After saying that the reason he failed a philosophy exam was because his teacher was rarely in class, a student has successfully sued the French state. Jerome Charasse, whose uncle Michel Charasse served as budget minister under late President Francois Mitterrand, only scored a 6 out of 20 on a philosophy exam. He had scored pretty well on the rest of his baccalaureate high school exams.

Scottish authorities on Wednesday complained some of the world's trash, coming from several countries including far off Brazil and Japan is piling up on a Scottish beach. Marine ranger Sarah Money told Reuters, "Despite being so remote, St Kilda is not immune to the problems of plastic marine debris pollution. " St Kilda harbors over a million marine birds and is a world heritage site.

Kelly Romenesko, a French teacher at two Roman Catholic schools in Appleton, was fired when she and her husband decided to start a family using in vitro fertilization. The Catholic School system claimed that Romenesko violated a provision of her employment contract saying a teacher has to act in accordance with Catholic doctrine which holds IVF as morally wrong as it replaces the "natural" conjugal union between husband and wife and often results in destruction of embryos.

A French playwright spent up to 10 hours a day in a cage for a week to better understand the life of the panda for a theater project he's working on. Norbert Aboudarham, 57, spent his time in the cage in Paris' Amiens Zoo writing "The Panda's Flea. "

Feminists in France have petitioned the French government to remove the title Mademoiselle or Miss from official administrative documents on account that the title "perpetuates the submission to macho values" in France. Les Chiennes de Garde (the Guard Dogs), the biggest feminist group in France, say it unfairly forces women to divulge their marital status whereas men have only to reveal their gender. Many women dread the day they are seen as too mature for Mademoiselle.