Everything you know about sex is true.

An Italian court has ruled the government must pay 100,000 euros (79,981 pounds) in damages to a man who was told to retake a driving test because he was homosexual.

When 26 year-old Danilo Giuffrida told doctors he was gay at his medical examination for military service, they passed the information to the transport ministry, who told him he must repeat his driving test or have his licence withdrawn due to his "sexual identity disturbance."

Giuffrida agreed to re-take his test, passed it for a second time, but the ministry renewed his licence for just one year rather than the usual 10 years because of his homosexuality.

Police in a Colorado town are searching for two robbers whose masks consisted in women's thong underwear.

A surveillance video shows two unarmed men inside the convenience store. They stole an undisclosed amount of cash and cigarettes in the robbery May 16.

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.

A working class suburb of Chile's capital began handing out free Viagra to senior citizens on Wednesday. Lo Prado Mayor Gonzalo Navarrete said he launched the program because "an active sexuality improves the overall quality of life."

About 1,500 residents of the working-class area are eligible to receive as many as four pills of the erectile dysfunction drug each month, the mayor said. They have to be at least 60 and be registered with the municipality's health service.

Some government insurance plans in the United States and elsewhere provide Viagra, but Lo Prado hands the 50mg pills out free, with no membership in any public or private insurance plan required.

Navarrete said some other mayors in the Santiago area, which includes 34 municipalities, have told him they plan similar programs.
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Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said. "But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.

Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.

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Massage parlors in an Indonesian town are asking their female masseuses to padlock their skirts and pants to make it clear that sex is not on offer.

'It is not the right way to prevent promiscuity,' commented Meutia Swasono, the women's affairs minister of Indonesia. 'It insults women ... as if they are the ones in the wrong.'

At least one parlor in the tourist town of Batu on Java island has required its masseuses to padlock their skirts or trousers to make it clear that the establishment does not tolerate prostitution.

Others in the town started following suit after local officials suggested it was a good idea at a recent meeting with parlor owners. TV footage and photos have shown several masseuses with small padlocks in the zip of their pants or skirts in recent days.

Italy's highest court has ruled that men who scratch, adjust or otherwise manipulate their genitals in public are committing a criminal offence.

Judges in the highest court of appeal in Italian law, have moved to criminalise not only shameless crotch-scratching, but also a specific local superstition.

According to Italian folklore, a swift grasp of one's generative organs - known by Italians as their "attributi" - protects against bad luck. A funeral procession passing by, or disaster or disease cropping up in conversation, brings a flurry of men's hands descending crotchwards.

The issue came to light after a 42-year-old workman from Como, near Milan, was convicted of indecent behaviour after "ostentatiously touching his genitals through his clothing".

Despite claims by his lawyer that the action was nothing more sinister than a "compulsive, involuntarily movement, probably to adjust his overalls", the court was unimpressed.

Such behaviour "has to be regarded as an act contrary to public decency, a concept including that nexus of socio-ethical behavioural rules requiring everyone to abstain from conduct potentially offensive to collectively-held feelings of decorum," they said in their ruling, ordering the man to pay a €200 (£152) fine and €1000 (£760) costs.

While superstitious groin-grabbing has become less acceptable in recent years, the phrase "io mi tocco i…", or "I touch my…", is still used in much the same way as "touch wood" is in English.

Judges in the case were helpful enough to suggest that would-be crotch criminals wait until they are the privacy of their own home before letting their hands wander.