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Adult-only porn videos and DVDs cannot be sold in the UK by mail order, the web or phone, the High Court has ruled.

Lord Justice Maurice Kay and Mr Justice Newman said "R18" sexually explicit recordings had to be sold in person in licensed sex shops.

They said the aim of the law was to stop the material falling into the hands of children.

It was argued at a recent hearing that the law harmed UK mail order firms and benefited overseas sex companies.

Forbidden material

Lord Justice Kay said: "We have no doubt that one of the main reasons for the restriction is to ensure that the customer comes face-to-face with the supplier so that there is an opportunity for the supplier to assess the age of the customer.

"It is a disincentive to a visibly under-age customer to seek out the forbidden material."

He said that it was no answer to say that the restrictions were unjustified because they could be circumvented.

"Whilst they do no make it impossible for a determined minor to come into possession of an R18 video, they make it more difficult," he added.

The judges were dismissing two appeals by licensed sex businesses fined thousands of pounds after prosecutions by Liverpool City Council's trading standards department.

Interfact Ltd, which has a sex shop in Bexley, and Pabo Ltd, based in Birmingham, were found guilty at Liverpool Magistrates' Court in April 2004 of offering R18 classified videos in their website catalogues.

At the recent hearing which led to the judges' ruling, David Pannick QC, for Interfact, said it made "no sense" to allow sales to adults who were physically present, but prohibit mail order.

No human rights breach

"Indeed, the only purpose which such an interpretation of the law would serve would be to damage the local economy in favour of the economy in France or the Netherlands," he had told the hearing.

Mr Pannick had claimed prohibiting mail order would breach Article 10 - the right to freedom of expression - of the European Convention on Human Rights. But the judges rules there was no Article 10 breach.

Interfact was fined £3,000 for one offence of supplying and £2,000 for one offence of offering to supply. It was ordered to pay £25,617 prosecution costs.

Pabo Ltd was fined £2,500 in relation to one offence. It was ordered to pay £22,314 prosecution costs.

BBC News

A Brazilian teenager bought his girlfriend a sheep for Valentine's Day.

Frederico Skwara, 17, bought Juliana Magalhaes, 15, a pregnant sheep called Waffle.

He told Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper that he first asked Juliana's mother if she wanted a sheep in the family home.

The mother, Marian Magalhaes, who lives in one of the city's busiest neighbourhoods, said: "I loved the idea instantly and gave him all the support."

Valentine's Day is called Dias dos Namorados in Brazil and is celebrated on June 12.

Ananova.com

A Serbian man who has invented a sex machine for women is appealing to western women to test his device.

Nesa Proka, from the central town of Krusevac, made the appeal after failing to find any willing Serbian women.

He has taken out a patent on what he says is the "ultimate sex aid" for lonely women after spending three years working on it.

The machine, which runs on a 390 volt electric engine, simulates sex and has a seven and a half inch artificial 'penis'.

He said: "My sex machine has an artificial penis that can make up to 180 moves in a minute. A man can only manage that intensity of movement for about five seconds but the machine can do it for as long as the woman wants.

"And it comes with a set of controls to fully regulate the speed and intensity a woman for individual sex."

But Proka said he would have to market it in the west because he had not been able to find any Serbian woman to test it out.

"Western women are more liberal. I couldn't find a woman here to try the sex machine," he told local daily Glas Javnosti.

But he did admit that some local women were curious about his invention and a few had come into his garage where he keeps it locked away just to look at it.

One reportedly told the newspaper: "If I had a machine like that at home I would never go outside the front door."

Ananova.com

Berlin is expecting an influx of prostitutes during next year's World Cup and city health officials plan to distribute 100,000 free condoms.

A woman dressed as a condom will also help promote the safe sex message outside the Olympic Stadium, Berlin official Martina Schmiedhofer said.

The free condoms will be accompanied by leaflets giving men advice on how to behave with prostitutes.

The campaign will target fans at all six matches in Berlin.

The leaflets will set out 10 "rules" for prostitutes' clients, Ms Schmiedhofer, health director for Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district, told the BBC News website.

She said the messages would include: be polite and respectful towards prostitutes; maintain a high standard of personal hygiene; always use a condom and be clear about what you want.

'Sex sheds'

Similar campaigns have been staged for major events in the city before, she said.

Prostitutes from other parts of Germany are expected to turn up in the capital for the World Cup, she added.

She ruled out Berlin introducing so-called "sex sheds" - special drive-in enclosures for prostitutes and their clients which have been pioneered in Cologne.

The German news magazine Stern says an area the size of a football pitch was earmarked for prostitution in Cologne's Longerich district in October 2001.

It was fenced off and photography was banned there. The enclosure was designed to stop illegal kerb-crawling in the city centre and according to Stern, it has been declared a success.

The city of Cologne funds it to the tune of 480,000 euros (£321,200) annually, with help from social services and the police, Stern reports.

BBC News

A Yorkshire HIV charity has been threatened with legal action over the name it uses for its free condoms. Sexual health group Yorkshire Mesmac issues condoms to gay and bisexual men under a scheme called Confi'doms.

