An Indian Muslim couple exchanged wedding vows by telephone after the groom, who lives abroad, said he did not have money to return home to get married, a cleric said yesterday.
Muslim clerics married Irin Biswas, 18, to Safikul Islam, who is employed as a labour surpervisor in Kuwait.
The entire village in Murshidabad, West Bengal, watched as the clerics put a mobile phone on speaker mode, enabling them to hear the wedding vows.
"They said qubul (I do) thrice and the marriage was complete," Maulana Alamgir, a cleric who solemnised the marriage said by telephone. He said the modern ceremony was not against Islamic laws.
The bride, in endless interviews to the local media, said she had seen Safikul only once, when he was home for holidays. "I have never spoken to him but now I speak to him daily," Irin told reporters.
Safikul is due to meet his wife for the first time in October this year when he eventually comes home for holidays, family members said.
Statue given by Hitler removed
The Austrian city of Linz has removed a statue of Aphrodite from a park after learning that it was a present from Hitler, officials said yesterday.
Authorities in Austria's third largest city said they checked the origins of the bronze statue after someone left an unsigned note on it stating that the statue of the Greek goddess of love was a gift from the Nazi leader. Research in Linz's city archives determined that the claim was correct and the statue was immediately removed and put in storage, a city statement said.
The statue had been mounted on a pedestal in a small colonnaded pavilion in a Linz park since 1942, when Austria was part of Hitler's Third Reich. Hitler was born in the small town of Braunau not far from Linz, which is around 120 kilometres west of Vienna.
Beijing takes dog off the menu
Beijing has asked hotels and restaurants in the city to take dog meat off the menu for the duration of next month's Olympics and September's Paralympics. Dog is eaten not only by the large Korean community in China's capital but is also popular in Yunnan and Guizhou restaurants.
A directive from the Beijing Food Safety Office issued last month ordered Olympic contractor hotels not to provide any dishes made with dog meat and said any canine material used in traditional medicated diets must be clearly labelled.
Concerned that canine dishes might offend animal rights groups and Western visitors, Beijing said restaurants expected to be popular among foreign visitors must stop serving dog meat "to respect the dining customs of different countries".
Credit card gifts
Guests at an Israeli wedding hall can now insert a credit card into a machine at its entrance, tap in a sum and leave a gift for the bride and groom. "It's new in Israel and the world," Aya Alon Kaufman of the Gan Oranim hall in Tel Aviv said on Israel's Channel 10 TV. "It's very convenient... guests can give a gift even if they forget their chequebooks."
She said couples pay 500 shekels (€97) to rent the device, which resembles an automated teller machine, and the recorded funds are transferred into their bank account the next day.
Stripper arrested for subway pole dances
A stripper who danced on the poles of Santiago subway trains to challenge the prudishness of Chilean society was arrested on Thursday during one of her lightning performances.
Monserrat Morilles, 26, surprised subway riders all week stripping to skimpy underwear, but she refused tips. She said she was protesting a lack of tolerance in Chile, one of Latin America's most conservative societies where the first generation since the Pinochet dictatorship is reaching adulthood.
"This is just a beginning. We are starting an idea here that will grow and be developed further," she said as police and subway guards surrounded her.
Floating feet mystery
Two of five feet that have washed ashore near Vancouver belonged to the same person, but Canadian police admitted yesterday they are still a long way from solving the macabre mystery.
Investigators still do not know who any of the victims were and when or how they died, although there is no evidence in any of the cases that the feet were severed with a knife or forcibly removed from the rest of body. "We're not ruling out any possibilities, and we have to be aware that these could be homicide victims," said Constable Annie Linteau of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, admitting they have received a wide range of theories from the public. The first two feet were discovered in August of last year, on islands in the Strait of Georgia, with three more found this year. Four were right feet, one a left and all them were encased in running-type shoes.
Star witness fails to show up
A star defence witness failed to turn up in a privacy case involving sado-masochistic sex and the head of world motor racing at London's High Court on Thursday.
The witness, a prostitute who secretly filmed a basement orgy involving motor racing boss Max Mosley and four other women, some dressed in German military uniforms, gave no reason for her failure to appear, leaving the defence at a loss. Mr Mosley, 68, president of Formula One's governing body the International Automobile Federation (FIA) and son of Britain's 1930s Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, brought the case against The News of the World newspaper, which last year published lurid photos and video taken at the orgy.