Thousands of real Christmas trees will make their way from a plantation to stores across the UK this week.

B&Q is collecting more than 300,000 real trees from the Green Team Plantation in Aberdeenshire and delivering them to 362 of its stores.

The company was the first large multiple retailer to sell real Christmas trees 30 years ago and continues to lead the offering of real trees in the UK. Customers can choose from six varieties of real Christmas trees including the blue spruce, the Serbian spruce and the dwarf Alberta spruce.

Drums for public modesty

Volunteers in India armed with drums and whistles are leading a crackdown on going to the toilet in public under a new scheme in Rajasthan.

“We are constructing public toilets... and people will be encouraged to use them,” Ramniwas Jat, head of the state’s Jhunjhunu district council, told The Times of India, adding: “We want to raise awareness against the practice of urinating in public.” The Times said volunteers would embarrass people caught urinating or defecating by standing behind them and letting loose a barrage of noise.

Guilty parties would also have their names read out on public address systems.

Nearly 60 per cent of all people in the world who defecate in the open are in India.

Fugitive crocodile caught

Gaza policemen have captured a crocodile that has been on the run since fleeing a zoo two years ago.

Lt Col Samih al-Sultan said police have been chasing the creature for weeks after he was spotted in a sewage pond. He said they did not know how to catch him, so they searched online for a solution.

They finally caught the croc by entangling him in shark nets, and he was returned to the zoo.

The policeman said the 5’ 9” crocodile had not hurt anybody, but was frightening sanitation workers. The crocodile was brought into the blockaded Gaza Strip through a smuggling tunnel linking the territory to Egypt. (PA)

Road crash is a life saver

A road crash may have actually saved the life of a taxi driver in Germany.

The 50-year-old choked on a sweet and lost control of his cab during a coughing fit while on a job in Wuppertal.

First he hit a small truck parked at the roadside before losing consciousness with his vehicle headed towards oncoming traffic, hitting another parked car head-on, they said.

The impact presumably dislodged the sweet from his throat and the taxi driver regained consciousness.

He and his 87-year-old female passenger escaped the accidents unscathed.

Field of Remembrance

The Duke of Edinburgh officially opened the Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey yesterday.

Prince Philip was invited to lay a cross of remembrance in front of two wooden crosses from the graves of unknown British soldiers from the First and Second World Wars by Sara Jones, president of the Royal British Legion Poppy Factory.

The Last Post was sounded from the parapet of St Margaret’s Church by two trumpeters of the Household Cavalry before Mrs Jones, who lost her husband in the Falklands War, read the Ode of Remembrance, followed by a two-minute silence. (AP)