32 1GM Friday July 31 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
Hunters from Provence are threaten-
ing to disrupt President Macron’s holi-
day after being told that his govern-
ment planned to ban them from setting
glue traps for thrushes.
Their anger follows a meeting with
Barbara Pompili, the minister for eco-
logical transition, who said she would
outlaw limestick trapping, a hunting
technique developed in ancient Greece
that involves covering twigs and bran-
ches in glue so that birds become stuck
when they land.
The thrushes are captured alive and
used as call-birds to attract others with-
in the range of the hunters’ guns.
The French Bird Protection League
has denounced limestick trapping as
cruel, saying that the glue and the sol-
vents used to clean it off the feathers do
irreversible harm to the thrushes.
The technique was once practised
throughout Europe and the UK, but is
prohibited in almost all European
countries, including most of France. Itis still permitted in Provence, with the
region’s 6,000 or so hunters allowed to
capture tens of thousands of thrushes
between October and December every
year on the grounds that limestick trap-
ping is a local custom.
This month the European Commis-
sion ordered France to take urgent bird
protection measures, saying that of the
64 species hunted in the country, only
20 had a satisfactory population level.
The commission said limestick trap-
ping had to end, along with the hunting
of geese during their springtime migra-tion and the shooting of turtle doves.
Ms Pompili said she was planning to
implement the recommendation and
ban glue traps from next year.
Loïc Dombreval, an MP with the rul-
ing La République en Marche party,
said: “It’s high time we did this. We have
been criticised several times by the
European Commission over limestick
trapping. It’s an archaic practice, which
is terrible and horrible for the birds.”
But Éric Camoin, chairman of the
Association for the Defence of Tradi-
tional Thrush Hunting, said: “There isnothing barbaric about this practice. It’s
completely respectful. The birds are
not killed, they serve as call-birds, and
if we want them to sing, we have to look
after them. We are fed up with being in-
sulted, threatened and attacked. This
green lobby is a disgrace.”
Hunting federations say Mr Macron
promised to defend traditional prac-
tices and is reneging on his word. They
plan to demonstrate at Fort de Brégan-
çon, the presidential holiday home on
the Riviera, where he arrived with his
wife on Wednesday.Hunters have Macron in their sights over move to ban glue traps
France
Adam Sage Paris
A decade after the Royal Spanish Aca-
demy struck an acute accent off several
words its continued use has reopened
an angry orthographical debate among
philologists and writers.
The academy, the final arbiter of the
Spanish language, ruled in 2010 that a
diacritical acute accent should be re-
moved from sólo (only), which tradi-
tionally carried it when used as an ad-
verb, and demonstrative pronouns such
as éste (this). It deemed them to be de-
funct as the “traditional use of the ac-
cent in the adverb sólo and demonstra-
tive pronouns does not satisfy the fun-
damental requirement justifying the
use of diacritical marks” — that is, to
tell a reader how to pronounce a letter.
The media and publishers added the
change to their style guides but it was
cially he lives with his wife, Sofía, in one
of the palace buildings. Felipe and
Queen Letizia and their daughters,
Leonor and Sofía, live in another.
The report added that Juan Carlos
was prepared to leave Spain temporari-
ly. Speculation has been rife that he
may move to Switzerland, where his
daughter, Princess Cristina, lives. In
2018 her husband, Iñaki Urdangarín,
was sentenced to serve nearly six years
in jail for crimes including tax fraud and
embezzlement. She was acquitted of
being an accessory to tax fraud.
If Juan Carlos did leave Spain it is not
known whether he would be accompa-
nied by his wife. The couple are said to
have been living more frequently apart
since his affair with Corinna zu Sayn-
Wittgenstein, a German-born busi-
nesswoman, became public in 2012.
He renounced the throne in 2014
after a series of scandals including one
over an elephant-hunting trip to Bots-
wana with Ms Sayn-Wittgenstein in
2012 during Spain’s economic crisis.King under pressure to bar
Juan Carlos from palace
Isambard Wilkinson
Acute dilemma over accent
divides arbiters of Spanish
met with protests and laments by writ-
ers and poets. Now it has emerged that
it has divided the academy itself.