But Britannia Medicare, which makes condoms under the Confident brand, has ordered the charity to sign away its name by Monday or end up in court.

Yorkshire Mesmac has refused to comply and accused the company of a "shocking" attempt to bully a small charity.

The charity says it can prove it was using the Confi'dom name in late 2001, before Middlesex-based Britannia registered the Confident name in May 2002.

It also dismissed the claim that people would confuse the two names as "ridiculous" and said it had been advised by lawyers to stand its ground.

Leading trademark lawyer Lindsey Wrenn, based at the Leeds offices of solicitors Pinsent Masons, has offered her services free of charge to the charity.

Yorkshire Mesmac director Tom Doyle said: "The tone of the letters sent to us by Britannia's solicitors is aggressive and threatening - we feel that they are trying to bully us.

"I think they are banking on us lying down and meekly accepting what they want, but we simply won't."

He said the legal wrangle was a waste of the charity's limited resources and had distracted him from important sexual health work in the region.

The organisation has offices in Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Hull, Scarborough, Sheffield, Wakefield and York.

Nobody at Britannia Medicare was available for comment on Friday.

BBC News

Pornographic websites are about to get their own online home. A proposal to create net domains ending .xxx has been approved by the body that oversees the net's addressing system.

Sexually explicit sites will be encouraged to move to the new domains to make it easier for people to filter and avoid them.

The .xxx approval reverses earlier decisions to block it over fears that it would be ineffective and controversial.

Name calling

Net domains such as .com., org., .uk and so on are overseen by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

Icann polices the firms that run the different domains and approves the gradual expansion of the pool of net names that can be used.

ORIGINAL DOMAINS .com
.edu
.gov
.int
.mil
.net
.org

In 2000 Icann approved seven new domains but the net's original generic domains such as .com, .org and country names such as .uk are still the most popular.

Many of the new domains that Icann has approved are for specific industries or special interest groups.

More recently Icann has been considering a second list of proposals for new sponsored domains.

Earlier this year it officially approved the creation of the .jobs and .travel domains.

The .xxx domain is the latest sponsored domain to win approval. Icann is now negotiating with ICM Registry, backers of the .xxx plan, on how the new net destination will be funded and run.

ICM Registry was formed specifically to lobby for the creation of the .xxx domain.

NEW NAMES .aero
.biz
.coop
.info
.museum
.name
.pro

Moving to the .xxx domain will be entirely voluntary but ICM said that some pornographers have expressed support for the idea.

In a statement, ICM said the creation of the .xxx domain would: "help protect children from exposure to online pornography and also have a positive impact on online adult entertainment through voluntary efforts of the industry."

While ICM will handle the technology behind .xxx, sites using it will be overseen by the non-profit International Foundation for Online Responsibility.

No need?

The decision to approve the .xxx domain comes five years after the idea was first proposed.

Icann has rejected the proposal on several occasions before now. In an early report on the idea, Icann experts said the proposal did not "meet an unmet need" because adult content was readily available on the internet.

NEWEST NAMES .xxx (approved)
.jobs (approved)
.travel (approved)
.post
.mobi
.cat
.asia
.mail
.tel

A report on the proposal noted: "no mechanism (technical or non-technical) exists to require adult content to migrate from existing [domains] to an .xxx [domain]. Icann experts also questioned how easy it would be to determine which sites should use .xxx and which avoid it.

"A lot of people objected because they said the domain naming system shouldn't be used as a content filter," said Jonathan Robinson, business development director at NetNames.

"To my mind though it's quite an elegant solution," he said.

ICM Registry might face problems in getting people to sign up, said Mr Robinson.

"If you have a very successful porn site running off a particular domain name you are going to be reluctant to change that," he said.

Icann also rejected the idea because of worries that eventually all sites dealing with sexual matters, including sex education sites or those that support victims of sexual abuse, would be forced to use the .xxx domain and, as a result, be harder to find.

BBC News

Soap opera storylines, magazines and adverts dealing with sex issues are to be used to teach pupils media studies. Children aged 11 to 14 are to look at the issues raised by the presentation of a false rape claim in the BBC children's drama Grange Hill.

They will also be asked to evaluate programmes of their choice, including soap operas, in a project run by London's Institute of Education.

Packs containing lesson ideas and DVDs are going to 1,000 schools in England.

'Not Footballers' Wives'

They are designed to instil a "critical approach" to mainstream media content.

Project leader Professor David Buckingham told the BBC News website: "We are not collaring kids and making them watch Footballers' Wives or pornography.

"The only material we provide is from Grange Hill or adverts."

Children will be asked to write a diary and compile a scrapbook detailing their reading and viewing activities.

They will also have to create their own storyline for a soap opera, dealing with teenage pregnancy.

Prof Buckingham said: "It will help kids to wonder why certain storylines get in.

"The DVDs we are sending out will include interviews with the producers of Grange Hill, which will provide a useful insight."

The Grange Hill episode analysed shows a girl and boy who have sex. The girl then accuses the boy of rape.

