In a bid to seek blessings from them, a couple from Kolkata, India sent personal invitations to nearly 250 beggars in the city for their wedding reception party. The groom's father Malay Saha said on Friday that it's a tradition in their family to invite beggars to the wedding ceremony "to seek divine blessings and fortune in the life of the newly married sons and daughters. " The family believes that the tradition brings them good fortune. Thus, they invited beggars by asking their names from them and then writing it down on the envelopes. The tradition of inviting beggars to a wedding is traced back to their great-grandfather Satish Chandra, who too invited 175 beggars to his wedding party. "And they blessed my son and daughter-in-law from their heart," said the groom's father.

ust in time for Valentine's Day, Chinese restaurants are offering customers a fresh new take on an old staple: the potato. The latest culinary fad is called the Purple Orchid Three potato, which due to a mutation while aboard a space mission, turned the vegetables purple in color and slightly sweet in taste.

The Guinness Book of World Records on Monday named 114-year-old Yone Minagawa as the world's oldest person after Emma Faust Tillman from the U. S. died. Tillman was also 114. Hospital staff at the nursing home where Minagawa is living in Fukuchi, southern Japan, greeted her with a poster that read, "Congratulations, you're No. 1. "

In celebration of the Year of the Pig this 2007, Chinese authorities are introducing postage stamps that smells and taste like the popular Chinese dish of sweet and sour pork. The stamps have been out in the market ahead of the official Chinese New Year which falls on February 18, it was reported.

Welcome to your new condo. Oh, and don't mind the long line to the soup kitchen. New multi-million dollar condos are being built over a church, homeless shelter, and soup kitchen. Since 1865, the First Congregational Church of Christ has dug its roots into the ground at 10th and G Street NW serving the community and it's not going anywhere.