Palin // Current TV

Elephants on drunken rampage kill three people

Binge-drinking elephants, drunk on local hooch, have killed three people and destroyed 60 homes in a four-day rampage in east India.

Yesterday they were reported by local officials to be sleeping off hangovers as shocked communities tried to clear the wreckage left by the 70-strong herd in remote villages on the borders of the states of Orissa and West Bengal.

With a local festival approaching, villagers had stockpiled the fermented-rice based drink which is stored in earthenware vessels and, according to Bijay Kumar Panda, a local administrator, the elephants found and drank it.

They then staggered through the surrounding area and began "to fall asleep hither and thither, throwing life completely haywire".

According to the Pioneer newspaper, the "jumbos" are known "for their love of local country-made brews" which they "gulp down and make merry at the expense of the villagers".

Elephant experts say such incidents are becoming more common. With pristine forest increasingly rare, especially in the area where this latest incident occurred, Indian elephants no longer avoid contact with humans, said Dr Amirtharaj Williams, Asian rhino and elephant programme co-ordinator for the World Wildlife Fund. "These herds are effectively semi-urbanised. There are elephants who are getting a taste for food that humans prepare because it is tastier, stronger-smelling and often more nutritious and that includes rice- or molasses-based drinks. Some go looking for it."

Around 400 people are killed each year by elephants in India and nearly a million hectares of farmland damaged.

Around 100 elephants are killed by villagers each year.

India's booming population and economic growth have placed the historic grazing lands of elephants under enormous pressure. To avoid exhausting fodder in one area, the herds migrate. Attempts to create safe corridors for the animals' travel have foundered on bureaucratic sloth and lack of enforcement.

In September seven elephants were killed by a speeding goods train.

Latest estimates put India's elephant population at around 21,000 – the largest in Asia. About half of these are found in north-eastern states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya.Binge-drinking elephants, drunk on local hooch, have killed three people and destroyed... more

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Tea Party Express loses momentum in rural Nevada

The Tea Party movement has gained the image of an unstoppable wave of anger sweeping everything before it as it seeks to overthrow the Washington establishment. Well in Elko, Nevada, last night it looked a little less than that.

About 150 people turned up in an open field on a very chilly night to welcome the Tea Party Express, the bus tour that is crossing America in the run-up to next month's midterm elections. Most of the participants were in their sixties or above, and the event had more in common with a sedate charity gala than a political revolution.

The low turnout and lack of energy was puzzling as it came just four hours' drive after a rousing start to the bus tour in Reno, addressed by Sarah Palin. I was lost for an explanation. This was after all the same state, the same battle to boot out Harry Reid, the local senator closely associated in Nevada with the big government spending habits of the Obama administration.

Then I talked to Tom Norris, an affable retired truck driver. The answer was pretty simple, he told me. The hunting season had just begun. Hunters and their families were out on the trail of elk (apparently no connection to the town's name) and deer.

"I'd have been gone myself if my ticket had come up," Norris said.

Ticket had come up?

"It's a lottery. Numbers are drawn and if yours comes up you can go hunting. It's a way to control the size of the shoot."

The other possible explanation for the poor turnout was that Elko is hurting slightly less than other parts of Nevada in the economic downturn. The unemployment rate here is less than 9%, compared with more than 14% for the state generally - the highest in the country.

Elko is traditionally a cowboy town, serving mile upon mile of ranches in all directions. But it also has a thriving mining industry, and of one metal in particular - gold.

With the slide of the dollar, gold has become ever stronger, and now stands at more than $1,300 (£827) an ounce. People have been moving in to Elko to work in its underground or surface gold mines.

Gold is also one of the great staples of the Tea Party movement. Glenn Beck speaks about it on his shows with almost reverential respect (but then he does get paid by one of America's largest gold dealers to do so).

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