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Elephant allegedly abused in Sri Lanka flown back to Thailand
A Thai elephant gifted to Sri Lanka two decades ago arrived back in its birth country on Sunday (03 July), following a diplomatic spat over the animal’s alleged mistreatment.
Thai authorities had gifted the 29-year-old Muthu Raja – also known as Sak Surin in its birthplace – to Sri Lanka in 2001. But they demanded the elephant back last year after allegations that it was tortured and neglected while kept at a Buddhist temple.
The 4,000kg (8,800-pound) mammal arrived in Thailand just after 2pm (08:00 GMT), having been transported inside a specially constructed giant steel crate onboard an Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane.
“He arrived in Chiang Mai perfectly. He travelled five hours and nothing is wrong, his condition is normal,” Thai environment minister Varawut Silpa-archa said at the airport. “If everything goes well, we will move him,” he added, referring to plans to quarantine the elephant at a nearby nature reserve.
Varawut helped give the elephant a drink after Muthu Raja’s decorated crate was removed from the plane, with the thirsty animal eagerly reaching his trunk through a hole to accept the water. The elephant could be seen when officials briefly opened the crate’s rear doors and it was sprayed.
Muthu Raja was moved from its temporary home at a zoo in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo before dawn, accompanied by four Thai handlers and a Sri Lankan keeper, with two CCTV cameras monitoring its health in transit. It left Colombo at 7:40am (0210 GMT) on a commercial reparation flight that Thai officials said cost $700,000.
Muthu Raja was in pain and covered in abscesses when it was rescued from the Buddhist temple last year, the zoo’s chief veterinarian, Madusha Perera, told the AFP news agency.
Animal welfare groups said the elephant had been forced to work with a logging crew and that its wounds, some allegedly inflicted by its handler, had been neglected. The elephant will undergo hydrotherapy in Thailand to treat a remaining injury on its front left leg, Perera said.
Elephants are considered sacred in Sri Lanka and are protected by law.
The organisation Rally for Animal Rights and Environment (RARE), which led a campaign to rescue Muthu Raja from the temple, expressed its unhappiness over the animal’s departure. RARE organised a Buddhist blessing for the elephant on Friday ahead of its journey and has petitioned authorities to prosecute those it says are responsible for neglecting the animal.
Sri Lanka’s wildlife minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi said Thailand was “adamant” in its demands for the elephant’s return.
Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena told parliament in June he had personally conveyed Sri Lanka’s regrets to the Thai king over the elephant’s condition.
Thailand has stopped sending elephants abroad, Thai environment minister Varawut said, adding that Bangkok’s diplomatic missions are checking the conditions of elephants already sent overseas.
(Aljazeera)
Some 360 bodies have been recovered and more than 1,400 people are missing across Nepal and China’s Tibet region after a huge collapse of mud and rock into a Himalayan river triggered catastrophic flooding across local towns and valleys, authorities have said.
Rescue teams waded through mud on Thursday searching for the missing, as authorities in Nepal said at least 359 people have been killed there.
At least three people have died in the neighbouring Tibet region.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang arrived at the mudslide site in Tibet on Thursday afternoon to “guide emergency rescue and relief work” a day after the disaster, state media reported.
Nepalese police and tourism officials said that more than 500 foreigners were among 910 people missing in Nepal.
Among the missing are tourists from more than two dozen countries: 177 are from India, 63 from the United States, 34 from Australia, 33 from the United Kingdom, and 25 from Canada.
Beijing’s foreign ministry also said nearly 100 Chinese nationals were among the missing in Nepal.
In Tibet’s Gyirong county, 558 people are reported missing, including 260 foreign nationals, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
Search and rescue operations are proving to be a “massive challenge” as just simply “getting to the affected areas … to try and recover the survivors”, is proving to be extremely difficult as the roads and bridges there have suffered extensive damage, said Al Jazeera’s Minelle Fernandez, reporting from the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu.
[Aljazeera]
India 503/9 decl (Devdutt Padikkal 117, Dhruv Jurel 115; Asitha Fernando 4-106, Prabath Jayasuriya 2-132) drew with Sri Lanka 290 (Sonal Dinusha 103, Pasindu Sooriyabandara 80; Prasidh Krishna 3-52, Manav Suthar 3-85) and 429/9 f/o (Sonal Dinusha 133*, Pasindu Sooriyabandara 92; Ravindra Jadeja 3-94, Manav Suthar 3-121)
Asif Khan the UAE batter, has been banned for 15 months after admitting to having tested positive for a banned substance – “a metabolite of mesterolone” – in an out-of-competition test conducted in September 2025, the ICC said in a statement on Thursday.
The statement said that Asif, 36, “had admitted the violation” of Article 2.1 of the ICC’s anti-doping code and accepted the period of ineligibility “pursuant to a case resolution agreement entered into with the World Anti-Doping Agency and the ICC”, which means there is no right to appeal on the part of the player.
The sanction is effective from September 8, 2025 and will run until December 7, 2026.
“Asif may return to training with a team or use the facilities of a club or other ICC Member organisation from 8 October 2026 but will only be eligible to play from 8 December,” the statement added. “The player’s individual results from 8 September 2025 until his provisional suspension on 29 December 2025 have been disqualified, along with all resulting consequences, including the loss of any medals, points, prize money or prizes.”
Asif, a former Pakistan Under-19 cricketer, made his UAE debut in March 2022 in an ODI against Oman in the ICC’s Cricket World Cup League 2. He turned out in 38 ODIs and 56 T20Is between then and September 2025.
The last three of those T20Is, against India, Oman and Pakistan in the T20 Asia Cup in 2025, came after September 8, and will be removed from his record.
[Cricinfo]
More than 360 dead, 1,400 missing in Nepal and Tibet after Himalayan floods
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