Prof Buckingham said: "The storyline is really about communication and relationships.

"The course is about media literacy and awareness; it is not about sex education. The children will find out how various messages are put across in the different media.

"It will teach them to be more critical about what they watch and read."

None of the content dealt with will be that shown after the 9pm watershed, before which excessive swearing, violence or sexually explicit content is banned.

The packs are being sent free to schools in London and the South East. The project is part-funded by the European Commission and the Broadcasting Standards Commission.

BBC News

Many women risk their own health for the sake of their loved ones, according to research. Two-thirds of women surveyed by the British Heart Foundation said they were more concerned about the health of family and friends than their own.

And a fifth of the 1,154 respondents said they were not concerned with their own health at all.

Psychologists said this behaviour was likely to be evolutionary to ensure the individual's genes are passed on.

Altruism

Dr Rick O'Gorman, an expert in the psychology of altruism at the University of Essex, said: "Mothers in particular are famous for sacrificing themselves for the benefit of their children.

"From an evolutionary perspective, mothers tend to strongly invest in offspring, often to their own cost.

"Additionally, humans in general behave quite altruistically.

"With the modern prominent focus on healthcare and controlling our wellbeing, we would expect a majority of individuals to be highly concerned about relatives, spouses, children and friends.

"Women may tend to be concerned about the health of significant others because of social norms relating to women."

He suggested that older women in particular might be more concerned for the health of close relatives than themselves, as they have less reproductive time left, and to pass on their genes it may be better to concentrate benefits on those alive than potential future offspring.

Belinda Linden of the British Heart Foundation said: "Women can be their own worst enemies when it comes to looking after their health - neglecting their own needs in favour of looking after their loved ones.

"The sad reality is that thousands of women die from heart and circulatory disease and we desperately want to stop so many women and their families from being affected.

"Being more aware of your heart health now could prevent problems in the future."

In the survey, most women perceived men to be at greater risk of heart disease, even though similar numbers of men and women die from it in the UK each year.

The BHF hopes its Help a Heart Week, which begins on June 4, will dispel the myths surrounding women and heart disease.

BBC News

The number of HIV/Aids cases diagnosed in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambs has risen by 500%, according to the region's Strategic Health Authority.

In 1999, there were 29 cases of the virus across the three counties. But in 2003 the number of people infected had increased to 146, the report revealed.

Public health director Dr Tony Jewell said the numbers had increased because people were not practising safe sex.

It costs the NHS £250,000 to treat each HIV patient during their lifetime.

A similar increase can be found across Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes.

Condom advice

Dr Jewell said: "When the HIV/Aids epidemic first started in the late 80s to early 90s it was largely confined to intravenous drug users and the male gay community.

"What we are now seeing is a growth area among the heterosexual community. Ages 25 to 35 is where the greatest incidence occurs.

"The message really is be very careful about alcohol. If you're drunk the risk is that you won't have safe sex."

Condoms were the best form of protection against sexually-transmitted infections (STIs), he added.

BBC News

Teenagers are putting themselves at risk by inconsistent and incorrect use of condoms, a study says.

Only about a third of those aged 16 to 18 used condoms regularly, the sexual health charity Brook found.

The study also showed some were not using condoms properly and were using them only as a form of contraception, rather than to prevent infections.

Researchers called for sex and relationships education to become a compulsory part of the curriculum.

Two thirds of the 1,300 teenagers surveyed said school was among their top three most important sources of information on sexually transmitted infections.

All secondary schools are required to include sex education as part of their teaching programme, but there are no rules over the content, leading to complaints that the lessons are too biological.

Brook chief executive Jan Barlow said Britain's sexual health problems - in the last eight years gonorrhoea and chlamydia have rocketed among teenagers - would not go away until the problem was tackled "head-on".

"This report should focus the minds of everyone who cares about the sexual health of young people today.

"Condoms are the only way for sexually active young people to protect themselves from STIs," she said.

Condoms

"Although most young people do now use condoms at least some of the time, the majority are still putting themselves at risk by using them inconsistently and sometimes incorrectly."

The survey found huge gaps in teenagers' knowledge about STIs.

More than half thought chlamydia affected only women, while a similar number did not know that emergency contraception could be taken up to 72 hours after having sex.

A third thought STIs could be caught from a lavatory seat.

A spokesperson for Terrence Higgins Trust said: "This is extremely worrying, and helps explain the huge rises in STIs across the UK.

"It is clear that we need to do much more to support young people in avoiding sexual ill-health, and that has to start with better quality sex education.

"We need to discuss relationships as well as the mechanics of sex if we are to help young people protect themselves."

Campaign on way

A Department of Health spokeswoman said sexual health was a priority.

"We are working to prevent people getting sexual transmitted infections in the first place and will shortly be launching a major public information campaign.

"We are also keen to improve access to sexual health care services, offering people more convenient options for getting screening and testing, including further education colleges and private pharmacies on the high street."

But the Department for Education and Skills said there were no plans to alter government guidance to schools on sex education, saying it was up to head teachers to decide on the content.

BBC News