What can the UK learn from New Zealand's approach to sex workers? Quite a lot, actually. On Wednesday June 25, sex workers and brothel operators mingled in parliament with a range of people – Catholic nuns, public health experts, and politicians – to mark the 5th anniversary of the decriminalisation of prostitution. Even the prime minister, Helen Clark, dropped in to pass comment on the success of giving rights to sex workers.

Throughout the day, participants heard from researchers who had been commissioned by the ministry of justice – included in the legislation was a requirement that a committee, appointed by the justice minister, be established to review the law and to assess its impact on the sex industry within five years. It was no surprise to me that these researchers found overwhelming evidence to contradict the wild claims of opponents to the Prostitution Reform Act. Opponents had claimed that, as a consequence of liberalising the law, brothels would create havoc in every neighbourhood, with thugs moving in to traffic women and children. Yet none of these claims came true.

The overwhelming response to the legislation has been positive. Police have moved from clogging courts with prosecutions for soliciting to preventing violence against sex workers. As one said: Now, if I have any trouble, I can pull out my phone and call the cops, and they will come.

We may be a small country, but we are part of the Asia-Pacific rim with its dynamic migration patterns. Motivated by claims of trafficking, immigration officials have raided brothels, seeking victims. They haven't found any.

The chair of the prostitution law review committee – a retired Police commissioner and one time vice cop – said that people were gobsmacked when he told them the committee had found that many sex workers enjoy their work. Researchers confirmed that many sex workers don't want rescuing – they want rights.

The committee concluded that the act has had a marked effect in safeguarding the human rights of sex workers and improving their occupational safety and health.

I believe the UK could reorient its laws to achieve this reality. And the sky won't fall in.

People who sponsor visits to the UK by relatives from overseas under new visa rules will be required to undergo Criminal Records Bureau checks, and will be liable for penalties of up to £5,000 or even a prison sentence if the relative goes AWOL, immigration minister Liam Byrne announced this week.

It will still be possible to visit the UK using a standard tourist visa, but those sponsored by a relative will receive preferential visa treatment, and in order to sponsor, the relative will need to be licensed.

According to the UK Borders Agency: Sponsors will need to accept and sign up to a liability to a sanction as part of the process of sponsoring a relative to visit the UK. Before accepting a sponsor we will make thorough checks as to who they are, including financial, criminal record and immigration checks [Do we hear 'ID card'?]... and we will link the issue of sponsor licences with the roll-out of national identity cards [yes, we do] for British citizens and ID cards for foreign nationals.

In cases where the relative doesn't go home when they should, the sponsor will be liable for a civil penalty of up to £5,000, and could also be prosecuted for assisting unlawful immigration, which may lead to an unlimited fine or even a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

One concession has been included in the new rules. Plans to reduce the maximum visa period from six months to three have been abandoned, although entry clearance officers will still have discretion to limit the visa to three months.

During the fifth anniversary of the legalization of prostitution in New Zealand, what has come to light are the positive feelings of sex workers who feel protected and safe under the new law.

The Prostitution Reform Act has put health and safety guidelines for prostitutes in place and according to the act, prostitutes must practice safe sex. They are also covered under employment law.

A follow up of the benefits of such an act conducted by the Justice Ministry found that 90% of sex workers were happy with the legislation. More importantly prostitutes were in a better position to bring violence and abuse to notice.

People in this business are now out in the light, there are many people and agencies who are able to help, committee chairman Paul Fitzharris said.

Prostitutes were happy that the law had enhanced their working conditions. A prostitute said: One of the biggest advantages of the law is having legal back-up. From time to time you get clients who want to have sex without protection. Generally they accept [having to wear a condom] but if they try and keep on arguing, you have some basis to tell them to leave.

New Labour More equal than YOU!

Equality minister Harriet Harman has set out plans to allow firms to discriminate in favour of female and ethnic minority job candidates.

The new Equalities Bill will also force public sector employers to disclose the gender pay gap in their organisation.

The plans, which will be adopted in England, Wales and Scotland, will also ban all age discrimination.

Setting out the plans in a Commons statement, Harman said the proposed bill - due later this year - would "address the serious inequalities that still exist" in the UK.

Allowing "positive action" would help organisations such as the police better reflect the communities they serve by recruiting more female and ethnic minority officers, said Harman. But if, for example, a headmistress wanted to discriminate in favour of a male teacher to balance an all female team that would be allowed too.

See also Harriet Harman Unruffled from the Times

She is known as Harriet Harperson and she was the happiest that I have ever seen her as she unveiled her beloved Equality Bill. She’s on her white horse (make that a mare) and she’s going to shake things up. Young and old, black and white, female and male. We’ll all be better off in Harriet’s brave new world.

Fiona Mackintosh, the Labour MP, was exasperated. The Daily Express describes this as ‘White Men to Face Jobs Ban’. she said: I would think they would have welcomed it given the age of their readers. But will you give some articulation that this is not a proposal to ban white men from jobs?

Harriet nodded: I absolutely can. I share your frustration at the deliberate misunderstanding. This is about promoting fairness! As she said this, Harriet Harperson looked ferociously earnest. For her, this is as close to Heaven as it gets.

See also This equality for women is an injustice for men from the Times by Minette Marrin

White men are no longer to be equal to everyone else; they will lose their rights in employment tribunals (unless they are beyond retirement age, when they may possibly regain them); they are to pay for the sins of their fathers (or rather for the sins of their fathers’ bosses) against working women and against ethnic minorities by being unjustly treated in their turn. And Harman is prepared to do this terrible thing on the basis, merely, of unexamined assumptions about the facts.

A quarter of the adult population faces vetting in an escalation of child protection policies, according to a report.

The launch of a new Government agency will see 11.3million people vetted for any criminal past before they are approved to have contact with children aged under 16.

But the increase in child protection measures is so great it is "poisoning" relationships between the generations, according to respected sociologist Professor Frank Furedi.
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In a report for think tank Civitas, he said the use of criminal records bureau checks to ensure the safety of children and vulnerable adults has created an atmosphere of suspicion.

As a result ordinary parents - many of whom are volunteers at sports and social clubs - now find themselves regarded "potential child abusers".

Professor Furedi said most adults now think twice before telling off children who were misbehaving, or helping children in distress for fear of the consequences.

He said that the need for the checks had transformed parents in the regulatory and public imagination into potential child abusers, barred from any contact with children until the database gives them the green light.

From next year the new Independent Safeguarding Authority will require any adult who come into contact with children or vulnerable adults either through their work or in voluntary groups to be vetted.

But Prof Furedi's report, Licensed to Hug, highlighted examples of when adult-child relationships were distorted by the need for CRB checks already being required by schools and other organisations.

In one example, a woman could not kiss her daughter goodbye on a school trip because she had not been vetted. In another, a mother was surprised to be told by another parent that she and her husband were "CRB checked" when their children played together. In a third example, a father was given "filthy looks" by a group of mothers when he took his child swimming on his own.

Prof Furedi details how one woman was made to feel like a "second class mother" because she was barred from a school disco because she did not have a CRB check.

Prof Furedi, a sociology professor from Kent University, said that adults are no longer trusted or expected to engage with children on their own initiative. When parents feel in need of official reassurance that other parents have passed the paedophile test before they even start on the pleasantries, something has gone badly wrong in our communities.

We should question whether there is anything healthy in a response where communities look at children's own fathers with suspicion, but would balk at helping a lost child find their way home.

Figures show that volunteering is on the decline with 13 per cent of men saying they would not volunteer because they were worried people would think they were child abusers, according to a survey last year. The report comes after Children's Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley Green, said 50,000 girls were waiting to join the Guides because of a shortage of adult volunteers, partly caused by the red tape of the CRB process.

Vile New Labour Trafficking in miserable lives

When the UK government travelled to Amsterdam to 'study' the Dutch approach to legislation they were somewhat selective and biased about who they spoke to.

During the visit, Ministers met:

• The Minister for Justice
• The Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam and officials from the Local Government
• The National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings
• The National Prosecutor on Human Trafficking
• Amsterdam Police
• Representatives from Scharlaken Koord — a religious support service telling prostitutes about Jesus
• Representatives from the National Crime Squad and the Human Trafficking Expertise Centre.

The sexworker.at has made a list of what they did NOT visit in the Netherlands:

• Prostitute Information Center (PIC)
• De Rode Draat
• De Rode Lantaarn
• VAK Werk
• SOA AIDS Helpline
• Brothels
• Window Owner
• Coalitieprojekts 1012
• Protected Zones
• CoMensHa
• BLinN
• La Strada International

And of course:

• Sex Workers
• Customers

It was meant to be a gently embarrassing centrepiece for her son's 21st birthday.

But when Gail Jordan asked bakery staff at Asda to print a photograph of him as a baby on to a cake they didn't see the funny side.

After one look at the photograph – which featured her son David at about five months and lying on his front – they declared that putting it on the cake would constitute pornography because his bare bottom could be seen.

And when the supermarket censors finally agreed to use the picture they insisted it had to have a strategically-placed star.

Yesterday Miss Jordan said It's ridiculous – I understand they have rules, but there ought to be a place for common sense as well.

A spokesman for Asda confirmed its blanket ban on bare flesh: We have a policy, as do many other retailers, of no nudity, whatever the age of the subject. In this case we offered a number of alternatives including enlarging and cropping the photo, increasing the border size or applying a strategically placed star to save his blushes.

A celebration is being held at Parliament today to mark the fifth anniversary of the decriminalisation of prostitution.

The day-long programme in the Beehive has been dubbed as Going all the way: an event to reflect on decriminalisation. It will involve panel discussions and will focus on the issues still affecting sex workers.

New Zealand became one of the first countries to decriminalise prostitution on this day in 2003. The new law only just passed through Parliament by 60 votes to 59, with Labour's Muslim MP Ashraf Choudhary angering many by abstaining from the final vote.

Which of these countries has the most prisoners per head of population? Sudan, Syria, China, Burma, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, or England and Wales? We win, or rather lose: I have ranked these countries in reverse order. On this measure, England and Wales have a more punitive judicial system than most of the world's dictatorships.

On Friday, the government released new figures for the prison population. It broke all records, yet again. It has risen by 38% since Labour came to power, and now stands at 83,181. What does the government intend to do about it? Lock more people up. It is building enough new cells to jail 96,000 people by 2014. At the beginning of this month it laid out its plans for titan prisons: vast broiler units, which will each house 2,500 people. But they'll be only just big enough: the government expects the number of cons to rise to 95,600 in six years.

...Read full article

The machine needs to be fed. When you have 650 members of parliament elected to make laws, and an army of 500,000 civil servants whose job is to make sure that those laws work, and more legions in Brussels making more laws, there is never going to be any respite. The machine can never rest until absolutely everything is illegal.

...

Today the machine is running out of people wearing high-visibility jackets to enforce its avalanche of new laws and so it is dispensing with the courts system and locking up people who may be innocent. And still it whirrs, announcing last week that it is going to ban people from becoming sexually aroused.

