London, Aug 6 : US presidential candidate Barak Obama celebrated his 47th birthday, yesterday, amid 850 friends and admirers in a fund rising bash in Boston.

London, Aug 6 : A couple literally took their love to new heights when they exchanged wedding wows standing on top of the wings of two planes, 1,000 feet above the ground.

Both the bride, Katie Hodgson, 23, and groom Darren McWalters, 24, were strapped to the top wings of two similar aeroplanes that flew alongside.

Rev George Bringham, who flew ahead on the wings of a third aircraft, married the couple, from Lancashire, via an airborne communications system.

However, the ceremony got delayed twice owing to bad weather. It was played through loud speakers throughout RFC Rendcomb Airfield, near Cirencester, Gloucestershire, to the congregation on the ground.

London, Aug. 6 : Most of the 171 hospitals that come under the purview of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) are infested with rats, fleas, bed bugs and other forms of vermin.

This horrific data has emerged through a Conservatives query sought under Freedom of Information rules, reports the Daily Telegraph.

What is even more alarming is the fact that at least eight hospitals trusts have called in pest control officers more than 500 times to eradicate rats found in maternity wards, wasps and fleas in neo-natal units, bed bug infestations, flies in operating theatres and maggots found in patients'' slippers.

London, Aug 6 : A Pakistan national and taxi-driver by profession allegedly used his deceased daughter’s passport to try and smuggle a girl orphaned in the 2005 earthquake into the UK.

After being held guilty, he was given a four-month prison sentence and suspended as a taxi driver for 18 months, besides being ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work.

Identified as Saftain Mahmood, the taxi driver applied for a passport using his deceased daughter Farah’s details, but enclosed pictures of the other child, reported the Daily Times.

Farah had died of a brain haemorrhage eight years ago. Her father attempted to deceive the authorities after a recent visit to Pakistan to help victims of the 2005 earthquake.

London, Aug. 6 : The leadership change plot in Britain is gathering momentum with Foreign Secretary David Miliband reportedly projecting Alan Milburn to be next Chancellor of the Exchequer if he (Miliband) replaces Gordon Brown as Prime Minister.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Brown, who is currently on a holiday, has failed to get Milburn’s support ahead of a tentative cabinet meeting on September 8. Miliband on the other hand has privately talked to the former health secretary about taking on a senior role in a government headed by him.

London, Aug. 6 : Security flaws have emerged in new micro-chipped passports that were introduced to protect against terrorism and organised crime.

In tests that The Times was privy to, Jeroen van Beek, a computer researcher at the University of Amsterdam, took less than an hour to clone the chips on two British passports and implanted digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. The altered chips were then passed as genuine by passport reader software used by the UN agency that sets standards for e-passports.