32 2GM Wednesday January 26 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
Search for 39 people
off coast of Florida
United States The US coast guard
is searching for 39 people who
have been missing at sea for
several days after a boat believed
to be used by people smugglers
capsized off the coast of Florida.
A man found clinging to the boat
45 miles east of Fort Pierce said
he was one of 40 people to have
left Bimini, in the Bahamas, on
Saturday night. He said the boat
capsized in severe weather and no
one was wearing a life jacket. The
agency patrols the seas around the
Bahamas — 50 miles from the US
— Cuba, the Dominican Republic
and Haiti along routes used by
migrants. On Friday, 88 Haitians
were found in an overloaded sail
freighter west of the Bahamian
island of Great Inagua. (AP)North Korea holds fifth
missile test in a month
North Korea Seoul has accused
Pyongyang of firing two cruise
missiles in its fifth weapons test
this year. The last time North
Korea tested this many weapons
was in 2019 after talks between
Kim Jong-un and President
Trump failed. The US imposed
more sanctions and proposed
talks after Kim restated his
goal of military expansion last
month. He has responded with
more tests and hints of nuclear
advancement. (AFP)Las Vegas casino giant
to open in the Emirates
United Arab Emirates One of the
seven sheikhdoms that make up
the UAE has announced a
multibillion-pound deal to open a
“gaming” resort in collaboration
with the casino giant Wynn
Resorts. It did not elaborate on
what activities would be offered.
Another Las Vegas operator,
Caesars Entertainment, already
operates a huge resort in Dubai,
but without the gambling, which
is forbidden by the Quran. (AP)French tourist jailed
by Iran for eight years
Iran A French man was sentenced
to eight years in jail for spying.
Benjamin Brière, 36, was arrested
in May 2020 while travelling in
Iran and has been on hunger
strike for more than a month. He
was also given an eight-month
sentence for publishing
propaganda. His lawyer said the
process was a masquerade and
the verdict was the product of a
“purely political process” that was
devoid of justification. (AFP)Driver’s six days in jail
after identity mix-up
United States A black man spent
six days in a Nevada jail after he
was mistaken for a suspect of the
same name who is white and
twice his age. Shane Lee Brown,
25, who is not charged with a
crime, is suing for $500,000 after
he was jailed for failing to show
his licence during a traffic stop in
January 2020. Las Vegas police
used a warrant in the name of
Shane Neal Brown, 49, who was
charged before Brown was born.Congolese rebels have captured an
endangered pangolin and sent a
ransom demand to conservationists in
what could herald a new trend in
wildlife crime.
Negotiators are attempting to secure
the animal’s release without payment in
the eastern rainforests of the Demo-
cratic Republic of Congo, where more
than 120 armed groups are engaged in
a decades-long conflict over land and
mineral riches.
“This is something new and alarm-
ing,” Adams Cassinga, of Conserv Con-
go, said after “proof of life” pictures
were sent of the pangolin, which was
snatched close to the edge of Virunga
National Park. “If we pay them then we
are doomed, the whole park and all the
apes would be taken hostage.”
Kidnaps of humans have risen over
the past year, with aid workers and ex-
patriate contractors targeted by rebels
hoping to raise fighting funds. An in-
crease in security, particularly after last
year’s killing of the Italian ambassador
to the DRC in a bungled kidnap plot,
has forced gangs to rethink their strate-
gy, Cassinga said.
“They have seen how much money is
spent on conservation issues and that
rare animals are prized by the inter-
national community, and they would
say even more so than the poor com-
munities who live in the same area,”
Cassinga added.
The DRC’s forests are home to spe-
cies found nowhere else in the world.
Hundreds of armed rangers guard
mountain gorillas in Virunga, a Unesco
world heritage site. Conserv Congo wasCavern club A diver explores the Cenote Dos Pisos, or “two floors” cave in Tulum, Mexico, so named because of stalactite-filled tunnels that sit one on top of the other
An Indian farmer has spent almost all
his savings on building an elaborate
nestbox to protect doves and other
birds against the annual monsoon
rains.
Bhagvanji Rupapara’s nestbox in
Navi Sankali village in the western state
of Gujarat is a tiered, 40ft high circular
structure made up of 2,500 clay pots. It
TOM ST GEORGEPay up or the pangolin dies,
threaten Congo kidnappers
contacted on Sunday for help by com-
munity conservationists near the town
of Mweso who had received pictures of
the snatched giant pangolin, the largest
of the eight pangolin species. The grass-
roots group in North Kivu province al-
so received a call saying “pay us and we
hand it over for release, if not we will do
what we want”, Cassinga added.
The Nduma Defence of Congo, one
of the oldest armed groups in the
region, is thought to be responsible. It
has yet to put a price on the pangolin’s
head. “They are testing the market,”
Cassinga said.
Pangolins are ranked as the world’s
most trafficked animal, with the Afri-
can Wildlife Foundation estimating
that up to 2.7 million are poached from
Africa’s rainforests each year. In China
and Vietnam its meat is considered a
delicacy and its scales coveted in tradi-
tional medicine, though there is no evi-
dence that they cure any ills. All eight
pangolin species are on the Inter-
national Union for Conservation of Na-
ture’s red list, with three listed as criti-
cally endangered. As regulators of in-
sect populations, pangolins are a key
species in the rainforest.Democratic Republic of Congo
Jane Flanagan
£10m to ‘free’
Aboriginal
flag design
Australia
Bernard Lagan Sydney
Australia is to pay an Aboriginal artist
millions of dollars for the copyright of
the yellow, black and red flag he
designed more than 50 years ago in an
attempt to “free” the symbol from bitter
fights over who can use it.
The government said that it will pay
A$20 million (£10.6 million) for licens-
ing rights to the design by Harold
Thomas, 75, which has become a sym-
bol of the struggles of Australia’s first
people since being launched at the
National Aborigines Day march in
Adelaide in 1971.
Thomas’s previous sole copyright al-
lowed him to grant licences to other
parties to make copies of the flag or
refuse permission. In 2018 he gave an
exclusive licence to a non-Aboriginal
clothing company, which then began
issuing infringement notices to small
non-profit Aboriginal organisations as
well as Australia’s biggest football codes
for their past use of the design.
The row led to a #freetheflag move-
ment on social media, which pushed for
the government’s intervention.
According to Thomas, the flag’s red
background represents the land, the
black the Aboriginal people and the
yellow the sun. He has said he
will use some of his slice of the
payout to establish a char-
ity for indigenous
Australians.Birdman blows nest egg on palace for doves
took a year to build and was completed
last month at a cost of nearly £20,000.
Rupapara, 66, used to sit in the fields
where he grows wheat and cotton and
watch as birds built their nests inside
the wells on his land, but every year the
nests were washed away by the torren-
tial rains that last several months.
“I used to wonder how I could create
nice, dry homes for them,” he said.
“They seemed so agitated when their
nests were washed away that I felt I hadto do something.” He tried various
designs that did not work until he hit on
the idea of using clay pots, raised off the
ground to keep dogs and cats away, and
attached to a solid steel structure. The
design keeps the pots waterproof.
It is not quite a full house yet. Some of
the pots are unoccupied because inter-
est in his project has brought camera
crews and reporters to the site. “I hope
the media interest will fade away soon
so that there is peace,” he said.India
Amrit Dhillon Delhi
The flag’s licence is held
by a clothing companyThe pangolin’s kidnappers sent “proof
of life” pictures to conservationists