Days that live in infamy NEW YORK, N.Y.––Kaporos, the chicken-swinging ritual practiced annually by the men of about 130,000 Hassidic Jewish households worldwide, mostly members of the evangelical Chabad sect, will occur during the early morning hours from September 20, 2025 to October 1, 2025, the day immediately preceding Yom Kippur. A week after that […]
A personal tribute to vegan author John Robbins, by Vasu Murti
Diet for A New America author John Robbins dies at 77 from legacy of polio, ANIMALS 24-7 headlined on June 24, 2025, above an extensive obituary covering the facts of Robbins’ life and briefly reviewing his teachings. Robbins’ longtime friend Vasu Murti here offers his further and more personal perspective. The number of animals killed […]
Robots to the rescue of Indian temple elephants!
Technology challenges a cruel pre-technology custom that originated with the Buddhist prescription for kindness to retired working animals CHENNAI, India––Thirty-five years after U.S. inventor Douglas Malewicki in 1989 built the 40-foot-tall flame-spewing Robosaurus, thrilling and terrifying exhibition crowds as an apparent real-life Godzilla ever since, Nanditha Krishna, author of The Sacred Animals of India, on […]
Remove bees, wasps, or hornets without getting stung
First, don’t go bugs by Merritt Clifton For years I was the fellow whom people would call for help when they had problems with bees and closely related species. I never had much trouble handling bees, wasps, or hornets, but even though handling them may not be hard, there is not any one simple answer […]
Life of Pei: the battle for compassion; my story and journey so far
by Pei Feng Su Lantern Publishing & Media P.O. Box 1350 Woodstock, NY 12498 www.lanternpm.org Reviewed by Merritt Clifton The animal advocacy world knows Pei Feng Su as the intensely hard-working, politely amiable, fluently multi-lingual, supremely capable and outwardly poised founder of ACTAsia for Animals, a humane education society with offices in London, Taipei, and […]
Animal welfare history in Madras/Chennai & why it matters to the world
History of the Animal Welfare Movement in Madras/Chennai by Prashanth Krishna C.P.R. Publications c/o C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, 1 Eldams Road, Alwarpet, Chennai 600 018, India Reviewed by Merritt Clifton Prashanth Krishna, author of History of the Animal Welfare Movement in Madras/Chennai, writes from the long shadows of his parents, 60-year Blue Cross of India […]
Lumpy skin disease––what’s that?––hits cattle from Africa to Nepal
Lumpy skin disease––yes, it’s ugly––also set Australia & Indonesia at odds for months. KATHMANDU, Nepal––Best known as the birthplace of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, circa 564 B.C., and as the land of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, Nepal during the summer of 2023 gained a more sinister distinction as ground zero for arguably the […]
Sri Lanka animal advocates fight to stop corrupted “animal welfare” bill
Exempts anything done in the names of food production, science, & culture 22-year-old fracas over Depo Provera injections in street dogs lurks in the background COLOMBO, Sri Lanka––Sri Lanka may be the only nation in the world, and perhaps the only nation ever, in which almost every indigenous animal advocacy organization appears to be frantically, […]
Elephant release marks 75th anniversary of Indian independence
(Adapted, with some explanatory text added and legal details deleted specific only to India, from a much longer version by Norma Alvares, president, People for Animals, Goa, and Alok Hiswarwala Gupta, Centre for Research on Animal Rights, published by Herald Goa on August 14, 2022.) While the people of India prepared to celebrate 75 […]
How “Napalm the dog” protests funded the “Animal Revolution”
Without Kent State, would there have been an animal rights movement? KENT, Ohio––The shots fired by National Guard members into demonstrators against the Vietnam War at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 were in a sense the first shots fired in what British historian Richard Ryder would call, 30 years later, the Animal […]