Details emerged of the will of Royal Marine David Hart, who had been killed in an explosion in Afghanistan’s Helmand province in 2010, on the day before his 24th birthday.

Marine Hart, who had taken out life insurance, left a letter in which he instructed that £100,000 of the policy proceeds should be used to send 32 of his friends on holiday to Las Vegas.

Close friend Andy Hare said: “He loved going away with his mates – it was always the best two weeks of the year. They were lads’ holidays and great times.

“In his letter David said he had had a great life and had no regrets about anything.”

Excitement gripped Sutton-onthe- Forest, meanwhile, when Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha turned up for the wedding of their friends Lucy Sheffield and Thomas Jackson at the village’s All Hallows Church.

In other news, the first Orange Order parade ever to be held in York passed off peacefully; Scottish singer-songwriter Paulo Nutini performed to a packed Barbican Centre; and scores of cyclists stripped off to take part in the World Naked Bike Ride in York.

York drug trafficker John Hibbs was spared jail, despite being caught carrying heroin just days after being released from prison, after a judge heard about his rare medical condition. Hibbs, 36, was one of the first people in the world to receive pioneering heart pump treatment to give him a heartbeat.

Judge Peter Fox, sentencing Hibbs at Teesside Crown Court, heard he needed medication four times a day and ready access to an electricity supply to recharge the batteries which keep his heart pump going.

“Were it not for your dire medical condition and limited life expectancy, it would be at least five years’ imprisonment,” the judge told Hibbs.

A new and dangerous craze hit York: planking. The Press published shocking photographs which had been posted on Facebook by the ‘York Planking Association’ – one of which showed a teenager lying across a railway track, his head on one line and his ankles on another.

“This was very dangerous behaviour,” a British Transport Police spokesman said. And plans were unveiled for a new chocolate and confectionery museum in York, to be known as The Sweet History of York.

In national news, teachers voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action in protest at Government plans to change pensions; and Justice Secretary Ken Clarke was forced to back down on plans to halve sentences for offenders who pleaded guilty early.