...is that it is used by a lot of very old cars and trucks. Unlike modern vehicles, they stink and smoke a lot. Even those with (now mandatory) particle filters end up polluting because the owners will not bother maintaining their filters. The police never stop vehicles on the road to check that they conform to emission standards.
Because we French love to enact laws that are never applied. So don't hold your breath on this one...

In France, this idiotic law was passed more than two years ago under the name "private copy tax". See
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copie_priv%C3%A9e
http://www.chere-copie-privee.org/ (sorry it's all in French)

    1Tb USB external HD -> tax=20euro
    100Gb USB stick -> tax=12.50euro

As a daddy who uses hard drives to store family camcorder vids, I strongly resent this.

The Aquarius/SAC-D salinity-sensing instrument is not exactly brand-new. It is an L-band microwave radiometer based on the same principle as the one on the SMOS satellite launched in October 2009. Still, it helps to have more satellites monitoring the oceans.