Elephant gores mahout to death at temple in India

A MAHOUT in Kerala, India was gored to death by an elephant named Kutty Sangaran during a temple festival.

Tamil Nesan reported that the 39-year-old man was leading a procession of 21 elephants during a temple festival with Kutty Sangaran in the lead.

Kutty Sangaran, however, suddenly went berserk when the procession neared the temple and had devotees scrambling for their lives.

The mahout tried to calm down the elephant but instead, the animal threw him to the ground with its trunk and gored him with its tusks.

Another mahout who was sitting atop Kutty Sangaran jumped off to save himself. He was seriously injured in the fall.

Wildlife authorities who were called to the scene worked for five hours to administer a tranquilliser to bring Kutty Sangaran under control.

> Tamil activists and educators have voiced their annoyance with what they felt was slipping standards of the language in programmes shown on a subscription TV, Malay­sia Nanban reported.

They cited mistakes in language usage, saying that it reflected a lackadaisical attitude towards the language.

 ?  The above article is compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with this ' >'sign, it denotes a separate news item.