Press Association:

Anti-whaling activists have claimed that they have effectively ended this year’s Japanese hunt following a late-night altercation near Antarctica, but the whalers said their season will continue.

The activists said they finally found the main factory ship after playing cat-and-mouse with the whalers for the past two weeks.

The Sea Shepherd ship Bob Barker confronted the whaling ship Nisshin Maru at midnight about 60 miles from the Antarctic coastline. The activists said they used laser beams and flares to disrupt the ship. The whalers said they used small vessels and ropes to prevent the Bob Barker from getting close…

Times Union:

The photo shows a hunter with a proud smile holding a slain, man-sized mountain lion in a snowy wilderness — a memento from a successful Idaho hunting trip that has become a political nightmare for the hunter. He is the state Fish and Game Commission president in California, where cougar killing is banned.

Since the photograph surfaced in a California hunting journal last month, Dan Richards has faced growing criticism, and animal rights activists and 40 California Democratic Assembly members have demanded that he resign from his appointed position. And on Thursday, he was hit with a complaint to the state’s ethics commission that the lion hunt was an illegal freebee…

Daily Mail:

A huge rise in the number of horses abandoned by their owners has left animal welfare campaigners ‘struggling to keep up’.

In the North of England alone, the RSPCA is caring for more than 200 horses found abandoned or taken from irresponsible owners.

The charity’s Cathy Hyde cited the harrowing case of a mare and foal abandoned on a moor in Doncaster. When the mare became stranded in a river, the foal went to her to suckle and drowned…

Wildlife Extra:

Donald Trump Junior and Eric Trump on hunting Safari

March 2011. Donald Trump’s boys have returned from a hunting safari in Zimbabwe. The Trump boys photos have appeared on the Hunting Legends website posing next to some of the animals that they have shot. The photos make my stomach turn, but one outrages me in particular.

One photo (Click here to see the Youtube video) shows Donald Trump Junior holding the tail of an elephant and a large knife. He is standing next to the carcass of an elephant that has a rifle leaning against it. We don’t know whether he shot the elephant or not, or whether he cut the tail off himself, but that is clearly the impression the photo is meant to give…