At the moment lap-dancing clubs are classified in the same category as coffee shops and karaoke bars. Quite why coffee shops or karaoke bars need to be “classified” by a government agent in a high-visibility jacket we are not told.

Nor is there much evidence that this classification system is working because, so far as I can tell, every single town in Britain these days is equally terrible - a vomit-stained centre full of estate agents, charity shops and building societies, ringed with a prefabricated, fluorescent sprawl of people in purple shirts trying to sell you Pentium processors and button-backed leatherette sofas.

At least a lap-dancing club brings a bit of individuality to a town, a bit of a respite from the endless chain stores and horrible pound shops. Sadly, though, the machine disagrees. It says that such places provide “visual sexual stimulation” and as a result councils must be allowed to prevent new ones from opening and perhaps must even close existing venues.

...Read full article

Carl has just made the 15-minute journey across the Öresund bridge to buy sex in Denmark.

I can feel free here, he says, stretching his arms out wide at the bar of the Spunk Club in central Copenhagen on a Saturday night. I can breathe.

In Sweden paying for sex is a crime punishable with a possible six-month jail sentence or a hefty income-linked fine. Perhaps the worst penalty for errant Swedish males is the official court summons addressed to the family home; an embarrassment that has ruptured many marriages.

In Denmark, by contrast, prostitution has been decriminalised. Nigerian and Romanian women competed for Carl’s attentions when he staggered out of the Spunk Club, while a brothel next door bore a sign saying: Here Only Danish Girls.

The builders of the Öresund bridge linking Malmö with Copenhagen has brought two dissimilar and often competing societies into an uneasy proximity.

Denmark, proud of its tolerant traditions, has allowed the hippy colony of Christiania to flourish in the heart of Copenhagen since the 1970s. Now Swedish teenagers are taking taxis over the bridge, stopping off at the settlement, stocking up on marijuana, and driving back home. The Swedes are irritated; the Danes sensitive - police occasionally raid Christiania’s Pusher Street to show that they have not lost control – but ultimately they are not that bothered.

The true flashpoint is prostitution. Nothing better highlights how the model Scandinavian societies are now at odds over the correct road to Utopia. The Swedish law, punishing clients but keeping prostitution legal, is based on the premise that prostitution is a form of violence against women.

Inspector Wahlberg estimates that the number of prostitutes in Sweden fell from 2,500 in 1998 to 1,500 in 2003, and the trend is still downwards.

But there are two problems with this law. The first is that it has taken Sweden even closer to the Big Brother state. Customers are secretly filmed going in and out of brothels. The police then confront them with the evidence. Phone tapping landed a senior judge in trouble with the police after he contacted a young male prostitute; the judge - who had always given mild verdicts in prostitution cases - resigned. But the main problem is that prostitution has gone underground in Sweden.

Thanks to the bridge across the Öresund Strait frustrated clients such as Carl can now travel to Denmark, despite the toll charge of €30 (£24). The bridge was opened the year after the Swedish law came into effect. Since then the number of prostitutes in Copenhagen has doubled to 6,000.

Vile New Labour Trafficking in miserable lives

The Dutch approach to prostitution was observed today by Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker during a visit to the Netherlands, as part of the Government's review into tackling the demand for prostitution.

The Government's six-month review began in January with a visit to Sweden to explore the impact of legislation which criminalises the purchase or attempted purchase of sex and decriminalises its sale. The Netherlands takes a different approach and currently has a licensing scheme for brothels, meaning the organisation of prostitution by consenting adults is not a criminal offence.

Ministers, including the Solicitor General Vera Baird and the Deputy Minister for Women and Equality Barbara Follett, used the visit to look at the impact of the Dutch Government's legislation and the effect this has had in terms of the size and nature of the market. The visit will also be used to find out more about the current debate in the Netherlands about whether they should be doing more to tackle demand.

Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said: We have already made considerable progress in terms of shining the light on those who pay for sex, particularly in relation to on-street prostitution. We are now looking at how the problem is being tackled internationally to see what lessons we can all learn from each other.

Solicitor General Vera Baird said: In the course of this review we have seen amongst our European and world neighbours very different solutions to the same problem. We are starting to develop more fully our ideas as to what can work effectively for us.

Deputy Minister for Women and Equalities Barbara Follett said: Men who pay for sex fuel the evil trade of sex trafficking. We support and protect victims, as well as catch and prosecute traffickers; but now we must step up our efforts to tackle the demand side. By visiting other countries, such as Sweden and the Netherlands, we can learn from how they are responding to this growing international problem, and make sure that we are doing all we possibly can to stop this vile trade.

During the visit, Ministers met:

• The Minister for Justice
• The Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam and officials from the Local Government
• The National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings
• The National Prosecutor on Human Trafficking
• Amsterdam Police
• Representatives from Scharlaken Koord — a support service working with those involved in prostitution
• Representatives from the National Crime Squad and the Human Trafficking Expertise Centre.

Comment: Consulting with Nutters

Thanks to Donald

Just reading about Coaker in Netherlands on his study tour

But why did they meet Scarlet Cord, that is a christian organisation, why didn't they meet the Dutch prossie organisation instead...

Scarlet Cord was founded in 1987. Moved by the fate of the ever increasing number of prostitutes, a few volunteers visited the Amsterdam red-light district every week to reach out to the women behind the windows - not only to have a talk with them, but also to tell them about Jesus, who changes the lives of people.

And for that matter why didn't they talk to any customers either..

Obsessive internet use is a public health problem which is so serious it should be officially recognised as a clinical disorder, according to a leading psychiatrist.

British psychiatrists have previously reported that between five and 10% of online users are internet addicts

Sufferers spend unhealthy amounts of time playing online games, viewing pornography or emailing. They suffer four symptoms:

• They forget to eat and sleep
• they need more advanced technology or more hours online as they develop 'resistance' to the pleasure given by their current system
• if they are deprived of their computer, they experience genuine withdrawal symptoms
• in common with other addictions, the victims also begin to have more arguments, to suffer fatigue, to get lower marks in tests and to feel isolated from society.

Early research into the subject found highly educated, socially awkward men were the most likely sufferers but more recent work suggests it is now more of a problem for middle-aged women who are spending hours at home on their computers.

Psychiatrist Dr Jerald Block said some sufferers were so addicted to the internet that they required medication or even hospital treatment to curb the time they spent on the web.

He said: It's much more acceptable for kids to talk about game use, whereas adults keep it a secret. Rather than having sex, or arguing with their wife or husband, or feeding their children, these adults are playing games.

Dr Block, of the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, in the USA, first made the claims in an editorial for the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Scots sending sexually explicit e-mails were warned last night that they could be accused of being a sex offender.

As part of the biggest overhaul of sex offences in Scotland, a new statutory offence of "communicating indecently" will criminalise those who send malicious and unwanted sexually offensive e-mails and texts, as well as other verbal and written messages.

A new bill unveiled contains proposals for a raft of other new offences, covering areas such as indecent exposure and spiking drinks for the purpose of having sex.

The proposals are based on recommendations in a report published last December by the Scottish Law Commission. It had been commissioned in 2004 to examine the law on rape and other sexual offences.

Age of Consent

However, ministers have turned down a commission proposal to decriminalise all consenting sex between youngsters aged 13 to 15.

BDSM

The new legislation rejected a proposal to decriminalise consensual adult sexual violence. It's not everybody's cup of tea, but when both parties are willing, where's the harm? For the government, it was the fear that such a move might offer some form of legal escape to rapists and those who commit domestic violence. It's a powerful argument, but a misguided one. These are instances in which the state simply should not meddle.

Sex tourism

Anyone from Scotland who travels abroad and has sex with someone under the age of 16 can currently only be prosecuted on their return if the intercourse was also illegal in the foreign country.

Indecent communication

THE bill defines the new offence of indecent communication as occurring when a person intentionally delivers a sexual message to another person.

The offence requires that the person sends the communication to obtain sexual gratification, or to humiliate, distress or alarm the recipient. The communication can be a word in someone's ear, a page from a pornographic magazine, or an e-mail or text.

Someone who sends an offensive e-mail to a group of colleagues, friends and other people could be breaking this new law.

However, the Crown would have to prove that the purpose of sending the e-mail had been malicious, or that the sender had done it for a sexual "thrill".

Anyone found guilty of indecent communication faces a maximum ten-year jail sentence.

Public indecency

THE offence of public indecency, which can include "flashing", streaking and urinating in public, already exists. But the government explicitly wants to criminalise anyone who intentionally exposes their genitals in a sexual manner to another person with the intention of causing alarm or distress, or being "reckless" as to whether alarm or distress may be caused.

The new offence also criminalises sexual exposure in someone's home. The aim is to make it clear such behaviour is a sex crime completely separate to someone causing offence by, for example, sunbathing naked in a public park. The Scottish Law Commission, which first proposed the move, reasoned that indecent exposure was in many ways similar to a sexual assault.

Sweden voted in favour of its controversial snoop law, after the proposal was amended.

Under the new law, all communication across Swedish borders will be tapped, and information can also be traded with international security agencies, such as America's National Security Agency.

A total of 143 members of parliament voted to pass the bill into law, with 138 delegates opposed.

Earlier , prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt failed to win the backing of his four-party coalition: the draft was sent back to the committee for revision. Key members of parliament who were likely to vote against the proposition were put under pressure by their parties, according to some reports.

Despite receiving copies of George Orwell's book 1984 from protesters earlier this week, MPs from Sweden's ruling party believe the law does not constitute the final nail in the coffin of democracy.

The amended law includes the creation of an agency to control the granting of permissions. The Swedish Data Inspection Board is to monitor the surveillance activities of the National Defence Radio Establishment. An external group comprising members appointed by the government will monitor privacy and integrity issues.

Pirates are the Good Guys vs the State Villains

Thanks to Donald
See Pirate Party to take Sweden to EU court from The Local

Sweden's Pirate Party has said it will take the country to the European Court of Human Rights in a bid to overturn a far-reaching eavesdropping law passed by the Riksdag on Wednesday evening.

• 'Yes' to surveillance law(18 Jun 08)
• Snoop law vote to go ahead(18 Jun 08)
• 'Orwellian law must be stopped'(18 Jun 08)

Deputy leader Christian Engström told The Local that the Pirate Party believed the new law was in clear breach of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

The minimum age for a prostitute is the subject of a parliamentary debate in the Netherlands with parties divided on whether it should be raised to 21 years, says the Telegraaf.

Labour (PvdA) is not convinced it should be raised from 18 years and the right-wing liberals VVD and socialist SP are against the move.

Raising the minimum age is part of a package of possible measures to deal with illegal prostitution and abuses in the sex industry. Among them is criminalising punters who use illegal prostitutes.

Escorts say TheEroticReview.com founder's arrest could change paid-sex industry.

