A British schoolboy described as a "model pupil" on Tuesday admitted robbing a bank while carrying a fake gun.

The 15-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, held up a branch of Barclays bank in Liverpool, northwest England, on Friday and made off with £2,000 ($3,200, 2,400 euros), the city's youth court heard.

There will be no rose ceremony for a 430-pound bachelor gorilla that failed to form any meaningful relationships with fellow apes during an 18-year stay at the Dallas Zoo.

Patrick, the 23-year-old Western lowland gorilla known for being gregarious with zoo staff and the public, while being ambivalent toward his female counterparts, has been handed his walking papers. The silverback will be transferred to the Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in Columbia, S.C. where he'll be allowed more solitude, according to a statement issued Monday by the Dallas Zoo.

An entry exam for one of France's top legal schools is to be rerun because some candidates were allowed to go to the toilet during the five-hour test.

Toulouse University confirmed Monday that one of the examinations for would-be entrants to its law school will have to be taken again by every candidate because a sympathetic supervisor allowed some desperate students to take a comfort break.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Monday that he stopped smoking out of fear of his wife, in an unwitting admission captured by a loose microphone.

The U.S. leader, taking part in an event on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly on the importance of civil society, was exchanging small talk at the end of his remarks.

More than 20 purebred goats— most of them pregnant — were stolen from a Hawaii farm on a full moonlit night, with duct tape used to keep the animals from making noise, their owner said.

Sometime between Thursday night and Friday morning, 23 goats valued at a total of about $10,000 were stolen from Kahuku Goats, a 250-acre (101-hectare) farm on Oahu's North Shore, said owner Keal Pontin. Two bucks were left behind with ropes around their neck and duct tape over their mouths, he said Monday.

Children playing in northwestern Greece found a bag containing 43,000 euros ($58,000) that an elderly woman had hidden in a derelict building fearing the crisis-hit country's banks were unsafe, police said Monday.

While playing near a square in the city of Ioannina on Friday, a group of primary school children aged around nine and ten stumbled upon the money in a bag stashed away in the building, police said confirming media accounts.

A tiny snake as slender as a pen forced the grounding of a Japan-bound Qantas flight in the Australian city of Sydney overnight, stranding hundreds of passengers.

The non-venomous reptile, about eight inches (20 centimeters) long, was found near the doorway of a Boeing 747-400 bound for Tokyo on Sunday night, a Qantas spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

It carried hippies through the 1960s, hauled surfers in search of killer waves during endless summers and serves as a workhorse across the developing world, but the long, strange trip of the Volkswagen van is ending.

Brazil is the last place in the world still producing the iconic vehicle, or "bus" as it's known by aficionados, but VW says production will end Dec. 31. Safety regulations mandate that every vehicle in Brazil must have air bags and anti-lock braking systems starting in 2014, and the company says it cannot change production to meet the law.

Six pornography dealers in western Japan have been arrested after mailing their catalogues to the head of Osaka Police Department by mistake, according to local media.

Police last week arrested Toshiharu Hidaka, 27, and five other men on suspicion of possessing obscene material with the intent to sell it in Osaka, Jiji Press and other news reports said.

A University of Wisconsin student with a nickname of "Silo" is eating his way through school — competitively.

Computer engineering student Eric Dahl now ranks third in the world of competitive eating as determined by All Pro Eating rankings, though he once held the top spot. Dahl has earned more than $18,000 in prize money or merchandise to help pay for his education.