News of the weird

Big cheese: A blue cheese from Denmark won the 1998 World Championship Cheese Contest in Green Bay, Wisconsin at the weekend. The runner-up was an Emmental from Switzerland.

Big lunch: Diners seated at a table stretching three miles along the Vasco da Gama bridge in Lisbon ate seven tons of feijoada, a Portuguese stew that includes pig's snout. The meal was held to celebrate the opening of the bridge, and the organisers hope it will earn a place in the record books as the longest table ever laid.