Private sex-industry message boards are buzzing with stories of how Dave Elms, the now-jailed founder of TheEroticReview.com, removed reviews of escorts who refused to offer him free sex in exchange for maintaining their good standing on his influential site.

In an interview with Valleywag, Nancy, an escort in California who says she relies on TheEroticReview for the bulk of her clientele, says she continues to use Elms's site even though she has "seen his 'work' of persuading girls to come and service him" to maintain the presence of the reviews critical to their business.

Independent traveling escort Ashley is one of the thousands of providers whose services have been reviewed on TheEroticReview. She had a run-in with Elms two months ago, when she asked that he change her name on the website to throw off a stalker. Elms took this opportunity to make his own pitch and that meant sleeping with him. She declined, and later found her reviews removed from TER.

Last week, after she heard that Elms had been jailed, she attempted to post a warning to escorts and clients on the board, but it was blocked by administrators and her account was disabled.

Elms is unlikely to face charges over these allegations of abuse. He is versed in what the law says, Nancy explains: He knew exactly what he could get away with and did it for a long time. In fact he could have continued getting girls to service him, had he not been jailed.

And the fate of TER? TER is the industry standard for men seeking providers, says Nancy. There is no other that comes close. Reviews are what fuel the industry.

Danish newspapers ran an article today that Denmark has rejected the Swedish model banning the buying of sex after considering it for the past few months.

Update: Campaigners

Thanks to Donald

From article (in Danish) in Berlingske

"DF will not support a ban on paying for sex"

That means that a ban is out of the question since not any of the major political parties in Denmark will support it either

This was not the result of a review of prostitution laws, feminazis launched a campaign in March and obviously the fems didn't get enough support.

Danish sex workers did launch a high profile campaign against it with press conferences declaring we're not victims we're women.

Under 21s will be banned from buying alcohol at supermarkets and off licences under a rights abusing plan to shake-up Scotland's drink laws.

Ministers want to stop teenagers buying cheap alcohol and believe a three-year increase in the age limit will reduce the nation's chronic drink-related violence and health problems.

A major action plan on alcohol will be unveiled by Injustice Secretary Kenny MacAskill who has waged a campaign against Scotland's drinkers since taking over the job last year.

Over-18s will still be allowed to drink in pubs and bars but ministers are said to be insistent on the need for radical reform of off-sales, arguing that "enough is enough" in the battle to bring an end to Scotland's "booze culture".

Along with the increase in the age limit, MacAskill will also propose setting minimum prices for alcohol and banning three-for-two and buy-one-get-one-free deals.

Last night, the drinks industry reacted angrily to the proposals, claiming they will "demonise and mystify" alcohol for teenagers.

The increase in the age limit to 21 for off-sales follows a pilot in the West Lothian town of Armadale where the restrictions were enforced recently.

Sources say MacAskill has also been influenced by the example of Sweden where the age limit for off-sales is 20, two years more than the bars and pubs limit.

But retailers and drinks bosses accuse him of having railroaded his plans through with no consideration for their own trade, or for household pockets, at a time when the cost of fuel and food are increasing.

Two groups have asked the courts to review a decision that allows border-patrol agents to search U.S. citizens' laptops without suspicion of crime.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives claim that the laptop searches violate citizens' Fourth Amendment rights, which protect them from unreasonable search and seizures.

The case began in 2005, after U.S. citizen Michael Arnold returned to the U.S. from the Philippines and was arrested by Customs and Border Patrol agents who searched his laptop. A district court ruled in Arnold's favor. 

A three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the district court's decision in April.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives now contend that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' decision essentially negated the Fourth Amendment and put citizens' privacy and identities at risk, since border patrols can confiscate laptops and make full copies of their contents.

The two groups argue that laptops often contain personal banking and identity information and the level of privacy invasion at a border search is "enormous."

The groups are asking the court to require border agents to have reasonable suspicion of a crime to search a laptop. A decision on whether the court will rehear the case is expected to come within the next few months.

Easton police have ticketed someone for going topless in public. Sean Cephus, 18, was cited June 4 when police say he was spotted without a shirt on South Street. He was also cited for failing to obey a lawful order to stop for police.

A town ordinance adopted in 1974 forbids anyone from going topless in public buildings or on public streets and sidewalks. Possible penalties are a fine of up to $100 and up to 10 days in jail.

Robert Hurt went to Washington and didn't like what he saw – nudity in the nation's capital.

Nude women, sculptured women, he told the state Republican platform committee, which sat in rapt attention. Of all the evils in Washington that the Texas Republican took aim at this week, removing art with naked people from public view was high on the list for Hurt, a delegate from Kerrville.

You don't have nude art on your front porch, he explained: You possibly don't have nude art in your living rooms. So why is it important to have that in the common places of Washington, D.C.?

Hurt offered statistics: He'd heard that 20% of the art in the National Gallery of Art is of nudes. He offered detail: On Arlington Memorial Bridge overlooking the famed national cemetery, there are two Lady Godivas, two women on horses with no shirt on and long hair.

Actually, they are classical sculptures about war – one called Valor, depicting a male equestrian and a female with a shield, and Sacrifice, a female accompanying the rider Mars.

The Republican platform presented to rally the troops advocates prayer in school, getting out of the United Nations, teaching intelligent design with evolution in science classes, repealing of the minimum wage, declaring illegal immigrants criminals and outlawing abortion with no exceptions.

Hallelujah! said a delegate who had urged strong anti-abortion language.

The platform calls homosexuality contrary to the unchanging truths ordained by God. It opposes gay marriage, civil unions and the custody of children by gays.

Ridding Washington of naked art didn't make the cut though.

A man ended up being arrested and charged - after laughing too much at BBC TV's Have I Got News For You.

Chris Cocker from Blackburn, was chuckling so vigorously at a comment by comedy panellist Paul Merton that he fell off the sofa.

A concerned neighbour in the flat below heard the thud and called the police.

But when he refused to co-operate, Cocker was arrested. He admitted in court to resisting a police officer and was given a conditional discharge.

A charge of assaulting a police officer was withdrawn when Cocker appeared before magistrates in Blackburn, Lancashire.

Cocker said: I fell off the settee in hysterics and hit the floor and got myself up and started carrying on watching the telly and the next thing I know there was a knock on the door.

The bit where I lost it the most was when I shut the door and the policeman had stuck his foot in the doorway and was refusing to let me shut my own front door.

After being sprayed with pepper spray, Cocker was put into a police van and taken to a police station where he said he was stripped naked and spent a night in the cells.

Authorities in Cairo have banned a 92-year-old Gulf Arab man from marrying a 17-year-old Egyptian girl, under laws brought in to counter the increasing number of wealthy Gulf men travelling to the impoverished Egyptian countryside to find much younger, temporary brides.

The ministry of justice invoked a law that says the age gap between spouses should not exceed 25 years. The newspaper Al-Akhbar reported that 173 couples with more than 25 years between them wed last year, via a loophole in the law that allows a foreign man to take a much younger bride in exchange for depositing about $80,000 (£41,000) in the Egyptian national bank.

In Egypt, poverty is rife. Girls from rural Egyptian families might be sold to a wealthy Gulf man for between $500 and $1,500. Having returned to the Gulf state with her husband, most Egyptian girls find they are treated as servants in the family home and rejected by the man's existing wife or wives.

After a few months of such "marriage" the girl can be divorced and sent home, often with a settlement of up to $10,000, a sum it would take the average Egyptian 10 years or more to earn.

Does UEFA censor the images TV viewers see during the Euro 2008 championships ? TV channels around Europe use a centralized video feed provided by UEFA, the organizer of the games. But there’s been a bit of debate about what gets shown and what doesn’t.

The whole issue might not have come up if Federal Cabinet Minister Samuel Schmid hadn’t mentioned the “smoke bombs” to Swiss German television.

It just was after a Sunday match in Vienna. He said he preferred the match the day before, because fans hadn’t set off smoke bombs. In fact, a significant portion of the stadium in Vienna was covered with smoke.

But that would have been news to TV viewers. Only a few wisps made it onto the telecast.

Did UEFA censor the images of fans behaving badly?

Pascale Voegeli is a spokeswoman for UEFA and said: If there are riots from some few people in the stands, there is no reason to give those people a platform on TV. So that’s why the producers they decide not to show some images.

François Jeannet is head of sports at French-language public television, TSR says the producers are right not to focus on disturbances in the stadium. Jeannet says most TV sports producers, including TSR, follow similar policies: There are some guidelines when you produce a sport event that say that you try not to emphasize or to bring publicity to agitators because you don’t want to make publicity for those actions on the field.

Update: Offside

16th June 2008 See full article from Strangeglue

The Swiss national broadcasting authority is set to formally complain about UEFA’s censoring of TV images at the European Championships.

SRG Director General Armin Walpen is concerned that UEFA’s decision not to show the incidents in question were ‘more than problematic’ from a journalistic point of view.

Walpen is preparing an official letter of protest for the governing body about their handling of the matter.

The Ministry of Defence has launched a legal battle against a high street shopping chain because a duvet cover features the RAF's insignia.

The MoD's legal team has lodged a claim in the chancery division of the High Court against Next's use of the RAF's red, white, and blue roundel.

They are upset that the fashion store is using the image on a range of bedroom furnishings and decoration aimed at seven-year-old boys.

The offending material includes a £35 cotton and polyester duvet cover, rugs, curtains and wall stickers. The patriotic bedset design also includes Union Jacks with images of a car, a guitar and a scooter.

Defence Secretary Des Browne is the claimant and a writ has been issued, although it is not thought to have been served yet.

The incident began last September when the MoD first accused Leicester-based Next, the UK's third-biggest clothes retailer, of copyright infringement.

However, Next argues that the symbol is also the emblem of the 1960s 'Mod' movement, revived by Paul Weller's band The Jam in 1978 and forever associated with the Franc Roddam film Quadrophenia. The band Oasis and shirts by the firm Ben Sherman also use the roundel image as part of their branding.

The minister of injustice in Norway has proposed criminalizing the purchase of sexual services both at home and abroad.

The law proposes imposing fines and up to six months in jail for anyone convicted of paying a prostitute for sex. The law is in line with a “Sex Purchase Law” passed by neighboring Sweden in 1999, which has been the subject of intense interest in Europe and elsewhere.

Injustice Minister Knut Storberget said in presenting the proposed law: People are not a commodity and criminalizing the purchase of sex would make it less attractive for human traffickers to look to Norway.

I am not sure I like the law. I don’t really know how smart it is to criminalize people for buying sex. But at least that part of the law I respect. The part I have strong objections to, is the part that says that the law should apply to Norwegians visiting other countries as well. This is strange as a legal principle.

I mean, if a Norwegian drive a car at 160 km/hour on a German highway, this is legal in Germany but illegal in Norway. But people do not get punished for it when they return home to Norway. Same for smoking cannabis in Amsterdam. And so on. But now the government proposes that when a Norwegian does something in a foreign country that is legal in that country, he is to be punished when he returns home?

