ELLE France has a strange and virulent article this week against the last videoclip from Death In Vegas, "Hands Around My Throat".

Starring model-actress Emmanuelle Seigner, the wife of director Roman Polanski, the clip shows a young woman fantasizing that she picks up a gigolo lover in a seeedy area of Paris (under the peripherique bridge of Bercy, in the 12th), then have him strangling her a bit till she comes.

Thought the strangulation act is off camera - in fact, the most erotic scenes are the scene of Seigner caressing herself in her bourgeois living room when thinking about it - ELLE claims a lot of sexual accidental deaths has taken place since MTV Europe has began showing the clip late at night. According to Elle, Paris youth is now heavily into stragulation practice.

Now, I live in Paris, I'm surrounded by parisian teenagers and although they talk about sex a lot, I've never heard of any strangulation wave. Sounds to me as a hobby for older folks. I also read a lot of newspapers, probably more than ELLE's news editor, and I haven't read about any accidental death of this kind since the clip was first aired, September 9.

So could it be the sudden interest of ELLE in strangulation practices condemnation is in fact connected to the publication in Vogue France, ELLE's arch-rival, of a wonderful portfolio by Mario Testino & Carine Roitfeld starring - you guessed it - Emmanuelle Seigner?

No scans of the ed yet (Seigner is photographed sweating in a very sexy way in a parisian gym), but the clip, directed by Richard Fearless, is online at continorooms.com (click on "Film Festival" after the opening sequence).

LONDON (Reuters) - Hard-up students are being recruited to test condoms, rating them for their pleasure, comfort and performance qualities.

The 100-150 successful job applicants will be paid 100 pounds per academic term as they road-test a range of condoms from German manufacturer Condomi.

"The condom testers will be asked to give a pleasure rating. They will not be asked to test quality -- that has already been done," Condomi's marketing manager in Britain Victoria Wells told Reuters on Thursday.

"Test results will be fed back to our research and development department, and we hope that the students who participate will both enjoy the testing and the money, and give us a frank response which we can use for product development," Wells said.

She said adverts had been placed in a number of student publications and will run on several student radio stations from October 25.

Among the voluntary questions asked of candidates will be: how many partners they have had, how often they have sex and how long its lasts -- with the option to tick various boxes marked from "under one minute" to one marked "1.5-two hours".

Would-be testers will be asked to fill in an application available online at Condomi's corporate site.