The Island Safari Centre on Koh Samui is teaching six-year old Malie, and nine-year old Toktak to use their trunks to perform basketball skills, in an effort to improve their health and vitality.

Organisers at the centre, which cares for the animals, say that they undergo rigorous training in order to learn the basics of the game.

“It takes two or three months of intensive training to teach them basics, but fortunately their standards are improving with each passing day”, said organiser Ning.

The keepers begin by teaching the elephants basic ball control skills, and how to hold the ball in their trunk. The animals are then taught to stand on their hind legs, walk with the ball and finally shoot it through the hoop.

Visitors to the centre described the game as “unbelievable”, with one onlooker saying, “I had never seen an elephant playing basketball.

Will elephants challenge NBA players one day? and who will win?

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Is it a funny news? Britain’s advertising watchdog has banned a radio ad featuring a man speaking loudly in German and which asked: “Is your boss a bit of a tyrant?”

Thirteen listeners complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), saying it used an outdated stereotype.

The advert for the Reed Online recruitment agency featured a man speaking to his boss who responded angrily and loudly in German. The voice-over said: “Boss a bit of a tyrant? Find your perfect boss on the UK’s biggest job site …”

The ASA said: “We concluded that, given the extreme reaction and aggressive tone of the German speaking boss, the ad reinforced a negative and outdated cultural stereotype of German people as overpowering and tyrannical and therefore the ad had the potential to cause serious offence to some listeners.”

It banned the advert for breaching rules on good taste and decency.

Reed did not comment but industry body the Radio Advertising Clearance Center said it believed most listeners would regard the scenario as humorous and inoffensive.

It said the boss character was a generic “German-sounding orator,” which they believed was a well established type in British comedy culture.

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