And, in addition to the very strange legal principle involved, there is also the almost impossible situation with respect to implementation. Are Dutch policemen supposed to look out for Norwegians buying sex, when that purchase is legal in the Netherlands?

CTwo Dutch cops stop a guy in the street because of his T-shirt. It features something resembling the police logo printed on top of the O in the word CORRUPT.

They give him a $265 fine for insulting a government worker in function (yes, there's actually a law that punishes such a horror), which he quite rightfully declines to pay, preferring to let the case go to trial.

The other day, he gets his summons, and discovers he is now charged with aanranding (molestation).

Italy’s interior minister Roberto Maroni, who orchestrated his country’s controversial crackdown on illegal immigration, has suggested that by August, prostitution should be legalized in Italy.

Maroni described his country’s current law as “repressive,” saying that prostitution has its “pros and cons.”

He claimed that thousands of people are currently serving jail sentences in Italy for infractions of those laws, and said that such punishment exemplifies an “adolescent reaction” to the sex trade.

Italian poll shows heavy support for legalized prostitution

Italy’s Donna Moderna magazine has published a survey showing that a substantial majority of Italians support the legalization of prostitution.

The survey respondents accepted the argument that legalizing brothels would protect prostitutes and move them off the streets.

The survey found substantial support for two different arguments in favor of legalization: 47% of those polled supported the legalization of prostitution as a means to “clean up the streets” while 38% said the measure would be useful to protect prostitutes from exploitation and violence.

Just 11% of respondents opposed legalized prostitution on the grounds that it would encourage the practice, and a mere 4% opposed the the idea on moral grounds.

Daniela Santaché of The Right Party supports the legalization of prostitution and has promised to collect 500,000 signatures in support of the proposal.

Most Italian political parties oppose legalized prostitution and the government’s undersecretary for the family, Carlo Giovanardi, has suggested heavy fines and the publication of the names of people who pick up prostitutes

Update: Postponed

18th June 2008

An amendment on prostitution presented by the president of the Senate Justice Commission, Filippo Berselli, and much discussed in the past days, is removed from the decree on security.

We have decided to remove all issues not strictly relevant for the measure from the decree explained Berselli.

Changes to prostitution law will now be tabled in a separate government bill on the topic.

A battle the very soul of Scotland will shortly erupt in Holyrood, when Kenny MacAskill, the justice secretary, lays the Sexual Offences Bill before parliament in the next week or so.

One area of contention which will cause some tittering is the proposal to decriminalise sadomasochism. The argument goes that consenting adults should not become criminals simply because they have a taste for whips and leather.

But Nigel Don, a justice committee member, has raised the fear that decriminalisation may open a loophole for domestic abuse. I understand his concerns have got civil servants looking at the proposal again.

The most headline-grabbing part of the bill will be the proposal from the Scottish Law Commission, partly supported the by Children's Commissioner, Kathleen Marshall, that teenagers under the age of 16 should be allowed to have sex with each other but not adults. Some fear this will push the age of consent down to 13, as it is in Spain. But with Scotland facing an increasing number of abortions and teenage pregnancies, there have been suggestions that legalising sex at 13 will be an invitation to Scottish youth to start copulating en masse. But many ask why should teenagers be turned into criminals for doing what comes naturally.

The mood in parliament is against the liberals. It has not been long since MSPs voted to turn kerb-crawlers into criminals, although it did not go as far as what community safety minister Fergus "Impound their Cars" Ewing wanted.

With drinking and smoking, Holyrood's new puritans took a morally conservative line telling people what is good for them rather than letting them decide for themselves. So be prepared for more of the same with sex.

The German government have passed an anti-terror law that would grant police the power to monitor private residences, telephones and computers.

Instead of tapping phones, they would be able to use video surveillance and even spy software to collect evidence. Physically tampering with suspects' computers would still not be allowed, but police could send anonymous e-mails containing trojans and hope the suspects infect their own computers.

Government cyberspying, the legislators point out, would only be conducted in a handful of exceptional cases.

The bill, called a building block for Germany's security architecture by interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble, still needs to be approved by the lower and upper chamber of the German parliament.

The federal law was passed after months of heated debate. The proposed plans would not only widen the anti-terror skills of police and the Federal Crime Office, better known as BKA, it would also reverse recent rulings by Germany's constitutional court and Federal Supreme Court. A law which permits authorities in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia to spy on computer users was rejected recently and last year the the Supreme Court ruled online police spying was unlawful.

Max Stadler, a security expert with the German Free Democratic Party, warned earlier the plan would weaken the trust of German citizens in government.

Russia has announced plans to ban foreign toys and Valentine’s Day in a bid to protect the country’s youth from moral corruption by the West.

Despite accusations of censorship and nationalism, the Russian Duma this week introduced a series of bills designed to uphold the spiritual values of children by protecting their morals.

The legislation envisages a ban on the sale of children’s toys that provoke aggression, model actions of a sexual nature, justify extremism and a criminal lifestyle, depict horror or unbearable pain or are created on the basis of the psychologically incongruous.

Under the new law, schools would also be forbidden from celebrating Halloween and St Valentine’s Day because they were inappropriate to ‘Russian cultural values.'

All school children would also be subject to a 10pm curfew, while minors would be banned from wearing tattoos and body-piercing. Mobile phone providers are to be instructed to block text messages sent by children than contain obscenities.

The authors of the policy paper, which has yet to be debated, were unable to provide a full list of the products to be sanctioned, but said that most came from the West.

Giving examples of the kind of merchandise that would be targeted, Yevgeny Yuryev, a sociologist who co-ordinated the draft legislation, identified a range of British made soft toys called the Bad Taste Bears: I can’t even describe what these bears do but they involve things of a sexual nature that might be traumatic for children.

Alongside a range of violent and criminal teddy bears, the company’s website advertises a line of “pornstar bears” featuring a character called Kenny Lingus and his friends.

Teenagers who model themselves on Western youth subcultures like Goths — who are accused of “cultivating bisexuality” — are to be regarded by the authorities as social nuisances in the same league as skinheads, football hooligans and anti-fascists.

The authors of the legislation, which mirrors other government measures to promote Russian nationalism, say urgent action is required to end a moral crisis inspired by the West that has seen a dramatic rise in alcoholism and addiction among teenagers.

Today we have a lost generation of wandering morons whose parents’ moral vision was robbed by perestroika, said Stanislav Govorukhin, a Duma deputy: We have taken the worst from the West because we failed to resist the encroachment of Western values. He denied accusations by liberal activists that the new laws represented an attack on freedom of expression: The essence of freedom is that there should be moral restrictions — that is what freedom is.

The Fox channel in Washington D.C. became aware that photographers were being hassled by security in Union Station (the train station in Washington), so they dispatched a reporter and a crew to do a story on it.

So they're interviewing the head spokesman for Amtrak, who is explaining that there aren't any laws or rules against photography inside the train station...when a security guard comes up and tells the TV crew they'll have to turn the cameras off.

For six months they have endured worsening physical and sexual abuse at the hands of police over-zealously enforcing a new anti-trafficking law, but now Cambodian sex workers are fighting back.

More than 500 commercial sex workers rallied together on June 4 to protest the massive escalation of violent police raids on brothels and the criminalization of sex work due to new US-backed "model" anti-trafficking legislation, passed in February this year.

The day of action, held at the Women's Network for Unity (WNU) in Phnom Penh, called for the repeal of the new anti-trafficking law, which critics say conflates prostitution with trafficking and is so over-broad that even carrying condoms can now get you arrested.

Chanting "save us from saviors" and waving placards saying "condoms protect, police threaten," hundreds of red-shirted sex workers demanded their human rights be respected and asserted they did not need to be "saved" from their jobs in brothels, least of all by lecherous, avaricious police officers.

During brothel raids the police beat sex workers with sticks, stones, or weapons, and take all their money and jewelry, said Pheng Phally, a sex worker and team leader of the WNU.

If any sex workers are pretty, the police gang rape them before sending them to the rehabilitation center where there is not enough food and very poor hygiene.

Video-taped evidence of the abuse of sex workers by Cambodian law-enforcement officials was presented at the event, which comes just one day before Minister of Interior Sar Kheng is due to make an announcement on the US State Department's annual assessment of the Kingdom’s anti-trafficking efforts.

WNU's Phally explained that after the new anti-trafficking legislation passed the police ramped-up brothel raids, began targeting street-based sex workers and closing down karaoke bars.

Not only does the new climate of fear and repression make it nearly impossible for the tens of thousands of women employed in the Kingdom's sex industry to earn a living, but they are being beaten and treated like animals during the raids, she said.

We have gathered today to ask the government to repeal the law and stop the violent raids on us, we have rights too and we need to be allowed to earn money for ourselves and our families – sex work is work, Phally said.

Cambodia’s Law on the Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation is based on US-style model anti-trafficking legislation that seeks to eliminate human trafficking by criminalizing the sex industry as a whole. Activists claim it was only passed in a misguided attempt to meet anti-trafficking standards imposed by the US State Department.

Three angry expressions and you're toast. Better safe than sorry!

European airlines are prototyping cameras trained on every passenger in flight, married to some kind of snake-oil "terrorism detection" software that will be able to tell if the guy in 11J is planning to rush the cockpit.

The European Union's Security of Aircraft in the Future European Environment (SAFEE) project uses a camera in every passenger's seat, with six wide-angle cameras to survey the aisles. Software then analyses the footage to detect developing terrorist activity or "air-rage" incidents, by tracking passengers' facial expressions...

It looks for running in the cabin, standing near the cockpit for long periods of time, and other predetermined indicators that suggest a developing threat, says James Ferryman of the University of Reading, UK, one of the system's developers.

Other behaviours could include a person nervously touching their face, or sweating excessively. One such behaviour won't trigger the system to alert the crew, only certain combinations of them.

Ferryman is not ready to reveal specifically which behaviours were most likely to trigger the system. Much of the computer's ability to detect threats relies on sensitive information gleaned from security analysts in the intelligence community, he tells New Scientist.

An airline passenger claimed that a security guard threatened to arrest him because he was wearing a T-shirt showing a cartoon robot with a gun.

Brad Jayakody from London, said he was stopped from passing through security at Heathrow's Terminal 5 after his Transformers T-shirt was deemed 'offensive.'

The IT consultant was set to fly off on a business trip to Dusseldorf in Germany when he was pulled to one side.

Jayakody said the first guard started joking with him about the Transformers character depicted on his French Connection T-shirt. Then he explains that since Megatron is holding a gun, I'm not allowed to fly, he said.

He was cooperative with the supervisor and took off the the 'offensive' T-shirt, replacing it with another shirt in his carry on luggage.

A spokesman for Heathrow operator BAA said: If a T-shirt had a rude word or a bomb on it, for example, a passenger may be asked to remove it. We are investigating what happened to see if it came under this category. If it's offensive, we don't want other passengers upset.

