World's heaviest man gets wheels.

The world's heaviest man still can't walk, but he will soon be able to roll.

Manuel Uribe said Thursday he is having a 1989 Chevrolet Astrovan outfitted to support his record-breaking weight, giving him mobility after more than six years of being confined to his bed.

Uribe earned the Guinness World Record as the world's heaviest man in 2006, when he tipped the scales at 560kg. He claims to have since shed more than 200kg after making a public call for help.

Uribe, known as Meme to his friends, even has a name for his new ride. "My friends call it the Meme-Mobile, just like the Batmobile," he said.

The minivan is being converted into an open-air, flatbed pickup of sorts. Manuel says he will put a bed on the back of the van to drive around town, with his new wife at the wheel. When at home, he will hang out in a remodeled garage that will include a forklift to help raise his regular bed up to the level of his car bed, allowing him to switch locations from time to time.

Uribe said that, with the new car, he plans to start up an auto parts business. And Uribe's wife, Claudia Solis, said the two are even thinking about making a trip to the beach in May.

Uribe married Solis in October, and the wedding was one of the few times he has left his home in recent years

Robin Williams needs heart op.

US comedian and Oscar winner Robin Williams is to undergo surgery to replace a heart valve, his representatives told the US celebrity magazine People.

Williams, 57, was admitted to a southern Florida hospital this week with shortness of breath and broke off a tour of his one-man comedy show Weapons of Self-Destruction. Doctors ordered him to take a rest, but Williams' spokesmen told People Thursday that his 80-city tour, which began in September and was to go to New York's Broadway in the spring, would resume in the autumn.

"This tour has been amazing fun, and I can't wait to get back out on the road after a little tune-up," the performer who won the best supporting actor Oscar in 1997 for Good Will Hunting said in a statement.

The date of Williams' surgery to replace his aortic valve was not announced. Heart valves are replaced when they fail to open or close properly. The aortic valve regulates the flow of blood from the heart's left ventricle into the aorta, which distributes blood to the rest of the body.

Apples for a healthy colon.

The apples and apple juice you consume may have positive effects in one of the most unlikely places in the body – in the colon. New research has demonstrated that both apple pectin and polyphenol-rich apple juice components actually enhance biological mechanisms that produce anticarcinogenic compounds during the fermentation process.

Using human faecal matter as the test substance, German researchers Dr Dieter Schrenk, and his colleagues hypothesised that the compound butyrate could be increased in the presence of apple pectin and apple juice extracts.

Colorectal cancer common in West
Butyrate has been suggested to be a chemopreventative metabolite that might prevent the occurrence of colorectal cancer, which is very common in Western industrialised countries. It is a short chain fatty acid which is seen as a major factor contributing to healthy colon mucosa. The research notes: “Butyrate not only serves as a major nutrient for the colon epithelia but is also thought to play an important role in the protective effect of natural fibre against colorectal cancer.”

So how do apple pectin and apple juice extracts play a role in increasing amounts of butyrate? The laboratory tests performed by Schrenk found that by the increased production of butyrate via the addition of apple components, histone deacetlyases (HDAC) were inhibited. With slowed production of HDAC, there would be significantly less growth of precancerous and tumour cells.

The research, published in Nutrition, notes, “apples are a major source of natural fibre and of low molecular weight plan polyphenols in the Western diet.” The researchers conclude, “Pectin-rich apple products can thus be expected to exert anticarginogenic effects in the colon.”