From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  July-August 2013:

Bijlee,  58,  a female elephant who spent 54 years appearing at weddings and in parades,  and begging on the streets of Mumbai and Thane,  India,  died on June 30,  2013,  nineteen days after collapsing on the Mulund-Bhandap Link road in eastern Mumbai. Suffering from severe chronic arthritis,  Bijee was allegedly abandoned by her mahouts. People for Animals,  the Thane SPCA,  Animals Matter to Me,  Wildlife SOS,  PETA/India,  the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations,  and the Plants & Animals Welfare Society combined efforts to try to save her,  five years after saving her once before.  “In 2008,”  recalled Vijay Singh of the Times of India, “Bijlee,  then known by her alias Ramkali,  had to walk over 100 kilometers to Alibaug to attend a wedding of a politican’s son. On her way back to Mumbai,  she fell in a ditch and a crane could pull her out only after nine hours.” Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  May/June 2013:

Obituaries

“I come to bury Caesar,  not to praise him.  The evil men do lives after them.   The good is oft interred with their bones.”  ––William Shakespeare

Bowatte Indrathana Thera,  a Buddhist monk of the Porambe temple in Pelmadulla,  Sri Lanka,  died on May 26, 2013 at the Colombo National Hospital,  two days after setting himself on fire outside the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic.  “The monk had been heard making a statement saying his effort was not to take his life,  but to sacrifice it,  in a bid to end cattle slaughter.  Indraratana Thera had been an active campaigner against cattle slaughter, and had launched a number of animal rights campaigns,”  Ceylon Today reported.  Added the news portal Ada Derana, “Certain media aired videos of the monk issuing demands such as putting an end to the killing of cattle for meat and Buddhists being converted to other religions.  Indrarathana Thera informed those media of his intentions before committing self-immolation,  while they recorded the incident.”  The fiery suicide,  apparently the first on record by a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk,  was followed by conflict among Buddhist factions over which would perform last rites for Indrarathana Thera.   Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2013:

Obituaries

“I come to bury Caesar,  not to praise him.  The evil men do lives after them.   The good is oft interred with their bones.”  ––William Shakespeare

Dianna Hanson,  24,  a volunteer/intern at Cat Haven in Dunlap,  California,  was killed on March 3,  2012 by a five-year-old African lion named Cous Cous,  who apparently lifted a gate with his paw and attacked Hanson while she was cleaning another part of his cage and talking with a co-worker on a cell telephone.  Sheriff’s deputies shot Cous Cous when he would not leave Hanson’s body.  A private zoo,  not accredited by either the Association of Zoos & Aquariums or the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries,  Cat Haven had operated since 1993 without previous accidents, founder Dale Anderson told media.  A biology and anthropology student at Western Washington University in Bellingham,  Washington,  Hanson had previously gained experience helping to look after four exotic cats at a private facility near Bellingham. Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  March 2013:

Obituaries 

“I come to bury Caesar,  not to praise him.  The evil men do lives after them.   The good is oft interred with their bones.”  ––William Shakespeare

C. Everett Koop,  96,  U.S. surgeon general 1982-1989,  died on February 27,  2013 in Hanover,  New Hampshire. Born in Brooklyn,  Koop was admitted to Dartmouth College in Hanover at age 16.  He studied medicine at Cornell Medical School in upstate New York,  served an internship at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia and a surgical fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania hospital,  then studied pediatric surgery for a year at Boston Children’s Hospital.  Becoming only the seventh pediatric surgery specialist in the U.S.,  Koop returned to Philadelphia to become surgeon-in-chief at Children’s Hospital.  Founding the first neo-natal surgery unit in the U.S. and cofounding the Journal of Pediatric Surgery,  Koop in The Right to Live,  The Right to Die (1976) warned against “a progression of thinking in this country from liberalized abortion to infanticide to passive euthanasia to active euthanasia,  indeed to the very beginnings of the political climate that led to Auschwitz,  Dachau and Belsen.”   Read more