BATAVIA, Ohio - An ailing, retired farmer who refused to give up his outhouse after authorities declared it to be a public nuisance finally got a new one.

Elbert “Lew” Preston, 79, stood his ground long enough for a nonprofit group to come to his aid and build him a sturdy new outhouse with a waste tank underneath.

“There she is,” Preston said as he showed off the new outbuilding. “She’s a lifesaver.”

The wooden outhouse, complete with a crescent moon on its door, replaces a 1960s-built version that had run afoul of public health officials in Clermont County, east of Cincinnati. While the old one was over a hole in the ground, this one sits atop a concrete base and a 1,000-gallon tank.

“It’s too nice and complicated to be an outhouse,” Preston said. “I call it a privy.”

Preston, a former trustee for Washington Township, challenged the board of health for months before seeking help from People Working Cooperatively, a nonprofit that has done thousands of projects for low-income, elderly and disabled residents in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky.

Past jobs have included replacing roofs and building wheelchair ramps, but this was its first outhouse.

Preston lives near a busy shopping area and has 175 acres of potentially lucrative real estate but didn’t want to go to the expense and complications of installing a septic system.

Preston, who is slowed by diabetes and has colon problems and pacemaker, said he never saw the need to replace the old outhouse — which once was picked up and carried into his garden by a tornado without major damage.

He said he has used an outside toilet since settling in Washington Township 40 years ago and likes the privacy of a privy.

“When you’re in a house, sounds carry,” Preston said. “Everybody knows your business.”

JAKARTA (AFP) - An Indonesian city is offering more than 1,000 boys a free circumcision as part of celebrations for the 58th anniversary of its foundation, a report said Tuesday.

Health officials in Kotabaru, South Kalimantan province, said the circumcisions were a gift of better health to hundreds of boys whose families may not be able to afford the procedure, Antara news agency reported.

“We hope the mass circumcision… can help the people in maintaining their health because free medical services do not include small operations,” local health department chief Cipta Waspada said.

Free cataract and harelip operations are also being offered to more than 100 people as part of next week’s festivities.

ATHENS, Greece - Three islanders from Lesbos told a court Tuesday that gay women insult their home’s identity by calling themselves lesbians.

The plaintiffs — two women and a man — are seeking to ban a Greek gay rights group from using the word “lesbian” in its name.

Also known as Mytilini, Lesbos was the home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love among women. It is a major travel destination for gay women.

The Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece “causes confusion by using a geographic term in connection with (the group’s) special character and social action,” said Dimitris Papadelis, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs.

A spokeswoman for the group accused the plaintiffs of homophobia.

“I believe … the other party’s intentions were purely racist,” Evangelia Vlami said. “They showed that what bothers them is a specific sexual orientation.”

“What will they do next, sue the United Nations? They, too, use the term lesbian,” Vlami said.

Plaintiff Dimitris Lambrou has insisted the lawsuit “is not an aggressive act against gay women.”

Lawyers from both sides are to submit written arguments on Wednesday, and the court is expected to issue its decision in the next six months.

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian couple who were caught having sex in a church confessional box while morning Mass was being said have repented and made peace with the local bishop.

The couple, in their early 30s, were detained by police earlier this month after they had made love in the confessional box in the cathedral in northern Cesena. They were cautioned for obscene acts in public and disturbing a religious function.

Their lawyer said they had been drinking all night and realized they had gone too far.

The lawyer told the area’s local newspaper on Wednesday the couple met with the local bishop on Tuesday night, asked for his forgiveness and that he had given it.

Last week the bishop celebrated a “Mass of reparation” in the cathedral where the confessional box incident took place to make up for the sacrilege.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Sexual Awareness for Everyone, or the SAFE, program has shown promise in curbing recurrent bouts of common sexually transmitted diseases among high-risk teenage girls, researchers report.

They found that a group of 14- to 18-year-old Mexican-American and African-American girls who participated in the SAFE program were less apt to engage in risky sexual behavior and had a statistically lower incidence of recurrent gonorrhea and Chlamydia infection in the first 6 months and over time, compared with teenage girls in a control group.

The SAFE program also curbed STD reinfection rates and risky sexual behavior among adult women ages 19 and older in the study.

“Although not specifically designed for teens, the SAFE intervention worked very well in this high-risk population,” Dr. Andrea Ries Thurman from University of Texas Health Sciences Center San Antonio and colleagues report in the current issue of the medical journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.]

