Pay-per-view funerals went live online in Britain yesterday, allowing mourners who cannot attend services in person to pay their last respects via the internet.
Despite criticism of the scheme as macabre, the company who launched the service, Wesley Music, is offering it to crematoria across the country who will charge a one-off payment of around £75 for access to a funeral webcast.
Mourners use the password to access a live online broadcast of the funeral service captured by a small camera mounted in the chapel.
"Families are dispersed across the world these days and sometimes it's the case that someone cannot get home in time for a funeral," said Alan Jeffrey, director of Wesley Music. "For those who need it, this is a very important service. It means that rather than being excluded, they can at least witness and be a part of a funeral as it happens. In a time of stress this is something that can ease the pain."
Naked cop chases car thief
A policeman in a small New Zealand town did not let the fact that he was naked hold him back from chasing a thief trying to steal his car.
The off-duty constable was asleep at his home in Balclutha, in the lower South Island, when his wife woke him in the early hours, the New Zealand Press Association reported.
When the policeman realised the sound his wife heard was someone attempting to start the couple's car, he burst out the door with nothing more than a torch. The offender bolted with the officer in hot pursuit, but was soon after picked up by a police patrol.
Undersea ironing record
A group of 72 Australian scuba divers has flattened the world record for ironing under water, taking the plunge off a pier near the southern city of Melbourne with ironing boards and irons, and their linen.
So-called "extreme ironing" has spawned a cult following in recent years.
The website extremeironing.com espouses it as being the "latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt".
The Australian group, who pipped the previous mark of 70, are seeking entry to the Guinness book of world records after taking their linen into murky, three-metre-deep ocean on Saturday.
Event organiser Debbie Azzopardi said the group eclipsed a 2005 record set in a swimming pool at nearby Geelong, which in turn beat a world mark set in New Zealand. The irons all had their electrical cords removed for the attempt, which took place in chilly pre-winter seas.
More cult members leave
Fourteen members of a doomsday cult who had barricaded themselves underground in central Russia have left their hideout, Interfax news agency quoted the regional vice-governor as saying yesterday.
Last week seven members of the cult, which predicts the end of the world in either April or May, came out of the dugout where they have been living since last year.
Local officials believe there were initially about 35 people, including children, in the dugout.
Serb-Albanian oil racket
Kosovo police have arrested a Serb-Albanian gang for smuggling oil into the newly independent republic from Serbia, a police spokesman said yesterday.
Disregarding ethnic hostilities that have flared since the Albanian majority declared Kosovo independent from Serbia six weeks ago, smugglers have spirited 1,000 tonnes of oil to Kosovo since last month, officials said, avoiding local Customs duties.
Police spokesman Besim Hoti said three Kosovo Serbs and one Kosovo Albanian were stopped late on Monday night as they went to pick up two transport vans, which contained about six tonnes of contraband fuel. He said the four tried to fight their way out of a checkpoint, but police fired a warning shot and called in Nato peacekeepers, who took them into custody.
Dating Stonehenge
Archaeologists have set out to unlock one of the secrets of Stonehenge, the majestic monument in southern England: When were the first standing stones placed at the ancient religious site?
The concentric stone circles that make up Stonehenge, 130 kilometres southwest of London on the sweep of Salisbury Plain, consist of giant sandstone blocks or sarsens and smaller bluestones - volcanic rock of a blueish tint with white flecks. Stonehenge experts Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainwright will use modern carbon dating techniques and analysis of soil pollen and sea shells to work out when the stones were set up, in the first archaeological dig at the World Heritage site since 1964.
"If you want to find out why Stonehenge was built, you need to look 250 kilometres away to the Presili Hills in north Pembrokeshire, where the first bluestones that built Stonehenge come from," Dr Wainwright told reporters as the two-week dig began.