The Times - UK (2021-11-25)

the times | Thursday November 25 2021 39

shops in Honiara’s Chinatown, and

marched to the Chinese embassy.

Video showed some in the crowd

throwing rocks at the embassy.

A police station and another build-

ing, owned by a Chinese citizen, were

also burnt down during the protests.

Suidani, who did not attend Wednes-

day’s protests, said the damage was the

Residents ready to

combat crime on the

streets of San Francisco

Page 44

Earthlings are closer to finding out

once and for all the truth behind un-

identified flying objects.

The Pentagon and America’s top spy-

ing agency are to begin an investigation

to decide whether UFOs pose a threat.

After decades of failing to explain the

brightly lit, rapidly accelerating and

oddly shaped phenomena, especially

over US military bases, the Pentagon

has set up yet another organisation to

try to find answers.

Five months ago a US government

task force that examined more than 140

UFO sightings over two decades con-

cluded that there was no evidence of

anything non-terrestrial involved in

the incidents.

The possibility of an alien presence

could not be ruled out, however. In 18

cases there appeared to be a demon-

The truth is out there: US

goes alien hunting... again

stration of technological know-how

unfamiliar to the US — or, it was be-

lieved, to China and Russia.

With intelligence officials and UFO

conspiracy theorists dissatisfied with

the result, the Pentagon decided to

have one more go at tracking and iden-

tifying any future suspected mystery

objects in the sky.

The UFO issue, or unidentified aerial

phenomena as the Pentagon calls it, has

been handed to a new organisation

consisting of senior defence officials

and representatives from the office of

the director of national intelligence,

which oversees America’s 18 spying

agencies.

The 18th spy service belongs to the

recently formed US Space Force, which

is expected to play an important role in

deciding whether or not strange aerial

phenomena might have begun their

journey from beyond the Earth’s at-

mosphere.

United States

Michael Evans

Protesters gathered in the

Solomon capital and its

parliament was set on fire

parliament in fury at Beijing

result of the government

not listening to the people

on a range of issues over

China and Taiwan.

Police in riot gear used

tear gas and rubber bullets

against protesters. They

stopped some arson at-

tempts in Chinatown, but

some shops were looted.

Radio New Zealand, re-

porting from Honiara, said

Wednesday’s protest was

reminiscent of civil unrest in

2006 when rioters rampaged through

Chinatown, burning most of it down in

anger over the rising level of Chinese

ownership of Solomon businesses.

Juanita Matanga, a spokeswoman for

the Royal Solomon Islands Police

Force, told a press conference that “a lot

of people” had destroyed buildings in

Honiara, including a police station.

Only 15 countries now recognise

Taiwan, including the Marshall Islands

and Nauru in the Pacific.

MARC BOW

The $30 sketch that

turned out to be

a masterpiece

Page 41

month. The runway at

the new Wolf ’s Fang

resort is a C Level

airport, on which only

specialised pilots can

land.

The world’s most

remote continent has

become a sought-after

destination for those

who are able to pay

up to $50,000 per

person to stay in a

heated igloo.

The tour operators

face tight regulations.

All rubbish and

human waste must be

removed to minimise

the impact on the

fragile environment.

ANTARCTICA

South Pole

Cape Town

Wolf’s Fang

runway

A340’s

2,800 mile

journey

Protestersgatheredid iin tttthhhehe

re

no

on

Ch

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ag

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so

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re

2006 hn

Putin’s top

cat is back

in the wild

Russia

Marc Bennetts Moscow

The footprints of a rare Amur tiger have

been discovered for the first time in

50 years in Russia’s largest and coldest

region in a sign that the animal is begin-

ning to thrive after decades on the brink

of extinction.

The Amur tiger, also called the Siber-

ian tiger, is the world’s largest cat and

can weigh up to 45st and measure ten

feet in length.

It was once found throughout

Russia’s far eastern region, northern

China and the Korean peninsula, but

large-scale hunting and logging re-

duced its number in the wild to fewer

than 50 by the 1940s.

The Soviet Union became the first

country in the world to list it as a pro-

tected species after the Second World

War. President Putin has championed

its cause, approving tougher punish-

ments in 2013 for the poaching, illegal

trade, transportation or storage of the

animals.

Successful conservation efforts have

almost doubled the population from

330 in 2005 to more than 600 today.

The great majority of the tigers, which

live for 10 to 15 years in the wild, make

their homes in Kremlin-backed

national parks and nature reserves in

Russia’s far east.

The Tigrus environmental charity

said it had discovered the tracks on a

river bank in southern Yakutia, Russia’s

vast ice kingdom, hundreds of miles

from the tiger’s usual habitat. Tempera-

tures in Yakutia, also known as the

republic of Sakha, drop as low as minus

Antarctica after flying for more than three and a half hours from Cape Town, South Africa. The flight opens up the prospect of tourism on the southern continent 55C in the winter.

The rare Amur

tiger is the largest

cat in the world

AUSTRALIA

Solomon

Islands

Cairns Vanuatu

Coral

Sea 500 miles