As part of the SAFE program, teen girls attended small-group meetings on STD prevention. Sessions included role-playing, interactive video, handouts, and group discussion to emphasize a number of preventive strategies such as periodic abstinence, mutual monogamy, correct and consistent use of condoms, the importance of taking prescribed STD medication as directed and avoiding sexual intercourse until finishing the medication, not douching, and seeing their doctor whenever they suspect an STD infection.

The overall goals of the SAFE program are to have participants recognize their risk for contracting STDs including HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, commit to changing their risky behavior and acquire the skills needed to be successful, Thurman’s team explains.

The results showed that the cumulative reinfection rate (0-12 months) was roughly 24 percent among teens in the SAFE program compared with 40 percent among teens in the control group who received only 15 minutes of individual STD risk reduction counseling. None of the study teens became infected with HIV during the study.

The cumulative reinfection rate was 12 percent among women ages 19 or older in the SAFE program compared with 18 percent among their counterparts in the control group.

Teenagers as a group had higher rates of STD reinfection (33.1 percent) than adults (14.4 percent), the investigators found, “because the behavior that was most highly and consistently associated with recurrent infection in teens - unprotected sex with untreated partners - was not sufficiently modified by the SAFE intervention.”

Thurman and colleagues conclude that STD prevention interventions for teenagers need to “emphasize skills to help teens ensure their partners are treated or to otherwise refuse intercourse.”

SOURCE: Obstetrics and Gynecology, June 2008.

OSLO (AFP) - Norwegian police accused a Gambian couple on Friday of subjecting five daughters to genital mutilation in the country’s first-ever case against the illegal act of female circumcision.

“The father and mother are accused under laws against genital mutilation because they are suspected of contributing to the circumcision of five of their six daughters,” Hanne Kristin Rohde, a police official told NRK radio.

Only two of the six children who are aged between three and 14 live in Norway, although the others — who live in West Africa’s Gambia, with the man’s two other wives — have Norwegian passports. These include a three-year old who has not yet been circumcised.

Rohde made it clear that Norway’s public child protection agency would be entrusted with caring for all the children.

Their father, a 41 year-old whose identity has not been disclosed, is expected to appear before a judge with authorities seeking his detention. Their mother, due to give birth to a seventh child, is said to be too weak to spend time behind bars.

Rohde said Norwegian laws against female genital mutilation carry a prison term of several years depending on the severity of the case.

LEBANON, Pa. - Rescue crews had to cut apart a portable toilet to rescue a man who got stuck naked inside the potty. Authorities say the 31-year-old man used his cell phone to call 911 on Sunday from inside a portable toilet.

Police say the man had been drinking and had taken off his clothes. Somehow, he immersed himself in the holding tank.

Deputy fire commissioner Chris Miller told WPMT-TV, “I’ve been on the job in one form or fashion for 21 years, and this is the first port-a-potty rescue I’ve ever had.”

Police charged the man with public drunkenness and creating a health code violation, but they have no idea why he was in the toilet with his clothes off. They said he didn’t suffer any serious injuries.

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - One of the last shipments to a U.S. research base in Antarctica before the onset of winter darkness was a year’s supply of condoms, a New Zealand newspaper reported on Monday.

Bill Henriksen, the manager of the McMurdo base station, said nearly 16,500 condoms were delivered last month and would be made available, free of charge, to staff throughout the year to avoid the potential embarrassment of having to buy them.

The base only has a skeleton staff through the long winter.

“Since everybody knows everyone, it becomes a little bit uncomfortable,” Henriksen told the Southland Times newspaper.

About 125 scientists and staff are stationed at McMurdo base, the largest community in Antarctica, during the winter months when there is constant darkness.

The first sunrise will occur on August 20 and McMurdo’s population will start to increase again in September when supply flights resume, peaking at more than 1,000 during the summer period.

ARVADA, Colo. - Police in a Colorado town say they’ve caught two “thong bandits” who used women’s underwear to disguise themselves during a convenience store robbery.

Nineteen-year-old Joaquin Rico turned himself in Friday, two days after 24-year-old alleged accomplice Joseph R. Espinoza turned himself in.

A surveillance video released last week by police in Arvada, Colo., shows two unarmed men inside the convenience store. They stole an undisclosed amount of cash and cigarettes in the May 16 robbery.

