Free Viagra spices up small town life

BRASILIA, Brazil, Nov 22 (Reuters) The mayor of a small Brazilian town has begun handing out free Viagra, spicing up the sex lives of dozens of elderly men and their partners.

''Since we started the free distribution of sexual stimulants, our elderly population changed. They're much happier,'' said Joao de Souza Luz, the mayor of Novo Santo Antonio, a small town in the central state of Mato Grosso.

Souza Luz said 68 men over the age of 60 had already signed up for the program, which was approved by the town's legislature and has been dubbed ''Happy Penis,'' or ''Pinto Alegre'' in Portuguese.

But the program has also had the unforeseen consequence of encouraging some extra-marital affairs, Souza Luz said.

''Some of the old men aren't seeking out their wives.

They've got romances on the side,'' he said.

X X X Fishy freckle remover inflames consumers BEIJING, China has banned TV ads for a freckle remover, touted as being so good it could remove spots from fish, when it not only killed fish but led to rashes, blisters and skin inflammation on the humans who tried it.

Advertisements promoting ''Magic Freckle Removing Gel,'' produced by a Shanghai company, used a celebrity, bogus experts and fish to endorse the cosmetic, but fish exposed to the gel by a research institute later died from poisoning, the Beijing News said.

''(The institute) carried out a test washing the fish's spots in the gel. Two fish died successively on the third and sixth days,'' the paper said, citing an investigative report on Chinese state television.

Experts later found that three different fish had been used in the advertisement to make the cleanser appear effective, the paper said.

Claims that the cleanser was produced by an American company using ''American technology'' were also found to be false.

X X X Slippery serpent scares suburbanites SINGAPORE: (Reuters Life!) Police wielding a golf club failed to save Bella the terrier from the crushing grip of a 10-foot python, which killed the pooch in an upmarket Singapore apartment complex and then slithered away.

A resident had been walking two dogs on Wednesday evening when the slippery serpent struck, coiling itself around Bella, a 7-year-old Jack Russell, the Straits Times reported on Sunday.

Police soon arrived but lacked appropriate tools to battle snakes. Using a golf club, they tried for 20 minutes to loosen the python's embrace before it abandoned Bella's body and gave them the slip.

''My head is filled with the image of the snake around my yelping dog and I can't sleep,'' the paper quoted Bella's owner, Glenda Liu, as saying.

Liu and her partner were so distraught they were moving out of the condo for good on Sunday. They said they feared the snake could also attack children.

X X X Artist's pig-for-name project sparks ire BUTEYONGERA : A Danish artist has stirred up controversy by giving Ugandan villagers free goats, sheep and pigs -- but on the condition that they adopt his name.

Kristian von Hornsleth says his aim is to highlight the perils of tied aid in Africa, but his project has already been denounced by a Ugandan minister as ''evil and satanic.'' Hornsleth launched an exhibition in Copenhagen Friday of the project. The 108 photos of people holding up their new ''identity cards'' in the red, yellow and black of Uganda's flag with the name ''Hornsleth'' are meant to comment on conditions Western donors attach to aid.

''It's a remark about hypocrisy, about Western and Third World relations,'' Hornsleth told Reuters.

But in Uganda, Ethics and Integrity Minister James Buturo denounced it as racist.

REUTERS Mir RK1530