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.

Thirteen Philippine policemen have been sacked and more than 350 others placed under investigation for allegedly cheating in written exams, the police governing body said Sunday.

The National Police Commission said it had invalidated the results of the exams taken last year by 386 people in the southern city of Zamboanga as so many had put exactly the same wrong answers.

Larry Hagman, the "Dallas" star who died this week, accepted a bag full of cash from Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in return for allowing the regime to use his image, Britain's Sunday Times reported Sunday.

Hagman, who won worldwide fame for his portrayal of villainous Texas oilman J.R. Ewing on the primetime soap opera, visited Bucharest in the 1980s with his wife, where they were feted by Romania's Communist leaders, the newspaper said.

Warren Blackwell held onto the ashes of his beloved canine companion Gypsy for eight years, never able to find the right place or occasion to celebrate her life.

"I've never been able to part with them, I've never been able to come up with anything that was suitable to do with them that would make me happy," he said.

Taiwanese authorities have rejected an application to set up a new political party named after Asian-American basketball hero Jeremy Lin, officials said Monday.

The "Jeremy Lin Party", jointly endorsed by 30 people as required by Taiwan law, was turned down by the interior ministry's Department of Civil Affairs.