Sri Lanka's government is digging a moat around one of its landfills to keep out hungry elephant herds and reduce conflicts between the animals and villagers.

Sri Lankan authorities on Monday began investigating the deaths of wild elephants in the east of the island after pulling seven carcasses out of a marsh, a minister said.

A top Islamist extremist under sentence of death has lost his last hope of avoiding the gallows after Bangladesh’s president rejected a mercy plea, an official said yesterday.