Israel as a locally grown tree is first attested to in the Iron Age by the presence of its fruit; and finally, cumin (Cuminum cyminum), a spice...

It is a mystery that has haunted a Chicago suburb for more than a half century. A little girl was found murdered, and the only suspect in the case had gone free, until now. CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds reports that police went to great lengths to try to close this cold case. For 53 years, the grave of seven-year-old Maria Ridulph was undisturbed. Her unsolved murder case as cold as the ground that held her coffin. On Wednesday morning, however, her remains were exhumed to see if modern science - and DNA - can support the authorities' belief that...

SYCAMORE, Ill. (AP) — Charles "Chuck" Ridulph always assumed the person who stole his little sister from the neighborhood corner where she played and dumped her body in a wooded stretch some 100 miles away was a trucker or passing stranger — surely not anyone from the hometown he remembers as one big, friendly playground. And, after more than a half century passed since her death, he assumed the culprit also had died or was in prison for some other crime. On Saturday, he said he was stunned by the news that a one-time neighbor had been charged in the...

A man has been charged with the killing of a seven-year-old girl 53 YEARS after she was abducted in a case that gripped America. Jack Daniel McCullough, 71, is accused of murdering Maria Ridulph, who was kidnapped while playing with a friend near her home. As almost an entire community and law enforcement agencies searched for her, President Eisenhower and FBI director J Edgar Hoover demanded daily briefings on the hunt. McCullough, from Seattle, is being held at Washington's King County jail today awaiting extradition after being picked up for questioning last Wednesday. The crime has haunted the city of...

C. Hayes WGNTV NEWS February 10, 2010 A magnitude 4.3 earthquake hit northern Illinois early Wednesday morning. The quake struck at 3:59 a.m. in Sycamore in DeKalb County. The quake could be felt as far away as Chicago... 50 miles from the epicenter. We'll have more information as it becomes available. For the latest information, go to the U.S. Geological Survey website.

Day after day in New York City, a small and strange procession can be seen moving along the pavement. While taxicabs whiz by and passersby move out of the way on Big Apple sidewalks, a handful of acolytes transport a large, hand painted box crafted from the wood of a sycamore tree. Make that "a sustainably harvested in Germany" sycamore tree. Dressed not in long flowing robes, but in average business apparel, the acolytes are garden-variety United Nations employees. There’s no need to hire Brink’s for protection and nothing but propaganda and hype worth robbing. The precious cargo of the...