Animals 24-7

Dogs, cats, horses, wildlife, zoonoses, & nature

Sperm-sorting comes to India through cow-loving Modi government

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Slippery business may stop the bull calf surplus          NEW DELHI,  India––Cracking down hard against illegal cattle slaughter and exports to slaughter,  while boosting milk production,  the Hindi nationalist Nahendra Modi regime ruling India since 2014 caused the perennial Indian bull calf surplus to explode. Now,  however,  the Modi government has reportedly […]

Heart failure fells Vier Pfoten (Four Paws) founder Helmut Dungler, 56

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Dungler died at the Lionsrock sanctuary he founded             BETHLEHEM,  South Africa––Helmut Dungler,  56,  founder of the international animal charity Vier Pfoten (Four Paws),  died on January 5,  2020 from a sudden massive heart attack suffered on one of his frequent visits to the Lionsrock sanctuary,  among the biggest and most ambitious of the many […]

Helping animals through the Australian firestorm

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Reports from 25 of the hundreds of animal aid charities working in the hot zones CANBERRA,  Australian Capital Territories––More than 100 wildfires raging in Australian coastal forests and wooded parts of the Australian interior in September 2019 exploded beyond immediate hope of control and burst into global consciousness during the first days of 2020,  splitting […]

Why U.S. furriers don’t advertise much any more

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Mink coat ads vanish from newsprint  SACRAMENTO,  California––A furrier somewhere in the U.S. may yet buy a page of advertising,  in what little remains of 2019,  in one of the thousands of newspapers that are electronically searchable at www.NewspaperArchive.com. As of December 29,  2019,  however,  the year appeared to be ending without a single NewspaperArchive […]

Sidney Holt, 93, achieved goal that great whales would outlive him

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70-year scientific career focused on whale conservation PACIANO, Italy––Marine scientist Sidney J. Holt,  93,  died on December 22,  2019 at his home in Paciano,  Italy,  about 80 miles north of Rome and 10 miles north of his previous longtime home in Citta della Pieve,  Italy. Holt thereby realized his often stated life’s ambition of having […]

Fire & ice puts Australian koalas and Icelandic horses at urgent risk

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Songwriter Joni Mitchell in 1982 recommended “50/50 fire and ice” as the best response to a crisis.  That isn’t working for either Icelandic horses or koalas.              REYKJAVIK, Iceland;  SYDNEY, Australia––Eco-disasters afflicting Icelandic horses and Australian koalas starkly illustrate extreme and contrasting effects of global warming as 2019 comes to an end. Hundreds of Icelandic […]

Is Down Under biological warfare killing bunnies across the Pacific?

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Spreading disease by air is much easier than containing it by any method             LANGLEY, Washington––About sixty feral Belgian hares, long beloved village pets in Langley,  Washington,  may be the latest casualties of deliberate releases of the rabbit hemorrhagic disease RHD-1 in Australia and New Zealand,  8,000 and 7,500 miles across the Pacific Ocean,  respectively. […]

Livestock shipment to Middle East goes sideways; to Hawaii, goes backward

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Drowned sheep & asphixiated cattle result from opposite approaches to maximizing profit MILILANI, Hawaii––Compared to the drowning deaths of more than 14,350 sheep on November 24,  2019 aboard the capsized Queen Hind in the port of Midia,  Romania,  the deaths of 21 Angus heifers aboard a Young Brothers barge en route from Honolulu to Kauai,  […]

Gadhi Mai 2019: more animals killed than in 2014, but fewer people watched

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But drone videos show––again––that the body count was vastly lower than is often claimed BARIYARPUR,  Nepal––More animals were slain at the 2019 Gadhi Mai sacrificial massacre in Bariyarpur,  Nepal,  than in 2014––a deeply disappointing discovery,  after 15 years of international efforts to stop the every-five-years bloodbath held in honor of a local goddess. Drone video […]

Iran to keep six cheetah conservationists in prison. Two more await fate.

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Sentences of six to 10 years come amid violent repression of anti-government protests & five-day Internet shutdown TEHRAN, Iran––The Iranian theocracy headed by Hassan Rouhani on November 20,  2019 celebrated “victory” over six days of public protest over fuel prices soaring by as much as 300%––and sent a warning to the protesters––by sentencing six of eight […]