He was a victim not of treacherous tribesmen but of an elephant he was riding, which reared and brained him on a stone archway he was passing through.

ECONOMIST: Waziristan

She told with great emphasis a story about her mother, who remembered falling and breaking her teeth on the steps leading into the courtyard of a lost family home, steps that were tall and broad to accommodate the enormous tread of a riding elephant.

NEWYORKER: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

The mahout riding the lead elephant, armed with a shotgun, was fuelled with local firewater.

ECONOMIST: The battle to conserve India's elephants

Much, then, is riding on the success of a plane that Boeing dismisses as a white elephant.

ECONOMIST: The biggest shareholders in EADS are preparing to sell up