Safe sex advocates claimed a victory over Australia's Christian lobby Wednesday when their HIV campaign posters featuring two men hugging were reinstated at bus stops after an intense online backlash.

The black and white posters, in which one man has his arm draped across his partner's chest and is holding a condom, are part of the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities "Rip and Roll" campaign promoting condom use.

New Zealand prisoners are reportedly being offered carrot sticks to help them overcome nicotine cravings as jails prepare to go smoke-free next month.

A leaked internal memo from Invercargill Prison said prisoners were being supplied with two carrot sticks a day in an effort to make them quit smoking before the total ban comes into force on July 1, the Southland Times reported.

Fourteen-year-old Deepchand should be learning but instead he lies sprawled fast asleep on the floor of an Indian school -- exhausted by his early morning labors finding rubbish to sell.

Abandoned by his mother, his father dead, he works as a trash collector on the streets of New Delhi, starting two hours before dawn collecting plastic bottles, drink cans and metal -- anything that will earn him a little cash.

A designer who shot to fame with a line of perfume inspired by last year's flight-halting Eyjafjoell volcano said Monday she would launch a new fragrance drawn from last week's eruption on Iceland.

After launching "EFJ Eyjafjallajoekull," a women's perfume made from melt water from the glacier sitting on top of the Eyjafjoell volcano that erupted in April last year, Sigrun Lilja Gudjonsdottir said she would soon launch the "VJK Vatnajoekull," a fragrance for men named after the glacier that straddles Grimsvoetn.

A Bangladeshi man who had his penis cut off by a woman who then took it to the police as evidence of attempted rape said Tuesday he was the victim of a revenge plot by his former lover.

Mozzammel Majhi's penis was severed by the 40-year-old woman, a married mother of three, who said she was attacked while sleeping. She gave the penis to police, who are keeping it at the police station in a jar of formaldehyde.

As Lebanon has plunged into turmoil with the absence of a new government and the growing confrontation between the March 8 and 14 forces, Caretaker Minister Jebran Bassil and the aide of either the speaker or the Hizbullah leader attended the Champions League Final, reported As Safir daily on Tuesday.

The newspaper said that Bassil and either MP Ali Hassan Khalil or Hussein Khalil were on Saturday among the crowds attending the football match during which Barcelona outclassed Manchester United 3-1 at Wembley to claim their second Champions League crown in three years.

Australians may have a love of plain speaking but new laws are set to curtail some of their more colorful language with police issuing on-the-spot fines for obnoxious swearing.

The country's second most populous state Victoria is due to approve new legislation this week under which police will be able to slap fines of up to Aus$240 (US$257) on people using offensive words or phrases.

A Zimbabwean man upstaged 15 others to win the Mr. Ugly title at a weekend pageant, a local newspaper reported Monday.

Thirty-year-old Austin Mbewe from the second city of Bulawayo won 1,200 South African rand ($174, 122 Euros) and a blanket at the contest held Saturday in the border town of Beitbridge, the Herald newspaper said.

Sitting in the shade of a large tree and surrounded by a group of women, Cambodian midwife Ly Siyan holds up a colorful poster displaying a range of contraception options.

She patiently waits for the giggles to subside when she points to a condom, aware that the two dozen women in the village of Chanloung in northwest Siem Reap province have rarely experienced such an open discussion about sex.

A Middle East Airlines plane with 231 passengers aboard bound to Beirut from Heathrow airport witnessed trouble last week, reported UK’s Daily Mail.

Trouble erupted after the plane had to abort a 5:00 pm take-off on Thursday, having already missed its original 1:00 pm departure slot.