PARIS - From miracle whale poo to the terrible things Americans are doing to croissants... Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.
Cereal killers
From the country that brought us cheese in a tube, marshmallow topped sweet potatoes and pineapple on pizza comes a new culinary abomination -- croissant cereal.
Clearly feeling that not enough damage had been done by crossing the sublime French breakfast pastry with the doughnut to make the "cronut", New York bakers have gone one step further.
Gautier Coiffard admitted that "there was a lot of hate and passion for these mini cereal croissants," but customers are still queueing up to pay $50 (46 euros) for a packet at his trendy Brooklyn Heights bakery.
Kabir Zafar, 25, who had been waiting in the early morning cold for nearly an hour and a half, said: "I hear they are really good."
Jack must die
He's a hard man, James Cameron, the maker of "Titanic". Asked if he had any regrets about the movie, the Hollywood director said he would have made sure Jack Dawson drowned in the icy Atlantic.
"I would have made the raft (cabin door) smaller, so there's no doubt" that Dawson -- played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie -- would have died, Cameron said.
Fans insist gallant Jack could have survived on the cabin door with Kate Winslet's Rose. Their star-crossed love story "never seems to end for people", said Cameron.
Stinky minke
It is not yet being hyped as a superfood, but scientists are adamant that minke whale poo is "worth its weight in gold".
The Norwegian Institute for Marine Research studied some of 600 tonnes of floating turds the whales leave on the surface every day in summer around the Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard, and their verdict was unanimous. "It can sound disgusting, but for the ecosystem it's worth its weight in gold," it said, boosting the growth of essential phytoplankton.
Norway is one of the few countries that allows the commercial hunting of the species, but the science seems to suggest that the world needs a whole lot more whale poo.
Love never gets old
"It's a good book!" exclaims 97-year-old Nils, leafing through a Swedish sex guide for seniors.
The famously liberal Scandinavian country is tackling one of the last taboos -- love among the wrinklies -- with nursing homes helping residents lead healthy sex lives.
"We have to be able to explain and demonstrate things," said home manager Louise Karlsson, "like how to hold the catheters in order to be able to have sex.
"Each generation thinks it's the most sexually active, the one with the most desire," she chuckled.
Only gold with do
And finally Spanish police are searching for thieves who broke into a warehouse and stole gold plated dildos, each worth up to 16,000 euros ($17,000). Idiared Aponte, of the sex toys' makers Dreamlove, told AFP: "I don't think it will be very easy for the thieves to sell them on."