The lucrative Los Angeles porn film industry was reeling on Friday by news that two production companies had been slapped with the first fines for allowing actors to perform without condoms.

California’s state health and safety board fined Evasive Angles and TTB Productions $30,560 each for making porn movies which it said exposed three actors to HIV infections.

It was the first time that the California Division of Occupational Health and Safety (Cal/OSHA) had taken regulatory action against the multibillion dollar adult film industry in Los Angeles, which employs some 6,000 people in 200 production companies turning out dozens of films and videos a week.

“This is a huge departure. This is really like dropping a bomb,” said Sharon Mitchell, director of the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM) which runs a voluntary HIV-screening program for the industry.

“I think the industry will contest this. These companies will be a test case,” Mitchell said.

Evasive Angles and TTB Productions could not be reached for comment.

The fines followed an HIV outbreak last April involving five actors who tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS. The nervous industry shut down voluntarily for a month while about 50 actors who had worked with those infected awaited test HIV test results.

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LUGANO, Switzerland � Did Saddam Hussein use any of his ill-gotten billions filched from the United Nations Oil-for-Food program to help fund Al Qaeda?

Investigations have shown that the former Iraqi dictator grafted and smuggled more than $10 billion from the program that for seven years prior to Saddam’s overthrow was meant to bring humanitarian aid to ordinary Iraqis. And the Sept. 11 Commission has shown a tracery of contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda that continued after billions of Oil-for-Food dollars began pouring into Saddam’s coffers and Usama bin Laden declared his infamous war on the U.S.

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Swedish welfare authorities plan to launch a campaign to educate Swedes about when they can take sick leave, after a study showed 40 percent believe it is enough to feel tired to stay home and draw benefits.

“Our mistake could be that, in some misdirected benevolence, we were not clear enough on where the limits are,” the National Social Insurance Board’s head Anna Hedborg wrote in a column for the Dagens Nyheter daily.

Sweden, famous for its generous welfare policies, has seen sick leave absenteeism double over the last two years to 800,000, or one fifth of the workforce, by late 2003.

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As reporter does segment on dangerous intersection, fatal accident occurs. Watch the video!

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