Free Republic

Police from the northern district on Friday evening captured four of the six terrorist prisoners who escaped from the Gilboa Prison at the start of the week. The two were captured near Nazareth and were detained without resistance. They are currently being interrogated and will be transferred to an Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) facility. The terrorists who were captured are Yacoub Qadri and Mohammed Ardah of the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization. Ardah is the leader of the squad who planned and led the escape operation. The second group of two included Fatah's Zakaria Zubeidi, and Islamic Jihad's Mahmad Ardah,...

The branches of Earth's oldest tree probably waved in the breeze like a modern palm, scientists said on Wednesday, based on two intact tree fossils that help explain the evolution of forests and their influence on climate. The 385-million-year-old fossils, which scientists believe are evidence of Earth's earliest forest trees, put to rest speculation about fossilized tree stumps discovered more than a century ago in Gilboa, New York. Scientists believe these early forests absorbed carbon dioxide, cooling the Earth's surface. The forests were flourishing at an important juncture in the history of life of Earth, coming shortly before the appearance...

William Stein, associate professor of biological sciences at Binghamton University... and his colleagues offer new insights into the world's oldest trees found in an area cited as home to the Earth's oldest forest. Located near the Gilboa Dam in Schoharie County, NY, the region has yielded tremendous tree trunks from the Devonian era, meaning they're roughly 380 million years old. These trunks have been studied by paleobotanists for about a century, but scientists could only guess what the tops of the trees looked like... The fossil, more than 12 feet long, offered the first evidence of how big and complex...

Researchers have unravelled an ancient missing link between today’s spiders and their long-extinct ancestors, and that may help explain how spiders came to weave webs. The research by scientists at the University of Kansas (KU) and Virginia’s Hampden-Sydney College focuses on fossil animals called Attercopus fimbriunguis. While modern spiders make silk threads with modified appendages called spinnerets, the fossil animals wove broad sheets of silk from spigots on plates attached to the underside of their bodies. Unlike spiders, they had long tails. The research was led by Paul Selden, professor of invertebrate paleontology in the department of geology at KU,...

..."The Gilboa is an assault rifle "based on the M-16, but with all the necessary improvements" and the Corner-Shot is a special Israeli technology which allows soldiers to shoot from behind a corner with the use of video camera and a special rotating rifle."

Dec. 8, 2003 Money problems delay completion of fence in North By DAVID RUDGE Completion of the security fence in the North is being delayed because of the non-transfer of some NIS 380 million, according to senior officials of the Public Committee for the Security Fence for Israel, headed by Maj.-Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan. Marc Luria, spokesman for the committee, said that most of the fence, between the Megiddo junction and Beit She'an could have been finished several months ago. This, he maintained, would have dramatically reduced the serious security alerts in the North last week, because the options of...