Caught walking on the cracks in the pavement

The middle classes have lost confidence in the police, a stark report has warned. They fear they have been alienated by a service which routinely targets ordinary people rather than serious criminals, simply to fill Government crime quotas.

The attitude of some officers has also led to spiralling complaints about neglect of duty and rudeness.

The report from the Civitas think-tank says incidents which would once have been ignored are now treated as crimes - including a case of children chalking a pavement.

The report warns that a generation of young people - the police's favourite soft targets - are being criminalised, putting their future prospects at risk.

Some offences being prosecuted are now so minor that senior officers have even begun talks with the US authorities to prevent such a 'criminal record' stopping decent citizens obtaining a visa to cross the Atlantic.

Meanwhile responses to crimes such as burglary are slow and statements given by victims of serious crime are often left lying idle for months, the report warns.

Miss Sergeant warns: 'The loss of public confidence is a serious matter. The police cannot police without the backing of society. Without trust and consensus it is very difficult and costly to maintain law and order.'

Her report says: Complaints against the police have risen, with much of the increase coming from law-abiding, middle-class, middle-aged and retired people who no longer feel the police are on their side.

The report details how officers are expected to reach a certain number of 'sanction detections' a month by charging, cautioning or fining an 'offender'. Arresting or fining someone for a trifling offence - such as a child stealing a Mars bar - is a good way of hitting the target and pleasing the Home Office. Miss Sergeant says performance-related bonuses of between £10,000 and £15,000 a year for police commanders depend partly on reaching such targets. This leads them to put pressure on frontline officers to make arrests for the most minor misdemeanours.

Dutch culture minister Ronald Plasterk plans to take no action against public TV channel Nederland 3 to prevent it from broadcasting 13 X-rated movies this summer, reports the NIS News Bulletin.

The scheduled series, titled Cinema Erotica, follows a broadcast by the channel last February of adult classic Deep Throat, and is being protested as that broadcast was by Christian party leaders.

These films are characterized by connoisseurs as artistic, Plasterk said in a letter to parliament. He maintained that there is no reason to stop the broadcasts, nor does the government have the means to do so.

Sandra White (Glasgow) (Scottish National Party has laid a motion:

Challenging Man's Demand for Prostitution in Scotland:

That the Parliament welcomes the publication of the report, Challenging Man’s Demand for Prostitution in Scotland, a collaboration between the Women’s Support Project in Glasgow and US organisation, Prostitute Research and Education; notes with concern the evidence that men who use prostitutes regularly are more likely to regard other women as “objects” and the link between using prostitutes and sexual violence against women, and believes that the evidence presented in the report will serve to inform and shape the debate and future direction of prostitution in Scotland.

Supported by: Shirley-Anne Somerville, Joe FitzPatrick, Kenneth Gibson, Christina McKelvie, Jamie Hepburn, Bashir Ahmad, Stuart McMillan, Angela Constance, Elaine Smith, Brian Adam, Johann Lamont, Gil Paterson, Bill Kidd, Pauline McNeill

The motion was lodged on Thursday, May 01, 2008.

The mean minded motion refers to the report Challenging Men's Demand [pdf] by Melissa Farley.

A response to the Farley report drafted by some 20 academics and activists (including such familiar names as Michael Goodyear, Ronald Weitzer, and Petra Boynton) has also been submitted to the Scottish Parliament. See Farley Critique [doc file].

Update: Deplorable Report

Thanks to Donald, 30th May 2008

Margo MacDonald has proposed an excellent amendment to Sandra White's mean minded resolution:

S3M-1799.1 Margo MacDonald: Challenging Man’s Demand for Prostitution in Scotland—

As an amendment to motion (S3M-1799) in the name of Sandra White, leave out from welcomes to end and insert deplores the publication of the report, Challenging Man’s Demand for Prostitution in Scotland, as it lacks any academic merit, is based on material gathered after payments to respondents, is guilty of bias leading to foolish conclusions and presents the public with a simplistic view of a highly complex subject; notes the outrage expressed by 16 distinguished academics who have joined Dr Jane Scoular, Reader in Law at the University of Strathclyde, in utterly condemning the report, and notes that the academics believe that "this research violates fundamental principles of human research ethics in that there is no evidence of any benefit to the population studied…It seems highly unlikely that the participants were ever informed of the true nature of the research, which could well have influenced their response. This sort of research is dangerous".

Cigarettes will no longer be available over the counter and cigarette vending machines will be outlawed under plans to be announced this week.

Only months after the Government raised the age for buying cigarettes to 18, the Health Secretary said that more anti-smoking measures were likely to be introduced, including banning packets of ten.

Alan Johnson said that packs of ten Woodbines had encouraged him to start smoking when young. He backed plans to enforce nationwide the decision in Scotland to force cigarettes “under the counter”. Speaking on Sunday AM on BBC One, he said: I think they [the Scottish] are right to do that and indeed we are considering that as well. We will launch a consultation document on that next week.

He said that many European countries had banned vending machines, with “startling” results: Whether you should still be able to buy ten cigarettes or whether you should insist you can only buy 20 is an issue we need to look very closely at.

He also gave a broad hint that the price of alcohol would rise: The instinctive reaction . . . is that if you’re selling lager at less than . . . mineral water, then that’s wrong.

The number of sex workers in New Zealand does not appear to have increased since legislation decriminalising prostitution became law, according to a new report.

The Prostitution Law Review Committee was set up to report on the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 three to five years after the Act came into force.

Its report, published today, was based on work carried out by the Christchurch School of Medicine and Victoria University's Crime and Justice Research Centre.

The committee, chaired by former Police Assistant Commissioner Paul Fitzharris, said an accurate count of the number of sex workers was difficult. However, a comparison between the number of sex workers in Christchurch in 1999, before decriminalisation, and 2006 - after the Act was passed - showed the total had stayed approximately the same.

Around 93% of sex workers cited money as the reason for getting into and staying in the sex industry. The most significant barriers to exiting are loss of income, reluctance to lose the flexible working hours available in the sex industry and the camaraderie and sense of belonging that some sex workers describe.

The committee said a Christchurch School of Medicine survey of sex workers found that more than 90% felt they had legal rights under the Act. More than 60% felt they were more able to refuse to provide commercial sexual services to a particular client since the enactment of the law.

Prior to the Act, the illicit status of the sex industry meant sex workers were open to coercion and exploitation by managers, pimps and clients. Research indicated there had been "some improvement" in employment conditions but this is by no means universal.

Generally, brothels which had treated their workers fairly before the Act continued to do so while those that did not continued to have unfair management practices, it said.

Other findings included that the majority of sex workers felt the Act could do little about violence that occurred, although a significant majority felt there had been an improvement since the passing of the Act.

Other recommendations included that the Government provide additional funding to the Ministry of Health to enable medical officers of health to carry out regular inspections of brothels.

It also said the Government should provide funding so that non-government organisations could provide services to the industry, including assistance with exiting for those that wanted to get out of sex work.

Associate Justice Minister Lianne Dalziel said the report showed the Act had had a positive effect on the health and safety of sex workers and had not led to an increase in numbers of sex workers as predicted by critics of the law reform.

The owners of cafés in the centre of Amsterdam are again up in arms against what they say is the umpteenth attempt to turn the city into a prudish provincial backwater.

A majority of the Amsterdam district council ‘Amsterdam Centrum’ have voted in favour of a measure that would forbid customers from sitting outside on a terrace past midnight. A Dutch newspaper says the centre of Amsterdam is moving another step towards becoming a ‘Staphorst on the Amstel’. Staphorst is considered the most strict and devout Calvinist town in the Netherlands.

Previously the district council ruled that customers cannot drink while standing. The free newspaper De Pers quotes an owner of a pub in Amsterdam, who says with a deep sigh:

Now we’ll have to hire an extra employee to act as a sort of police officer who will walk around seeing to it that customers don’t drink while standing. They will also have to ensure that customers are gone (from the terrace) by midnight… when they’d rather sit there until four. Earlier, the council ruled that outside terraces cannot be heated because it is a waste of energy and hence environmentally unfriendly.

The district council has also been criticised for ordering the closure of 150 terraces, banning the construction of new hotels and organising fewer events.

The Amsterdam City Council is also in the process of “cleaning up” the city. Permits for a large numbers of rooms in the Red Light District, where prostitutes stand behind windows, are being rescinded. Recently the town council ordered the closure of the famous sex club Yab Yum as well as the live-sex theatre Casa Rosso.

Prostitution in the Islamic nation of Pakistan, once relegated to dark alleys and small red-light districts, is now seeping into many neighborhoods of country's urban centers. Reports indicate that since the period of civilian rule ended in 1977, times have changed and now the sex industry is bustling.

Early military governments and religious groups sought to reform areas like the famous "Taxali Gate" district of Lahore by displacing prostitutes and their families in an effort to "reinvent" the neighborhood. While displacing the prostitutes might have temporarily made the once small red-light district a better neighborhood for a time, it did little to stop the now dispersed prostitutes from plying their trade. Now the tendrils of the sex trade have become omnipresent in cities like Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi and Lahore, not to mention towns, villages and rural outposts.

Chinese bordellos, often operating as "massage parlors" or beauty salons, are across Pakistan, even spread even to war-torn and restive locations such as the Afghan capital Kabul. Chinese in the sex industry have developed a cunning ability to recognize areas where the demand for sex far outstrips the supply.

The local sex industry comprised of Pakistani prostitutes has also grown in recent years. YouTube videos show house after house with colorfully lit entranceways always with a mamasan and at least one Pakistani woman in traditional dress. The women are available for in-house services for as little as 400 rupees (US$6) to take-away prices ranging 1,000 to 2,000 rupees. These districts are mostly for locals, but foreigners can indulge at higher prices.

More upscale areas like Lahore's Heera Mundi or "Diamond Market", cater to well-heeled locals and foreigners. At these places prettier, younger girls push their services for 5,000 to 10,000 rupees for an all-night visit, and the most exceptional can command 20,000 to 40,000 rupees for just short time.

Rumors abound online that female TV stars and actresses can be hired for sex. You can get film stars for 50,000 to 100,000 rupees but you need good contacts for that, one blogger wrote after a trip to Lahore.

Short-time hotels offering hourly rates can be found all over major cities, underscoring the profits being reaped by the sex industry.

The root causes of prostitution in Pakistan are poverty and a dearth of opportunities. Widows find themselves on the streets with mouths to feed, and for many prostitution offers a quick fix. A local Pakistani prostitute can earn 2,000 to 3,000 rupees per day compared to the average monthly income of 2,500 rupees.

Germany has been debating their immigration laws.

Many immigrants, particularly the female ones, continue to remain in their comfort zones and are said to be reluctant to learn German and integrate into German society.

Many do not work and instead receive a monthly allowance from the state-funding programme for jobless people. Those who have kids also get a child allowance, "Kindergeld", to help raise their children. Many Germans say their presence is taking its toll on their tax bills. The debate is on and the government is facing growing pressure to do something about it.

