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Kenyan rangers have devised a hi-tech way of saving endangered elephants - by getting the animals to send text messages.Elephants from the Ol Pejeta conservancy have been equipped with a mobile phone SIM card on their collar which automatically sends text messages if they head towards villages. Bull elephants, ranked as near extinct in the Red List of vulnerable species, are renowned as a nuisance for raiding villagers' crops during the harvest, sometimes wiping out six months of income at a time. Previously the Kenya Wildlife Service had reluctantly shot five of the animals who persisted in stealing crops. But...

Jul 21st, 2008 The RNC agrees to remove the Republican Elephant from CafePress’ Endangered Species List - Grand Old Party Ensues! Some of you may have seen some of the media coverage (maybe here, here, or here) regarding the Republican National Committee’s recent complaints about our shopkeepers’ use of the terms “GOP,” “Grand Old Party,” “Republican National Committee,” “RNC,” and various elephant designs. To sum it up: back in February, the RNC demanded that CafePress “cease and desist from allowing vendors to utilize the federally registered trademarks of the RNC” and threatened legal action. While we’re open to working...

Wind, rain and bitter cold could not keep five determined women from sending their message to Woodland Park Zoo: An elephant never forgets. The women, representing three animal activist organizations, went to the zoo Friday morning to remember Hansa, the zoo's baby elephant, who died one year ago, and to protest the zoo's decision to once again impregnate Hansa's mother, Chai. The activists claim that because Hansa died of herpes, Chai might also carry the disease and could pass it on if she had another child. "If she has another baby and it dies, she won't recover," said Nancy Farnam,...

PATNA, India (Reuters) - An elephant named "Osama bin Laden" that has killed more than 11 people and injured dozens over the past few months was shot dead in Jharkhand, officials said on Saturday. The wild male elephant, had been terrorising villagers in two states, destroying their crops and homes. Forest officials and a police team tracked down the rogue jumbo in Jharkhand late on Friday, where it was shot dead, Ravi Ranjan, a senior government official said. "Yes, Osama has finally been killed and it took us 20 bullets to silence him," Ranjan told Reuters from Jharkhand on Saturday....

Elephant ancestors were semi-aquatic By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 10:01pm BST 14/04/2008 A primitive ancestor of today's elephants grazed in swamps 40 million years ago, according to a study of fossil teeth. The evidence that the ancient relative of today's elephants lived in fresh water is published today by an international team led by an Oxford University scientist. Moeritherium, a 37 million-year-old amphibious relative of elephants The scientists were investigating the lifestyle of the two early elephants - called proboscideans - Moeritherium ('the beast from Lake Moeris') and Barytherium, which looked like a slender version of today's Asian...

Why are elephants used as the symbol of the Republican Party? Watch this and see... Discover the answer

I attended the Council for National Policy meeting last week in New Orleans and listened to John McCain address the who's who of Hillary Rodham Clinton's vast right-wing conspiracy. It was another chance for McCain to, in his words, "not just unite, but reignite the base." How did the crowd think he did? Let's just say it's hard to ignite anything with cold water and no fire. He talked about two legs of the Republican stool - spending/taxes and national security. But the third leg - social issues - went unmentioned. When questioned, he failed to connect with the people...

February 14, 2008 Zoo slammed for elephant's 'under-age pregancy' Philippe Naughton Sydney's Taronga Zoo has been reprimanded by animal rights activists for letting an Asian elephant fall pregnant even though she is only nine years old. The zoo, famed for its views over Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, proudly announced today that Thong Dee was five months into a 22-month pregnancy and should become the first captive elephant in Australia to give birth. It even released ultrasound images to confirm what it called an "historic event". But Erica Martin, who heads the Asia Pacific office of the International...

In the Trees A republican elephant in the garden of a home where President Bush attended a fundraiser in Hillsborough, California.

Zimbabwe unveils plans to slaughter excess elephants for dried meat Posted : Fri, 04 Jan 2008 10:24:01 GMT Author : DPA Category : Africa (World) Africa World News | Home Harare/Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's parks and wildlife authority has announced plans to dry and sell elephant meat as a way of making use of the country's burgeoning elephant population, the official Herald newspaper reported Friday. The state-run body will apply to get a quota of elephants it can slaughter to make the delicacy, which is known in southern Africa as biltong. Abbatoirs will have to be specially constructed for the purpose,...

