ABC News has posted a Reuters story about a free health camp for working elephants in Jaipur, India, near the major tourist attraction known as the Amber Fort. Vetinarians specializing in elephants are training the local handlers and vets to deal with a variety of health problems unique to the hard-working "Jumbos."

Boston furry artist paf! (aka Chris Goodwin) is raising money for his run in the Monster Challenge: Tri Boston triathlon this coming Labor Day weekend. Anyone who makes a donation of $20 or more to help the AIDS Action Committee will receive a free limited edition 12 x 18 poster, signed, numbered, and with their name on it too.

Check out the poster and make a donation and learn more about the run here.

This is a spinoff of the ConFurence's new annual Anthropomorphic Awards. I am trying to compile a database of the Furry novels, short stories, fanzines, movies, art, etc. published and released during 2001 that are good enough to be worth nominating for the final ballot at the end of 2001. I am sure that I have not discovered or had time to read and watch everything that is good enough to qualify. I will send my list so far to anyone who wants to compare notes. Recommendations from others are solicited; it would be nice if this database can be built into a general Recommended Reading/Viewing List of all the best Furry fiction and art of 2001. Contact me at: fredpatten@earthlink.net.

Over 100 animals were found dead when new owners bought a zoo near Rio De Janeiro in Brazil. Enviromental authorities were brought in, and charges have been laid against the previous owners, who, unsatified with running a zoo, were looking into starting a sex club and may have abandoned the animals up to two months before they sold the property.

The animals represented three quarters of the animals in the zoo, and many of them were endangered species. The new owners have closed the property to try and bring the remaining animals back to health.
BBC article can be found here.

According to this article by the BBC:

Norway has bestowed one of its most prestigious military honours at a ceremony in Edinburgh - on a penguin. The king penguin, known as Nils Olav, has been promoted to the rank of honourable regimental sergeant major. The bird is the first to hold the rank in the Norwegian Army.

Click on 'Read More' for Midwest FurFest's August newsletter. Find out what's up with furry fandom's coolest (pun possibly intended) convention!

CBS News reports that a 1500-lb bull moose decided to beat the heat by hopping into a Spokane family's back yard pool. Although the pool owner was startled, he did manage to snap a photo before the moose exited the pool and hopped over the fence to leave, presumably refreshed. You can see the photo here.

Jerry Beck's Cartoon Research website quotes a "Variety" report that Hayao Miyazaki's newest animated feature, about a young girl whose parents are turned into pigs and who must venture into a bizarre fantasy world to save them, is setting new box records in Japan that far surpass the records set by Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke", Japan's top-grossing film upon its release in 1997. Incidentally, although "Cartoon Research" is about all animation and not just funny animals, there is plenty of news about other funny animal theatrical and TV cartoon projects.

Editor's note: In case it's unclear, the movie concerned is Spirited Away

Despite the seriousness of the topic of protecting what little Florida wetland remains, I had to get several chuckles out of this spoof in The Onion:

Endangered Manatee Struggles to Make Self Understood to Congress

Sci-fi Wire reports that Warner Brothers Television has greenlighted a pilot for a proposed series based on Wizard of Oz books by Frank Baum. The series will be set 60 years after Dorothy's adventures in Oz, and will center on a young woman who comes to Oz and winds up leading a rebellion against the Emerald City. No news on which, if any, characters from the actual books will appear in the series. You can read the Sci-Fi wire story here.

At the recent RoboCup, Sony's AIBOs played soccer. Sort of a more civilized version of the Robot Wars program on TV. It's worth going to MSNBC just to see the pictures of the dogs splayed on the playing field. Anthropomorphics in its most literal form!

Cats. Computers. From the Meisha Merlin website. See http://www.meishamerlin.com/CatsinCyberspace.html for a picture of the cover and ordering information.

From NPR's Morning Edition. From this, we learn two things: 1) society often reacts badly to nonconformity, and 2) don't wear your fursuit in the streets of Almaty. :)



"Host Alex Chadwick talks to a Central Asian human rights monitor about the Kazahkstan government's arrest of people with "bohemian" lifestyles. That includes those who dress up like Hobbits, the gnome-like creatures from the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy books. The interviewee is Saule Muthametrakhimova, an editor for the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting."

Californians for Ferret Legalization has been passing around petitions for the legalization of (of course) ferrets. As of yesterday, the running tally of signatures for this year's petiton has reached an unprecedented 28,000.

To drum up more signatures, the group plans a symbolic ride for the petition from San Fransisco's East Bay to Sacramento on September 5th.

More information on the petition and other ferret legalization news, as well as printable copies of the advertisement poster and petition can be found at the CFL website.

Please consider signing up your Californian freinds and sending it in by August 29th for the final count.

DaliLab Inc (short for Distributed Artificial Life) has started Daliworld.net, a virtual internet fishtank. Like Napster, this takes advantage of connected nodes of computers, but instead of sharing files, you're sharing fascinating, realistic fish in a reef enviroment.

Unlike the average screensaver, the programmers of Dali have tried to create an artifical ocean enviroment, where fish can swim as they please across the internet, living, dieing and multiplying like real fish. There is even code set in for further generations' evolution and adaptation to avoid preditors and to find better places to swim.

True, it doesn't take a lot of smarts to be a fish, but this is another example of the vast changes in processing power in computers.
To download DaliWorld's fish program, go to the DaliWorld website