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KERALA: It is one man's love for an elephant that is standing between the animal's life and death. For days, Kuttikrishnan, a pet elephant in its 40s, has been lying in agony on a road, ever since it was knocked down by a speeding bus. With the hip and thighbones broken, there is no way the pet elephant can stand on his legs. And with veterinarian Jacob Cheeran warning that there is a possibility of body sores leading to septicemia, there are already calls for its mercy killing - to end its misery. But Swarnakumari Warrier, the owner, would have...

Sorry if this is a repost. Elephants and lions unleashed on North America? 18:00 17 August 2005 NewScientist.com news service Kurt Kleiner Elephants, lions, cheetahs and camels could one day roam the western US under a proposal to recreate North American landscapes as they existed more than 13,000 years ago, when humans first encountered them. The plan, proposed in a commentary in Nature and co-authored by 13 ecologists and conservation biologists, would help enrich a North American ecosystem that was left almost devoid of large mammals at the end of the Pleistocene period. It would also help preserve wildlife that...

CERGY, France (AFP) - An envelope leaking a strange pinkish powder sparked an alert in a Paris suburban post office, but tests revealed the substance to be nothing more than dessicated elephant dung, police said. With France on high terrorism alert following the London bombings last month, postal workers in a sorting centre in the northwestern suburb of Bonneuil-en-France took no chance when they noticed the strange envelope from Sri Lanka with the powder inside. After police were called in Thursday, six employees who had been exposed to the powder were subjected to medical examinations. The powder was analysed too,...

UC Berkeley paleontologist Mark Goodwin said Wednesday the bones discovered Saturday by environmental watchdog Roger Castillo may be the femur, tusks and pelvic bones of a Columbian mammoth, a species of ancient elephant that roamed Silicon Valley tens of thousands of years ago. UC Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology has a mammoth pelvis and some assorted teeth and bones found at other South Bay sites, Goodwin said. But the generous scattering of bones atop the ground at the San Jose site Goodwin visited Wednesday may indicate a more complete specimen. "If these are tusks here, there's a good chance that there's...

CHENNAI: A three-day census of wild elephants in southern India, home to one of the largest elephant concentrations in Asia, has just ended. The headcount was done in a 3,000 sq km area in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Wild elephants in the states move between the forests of the three states through traditional routes known as elephant corridors. According to the government, India still has more than 27,600 elephants, including the domesticated ones, and southern India alone accounts for more than half of them. But wildlife experts contest this. Some 600 officials and an equal number of volunteers criss-crossed...

CHONBURI, Apr 29 (TNA) - A wild elephant whose penis was injured by a tree branch is being treated by His Majesty the King's veterinary surgeon, it emerged today. The veterinarian, Dr. Alongkorn Mahanop, travelled to Sri Racha district in the country's eastern province of Chonburi today to treat Phlai Thong Bai, a 32 year-old elephant whose mahout had taken him to Laemchabang to search for food. The condition of the elephant, whose wound had become infected, was said to be improving after the Royal vet injected him with medicine. (TNA)--E006

Rampaging Elephants My Summary Around 3:20pm, Apr. 20, six elephants escaped from Children's Grand Park in Seoul, S. Korea. They rampaged  in the neighborhood, injuring one woman and causing extensive property damage. Scores of firemen and policemen had to spend hours to capture them and bring them back safely.Elephants were making a round in the park to lure more crowd to their daily show. A few dozen pigeons were munching on crumbs left on the road ahead. They were so busy eating that they could not realize elephants are coming. When they realized that a giant beast is only a...

SEATTLE - A ticklish business, artificially inseminating an elephant. With the help of high-tech ultrasound and computer gear, special protective clothing, wheelbarrows and not a little cooperation from Chai, a 26-year-old Asian elephant, Woodland Park Zoo officials hope the complicated process led by two German scientists will result in the pachyderm giving again birth, as she did four years ago. Chai got pregnant by natural means last time around, but it wasn't all candy and flowers. She had to endure the stress of getting shipped off to a zoo in Missouri, where some of her fellow elephants showed her hostility....

From the OK, we have heard it all department... Finally - toilet-trained elephants From correspondents in Bangkok January 20, 2005 MEET Diew the elephant - the world's first potty-trained pachyderm. Diew the elephant - the world's first potty-trained pachyderm Visitors to a Thai elephant camp were treated to a call of nature with a difference yesterday, as five-year-old Diew demonstrated how to use and flush an oversized toilet. The massive but immodest beast had no problem posing for the cameras as he went about his business. Handlers at the camp, in northern Thailand's Chiang Mai province, have previously taught their...

As a persistent surveyor of California education policies and attendant inclination of the state's legislature and teacher's union to emphasize self-esteem, revisionist indoctrination and sexual orientation into the classroom at the expense of basic academics, it was with low expectations that I read an eruption of stories on our "failing schools" delivered by the politically routine press on January 4. The writers were reacting to a just-issued Rand report titled: California's K-12 Schools: How Are They Doing? One story stated the report's intent: "The nonpartisan Rand Corporation examined every measurable aspect of California schools, from student achievement to teacher qualifications...

