A one-time anorexic from Toronto turned world-class competitive eater clinched his fourth straight hamburger title in Washington on Tuesday on the eve of New York's iconic hot dog classic.

Peter Czerwinski, 24, ate 15 hamburgers in the space of 10 minutes at the Z-Burger Independence Burger Eating Championship to win a $1,000 prize plus a similar amount of gift cards for the local burger chain.

A six-week-old Twitter account is making apparent progress in its mission to get people to stop tweeting pictures of their bank cards, often with full numbers visible.

It's unclear who set up @NeedADebitCard, but several of the Instagram and Twitpic images of debit cards that it has found and retweeted on the microblogging website have been pulled down.

The United States government has assured its citizens that, much like zombies, mermaids probably do not exist, saying in an official post: "No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found."

"Mermaids -- those half-human, half-fish sirens of the sea -- are legendary sea creatures," read the online statement from the National Ocean Service (NOS).

A German couple on holiday on the Italian island of Sardinia bought the live lobsters on the menu at a posh seaside restaurant for 500 euros ($629) and put them back in the sea, local media said Tuesday.

"When the woman came into the restaurant, she saw the lobsters straight away," Giuseppe Demuro, a chef at Mama Latina on Sardinia's luxurious Emerald Coast, was quoted as saying by the L'Unione Sarda newspaper.

Startled drivers weren't seeing things — it really was a kangaroo hopping down the highway in the U.S. state of Washington.

The meandering marsupial nearly caused a couple of accidents in the weekend and police responded, keeping the kangaroo off the road while its owner tracked it down and caught it with help from friends.

Spotlessly clean and decorated with plastic flowers and balloons for its opening ceremony, Priyanka Bharti's toilet is seen as a gleaming symbol of the empowerment of Indian women.

It has been built in the village of Vishnupur Khurd in Uttar Pradesh state due to the determination of Priyanka, a young bride who walked out of her new marital home when she was appalled to find she had to defecate in the open.

The organizers of a death metal festival have mockingly thanked an Austrian bishop for his "support" and invited him to their event, after he urged people to pray for the souls of those attending.

"We are grateful for support of any kind and are therefore very happy that the diocesan bishop Klaus Kueng has called for a common prayer for our event," a tongue-in-cheek statement said on the Extremefest's Facebook page Monday.

Couples in England will be able to get married at any time of night or day from October, officials announced Sunday.

Marriages in England and Wales are currently banned outside the hours of 8:00 am and 6:00 pm, under rules dating back to 1837.

In the latest American food craze to catch on in France, Parisians are flocking to U.S.-style food trucks for gourmet burgers, artisanal tacos and other decidedly non-French street foods.

Usually uber-traditionalists when it comes to dining, Parisians have fallen hard for the food trucks, with some queuing for up to two hours at lunch time to sample their wares.

A saltwater crocodile weighing more than a ton and suspected of killing two people in the Philippines has been declared the largest such reptile in captivity by the Guinness Book of World Records.

The 6.17-metre (20.24-foot) male, nicknamed "Lolong", was captured in the Agusan marsh on the southern island of Mindanao last September after a two-year search following the killing of a girl and the disappearance of a fisherman.