Deccan Chronicle

Vehicle with explosives found near Mukesh Ambani’s house

More than 150 bird species are ‘lost’ with no confirmed sightings

- SHAHAB ANSARI | DC MUMBAI, FEB. 25

THE SUV was noticed at around 3 pm after which some people from the vicinity alerted the local police, who rushed to the spot.

● CCTV FOOTAGE of the area revealed the SUV was parked beside a tree on the Carmichael Road at around 1 am.

An abandoned vehicle with 20 gelatin sticks was found just metres away from business tycoon Mukesh Ambani’s house in Mumbai on Thursday.

The SUV was noticed at around 3 pm after which some people from the vicinity alerted the local police, who rushed to the spot and cordoned off the entire area, sending the state government and the police into a tizzy.

A Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad (BDDS) team reached the spot immediatel­y, he said. It was not an assembled explosive device, he said, adding that further investigat­ion was on.

“A Scorpio with 20 gelatin sticks was found near Mukesh Ambani’s Mumbai residence. The crime branch of Mumbai Police is investigat­ing the entire matter and the truth will emerge soon,” Maharashtr­a home minister Anil Deshmukh said.

According to reports, CCTV footage of the area revealed the SUV was parked beside a tree on the Carmichael Road at around 1 am. More than one person was seen alighting from the car.

Deshmukh said that the car was parked some distance away from Ambani’s palatial house.

Mumbai Police spokespers­on, DCP S. Chaitanya, said, “The gelatin sticks recovered in the SUV were not an assembled explosive device. But details of the risks they posed would be known only after a thorough probe.”

Efforts are on to trace the persons who parked the vehicle there, from where they came, what were their diabolic motives, who or what were the exact targets etc., officials said.

RESEARCHER­S HOPED to go back to the area where it was recently spotted, but Covid-19 travel restrictio­ns could slow the effort.

Jakarta, Feb. 25: A bird last seen more than 170 years ago in the rainforest­s of Borneo has been rediscover­ed, amazing conservati­onists who have long assumed it was extinct.

The Black-browed Babbler has only ever been documented once — when it was first described by scientists around 1848 — eluding all subsequent efforts to find it.

But late last year, two men in Indonesian Borneo saw a bird they didn't recognise and snapped photos of it before releasing the palm-sized creature back into the forest, according to Global Wildlife

Conservati­on.

Ornitholog­ists were astounded to find that the Black-browed Babbler was alive and well, despite not having been seen since before Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species”.

“It was a bit like a 'Eureka!' moment,” said Panji Gusti Akbar, lead author of a paper on the discovery published Thursday in the journal

“This bird is often called 'the biggest enigma in Indonesian ornitholog­y.' It's mind-blowing to think that it's not extinct and it's still living in these lowland forests.” Little is known about the creature with brown and grey feathers, which has been “missing” longer than any other Asian bird, according to the paper.

Researcher­s hoped to go back to the area where it was recently spotted, but Covid-19 travel restrictio­ns could slow the effort.

“There is now a critical window of opportunit­y for conservati­onists to secure these forests to protect the babbler and other species,” said Ding Li Yong, a co-author on the paper and a Singapore-based conservati­onist with BirdLife Internatio­nal.

More than 150 species of birds around the world are considered “lost” with no confirmed sightings in the past decade, conservati­onists say.

“Discoverie­s like this are incredible and give us so much hope that it's possible to find other species that have been lost to science for decades or longer,” said Barney Long, Global Wildlife Conservati­on's senior director of species conservati­on.

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