PHUKET (AP) When Mother Nature unleashed its wrath, a member of the Animal Kingdom stepped in. A British tourist says she saw an elephant save several children on a Thai beach when the killer waves struck. The animal had been brought to a beach resort in Phuket to entertain children. Laura Barnett says the elephant’s keeper hoisted kids up onto the animal’s back, and then walked them off to safety. Barnett told her tale from London. She and her family escaped the disaster, but the beach where she was staying was destroyed.

When Mother Nature unleashed its wrath, a member of the Animal Kingdom stepped in. A British tourist says she saw an elephant save several children on a Thai beach when the killer waves struck. The animal had been brought to a beach resort in Phuket to entertain children. Laura Barnett says the elephant's keeper hoisted kids up onto the animal's back, and then walked them off to safety. Barnett told her tale from London. She and her family escaped the disaster, but the beach where she was staying was destroyed.

Please place your predictions, traditions, comments, jabs, and jokes on this thread for the 2004 Auburn/Alabama game...This is the thread...

GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) - It is an unexpected headache for the Indian army, an unlikely embarrassment for the government and an unwelcome challenge for the railways department. Elephants in India are on the rampage, coming into conflict with man ever more frequently and ever more dangerously. It is a battle the normally gentle animals seem destined to lose. In the northeastern Indian state of Assam, elephants have been raiding army depots, eating the military's rations, drinking its liquor and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. In Bangladesh, stray elephants from India have been terrorizing villagers and destroying farms,...

What do you call a 338-pound baby? Cast your vote and find out CHOOSE OR LOSE The keepers have come up with six names they like. The names (and also their Thai translations): Bella: waiting, time Asha: hope Sitara: star Ananti: gift Soma: beautiful eyes Anjika: blessed Does she look like a Bella or Asha or, maybe, Soma? Right now Houston Zoo staffers and volunteers call the 338-pounder Baby.And Baby is OK when you're alone with your mother, but when you go out in the yard with the big elephants, you need a proper name.After 22 months of anticipation, Shanti's...

IT MAKES perfect sense to a person marooned in a convention city suffused with phony symbolism that the first famous advance man in politics worked for a dictator, albeit a somewhat enlightened one. In the 18th century, Catherine the Great mixed a preference for modernity with a ruthless hold on power. Artifice was as important to the ruler as it was to the ruled, illusions being central to the totalitarian mind-set. Enter Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin. On a journey through the Ukraine and Crimea -- what might be called a campaign swing today -- it was Potemkin's precedent-setting duty to...

CLINTON, Iowa — A national animal advocacy group is calling for a federal investigation into a circus incident at Clinton Riverboat Days, where an African elephant injured an employee stooping near its water bowl. . People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, of Norfolk, Va., claims the elephant “attacked” former circus worker Hristo Entchev July 4 in the city’s Riverview Park. . That’s not the way officials with the Florida-based Liebel Family Circus and Riverboat Days describe the incident, which left the worker with a head injury that required stitches. They said the elephant merely turned its head,...

After a yearlong effort to banish Ruby -- the meek elephant who's become quarrelsome -- to the American hinterland, Mayor James Hahn did an about-face Monday and ordered the city's 9,000-pound pachyderm returned to Los Angeles. Under pressure from animal activists and a lawsuit that warned that her health was in jeopardy -- Hahn directed that the 42-year-old African elephant be returned after 14 months at the Knoxville Zoo in Tennessee, where she had become something of an outcast. "Though the move of Ruby to the Knoxville Zoo was well-intentioned," Hahn said in a statement, "it is clear that she...

14/07/2004 13:54 - (SA) Elephant beats murder rap Bangkok - A veteran performing elephant has been dramatically cleared of killing a worker at the world Aids forum after footprint and forensic tests, police said on Wednesday. The elephant, called Very Handsome and with a screen credit for a slow walk-on part in Alexander the Great, was cleared after officers checked his tusks for signs of violence. Very Handsome, 'Sud Lor' in Thai, had been the prime suspect in the killing of Somsak Klangkaew, 55, who was grabbed by an elephant and smashed to the ground. "The doctor collected and tested...

Milwaukee playwright and actress Gina Lucita Monreal is about to stage a really huge new play, "Big Dreams (An Evening With An Elephant, Enclosed)," at 8 p.m. July 9 and 10 in the Latino Arts Inc. Auditorium at United Community Center, 1028 S. 9th St. Monreal's first full-length play stars a life-size puppet of an Asian elephant and tells the story of what a zoo elephant named Sky thinks about when she is caged alone at night. Monreal has had her original one-act plays produced here and in Chicago. For research, she went to various elephant sanctuaries. She spoke with...