Free Republic

Mayor Brandon Johnson plans to remove the statue of former President George Washington from the hallway outside the mayor’s office on the fifth floor of City Hall in a move that, a top aide said Tuesday, has nothing to do with the first president’s role as a slave owner. Ronnie Reese, Johnson’s communications director, said the statue “is being removed from the hallway outside the mayor’s office as we make updates to some areas around City Hall.” Reese said there is no timetable yet for the removal. He wouldn’t say if it would be moved to a new home or...

The Kumano-zakura, photographed in Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture, in March 2017 (Provided by the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute) Photo/Illustraion WAKAYAMA--A botanist says he has identified a new species of cherry tree in the Kii Peninsula, which, if verified, will be the first to be discovered in the wild in Japan in about a century. The early-blooming “Kumano-zakura” (Kumano cherry) is thought to be distributed in Wakayama, Nara and Mie prefectures over an area measuring 90 kilometers from north to south and 60 km from east to west. Toshio Katsuki, 50, who heads the cherry tree preservation team at the...