Numerous measures have been implemented to persuade immigrants to return to their home countries or to make it harder for them to come over in the first place. It is now virtually impossible for non-Europeans to come and work in Germany.

For example, foreign graduates can only immigrate to Germany if they earn an annual salary of Euro85,500 (Bt4.3 million), which is generally more than what most German managing directors make. Last year, fewer than 500 foreign specialists qualified under this rule. Obtaining a travel visa to Germany is also notably very difficult.

Nowadays, it is as if the only possible way for non-EU citizens to live in Germany is to tie the knot with a German.

For those immigrants who are already living in the country, several procedures have been introduced aimed at integration. For example, migrants are encouraged to attend an "Integration Course", which consists of 600 hours of German language, and a 30-hour "Orientation Course" on Germany's history, politics and culture. They also need to pass the "Zertifikat Deutsch", a German language test, should they wish to obtain German citizenship.

And, as of October last year, the spouses of Germans must pass the "Start Deutsch 1" - a basic German-language comprehension test - before they are given family-reunion visas.

Thousands of Thai women marry Germans and migrate to Germany each year. Currently there are about 52,000 Thai citizens residing in Germany, according to Germany's Statistics Authority. That number could increase to 100,000 when those living here illegally or those who have already obtained German citizenship are taken into account, according to the Thai Ambassador to Germany, Sorayouth Prompoj.

According to a Frankfurt-based NGO worker helping Thai women, the stricter policies have put a big dent in the number of Thai women relocating to Germany: The number of Thai women migrating to Germany has reduced to only a third of the same period of last year.

He added that even though the initial language test is relatively easy, for many Thais with zero command of English studying German - seen as a more difficult language - could be a big burden.

There is also a concern that Germany's stricter immigration policy could jeopardise the country's standing in the international community in the area of human rights.

Partners should be allowed to reunite without questions. The government should not intervene in family affairs, said the NGO worker, who asked to remain anonymous.

Imagine a country where strangers have the right to ask intrusive questions and store the answers on a database. Where everyone from police officers to leisure-centre staff can demand: Tell me who you feel close to?

They will also have been trained to ask questions about sexual behaviour, family life, religion, secret fears, weight and "sleeping arrangements" at home.

Incredibly, thousands of Government and council apparatchiks in Britain became entitled on April 1 to ask such questions of anyone under 19.

This horrifying invasion of privacy has begun, almost unnoticed, because the Government has cleverly presented it as being in the interests of "child protection".

The new questionnaire, known as the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), is part of a £20million programme called Every Child Matters (ECM), ostensibly set up to ensure youngsters are safe and leading positive lives.

Professionals - such as police officers, teachers and doctors - and volunteers are now under orders to subject children to a questionnaire if they consider them "at risk": a definition so broad that many decent parents could find themselves labelled as potential abusers.

The questions don't need a parent's consent since any child over 12 is deemed responsible enough to grant permission for an interview.

Any child not achieving the Government's five "outcomes" - being healthy, staying safe, enjoying life, "making a positive contribution", and achieving " economic well-being" - is now defined as having "additional needs".

The Integrated Children's System isn't fit for purpose and many authorities are dragging their feet about implementing it because it's worrying the hell out of them, said Terri Dowty, director of Action On Rights For Children.

One police officer, who attended a CAF course, told me that many of his colleagues are so reluctant to interview teenage criminals about their emotional needs, sex life and diets that they avoid calls involving them. We're cops, not social workers, he said. It's insane. He and his colleagues have renamed the agenda Every Fat Kid Matters.

In his meeting with the bishops of Thailand on their five yearly visit to the Vatican, Benedict XVI insisted on the need for Thai Catholics to promote education in Catholic-run schools.

At the same time he stressed the need for working together with Buddhists to preserve and improve Thailand’s cultural traditions, opposing through inter-faith cooperation one of the negative effects of globalisation, namely prostitution-related trafficking in women and children, which is itself a consequence of the trivialisation of sexuality by the media and the entertainment industry.

Benedict turned his attention to the scourge of the trafficking of women and children, and prostitution.

Undoubtedly poverty is a factor underlying these phenomena, he said. And the Church does what it can to counter this problem: But there is a further aspect which must be acknowledged and collectively addressed if this abhorrent human exploitation is to be effectively confronted. I am speaking of the trivialization of sexuality in the media and entertainment industries which fuels a decline in moral values and leads to the degradation of women, the weakening of fidelity in marriage and even the abuse of children.

Newcastle council faced an angry nutter backlash after ruling out objections to shows featuring scantily clad dancers in a shower cubicle.

The row is over a decision to allow plans to install a shower booth at the recently licensed Purple Door lap dancing bar in Newcastle without a hearing in front of the city council’s licensing sub committee.

The council received 17 objections, but after taking legal advice, officers have ruled them all invalid under Government licensing regulations because none live or work in the immediate vicinity.

The Purple Door, in Neville Street opposite Newcastle Central Station, was granted a licence in January and later applied for a variation allowing it to install a shower room for dancers to entertain customers. There were no objections to the original application for a premises licence by Lookchart Ltd, a subsidiary of the Tyneside-based Absolute Leisure chain.

One objector to the shower booth was the Newcastle-based Christian Institute which said it was a mistake to grant a licence so close to the station, a children’s nursery, family attractions and St Mary’s Cathedral. Deputy director Simon Calvert argued performances in the shower booth would increase the risk of men becoming a nuisance when they leave the premises.

He said: The council is obliged to take into account the views of people who are directly affected and this place is opposite Central Station so anybody who uses the station can be affected. It shows shocking disregard for the views of the electorate. It is very worrying to suggest that unless people live next door they have no right to object.’

Coun Anita Lower, Liberal Democrat, executive member for regulation on Newcastle Council, said: This affects people across the city and they should have a right to make representations. Opposition Labour leader, Coun Nick Forbes, said: People’s objections need to be heard. The council needs to listen to the views of the community.

Locally brewed liquor apparently tainted with lethal chemicals continued to kill in southern India, with another 66 people dying and bringing the overall death toll from the past five days to 156, police said Wednesday. Another 135 people were being treated in hospitals.

Bootleggers have been selling the deadly brew as police shut authorized liquor shops in Karnataka state because of voting for the state government, Sri Kumar, the Karnataka state police chief said.

In India, liquor stores and bars are routinely closed on voting days to prevent politicians from handing out free alcohol in a bid to win votes.

Police were analyzing the drink to determine what made it so deadly.

Police arrested 1,500 people and seized tainted liquor worth $1.8 million since elections were announced in Karnataka state last month in a drive to curb its distribution, Kumar said.

Deaths from illicitly brewed liquor are frequent in Indian villages and towns, where locally made brew is often spiked with pesticides or chemicals like the banned methyl alcohol to make it stronger or to increase the yield.

A Spokesman for Manchester Museum who admitted to being out of touch and a  little behind the times

Complaints about naked mummies have led to the remains of Asru, a mummified chantress at the Temple of Amun in Karnak, plus the partially-wrapped male Khary and a child mummy, all being covered in shrouds to protect their modesty.

The decision, which has prompted wholesale derision, came after Manchester Museum said it had received 'feedback' from the public saying it was 'insensitive to display unwrapped mummies'.

Having ordered the cover up, managers claim they are following Government policy and are carrying out a public consultation.

Last night the museum, whose Egyptian department has a worldwide reputation, was accused of being ridiculous and told it risked becoming a 'laughing stock'.
Mummies at Manchester Museum

Bob Partridge, chairman of the Manchester Ancient Egypt Society, said the cover-up was 'absolutely incomprehensible': The mummies have always been sensitively displayed and have been educational and informative to generations of visitors. We are shocked this has been done in advance of any results from the public.

Josh Lennon, a museum visitor, said: This is preposterous. Surely people realise that if they go to see Egyptian remains some of them may not be dressed in their best bib and tucker. The museum response to complaints is pure Monty Python - they have now covered them from head to foot rendering the exhibition a non-exhibition. It is hilarious.

The operator of a Hong Kong website that carried advertisements for brothels is beginning an 18-month jail term after being convicted of living off prostitutes' earnings.

The ruling, the first of its kind in Hong Kong, has alarmed some legislators and welfare groups who say it will open a legal minefield for anyone who has business dealings with prostitutes.

At a court hearing Thursday, Chan Yuk-bun, 48, was jailed for conspiring to live off the earnings of prostitution by carrying brothel adverts on his website from 2003 to 2006. He charged 77 US dollars a month for advertisements which included the prostitutes' names, ages, addresses and price lists of how much they charged for sex. Hundreds of prostitutes advertised on the website which made profits of up to 13,000 US dollars a month, Hong Kong's District Court was told.

Six other people who worked on the website including a designer and a programmer were also convicted of the same charge and sentenced to 180 hours' community service with fines of 2,564 US dollars each.

Judge David Dufton said Chan's website encouraged prostitution on a large scale and had no measures to prevent access by the under-aged.

One legislator said the use of the law to prosecute a website meant in theory that a builder who knowingly did work on a prostitute's flat could also be committing an offence. A welfare group for prostitutes, quoted in Friday's South China Morning Post, questioned whether the ruling meant children of prostitutes could be charged with living off their mothers' earnings.

In the UK, the law of living off a prostitute's earnings has been amended to restrict it to those who control women for their own gain, but no such amendment to the law has been made in Hong Kong.

A massive government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public is being planned supposedly as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.

The information would be held for at least 12 months and the police and security services would be able to access it if given permission from the courts.

The proposal will raise further alarm about a “Big Brother” society, as it follows plans for vast databases for the ID cards scheme and NHS patients. There will also be concern about the ability of the Government to manage a system holding billions of records. About 57 billion text messages were sent in Britain last year, while an estimated 3 billion e-mails are sent every day.

Home Office officials have discussed the option of the national database with telecommunications companies and ISPs as part of preparations for a data communications Bill to be in November’s Queen’s Speech. But the plan has not been sent to ministers yet.

Jonathan Bamford, the assistant Information Commissioner, said: This would give us serious concerns and may well be a step too far. We are not aware of any justification for the State to hold every UK citizen’s phone and internet records. We have real doubts that such a measure can be justified, or is proportionate or desirable. We have warned before that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Holding large collections of data is always risky - the more data that is collected and stored, the bigger the problem when the data is lost, traded or stolen.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: Given [ministers’] appalling record at maintaining the integrity of databases holding people’s sensitive data, this could well be more of a threat to our security, than a support.

The proposal has emerged as part of plans to implement an EU directive developed after the July 7 bombings to bring uniformity of record-keeping. Since last October telecoms companies have been required to keep records of phone calls and text messages for 12 months. That requirement is to be extended to internet, e-mail and voice-over-internet use and included in a Communications Data Bill.

Police and the security services can access the records with a warrant issued by the courts. Rather than individual companies holding the information, Home Office officials are suggesting the records be handed over to the Government and stored on a huge database.

