HRNZ chief executive Edward Rennell took the report seriously – only nine months ago New South Wales harness authorities uncovered evidence that snake venom was in use in Australia.
Several trainers, including renowned thoroughbred trainer Patrick Biancone, have also been disqualified or suspended for using cobra venom in North America. Biancone's vet Rodney J Stewart, who admitted buying cobra venom from a Florida supplier, was banned for five years.
Last August the Sunday Star-Times also revealed Carl Forrester, now running a Morrinsville stable for Foxton-based Peter Scaife, was still wanted by United States police for his role in a conspiracy to dope horses with cobra venom and the blood-doping agent EPO.

The use of a highly toxic substance in order to win a horse race may seem paradoxical, but the chemical structure of cobra venom makes it an effective painkiller when administered under the skin in very small quantities. By deadening the nerves that lead from the source of pain to the brain, cobra venom can allow a horse to ignore physical problems and run through them, officials say. It is believed to be effective only when administered within four hours of a race.

“If there was ever a deserving Rubber Dodo Award recipient, it is Tony Hayward,” said Kierán Suckling, the Center’s executive director. “While famously whining that he ‘wanted his life back,’ Hayward showed no remorse for the thousands of rare and endangered animals BP killed in its spill.”
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“History will remember Hayward as the man at the helm of BP when it unleashed the worst environmental disaster in American history,” said Suckling.
“Hayward not only pushed BP into causing the spill by creating a corporate culture of risk-taking and cutting corners, he failed to take responsibility after the spill and make all of BP’s resources available to contain it.”

In 1598, Dutch sailors landing on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius discovered a flightless, three-foot-tall, extraordinarily friendly bird. Its original scientific name was Didus ineptus. (Contemporary scientists use the less defamatory Raphus cucullatus.) To the rest of the world, it’s the dodo — the most famous extinct species on Earth. It evolved over millions of years with no natural predators and eventually lost the ability to fly, becoming a land-based consumer of fruits, nuts and berries. Having never known predators, it showed no fear of humans or the menagerie of animals accompanying them to Mauritius.
Its trusting nature led to its rapid extinction. By 1681, the dodo was extinct, having been hunted and outcompeted by humans, dogs, cats, rats, macaques and pigs. Humans logged its forest cover and pigs uprooted and ate much of the understory vegetation.

A grandfather rode to the rescue of a Mesa school when he shot and killed a diamondback rattlesnake on school grounds Tuesday.

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Normally, a shovel would be the weapon of choice, but the diamondback had scurried into the bushes.

Not wanting the snake to endanger the kids again, Rich Drappo said he grabbed his .22-caliber pistol out of his pickup truck and made quick work of the unwelcome serpent.

“You gotta do what you gotta do,” Drappo said.

Taking advantage of a show-and-tell opportunity, he called the kids out of their classrooms to show them the headless harasser.