Polar bear Knut has passed away. Long live baby elephant Anchali.

This week, Berlin's zoo celebrated the birth of a 350-pound Asian elephant, born to her Thai mother Pang Pha and 18-year old "proud father" Victor. The young elephant was named Anchali, which means "greeting" in Thai.

The elephant calf has the potential to become the new celebrity at the Berlin zoo, which is located in the heart of the German capital and was the home of the late polar bear Knut, who became an international media star.

"During the first half of the day we keep Anchali inside with [its] mother, but in the afternoons [it] gets to go outside, where visitors can see [it] interact," Dr. Andreas Ochs, a veterinarian at the Berlin zoo, told NBC News.

Despite the joy shared by both zoo staff and visitors, there is also fear that Anchali's life could be cut short.

Anchali's siblings, all from different fathers, died young as a result of the highly fatal disease EEHV. The common elephant virus has already led to the death of three calves at the Berlin zoo.

The elephant endotheliootropic herpes virus, or EEHV, is seriously impacting Asian elephants in zoos across North America and Europe. The virus mainly strikes young Asian elephants and produces a hemorrhagic disease so lethal it has a higher than 90 percent mortality rate.

To date, scientists have not been able to find a cure or vaccine for the disease.

Experts say that adult elephants who contract the virus later in life are typically not affected, but that approximately 80 percent of infected young elephants up to the age of 8 die from the disease.

"We have the impression that the young elephant is doing really well. Despite being a heavy calf with its 352 pounds, it is very agile and alert," Ochs said.

"Anchali is strong, which makes us hopeful for the future," says Ochs.

The Berlin zoo -- Germany's oldest animal park founded in 1844 -- has been keeping only Asian elephants since 1996.

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Spain's King Juan Carlos leaves his room at a hospital after being discharged in Madrid, April 18.

Spain’s King Juan Carlos apologized Wednesday after he was roundly condemned for allegedly going elephant-hunting in Botswana as his country struggles amid the economic downturn.

“I am very sorry. I’ve made a mistake and it will not happen again,” Juan Carlos said Wednesday morning after he left a hospital in Madrid, where he was treated for a broken hip he sustained during his safari. His remarks were reported by several news outlets, including the English-language website, typicallyspanish.com.

It was not entirely clear whether he was sorry for trying to kill elephants, doing so at a time of austerity for many Spaniards, or simply for getting injured.

United Left party leader Cayo Lara said the king was “clearly not losing any sleep over the fact that thousands of young people are unemployed, while he goes off to Africa to hunt elephants,” according to the English-language Olive Press website.

The U.K.’s BBC News reported that while it was widely reported the king had been hunting elephants, the royal family had not confirmed or denied this.

It said Spanish newspapers had published pictures of the king standing with a gun beside a dead elephant dating back to 2006.

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Shoppers in Ireland got a large surprise when a 5,500 pound elephant ran away from her circus and wandered around a parking lot.

Drivers called police on Tuesday after seeing the 40-year-old animal - called ‘Baby’ - wandering between cars parked outside stores in a suburb of Cork, according to a report in the Irish Examiner.

Handlers attempted to lead Baby back to the circus but the reluctant pachyderm made another dash for freedom, heading towards a nearby mall.

One driver claimed the Indian elephant had damaged his parked car while evading circus employees, the newspaper reported.

It said the animal was eventually stopped and escorted back to the circus, located a short distance away.

Irish broadcaster RTE reported the circus as saying Baby broke loose and ran away because she did not want to take a shower.

IFAW / EPA

Celine Sissler-Bienvenue of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) examines a slain elephant in Cameroon.

At least half the elephants in Cameroon's Bouba N'Djida reserve were slaughtered because the west African nation sent too few security forces to tackle poachers, the World Wide Fund for Nature said on Thursday.

In what was described as one of the worst poaching massacres in decades, as many as 200 elephants have been killed for their tusks since January by poachers on horseback from Chad and Sudan, the fund said.

Rising demand in Asia for jewelry and ornaments made from elephant tusks is understood to be among the factors behind the spike in poaching.

"WWF is disturbed by reports that the poaching continues unabated," Natasha Kofoworola Quist, WWF's representative in the region, said in a statement.

It was the second major elephant-poaching report out of Africa this month. On March 5, the warden at Virunga National Park, a U.N. World Heritage Site in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said poaching had become so severe that rangers began using bloodhounds to track down poachers. The Virunga elephant population has fallen to fewer than 400 from an estimated 3,000 in the 1980s.

In Cameroon, about 20 fresh elephant carcasses were discovered last week, a WWF spokesperson said.

The government of the Central African state has sent special forces to track the poachers and end the killing spree in the north of the country, but the WWF said this may be too little, too late.

"The forces arrived too late to save most of the park's elephants and were too few to deter the poachers," Quist said. She said the organization regretted that a soldier was killed during a clash with the poachers.

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Bouba N'Djida reserve

Biologically diverse and protected only by unarmed rangers, Bouba N’djida is located near Cameroon’s porous northern border, where it presents a tempting target for poachers from Sudan and Chad, the magazine Nature reported. They typically cross into the park on horseback at the beginning of each dry season and return north before rains begin in April, using ivory profits to procure more weaponry.

Legalize ivory trade to save elephants, rhinos?

The International Fund for Animal Welfare, or IFAW, said the scale of this year’s killings was unprecedented.

IFAW said it was not clear how many elephants remained in Cameroon but a 2007 estimate put the figure at between 1,000 and 5,000.

Conservation groups have said the spike in poaching and illegal ivory trade in Africa was a direct consequence of China's investment drive into the continent and as the demand for ivory, used in jewelry and ornaments, grows in Asia.

In South Africa, rhinos are under assault by poachers, who killed more than 400 last year, NBC’s Rock Center reported.

More stories on this topic:
Rangers arrested for killing rhinos, selling horns
NBC's Rock Center reports on efforts to protect rhinos
Rhino dies during operation to protect it from poachers

This article includes reporting by Reuters.

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