SYDNEY - An elephant toppled out of a truck and killed a circus worker in Australia on Thursday, police said. “The man was killed, crushed to death, while the elephant was being offloaded from a truck,” a spokeswoman for the New South Wales police department said. Police said they had no other details of the incident, which occurred on the grounds of a circus in the seaside community of Yamba, about 700 km (435 miles) north of Sydney. The victim had been the handler of the elephant, named Anna, for two years, local television reported.

30 Aug 2007, 0135 hrs IST,Debajyoti Chakraborty,TNN RANIGANJ (WB): He was tall, dark, handsome and wild at heart. She was city bred, not all that coy. And it was love at first sight. A huge tusker, straight out of the jungle, raided a circus in the wee hours of Wednesday, freed a female elephant and eloped with her to make a cosy home by a pond in Raiganj. This tale of untamed love has yet another bizarre twist: a second female elephant, said to be "very attached" to the one that fled the circus, has broken down and is grieving...

Comic and actor Roseanne Barr has offered a reward to anyone that can return a sex tape of her that has gone "missing." Barr has fired an intern who she alleges stole the tape while working for her on her MySpace page. Barr says on her website: "One of the interns who was administering my MySpace page has been fired. He has stolen my private sex tape. "I am offering $25,000 for its return, unless someone would like to distribute it - then I am willing to deal." She has also claimed that the intern posted offensive messages on the...

The Elephant in the Room of Pasadena Affordable Housing When it comes time to hand out awards for affordable housing in Pasadena who should get the most notoriety? a) Danny Bakewell, Black housing developer and activist b) Jill Shook, activist and author of "Making Housing Happen: A Faith Based Approach" c) Mayor Bill Bogaard, the force behind inclusionary housing law d) Marvin Schacter, low income housing activist, former State Aging Commission member e) Patricia Duff Tucker, Director, Neighborhood Housing Services f) The private landlord elephant in the room The phrase "elephant in the room" is an English idiom for an...

Girl kills elephant with 83-lb bow One of the more unusual stories I've seen on the archery forums recently...

A woman is campaigning to raise awareness of a rare condition which has left her with 11 stone (70kg) legs. Mandy Sellars, 32, from Lancashire, suffers from Proteus syndrome, a condition also thought to have affected the "Elephant Man", Joseph Merrick. Mandy says she is determined to lead an adventurous life

GAUHATI, India - A killer elephant named after Osama bin Laden by fearful villagers was killed by sharpshooters, officials said Sunday. The animal was blamed for 14 deaths in the northeastern state of Assam. "A licensed shooter shot and killed the 10-foot tall bull near the Behali forest reserve in northern Assam," said wildlife warden Chandan Bora. Wildlife authorities had ordered that the elephant be shot and killed by December 31. The order came after the bull — dubbed "Laden" — was blamed for the death of a woman Wednesday near the thickly wooded evergreen jungle where it lived. The...

By IANS Saturday December 16, 07:23 PM Guwahati, Dec 16 (IANS) Laden, a rogue wild Asiatic elephant that was wreaking havoc in Assam, was Saturday shot dead on state orders. A wildlife official said the 10-feet tall male tusk-less elephant was killed by a hunter at the Behali tea plantation in Sonitpur district, 240 km north of Assam's main city of Guwahati. 'Licensed hunter Dipen Ram Phukan and a team of forest rangers shot dead Laden as the elephant was moving around aimlessly and trying to enter a human settlement area,' wildlife warden Chandan Bora told IANS by telephone. 'Local...

'BULL' LADEN AP December 16, 2006 -- GAUHATI, India - Hunters in northeastern India are tracking a rogue elephant blamed for 14 deaths in two years and named Laden - after Osama bin Laden - by fearful villagers. The bull was blamed for a woman's death Wednesday near the evergreen jungle it calls home.

The elephant and the event horizon 26 October 2006 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. How to be in two places at once What happens when you throw an elephant into a black hole? It sounds like a bad joke, but it's a question that has been weighing heavily on Leonard Susskind's mind. Susskind, a physicist at Stanford University in California, has been trying to save that elephant for decades. He has finally found a way to do it, but the consequences shake the foundations of what we thought we knew about space and time. If his calculations are correct,...