“There remains disagreement about
the accents,” Santiago Muñoz Macha-
do, head of the Madrid-based academy,
told El Pais. “We have no consensus.”
It has stirred passions in the normally
staid institution. “I hope [those who op-
pose the change] stop being stubborn,
because they have no technical argu-
ments to defend themselves,” Salvador
Gutiérrez, an academic, said. “They use
sentimental criteria and orthography
doesn’t work like that. It would be a seri-
ous mistake to operate outside science.”
However, 12 of 43 academics at the
institution disagree. “[The] change was
unnecessary,” Luis Mateo Díez, one of
the dissidents, said. “The accent is
forceful. What was before was better
than now. We will continue to insist.”
Several prominent writers, includingMario Vargas Llosa, Arturo Pérez-
Reverte and Javier Marías, have resist-
ed and told their publishers to keep the
accent in their books. “With all due re-
spect I will not listen to what a philolo-
gist says. For me these are absurd meas-
ures that have generated a lot of confu-
sion,” Marías, a novelist and former
Oxford University lecturer, said. “I
trust that one day this will be rectified
for the sake of the Spanish language.”
However, the academy is united on
another controversy: its opposition to
government proposals to use gender-
neutral or inclusive language, replacing
generic masculine nouns with more in-
clusive forms. One suggestion is “dou-
bling up”, for example “children” would
be changed from niños to niñas y niños.
“Doubling up alters the economy of
the language,” said Mr Muñoz Macha-
do. “It is a beautiful and precise lan-
guage. Why do you have to spoil it?”Spain
Isambard Wilkinson Madrid
Pressure is mounting on Juan Carlos to
leave the Spanish royal palace after a
series of allegations linking him to
secret multimillion-euro offshore
accounts.
In March allegations about the
former king’s financial dealings
reached his son, King Felipe, who after
media revelations that he was named as
a beneficiary of two funds under in-
vestigation disinherited himself from
his father and stripped him of his
€200,000 state stipend.
Now Felipe is under further pressure
to assuage popular anger by ejecting
Juan Carlos from the Zarzuela Palace,
the royal family’s residence in Madrid,
or removing his title as the emeritus
king.
According to unnamed sources close
to Juan Carlos cited in a report by El
Mundo this week, he says that he is pre-
pared to leave the state-owned palace
in an attempt to placate his critics. Offi-Wife ‘cut up
rapper’s body to
hide overdose’
Russia
Tom Parfitt Moscow
The wife of a Russian rapper whose dis-
membered body was found in a fridge
told police she cut him up because he
did not deserve his “inglorious death”
from a drug overdose.
Marina Kukhal, 36, thought it would
be better for Alexander Yushko, 30, to
“simply disappear”, Russian media re-
ported, citing law enforcement sources.
She then had second thoughts and
four days after his death sought advice
from a lawyer, who contacted police.
Officers found Mr Yushko’s body
parts in a fridge in the couple’s apart-
ment in St Petersburg, stacked in five
bags next to jars of pickles.
Ms Kukhal was said to have salted the
body parts to preserve them. A ham-
mer, knife, hacksaw, basin and cutting
board were also recovered. The cause of
death has not yet been established.
A murder inquiry was opened and Ms
Kukhal was questioned on suspicion of
abusing a deceased person’s body,
which carries a jail term of up to three
months. She has not been charged.
“She wanted to portray his death as if
he just went missing,” a source told the
Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.
“She did it, she said, out of great love,
because she didn’t want a shameful
memory for her husband.” The couple’s
three-year-old child was sent to stay
with relatives.
Mr Yuskho, was widely known onNorthern highlights Polarlights, a view of Moskenesøya in Norway’s Lofoten isles, the most northerly populated region, features in Agora’s world photo competition YouTube as Andy Cartwright.
@AND1402/AGORA/TNG