Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday made light of the sex scandals surrounding Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, saying critics were simply jealous of his sexual prowess.

"However much they nag Signor Berlusconi for his special attitude to the beautiful sex, and by the way they nag him mainly because of jealousy, he has shown himself as a responsible statesman," Putin said at an international investment forum in Sochi, quoted by the state RIA Novosti news agency.

A 78-year-old Bulgarian man started off the new school year on Thursday like hundreds of children a fraction of his age ... in first grade.

Apostol Stoyanov from the central village of Popovtsi never got a chance to attend school when he was a kid and decided to enroll in first grade this year, at the age of 78, the state BTA news agency reported citing school officials.

A South African court has blocked the government from buying 11 million female condoms from China, saying they are too small, a newspaper reported Friday.

The finance ministry had awarded a contract to a firm called Siqamba Medical, which planned to buy the Phoenurse condoms from China, the Beeld newspaper said.

Women in the southern Philippines brought peace to their strife-torn village by threatening to withhold sex if their men kept fighting, the U.N. refugee agency reported Friday.

The "sex strike" in rural Dado village on the often lawless southern island of Mindanao in July helped end tensions and bring some prosperity to the 102 families living there, said UNHCR national officer Rico Salcedo.

Bulgarian schools, where strict discipline reigned until the fall of communism, are starting to reintroduce decency rules as clothes grow skimpier and teenagers increasingly make out in hallways.

"Students must not exhibit intimate behavior during lessons, nor in the school," according to the regulations of one Sofia high school, cited by the daily 24 hours Thursday on the first day of the new school year.

Neanderthal cavemen supped on shellfish on the Costa del Sol 150,000 years ago, punching a hole in the theory that modern humans alone ate brain-boosting seafood so long ago, a new study shows.

The discovery in a cave near Torremolinos in southern Spain was about 100,000 years older than the previous earliest evidence of Neanderthals consuming seafood, scientists said.

A "rogue slug" sparked travel chaos in an English town after it crawled into a traffic light and caused a short circuit, officials said on Wednesday.

Cars were brought to a standstill at a busy junction in Darlington, northeast England, when the lights failed on Friday.

A thief in Spain who stole a diamond from a British woman -- and then swallowed it -- was caught when police stopped him at a checkpoint and forced him to undergo an X-ray.

The theft occurred when two British women entered a restaurant in the luxury southern resort of Marbella and one of them left her handbag on the floor by her chair, police said in a statement.

French film star Gerard Depardieu said he had no choice but to relieve himself into a bottle on a plane last month after a flight attendant blocked the bathroom door, insisting "I'm not a monster."

In a daytime talk show interview on Tuesday with Anderson Cooper -- who had broken into a giggling fit over the incident on his prime-time CNN news show -- France's best-known movie star admitted the bottle was not up to the task.

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have shown a sense of humor -- and made a little extra cash presumably -- by starring in an ad for pistachios poking fun at their notorious Facebook legal battle.

The identical twins, who waged an epic battle with Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg over whether he stole their idea for the social networking site, appear in bright green neckties in the advert.