A French organic farmer has forked out 3,000 euros (2,100 dollars) for a series of billboard advertisements that denounce the evils of advertising.

Twenty-five of the giant ads went up this week across the southwestern town of Agen showing a human brain stuffed with advertising images and carrying the slogan "Advertising is manipulating you - React!"

A "sea crazy" Australian helicopter pilot was arrested on the tiny Pacific outpost of Nauru after illegally landing on the island in search of sweets and soft drinks, a report said Thursday.

The 24-year-old's helicopter was impounded and he was locked up after parking on a beach near Nauru's main supermarket while he bought some chocolates and soda, a spokesman for the island's government said.

Twenty inmates pound barrel-sized drums in a Taiwanese prison courtyard until they are so drenched with sweat that colorful tattoos show through their thin cotton T-shirts.

The convicts range in age from 18 to 25 and most of their records include violence or serious drug abuse. They beat out their energetic rhythms under a blazing summer sun during their midday session at the Changhua Prison.

Police say a woman endangered her 6-year-old niece by having the girl back the woman's car out of a tight parking spot, wrecking two other cars in the process.

Fifty-five-year-old Rebecca Beatty and her attorney have not returned calls on the charges she waived to Beaver County Court on Tuesday.

Scientists on Wednesday said they had uncovered the secret behind the extraordinary jumping ability of the white-handed gibbon, capable in the wild of leaping across more than 10 meters (33 feet) in gaps in the forest canopy.

Using high-speed cameras and laser measurement, researchers recorded two captive gibbons -- one an adult male, the other a juvenile female -- as they jumped between trunks at a wildlife park in Belgium.

Renova, one of Europe's biggest producers of household paper products, has launched toilet paper in the colors of the Vatican flag in honor of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Spain next week.

Each pack contains two perfumed rolls of toilet paper, one yellow and the other white, which the company says on its online store can be used as giant streamers to welcome the 84-year-old pontiff to Madrid.

Russian authorities fired a prison governor Tuesday after scandalous photographs revealed prisoners holding a toga party with caviar and even taking a delivery of McDonald's takeaway.

The governor of Prison Number 3 in the town of Serpukhov outside Moscow and two of his deputies were fired after an investigation found "blatant breaches" at the jail, the prosecutor-general's office said Tuesday.

A gang of drug traffickers is inserting pictures of late British singer Amy Winehouse in their bags of cocaine to improve sales, Brazilian police have said.

The clear plastic bags carry a paper insert with a picture of the troubled 27-year-old singer, who died at her north London home on July 23. She is described in the insert as "Amy House."

A Malaysian man is suing his runaway bride for 1.1 million ringgit ($365,000) after she called off the wedding with just six hours to go, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Civil servant Mohammad Masran Abdul Rahman, 32, is suing hospital technician Norzuliyana Mat Hassan, 28, in the second case of its kind in northern Kelantan state in just two months, his lawyer Latifah Ariffin told Agence France Presse.

France is the home of the baguette, that savory, crisp staple of a fabled gastronomy. But just try getting a fresh one in the evening, or on a holiday, or even in August, when many of the country's 33,000 bakeries are closed.

Jean-Louis Hecht thinks he has the answer.