One man wore a green thong and the other wore blue. Each thong barely covered the man’s nose, mouth and chin and left the rest of his face exposed. One also wore a pink backpack in which he stuffed the stolen items.

Not quite my idea of sexy thongs.

HAVANA - Cuba has authorized sex-change operations and will offer them free for qualifying citizens, an official said Friday. The move is the latest in a series of changes implemented by President Raul Castro since he succeeded his elder brother, Fidel, in February. Raul Castro’s daughter, Mariela, heads Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education, which strongly backs the new policy.

Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer signed a resolution approving sex-change surgery, said an official at the center who spoke on condition of anonymity because the measure has not been formally published. The resolution will be posted on the Internet on Saturday, the official said.

The procedure would be available to Cubans for free as part of their country’s health-care system.

The sex education center has said previously that 28 transsexual Cubans have asked to undergo the surgery and that Cuban doctors have trained with physicians from Belgium to prepare for the procedures.

According to the center, a clinic for transsexual health will be created to perform the procedures, but it was not clear when it will start operating.

Cuba carried out a successful sex-change operation in 1988, but future surgeries were canceled because it sparked a negative public outcry.

Since becoming Cuba’s first new president in 49 years, the younger Castro has done away with bans that kept most Cubans from owning cell phones in their own names and renting hotel rooms and cars. His government also has decentralized the floundering state agricultural sector, raised pensions for retirees and hiked salaries for some state employees, among other changes.

TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese man was arrested for calling a food company’s toll-free number 500 times in 16 months because he wanted to hear the woman’s voice on the automated tape, police said on Monday.

The 38-year-old plumber, who was arrested on Sunday, made 3,100 hours worth of free calls to the company, costing it almost 4 million yen ($38,730) in phone bills, a police spokesman in Takasaki, northwest of Tokyo, said.

“He gets excited by the woman’s voice on the guidance tape,” the spokesman said, adding that the voice sounded normal to the detective who was involved in the investigation.

The food company asked for its name to be withheld. The spokesman said police are investigating if the man placed an excessive number of calls to any other firms.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India (Reuters) - Employees counting donations at a popular Hindu shrine in southern India will no longer have to take off their underpants at work after the local human rights commission intervened.

Police and temple authorities imposed the dress code at the Sabarimala hill shrine in Kerala five years ago after thefts were reported from the shrine’s strongroom.

Employees in the vault, all of whom were men, were made to work topless wearing only a dhoti — a cotton wrap worn around the waist — with nothing underneath.

But they found it degrading, and their union complained to the Kerala State Human Rights Commission.

“The employees on duty are made to strip before an officer before leaving the office to ensure that they do not carry anything in their underwear,” said Chavara Gopakumar, the union leader. “It is humiliating and an insult to human dignity.”

The state’s human rights commission agreed.

Authorities at the shrine, which is dedicated to Ayyappa, a south Indian deity, said on Friday they would end the practice and have begun looking into electronic surveillance systems.

Thousands of pilgrims flock to the shrine between November and January, bringing cash, precious metals and jewels in offerings. They are expected to fore go meat, alcohol and sex for 41 days before arriving. Women of child-bearing age are forbidden.

PARIS (Reuters) - She may have been defeated by Serena Williams at the French Open Sunday, but Ashley Harkleroad claimed a more glamorous coup over her American rival — by appearing on the pages of Playboy magazine.

The 23-year-old Harkleroad found herself kicking her heels earlier this year when she was recovering from surgery to remove a cyst from her ovaries.

While others would choose to convalesce on a relaxing vacation or just lounge in front of the television, Harkleroad chose to accept the offer of posing nude for the world’s most famous glamour magazine.

“I was just laying there for three weeks, and, you know, an offer came to me,” the woman from small town Georgia told goggle-eyed reporters.

“I thought, well, I’m not really doing anything right now so I thought about it and it was something that I did. I’m proud of my body. I was representing a female athlete’s body.”

REFRESHING CHANGE

She said she would be the first tennis player to appear in the magazine, August’s edition the male journalists furiously noted, and that it had been a refreshing change to the treadmill of the women’s tour.

“It was hard work, but, you know, it was just a completely different experience. It was fun. I think it comes out July 13th. It’s the August edition. So you’ll see for yourself.

“I stay in shape and try to stay fit, so like I said, I’m just trying to represent a female athlete and her body. That can be sexy too, you know.”

