The Royal Mail is launching "singing" postboxes which play Christmas jingles when cards and letters are posted.

The sound of sleigh bells or a jolly message from Father Christmas will greet anyone sending mail at the special postboxes in the coming weeks.

Four of them are being launched, in London, Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh, installed with sensors which spark the messages. They are adorned with snowflakes and will be in place throughout the festive season.

IMPRESSIVE FEAT

An artist is creating the UK's largest cast bronze sculpture - so huge that when he is lying down he is the same size as one of its feet.

Messenger, depicting "a young, powerful woman", will be unveiled next year in front of the Theatre Royal Plymouth, which commissioned Joseph Hillier to create the work, and it is now being cast at a foundry in a tiny Welsh village, using the ancient technique of lost wax casting.

The sculpture, spanning seven metres high and nine metres wide, is too large to be put together inside the foundry, so it is being made in sections, and once its 200 bronze panels are complete, 30 master craftsmen and women will weld them together.

EIGHT LIVES LEFT

A ginger cat called Kevin has been saved by vets after swallowing a 5p coin which left the poor animal with suspected metal poisoning.

Steve and Frances Gwillm, from Ystradgynlais, near Swansea, took the two-year-old to Swansea PDSA Pet Hospital where vets discovered the cause of his woes - a coin from their daughter's piggy bank.

After stabilising Kevin, the vet team carried out surgery to remove the coin from his stomach in an hour-long operation, but he remained jaundiced and required close monitoring. The couple were told that 5p coins made before 2012 contain metals that are potentially toxic.

MONEY LAUNDERING

Dutch police who found 350,000 euro hidden inside a washing machine have detained a man - on suspicion of money laundering.

Police said officers were checking a house in western Amsterdam for unregistered residents when they found the valuable laundry load.

A photo displayed on a police website showed bundles of bank notes, mainly 20 and 50 euro bills, crammed into the drum.

COUPLE CLEAN UP

A New Orleans couple who wanted their home to be tidy for Thanksgiving guests really cleaned up when they found a 1.8 million dollar lottery ticket on a nightstand.

If Harold and Tina Ehrenberg had found the ticket two weeks later it would have been too late, the Louisiana Lottery Commission said.

Their winning numbers were drawn on June 6, and prizes must be claimed within 180 days.

GRETA GRATITUDE

A German Shepherd is being hailed a hero after alerting a family in Delaware to a potentially fatal gas leak.

Five-year-old Greta barked to wake up her owner in the middle of the night and alerted him to a leak from a propane stove, the News Journal said.

Owner Ken Walsh called Greta, a rescue dog, a hero for alerting him to the gas leak before it hurt him, his wife and 14-year-old son. Mr Walsh said Greta was rewarded with a steak and sweet potatoes.