The dress worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz is going up for auction with an estimated value of more than £300,000 (€370,730).

The white puff-sleeve blouse and blue gingham pinafore has inspired countless Halloween costumes since the film was released in 1939.

Although several identical dresses were made for her character Dorothy, the dress to be sold is the only version seen in the film and the only complete original dress to survive. (PA)

Timbuktu women protest

About 200 women have marched in protest in the Malian city of Timbuktu, where Islamists are requiring women to wear veils. However, the Islamists fired shots into the air to disperse the protesting women.

The women were protesting against abusive arrests since the Islamists began enforcing Islamic Shariah law. Women have been subjected to curfews, and have been publicly whipped for failing to wear veils. It is also forbidden for them to be in the streets with men who are not their husbands or relatives.

The Islamists now control an area as large as France in the north of Mali. (AP)

Tarantulas in a suitcase

Dutch customs confiscated hundreds of poisonous tarantulas on a flight from Peru after discovering them hidden in a suitcase.

“Customs at Schiphol airport found 200 live tarantulas and an assortment of other insects including bugs, crickets, grasshoppers and millipedes,” customs officials said . “The animals were collected by a German couple on a recent trip to Peru and were put in plastic containers and tubes hidden in their clothing and shoes,” the statement said, adding that some of the tarantulas were of a type little known to science. (AFP)

Wife-carrying competition

A Finnish couple has taken first place in the North American Wife Carrying Championship in Maine.

Taisto Miettinen and Kristina Haapanen travelled from Helsinki, where they won the World Wife Carrying Championship, for the contest.

The winners receive the woman’s weight in beer and five times her weight in cash. (PA)