Free Republic

The chestnut trees of Europe tell a hidden story charting the fortunes of ancient Rome and the legacy it left in the continent's forests. The ancient Romans left an indelible imprint on the world they enveloped into their empire. The straight, long-distance roads they built can still be followed beneath the asphalt of some modern highways. They spread aqueducts, sewers, public baths and the Latin language across much of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. But what's perhaps less well known is the surprising way they transformed Europe's forests. ... Romans had something of a penchant for sweet chestnut...

Official preliminary results showed that 63.7% of voters gave their backing to new EU gun laws, including tighter controls for semi-automatic weapons. A majority of voters in all but one canton, the Italian-speaking Ticino in southern Switzerland, came out in favor of reforming Swiss gun laws. […] Swiss lawmakers had approved earlier reforms that the EU deemed sufficient to comply with its legislation; however, that prompted a huge pushback by the rightwing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which gathered enough signatures to force Sunday’s vote on the measures. […] Under the new gun law, semi-automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines would be...

A Swiss regional politician was convicted Thursday for helping 24 migrants to illegally cross from Italy into Switzerland and for repeatedly inciting others to do the same. Lisa Bosia Mirra, a Socialist member of the Ticino parliament in southern Switzerland, was found guilty of the offenses by a regional court and sentenced to a suspended fine, the ATS news agency reported. She helped Eritreans and Syrians stuck at the train station in Como, near the Swiss border, in mid-2016. “The facts have been admitted to by the defendant, who over a period of two weeks worked along with accomplices to...

The world's longest railway tunnel is set to open in just over a week - after some 17 years of construction. Measuring 35.4-miles in length, the Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) is 7,545 feet below the Gotthard massif, cutting through the Swiss Alps. The tunnel was first conceived in sketch-form in 1947 but construction began 17 years ago. It consists of two single-track tunnels connecting Erstfeld (Uri) with Bodio (Ticino) and passing below Sedrun (Graubünden).