The new politics in action. A friend of mine has a friend who went out for a drink with a parliamentary candidate for one of the three main parties. The next day, the candidate sent her a photograph of his genitals.

Elephants move like a 4x4 vehicle with all four legs used to accelerate and brake rather than the "rear-wheel" drive and "front-wheel" braking of other animals.

Twenty years ago we might have hoped that the African elephant, whose numbers were crashing disastrously, had been saved by the worldwide ban on the ivory trade brought in by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Some hope. The ban has twice been undermined by big sales of ivory by African states which the CITES has seen fit to allow, and illegal trading and the poaching which feeds it are resurgent and in many countries once more pushing elephants to the brink.

The attempted coup against Prime Minister Gordon Brown was the great unmentionable at this morning's Cabinet meeting, where ministers went 90 minutes without uttering a single word about the plot which convulsed Westminster earlier this week.

A tourist and her baby were trampled to death by a rampaging elephant in Kenya.

A guide has been killed by a charging elephant while helping a film crew to make a BBC children's television programme.

I like things big. I adore Palladian villas, monumental Mark Rothkos, vases of gladioli, eagles, 16-ounce T-bone steaks. I can grasp the attractiveness of cottages, Indian miniatures, lilies of the valley, guinea pigs, and roast quail. But it seems to me that, with a little more effort, any of these might make more of itself.

Charles Darwin thought the toucan's oversized beak was a sexual lure for attracting potential mates, while some modern-day biologists suggested it was either for peeling fruit or to warn off territorial rivals. A new study has found, though, that the outrageously big structure helps to keep the bird cool in the heat of the tropical day.

The following is by Akhila Vijayaraghavan, a friend of mine who works as a campaigner on sustainable agriculture at Greenpeace. She returned to India in March of this year having spent six years studying in Glasgow, and still retains much of the excellent accent. With this perspective, I asked her to write something on her impressions of the Indian attitude to environmentalism.

Jacques Tredoux always wanted to be a teacher.