World Briefs

The groom wore a garland made of bank notes and received a helicopter as a gift and 1,000 workers took 40 days to prepare the venue.

The exact details have been fiercely disputed, but Thursday’s newspapers in New Delhi were all in agreement that this had been one very big, very fat Indian wedding.

Lalit Tanwar married his bride Yogita Jaunapuria in a ceremony celebrated with 100 dishes, 12 giant TV screens to broadcast proceedings, and even a gift of $5,500 for the groom’s barber. The groom’s father, Kanwar Singh Tanwar, was quoted as saying: “True, a Bell 429 helicopter was given but it was a simple wedding.”

Mr Tanwar is a hugely wealthy city politician from the ruling Congress party, while the bride’s father is a former politician in the capital.

The Hindustan Times reported that at a pre-wedding ceremony last week 2,000 guests were each given a silver biscuit, a safari suit and $500 in cash. (AFP)

Customised coffin

TV host Griff Rhys Jones is not quite ready for a close-up with one particular camera... a customised coffin.

The star was presented with the bizarre life-size casket during a global tour to find extraordinary art in his latest BBC show.

Mr Rhys Jones visited craftsmen in Ghana who specialise in bespoke coffins to match the personalities of their owners, as he filmed BBC2 series Hidden Treasures. (PA)

No hot dog

A runaway dog darted into an Arizona apartment and hid in the bottom of the fridge.

A Yuma Fire Department spokesman said the family told firefighters the animal rushed into their home when they opened the front door and kept snapping at them. When they went to the fridge to get some food to try to lure it outside, the dog jumped in the appliance and refused to come out.

Firefighters found the small black terrier-type dog crouched on the bottom shelf, snapping at anyone who approached. They used protective gear to pick it up and put it in a carrier. It was reunited with its owner elsewhere in the apartment complex. (PA)

Smelly notes

An ingenious thief swiped almost $250,000 on a flight in the Caribbean after sneaking into the cash-laden cargo hold via the toilet,.

A Brink’s security employee placed three sacks of cash containing a total €1.2 million in the hold of the Air Antilles plane before it headed from Guadeloupe to the Franco-Dutch island of Saint Martin.

The security guard took his seat on the ATR-42 turboprop plane but when the flight landed 40 minutes later it was discovered that €172,000 were missing from the sacks.

Police are seeking a man who complained he felt ill and spent most of the journey in the toilet.

In fact, he was removing panels to gain access to the hold in the rear of the plane.

Cleaners who found bundles of notes in the toilet raised the alarm. (AFP)

Mystery letter

A letter addressed to a woman at a Red Cross hospital in California has been delivered nearly 70 years after it was posted in Alabama.

Officials are trying to trace the addressee Miss RT Fletcher. The hospital, at Camp Roberts, was closed in 1970.

Curator of the Camp Roberts Historical Museum, Gary McMaster, said he had not opened the letter for privacy reasons. A hand-written letter can be seen inside. (PA)

‘Witch’ killings

A 350-year-old notebook which describes the execution of innocent women for consorting with the devil has been published online.

Puritan writer Nehemiah Wallington wrote passages on his attitudes to life, religion and the Civil War as well as the witchcraft trials of the period.

By 1654 Wallington had catalogued 50 notebooks, of which only seven are known to have survived. Four are in the British Library, one in the Guildhall Library, one in the Folger Library in Washington DC, and one at Tatton Park in Cheshire. (PA)

New species

A new species of shrimp has been named after the British scientist who discovered it.

Dr Alan Jamieson said he found the 2.4in (6cm) white shrimp in trenches on the floor of the world’s deepest ocean.

The Princaxelia Jamiesoni, seen at the bottom of the North West Pacific Ocean, is only the fourth species of the Princaxelia shrimp family to be discovered. (PA)

Royal gimmick

A German firm is using a great British tradition – a cup of tea – to try to cash in on the royal wedding.

It is selling “KaTEA” tea bags featuring Prince William and his bride-to-be Kate Middleton.

The bags feature the faces and torsos of the royal couple with extended arms that drinkers can hang over the rim of their cups. (AP)