Serena was full of admiration for Harkleroad’s naked ambition when she was told about the Los Angeles photo shoot.

“I’m just surprised that she beat me to it,” Serena, no stranger to the camera lens herself, joked with reporters.

“I’m happy for her if that’s what she wanted to do. It takes a lot of courage. And whether I’m courageous enough, I don’t know, but that’s great for someone to be so courageous and tough.”

Would Serena be following in the footsteps of Harkleroad, U.S. swimmer Amanda Beard and volleyball player Gabrielle Reece and bare all for Playboy?

“I can’t say right now it’s in any thought of my mind to be in that mag. I do appreciate that mag. I think (Playboy owner) Hugh Hefner is a great businessman.”

BERLIN (AFP) - If you thought cycling home after the pub was a good idea, think again. A German court ruled Wednesday that inebriated cyclists could forfeit their right to drive a car.

The country’s highest administrative court was ruling on the case of a man near Berlin whose license was taken away after he was caught cycling with a blood-alcohol level four times the legal limit.

Medical tests found he was a heavy drinker and probably often in no state to cope with road hazards. The council appealed when a local court overruled the decision to revoke his license.

Meanwhile other offenses now look set to attract significantly stiffer sentences after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet approved a raft of new measures aimed at reducing road deaths.

A government spokesman confirmed that drink drivers could from 2009 face fines of up to 3,000 euros (4,720 dollars), double the current maximum, and a penalty of 2,000 euros for jumping a red light.

The tougher laws, which also include higher fines for speeding, still have to be approved by parliament. There is no change planned though to the lack of speed limit on many autobahns.

TOKYO (Reuters) - One of the travelers who arrived at Tokyo’s Narita airport over the weekend may have picked up an unusual souvenir from customs — a package of cannabis.

A customs official hid the package in a suitcase belonging to a passenger arriving from Hong Kong as a training exercise for sniffer dogs Sunday, but lost track of both drugs and suitcase during the practice session, a spokeswoman for Tokyo customs said.

Customs regulations specify that a training suitcase be used for such exercises, but the official said he had used passengers’ suitcases for similar purposes in the past, domestic media reported.

“The dogs have always been able to find it before,” NHK quoted him as saying. “I became overconfident that it would work.”

Anyone who finds the package should contact Tokyo customs as soon as possible, the spokeswoman said.

TUESDAY, May 20 (HealthDay News) — Gene therapy may be a way to treat erectile dysfunction in men who do not respond to pills such as Viagra, researchers report.

Maxi-K gene therapy is a gene transfer that improves erectile dysfunction. Two studies using the gene were presented Tuesday at the American Urological Association’s annual meeting, in Orlando, Fla.

“Gene transfer technology has the potential for long-term improvement for erectile function,” lead researcher Dr. Arnold Melman, a professor of medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, said during a morning teleconference Tuesday.

“The market for erectile dysfunction is quite large,” Melman said. “And medications such as Viagra don’t work very well in 40 percent of men.”

Melman noted that a recent survey showed that 50 percent of urologists would consider switching their patients from their current medications to gene transfer treatment. “So, we think this will be well-accepted by physicians and patients,” he said.

Results of a phase I trial testing gene transfer in 11 men with erectile dysfunction who had failed other therapy showed that gene transfer was safe and also had restorative effects. Four different doses were tried during the trial. Men receiving the highest dose showed improvement for up to six months, Melman said.

“These men had normal sexual function for six months and then went back to the way they were,” Melman said. He added that two doses a year would be enough for most men to maintain their normal sexual function.

During two years of follow-up, none of the men reported any abnormalities after the gene transfer. The procedure was safe, and no adverse effects were seen, Melman said.

Based on these findings, Melman’s group is moving on to new trials and hopes to have a product on the market within two years.

In another trial, four monkeys were fed a high-fat diet, which reduced their sex drive. After the monkeys received a Maxi-K gene transfer, they became friskier.

In addition, the number of partial and full erections increased about fivefold, the researchers found. Also, the frequency of ejaculations increased among the monkeys that received the gene transfer. Moreover, the gene transfer affected how the monkeys behaved with female monkeys.

“The most fascinating thing is there was the increased socialization,” lead researcher George J. Christ, a professor of urology and head of the Program in Cell Tissue and Organ Physiology at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, said during Tuesday’s teleconference. “After receiving a gene transfer and regaining sexual function, they felt better about themselves.”