2 British tourists freed after

being kidnapped in Congo

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — Two British tourists have been released in eastern Congo two days after being kidnapped, according to announcements Sunday by Virunga National Park and the British foreign secretary.

Boris Johnson didn’t give any further details, but paid tribute to the authorities from the African country and the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation “for their tireless help during this terrible case.”

He said that “my thoughts are now with the family of Virunga Park ranger Rachel Makissa Baraka who was killed during the kidnapping, and with the injured driver.”

Cosma Wilungula, director general of the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation, welcomed the tourists’ release.

“We would like to thank our brave team for ensuring the swift resolution of this incident, and the safe return of the two British nationals,” he said.

Virunga Park director, Emmanuel de Merode, said: “We are deeply saddened by the death of Virunga National Park Ranger Baraka, whose life was tragically cut short while protecting the passengers and driver. We wish to extend our deepest condolences to her family and our sincerest gratitude for her bravery and service to Congo. We would like to thank the U.K. government for their support with this issue.”

Will Alsop, UK architect with

exuberant style, dies at 70

LONDON (AP) — British architect Will Alsop, whose exuberant buildings enliven cities on both sides of the Atlantic, has died, his company said Sunday. He was 70.

Marcos Rosello, a co-founder with Alsop of the London-based architecture practice aLL Design, said Alsop died Saturday after a short illness.

Born in Northampton in central England in 1947, Alsop studied at the Architectural Association in London. He cited 20th-century modernists Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe and 18th-century British neo-Classicist John Soane among his influences. But Alsop’s work had a playful style all its own.

“Architects are the only profession that actually deal in joy and delight — all the others deal in doom and gloom,” Alsop told The Observer newspaper in 2007.

Alsop’s buildings include the green, copper-clad Peckham Library in London, which won the Stirling Prize for architecture; London’s futuristic North Greenwich Underground station; and the Sharp Centre at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, a black-and-white box poised rakishly on multicolored stilts.

Alsop also completed several residential projects, other transit stations and a striking government building in Marseille, France that is nicknamed the Big Blue.