One of the arguments being put forward in favour of the plan is that it would make it simpler and swifter for law enforcement agencies to retrieve the information instead of having to approach hundreds of service providers. Opponents say that the scope for abuse will be greater if the records are held on one database.

Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you're entering the country. But the US is not alone. British customs agents search laptops for pornography. And there are reports on the internet of this sort of thing happening at other borders, too. You might not like it, but it's a fact. So how do you protect yourself?

Encrypting your entire hard drive, something you should certainly do for security in case your computer is lost or stolen, won't work here. The border agent is likely to start this whole process with a please type in your password. Of course you can refuse, but the agent can search you further, detain you longer, refuse you entry into the country and otherwise ruin your day.

You're going to have to hide your data. Set a portion of your hard drive to be encrypted with a different key - even if you also encrypt your entire hard drive - and keep your sensitive data there. Lots of programs allow you to do this. I use PGP Disk (from pgp.com). TrueCrypt (truecrypt.org) is also good, and free.

While customs agents might poke around on your laptop, they're unlikely to find the encrypted partition. (You can make the icon invisible, for some added protection.) And if they download the contents of your hard drive to examine later, you won't care.

Be sure to choose a strong encryption password. Unfortunately, this isn't a perfect solution. Your computer might have left a copy of the password on the disk somewhere, and smart forensic software will find it.

So your best defence is to clean up your laptop. A customs agent can't read what you don't have. You don't need five years' worth of email and client data. You don't need your old love letters and those photos (you know the ones I'm talking about). Delete everything you don't absolutely need. And use a secure file erasure program to do it. While you're at it, delete your browser's cookies, cache and browsing history. It's nobody's business what websites you've visited. And turn your computer off - don't just put it to sleep - before you go through customs; that deletes other things. Think of all this as the last thing to do before you stow your electronic devices for landing. Some companies now give their employees forensically clean laptops for travel, and have them download any sensitive data over a virtual private network once they've entered the country. They send any work back the same way, and delete everything again before crossing the border to go home. This is a good idea if you can do it.

Lastly, don't forget your phone and PDA. Customs agents can search those too: emails, your phone book, your calendar. Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do here except delete things.

I know this all sounds like work, and that it's easier to just ignore everything here and hope you don't get searched. Today, the odds are in your favour. But new forensic tools are making automatic searches easier and easier, and the recent US court ruling is likely to embolden other countries. It's better to be safe than sorry.

A Dr Who fan blogging as Mazzmatazz has for some time been posting knitting patterns on the internet to show others how to recreate cuddly versions of the villainous Ood and Adipose aliens from the current BBC series.

The BBC, however, has taken exception to this since someone tried to sell one of her patterns on eBay. This, the broadcaster evidently felt, represented a clear and present danger to the £800m a year its commercial arm makes through its intellectual property and merchandising rights every year and it has unleashed its lawyers on her.

The readiness of giant corporations to confuse an excess of enthusiastic fandom with an insidious commercial threat is not heartening.

Update: Designed to Appease

See full article from the Times, 25th May 2008

A report in The Times and a very British public outcry persuaded the BBC to adopt the knitting patterns used to create the Doctor Who monsters – instead of threatening to force them out of existence.

The report generated a string of comments from Times readers, who questioned why the BBC was threatening one of its licence fee payers. Lawyers had previously said that there was little doubt that Mazzmatazz had broken the BBC’s Doctor Who trademark by mentioning it on her website.

Only three days later, the BBC is exploring whether it can help to generate some money out of the designs, with a spokesman for the Corporation saying that it was never interested in stifling fan creativity in any way.

The woman behind the patterns for the fat, white Adipose and the squid-faced Ood characters has been invited to meet BBC executives with a view to creating a limited edition of exclusive promotional products for the public to buy.

On her website, Mazzmatazz, who has chosen not to reveal her real name, said that she just wanted to thank everyone who has sent me a message of support over the past few days and confirmed that she was currently discussing matters with the BBC.

Every little abuse helps

Tesco claim they are trying to clampdown on underage drinking but staff often make mistakes when they stop parents shopping with children.

Parents shopping with their own children are being refused alcohol for fear they are supplying drink to minors.

Workers have been told not to serve adults accompanied by children in the latest crack-down on underage drinking.

However diligent shop staff are applying the letter of the law and refusing to serve parents who are on weekly shopping trips with their children.

Television medium Dominic Zenden could never have predicted that he would have been barred from buying a six-pack of beer at the respectable age of 45 - 27 years over the legal age. The television star was with his daughter Devon, 15, when he tried to buy six bottles of Budweiser beer. But staff refused to believe his insistence the alcohol was not for the schoolgirl - and would not sell him it.

I was dumbfounded, said Zenden: There was absolutely no indication that my daughter would be drinking the alcohol - it was for me. I fancied a nice cool beer on a warm evening. But the woman told me that they don't sell alcohol to people who have children with them.

Ms Bell fell foul of the rules when she popped into a Tesco Extra Store to pick up a crate of lager while her husband Mick, 46, was buying petrol. With stepson Michael Bruce, 18, by her side, she was preparing to pay when the checkout assistant called over a supervisor to ask whether they could serve her. Incredibly, the supervisor decided that Ms Bell was not permitted to buy the beer. The reason given was that they said she was buying it for Michael - who is 18 and able to buy alcohol regardless.

Tesco today said they trained their store workers to ask for proof of age for anyone present at the purchase who they suspect may consume the alcohol. But they admitted: Quite often they may be mistaken and the adult may be buying it for themselves. But we would rather the staff err on the side of caution than risk selling to someone who is buying alcohol for people who are under age.

A Tesco spokesprat added: We are doing lots of work to try to stop under-age people from being able to get hold of alcohol and one of the biggest problems has become adults buying for people who are underage. If our staff suspect that people are buying for people who are under the age of 18 then we do not serve them."

But Zenden said: I can understand people not wanting to sell alcohol to children. But they haven't got signs up to say that they won't sell to people who have their children with them. If they did it would save a lot of embarrassment at the till.

The UK supermarket chain, Budgens, has installed face recognition cameras in one of its stores to stop children buying alcohol and cigarettes.

It is thought to be the first time a UK retailer has used the technology to identify underage customers.

The scheme is being piloted at an unnamed branch of Budgens in London.

If the system recognises someone who has previously been unable to prove they are 18, a signal alerts the cashier who will refuse to serve them.

Facial recognition software makes a unique template of an individual's features by taking measurements between key points on the face.

Three cameras have been installed at the pilot branch, one in each checkout lane. The cameras monitor customers as they approach the tills, transmitting the pictures to a control centre in Worcester. The customers' facial features are automatically scanned against a database of images of young people who have visited the store before. Anyone who has been refused alcohol or cigarettes on a previous occasion will be flagged up.

The system also identifies when a customer has previously verified that they are 18 or over, enabling the sale to proceed more quickly. Young customers who are not recognised by the system will be asked by the cashier to provide proof of their age when buying drink or cigarettes. Their details will then be added to the database.

Charlie Willetts, managing director of Charton Ltd, which is supplying the software, said the system had to overcome a number of technical issues first and ensure that it was compliant with data protection laws. The storage of large amounts of data is also likely to fuel concerns about civil liberties.

Christian nutters based in San Diego have found grounds for outrage over the new retro-style Starbucks logo.

The Resistance says the new image has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute, Mark Dice, founder of the groupsaid: Need I say more? It's extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves Slutbucks.

The group, which claims more than 3,000 members nationwide and has found a place on the fringe advancing various conspiracy theories, is calling for a national boycott of the coffee-selling giant.

The logo will run on Starbucks cups for several more weeks, said company spokeswoman Bridget Baker, and will live on as the logo for Pike Place bags of coffee.

The image is a less-revealing version of what the chain used for many years, starting when it first opened in Seattle in 1971. The explanation for that initial logo is explained in the book Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, written by company founder Howard Schultz:

[Creative partner Terry Heckler] poured [sic] over old marine books until he came up with a logo based on an old 16 Century Norse woodcut: a two-tailed mermaid, or siren, encircled by the store's original name, Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice. That early siren, bare-breasted and Rubenesque, was supposed to be as seductive as coffee itself.

The Dutch government, previously famous for liberalism on issues of personal morality, have announced plans to criminalize the visiting of prostitutes who are not officially licensed.

The Justice Ministry said the move is necessary to force better compliance with the country's legalized prostitution policy.

At the same time, authorities will compel prostitutes to be registered in a national database before they may offer sexual services.

There are still too many problems in the prostitution sector, including human trafficking, the Justice Ministry said in a statement.

Prostitution has been legal in the Netherlands since 2000, when a long-standing tolerance policy was formalized.

However, registration rules that are currently only followed by brothels and some large escort agencies will now be enforced for all sex workers, all the way down to "freelance" prostitutes, the ministry said. Prostitutes will need to offer a fixed address and telephone number. Clients will be able to ask for proof of registration to avoid prosecution.

The plans follow similar moves in the city of Amsterdam, which has been harassing prostitution in its famed Red Light District for several years.

Marriott International is coming under heavy fire from nutter activists urging the hotel giant to banish  sexual fare from its bedroom TV.

Focus on the Family met with hotel executives in Washington DC, and provided Marriott with a petition signed by 102,000 nutters who want pornographic films purged from the list of movie offerings.

Daniel Weiss, media and sexuality analyst for the group, said Marriott has billed itself as a family-lodging establishment, and its decision to provide adult films to its customers is contrary to its reputation.

Weiss said hotels and motels have been major contributors to the proliferation of pornography in mainstream culture: We've heard from people who have developed addictions, businessmen, people who travel a lot, who found that away from their support structure and families they were very vulnerable to this type of material. They indicated that hotel porn was very significant in their addiction.

When WND asked Marriott Vice President of Communications Roger Conner why the hotel offers sex films in its rooms, he provided the following response: That's one of those any-kind-of-'why' questions. It's very universal in nature. For 25 years or more, not just Marriott, but the whole industry has offered a wide range including adult movies.

Asked if he believes customers would miss the pornographic films if they were not offered, Conner said, It would be interesting to know. I don't want this to sound flippant, but who knows?

Marriott International offers families an option to block pornographic movies by calling the front desk or using the remote control, but Focus on the Family and other nutter groups would like the hotel chain to consider a policy where the pornography would automatically be turned off unless a guest requests it.

For some people, that may just be enough of a hindrance that they won't access that material, Weiss said. They won't get caught up in it if they have to come out of the anonymity of ordering it in their room and call somebody.

Marriott executives said they will think about the suggestions and respond to concerns by July 1, though Conner acknowledged that not everyone left the meeting satisfied: We know it's not a perfect world that we live in, unfortunately, so it's not a perfect response for those that we met with yesterday. There were some who said they wanted more of an immediate response or decision. But, based upon the complicated business model and contracts that are in place, we can't simply walk away from it as we speak.

