Elephant kills youth in Bihar

September 13th, 2009 LUCKNOW - Scores of elephants statues are to come up in a memorial park here in the Uttar Pradesh capital city at a cost of tens of crores of rupees. But for creation and maintenance of a special elephant reserve, the state government can spare only Rs.50 lakh.

August 24th, 2009 DPA HANOI - Vietnamese customs inspectors have discovered more than two tonnes of elephant tusks hidden in a shipping container full of snail shells from Kenya, an official said Monday. Bui Hoang Duong, head of the customs inspection department at the northern port of Haiphong, said inspectors opened the container Friday as part of enhanced scrutiny of shipping from Tanzania, due to recent cases of ivory smuggling.

August 20th, 2009 Thai elephant damages newly fitted artificial limbBANGKOK — An elephant fitted with an artificial limb 10 years after stepping on a land mine has had a minor setback, damaging the device attached to her left front leg. Soraida Salwala of the private group Friends of the Asian Elephant said Thursday that 48-year-old Motola bent the prothesis when she lay down on it.

August 17th, 2009 RANCHI - The Jharkhand forest department is distributing mobile phones free of cost to keep track of movements of wild elephants that run amok in villages close to forest areas. Mobiles are being distributed to one member of the Joint Forest and Village Defence Committee (JFVDC) member of each village.

August 16th, 2009 KOLKATA - A four-month-old sick elephant calf, which was rescued from a riverside in West Bengal's Jalpaiguri district last month, died Sunday at a wildlife camp, a senior state forest department official said. "The young pachyderm, named as Aranya by the forest department officials, died early Sunday," a senior state forest department official said.

August 15th, 2009 KOLKATA - An adult female elephant was killed after getting entangled in electified fencing at an army cantonment in West Bengal's Jalpaiguri district late Friday night, a forest department official said Saturday. "An elephant was electrocuted when it entered an army cantonment near Binnaguri forest area and got entangled in electrified fencing.

July 31st, 2009 PATNA - The Bihar government has decided to check the use of anti-inflammatory Diclofenac medicine in treatment of animals as the drug accumulates in the tissues of carcasses and is leading to the death of vultures. Bihar Animal Resources and Fisheries Minister Ramanarayan Mandal said Friday: "I was told by experts that vultures suffer from renal failure and die after consuming the Diclofenac accumulated in the tissues of the dead animals.

July 23rd, 2009 SILIGURI - At least six houses were damaged by a wild elephant Wednesday night in West Bengal's Darjeeling district, a forest official said Thursday. "An elephant went berserk, and moving out of the forest in Kurseong forest division damaged at least six houses in that area.

July 1st, 2009 Enraged elephant stomps 3 Thai workers to deathBANGKOK — A rampaging elephant stomped three rubber tappers to death in southern Thailand on Wednesday after it was left to wander freely by its handler, police said. The 38-year-old domesticated elephant is believed to have attacked the workers in three separate plantations in Trang province before it was recaptured.

June 15th, 2009 Official: Sumatran elephant poisoned in IndonesiaJAKARTA, Indonesia — An endangered Sumatran elephant found dead with its tusks removed in northwestern Indonesia may have been killed by poachers using poisoned pineapples, conservationists said Monday. It was the ninth dead elephant found in that region of Sumatra island in three months.

June 11th, 2009 LONDON - An almost 200,000-year-old elephant skeleton from a terrace adjacent to the Solo River in East Java, Indonesia has been excavated recently. The discovery was made by a team from the Geological Survey Institute (GSI) and the University of Wollongong (UOW).

May 30th, 2009 RAIPUR - Worried over the increasing incidences of man-elephant conflict, the Chhattisgarh government is planning to set up villages for wild elephants in areas hit hard by jumbo attacks, an official said Saturday. Such villages are proposed to be set up in the state's northern region where jumbo attacks have claimed the lives of dozens of people in the past two decades.

May 19th, 2009 PATNA - While speculation mounted over whether Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Lalu Prasad would continue in the union cabinet, a section of Congress workers here Tuesday took to the streets Tuesday to insist that it shouldn't be so. Disregarding the scorching heat, Congress workers marched with posters and banners to ask party president Sonia Gandhi to keep Lalu Prasad, railways minister in the outgoing cabinet, out of the new United Progressive Alliance government.

May 15th, 2009 PATNA - Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar on Friday made it clear that whichever coalition gave his state special status could hope for support from him in forming the next government in the Centre. Speaking at a book release function here, Kumar said that the Prime Minister, Dr.Manmohan Singh, had so far refused to give Bihar a special status.

February 13th, 2009 PATNA - In a bizarre occult ritual, a 10-year-old girl was allegedly killed by her mother and brother in a Bihar village to appease a Hindu god, a police officer said Saturday. Sunita Kumari was killed in Hardoravara village in Siwan district Friday after occult practitioner Harendra Sah asked the victim's mother Sachia Devi and brother Ramesh Kumar Yadav to sacrifice her for divine blessings.