The organizers of a death metal festival have mockingly thanked an Austrian bishop for his "support" and invited him to their event, after he urged people to pray for the souls of those attending.

"We are grateful for support of any kind and are therefore very happy that the diocesan bishop Klaus Kueng has called for a common prayer for our event," a tongue-in-cheek statement said on the Extremefest's Facebook page Monday.

Couples in England will be able to get married at any time of night or day from October, officials announced Sunday.

Marriages in England and Wales are currently banned outside the hours of 8:00 am and 6:00 pm, under rules dating back to 1837.

In the latest American food craze to catch on in France, Parisians are flocking to U.S.-style food trucks for gourmet burgers, artisanal tacos and other decidedly non-French street foods.

Usually uber-traditionalists when it comes to dining, Parisians have fallen hard for the food trucks, with some queuing for up to two hours at lunch time to sample their wares.

A saltwater crocodile weighing more than a ton and suspected of killing two people in the Philippines has been declared the largest such reptile in captivity by the Guinness Book of World Records.

The 6.17-metre (20.24-foot) male, nicknamed "Lolong", was captured in the Agusan marsh on the southern island of Mindanao last September after a two-year search following the killing of a girl and the disappearance of a fisherman.

The pilot of an Air India passenger plane seated his mother in the cockpit for a domestic flight, refusing to take off without her after he could not get her a free ticket, a report said Sunday.

The pilot allegedly demanded that his mother be issued a "dummy boarding card" at Pune airport in western India and placed her in a jump seat reserved for the crew for the two-hour flight to the capital New Delhi.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service says a stolen Salvador Dali painting has been mailed back to New York from Europe and intercepted at Kennedy International Airport.

Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his wife Anne Sinclair said Friday they would sue French celebrity magazine Closer for invading their privacy with a story claiming they had separated.

"Having taken note of the cover and content of celebrity magazine Closer, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Anne Sinclair have decided to sue this publication for invasion of privacy," their lawyers said in a brief statement.

An American research student was in a critical condition in a South African hospital on Friday after he was dragged by chimpanzees into an enclosure at a primate sanctuary and attacked.

The mauled body of the student, identified in local media as Andrew Oberle, was retrieved from the enclosure by paramedics under armed guard at the Jane Goodall Institute Chimp Eden near the eastern town of Nelspruit.

Greeks fed up with stories of austerity and gloom can now turn to a new website aptly named Everything is OK (ola kala, OK in Greek) which aims to bring only happy news stories to the population.

Describing itself as an "online health wellbeing portal", the site www.olakala.gr tells users: "If you want to change your life, come with us."

When an elderly Indian patient came to Dr V. Seetharaman with persistent pain in his eye, what the surgeon found was reminiscent of a far-fetched alien movie plot: a live, 13 centimeter-long worm.

On examining the 75-year-old at Mumbai's Fortis Hospital this week, the eye expert was shocked by the highly unusual sight of the writhing parasite and had to operate speedily to remove it before serious damage was caused.