Don't tell Popeye. It turns out you don't need to eat your spinach to get the world's biggest arms.
Massachusetts bodybuilder Moustafa Ismail eats seven pounds of protein, nine pounds of carbohydrates and three gallons of water each day to help maintain upper arms that measure 31 inches around — as big as a small man's waist.

A regal 19th-century horse-drawn hearse believed to be the world's largest has become a crowd magnet for a Czech museum built single-handedly by a plumber with a passion for historic vehicles.
Czech master craftsman Vaclav Brozik built the massive eight-horse hearse around 1895. It is over four meters (yards) high, 6.5 meters long and weighs in at almost three tonnes.

A hugely obese New York woman visiting her native Hungary died while trying to find a plane to fly her home, and her family is reportedly suing airlines that had balked, citing her size.
Janos Soltesz and his wife Vilma, an ill woman from the Bronx, visited their native Hungary but could not get back in October when Delta and KLM said that, at more than 400 pounds (180 kilos), she was too large to fit in a seat.

The Chinese Communist Party's official mouthpiece on Wednesday deleted a story that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un had been named 2012's "Sexiest Man Alive", after it fell for a spoof by U.S. website The Onion.
The People's Daily had run the U.S. satirical site's gushing quotes about the "Pyongyang-bred heartthrob" in both Chinese and English as world news, along with a 55-image gallery opening with Kim astride a horse and gazing into the distance.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has been named 2012's "Sexiest Man Alive", China's Communist Party newspaper proclaimed Tuesday after treating a spoof award by satirical U.S. website The Onion as genuine.
The People's Daily website published two paragraphs lifted word-for-word from The Onion, along with a photo gallery of 55 images of Kim, who took over as the North's leader after his father Kim Jong-Il died last December.

Onion Johnnies, the travelling salesmen whose berets and bicycles inspired Britain and much of the world's classic image of the archetypal Frenchman, are setting sail for England once more.
Beset by tough market conditions at home, the producers of Brittany's celebrated pink onions have decided it is time to seduce a new generation of British housewives with their Gallic charm and strings of eye-watering produce.

The U.S. State Department was forced to deny Monday that it had invited a notorious rock star behind such classics as "Party Til You Puke" to represent America in the conservative Gulf state of Bahrain.
Musician, DJ, motivational speaker and self-styled "King of Partying" Andrew W.K. had earlier claimed to have been named a U.S. "cultural ambassador" to the troubled Arab kingdom, a close U.S. ally beset by sectarian tension.

A 22-year-old Mexican beauty queen was killed in a gunfight between soldiers and a suspected gang she was riding with in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, prosecutors said Monday.
Authorities suspect that Maria Susana Flores, who was the Woman of Sinaloa 2012, was part of the gang and may have fired a gun in Saturday's violence. An AK-47 assault rifle was found next to her body in the group's car.

A Briton celebrated Monday claiming to be the first person to have visited every sovereign nation on the globe without flying, after he crossed into the world's youngest country, South Sudan.
Graham Hughes, 33, took almost four years to tick 201 countries off his list, including all 193 members of the United Nations, as well as destinations including Kosovo, Palestine, Taiwan, Vatican City and Western Sahara.

An Austrian photo gallery says a camera used by a photographer who documented the life of artist Pablo Picasso has sold for a world record price of €1.68 million ($2.19 million).
The Westlicht gallery says the Leica m3d belonged to David Douglas Duncan. The 96-year-old former photographer for LIFE magazine was a close friend of Picasso and published hundreds of exclusive photos of him.
