Sesame Street drops HIV plans

Sesame Street has dropped plans to include an HIV-positive character.

American TV company PBS, which makes the 30-year-old children's show, now says it will not include the character created by producers of the South African version.

Last week Sesame Street's makers told an international conference on Aids they planned to introduce an HIV-positive character to help remove stigma.

The move provoked a storm of protest in the US, where several Republican politicians wrote to PBS president Pat Mitchell to demand that this would not happen on US TV.