Hotels do not lose a large percentage of revenue when they boycott adult content because they only take 10 to 15% of the profits from the sale of pornographic films, Weiss said. He has faith that Marriott International will live up to its reputation as a family friendly establishment and make its 3,000 hotels porn free: I think at this point we want to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they will do the right thing. We're going to take a cautious wait-and-see approach.

Sales of porn videos are down double digits for the first time in 40 years. Some believe that a decline in this once recession-proof business, could be an indication of a decline in overall consumer confidence.

So is porn going soft? According to Adult Video News, the industry's leading trade publication, DVD sales fell 11% in 2006. This year, it's closer to 30%.

Economics professor Robert Gustafson said that's very unusual for this industry: We're seeing this happen for the first time where you have the adult world actually in their own form of a recession.

Competition from the internet has also cut into profits. Consumers are hooked on pornographic knockoffs of You Tube, like Your Porn, the world's number one porn site, which offers free uploads of adult entertainment videos.

Hustler president Michael Klein said while DVD sales may be down, his stores, magazines, and casino are doing well. In fact, Hustler is now marketing the brand on cell phones.

According to Professor Gustafson these obscene losses won't last long: It'll come back maybe in a different way maybe in 3D. The industry has always been able to profit from new technology.

The porn industry overall earned an estimated $14 billion last year although some within the industry say that estimate is high.

For the last few months, Luxemburg has been discussing a applying the Swedish model to the prohibition of prostitution.

In this model, prostitutes are generally viewed as victims of patriarchy and sexual exploitation. Their customer are criminalized via heavy fines or even a prison sentence.

In Luxembourg, a similar model is now planned, both CSV and LSAP (both government political parties) have proposed legislation. No fines but instead community work and/or compulsory education courses on human trafficking, especially women and children.

And a few more stories from Sweden where the fem-nazis have been allowed to run riot

Female pedestrians get road sign recognition

Gender equity hits below the belt for Swedish patients

No more hotel porn for Swedish government officials

Spy cameras are to be used to crack down on kerb crawlers as part of a new bid to repress street prostitution in the Capital.

The city council has received £200,000 from the Scottish Government and plans to spend some of it on the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras.

They will be placed discreetly in prostitution hot-spots and will log all the vehicles that visit them. The information gathered will alert officers to vehicles which are regularly in the area, and ultimately help them build up a case against kerb crawlers.

Officers have refused to reveal the locations being considered for the cameras and it is unclear exactly how the system will work, though they will have to ensure innocent residents are not wrongly targeted.

The initiative comes on the back of new laws brought in last year which made an offence out of "loitering" in a vehicle, with maximum fines of £1000. Persistent offenders can also have their cars confiscated.

Ruth Morgan-Thomas, project manager at Scotpep, a support group for prostitutes, said: We believe this will leave women more vulnerable by pushing them into more isolated areas. If they put these cameras up in one area it will just push the women to another one, because clients will not go there any more.

British Airways has taken beef off the menu for economy passengers amid concerns about its "religious restrictions".

The airline has instead switched to a fish or chicken dish option for the so-called "cattle class" passengers.

BA's second-biggest long-haul market is to India, where the majority Hindu population do not eat beef because of their beliefs.

The decision to scrap the nation's favourite fare was described as a "great shame" by the English Beef and Lamb Executive. A spokesman said: It is regrettable that Britain's flag carrier is not proposing to serve Britain's national dish.

A BA spokesman said the it stopped serving beef to economy class passengers last month. He added: We can only serve two options and beef and pork obviously have religious restrictions. We have to try to use two meals which appeal to as many customers as possible. This summer season we are offering customers in World Traveller on most longhaul flights a choice of chicken and tarragon or fish pie.

The Hindu Council UK said: The Hindu community will welcome this decision and the news it has been made partly because Hindus don't eat beef. That said, Hindus are tolerant of the beliefs of others and do not expect everyone to stop eating a food because they do not eat it.

Sashimi sex and nude casinos: It's hardly what you'd expect to witness after the sun goes down in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

But best-selling author Moammar Emka, known as Emka, knows otherwise. He's been tracking the steamy nightlife scene in Indonesia's capital city, Jakarta, for the last six years.

Today, as he continues prowling the seedy underground for its latest trends, the former reporter is most surprised by the basic concept of sex as entertainment. You can find anything at anytime here, the East Java native says.

His popular published trilogy is titled Jakarta Undercover. The first two novels have been translated into English and are visibly available at bookstores throughout the Jakarta region. A comic strip and movie have been based upon his work.

Clubs with sex menus, invite-only swingers parties and orgies at people's private homes are detailed in Emka's little black books.

Like the culture of the region, his tone is more discreet as he divulges the reality of Indonesia's sex industry. And, not wishing for his work to be mistaken for a tourist sex guide, he masks the names of venues and locations.

As anti-prostitution nutters try to thwart sex trade by going after customers, they said they have faced a big problem: researchers have only the crudest grasp of why men buy sex.

A group of 'researchers'—most of them young women—invited more than 100 Chicago-area men who frequently use prostitutes to talk about their attitudes and experiences.

While the survey, which is not peer-reviewed, is likely to draw justifiable criticism from some academics, the project offers a window into the attitudes of men who buy sex in Chicago.

The results show men are often deeply conflicted about their behavior, said Rachel Durchslag, director of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, which conducted the survey in Chicago with the Evanston-based Justice Project Against Sexual Harm.

Though most of the men interviewed said they believe there is nothing wrong with prostitution, a large majority, 83%, view buying sex as a form of addiction, according to the study.

Most men said they believed women entered prostitution freely. About 40% of men said they are usually intoxicated when they buy sex.

According to one man who was quoted anonymously in the report, For a small second after I buy sex, I feel happy, and then it's over. It's so fleeting. There's frustration beforehand, and depression afterward [because] it's so quick. Those feelings are always there. They're associated with buying sex.

The survey was designed by anti-prostitution activist Melissa Farley, who is controversial because academics have accused her of tilting previous research to support a political agenda. The Chicago study is part of an international project that includes surveys in Scotland, India and Cambodia. Critics of the Scotland survey called Farley's methods unscientific.

Durchslag said the goal of the research is to push for harsher criminal punishment for men who buy sex from prostitutes, she said. Nearly 90% of the men said that they would stop if they felt there was a likely chance they would be caught and prosecuted.

I am shortly to speak at the UK Network of Sex Worker's Conference which is focusing on “Good Practice”. I thought what better form of good practice than to ask the clients what they would like. I am focusing on brothels because they are the ideal for selling sex.
I am thus asking you to send me your wishes.

Let me give you some background. I started my survey with a population of disabled people, before opening it up to the public.

A TV documentary was made by Asta Philpot for the BBC, to bring attention to the fact that some disabled people need to visit brothels, and he is continuing his campaign by approaching Larry Flint in America, to support his cause.

Encouraged by the impact of our demonstration, and the way members of the House of Lords are recognising the sexual needs of disabled people, I have decided to ask everybody I can reach, precisely what they would really like to have provided for them personally, in a brothel (should they wish).

The Costa Brava brothel in Asta's programme was far from perfect. For a start, they did not cater to women. The sex workers, sweet as they were, looked like lap dancers, young and cosmetically enhanced. The décor was grim: not sexy or glamorous. The brothel also had a lot going for it: a good sexual service, it provided hoists for disabled people to get onto the beds, was clean and well-run and, perhaps best of all, it operated openly, without stigma – a local guy had come up to Asta in a bar and recommended he pop along.

So, please let me know what you would like, from a personal point of view, and any special needs dictated by your personal problems, disability and impairments.

Bear in mind, brothels can cater to many different needs – not just sex. They can be seats (or beds, to be more precise) of learning, anxiety reduction, confidence building, off-loading guilt, shame, sadness and confusion, experimentation, cuddling, touching and lying in bed with someone. They can also be places where you can get beaten shitless, tied up, humiliated, or try a little spanking or torment, cross-dressing, see women in polo-neck jumpers, women popping balloons, and experience your own personal fetish. They can provide sex parties, straight sex, gay sex, and whatever your fantasy dictates. That is why they are rather good.

My dream brothel would be a place where all pleasures are catered for, offering dinner, drinks, dancing, gambling, erotic shows, treatment rooms, a Tantric Temple, chill-out rooms and a cinema as well as bedrooms, a dungeon, fetish rooms. This mix would hopefully take away the stigma and make the brothel acceptable in polite society.

I would base my dream brothel along the lines of a top hotel, as these are the only places on earth where both sex workers and disabled people are treated as respectfully as other guests. Top hotels are very strict about this. Their staff never know when royalty are coming in to have a laugh or politicians are just taking the weight off their feet!

Staff would be trained to communicate with deaf and deaf-blind clients, as well as spinal injured and other disabled people.

I am inspired by the fact that jazz music came out of the brothels of New Orleans and Tango came from the brothels of Argentina. Both forms of music were fusion music, designed to fire people up. Brothels can, if left to run in the spirit of bon amie rather than fear and shame, be centres of cultural influence.

I've never been one to ask for much, have I? But while the topic is being debated on the political agenda, let's state what we want.

Please send me your requests. I will put everything into a document, display it on-line and present it at the conference I’m speaking at in early June.

Madame Cynthia Payne can open the first brothel, and bring back her luncheon voucher scheme for disabled and pensioners.

Send to me at mail@sfc.org.uk preferably including any details of your personal needs, disabilities and impairments, so I can present your case accordingly.

A poster to supposedly get men to think twice about paying for sex with women who may have been trafficked has been launched.

The government pilot in Nottingham and the borough of Westminster tells men sleeping with a woman forced to work in the sex industry makes them a rapist.

The poster, which will be placed in gents' toilets in pubs and clubs, will be supported by an online advertising campaign.

It shows a brothel entrance with the caption: Walk in a punter. Walk out a rapist."

It also urges men who discover a woman they believe may have been trafficked: If you're man enough, call Crimestoppers.

'Internal Trafficking' Bollox

More propaganda designed to tag all prostitution as 'trafficking'.

Based on article from the BBC

The BBC has been invited to the set of a film sponsored by the Home Office and other organisations, including the UK Human Trafficking Centre and Streetreach - a support group for prostitutes.

When completed, the film will be shown in schools across Britain to warn youngsters about the recently identified problem of "internal trafficking" in which British schoolgirls are seduced by older teenage boys who then pass them on into prostitution.

Writer and director Virginia Heath says she threaded together real events into a fictional storyline: I did a lot or research. Much of the script comes out of stories told to me directly by some of the girls, or by those who have been looking after them. The whole process of enticement can be exciting for the girl - I wanted to depict that. She's excited because she's exploring new things.

Later, we move to a student house that has been taken over by the film crew. This, explains Virginia, is where the girl, Jade, realises things aren't what they seem with her pimp/boyfriend Raz: It's a crucial turning point in the film. Raz asks Jade to 'Do something nice to my friend.' Jade knows it isn't right but she goes along with it. What Jade doesn't know is that her boyfriend owes money for drugs, and she is his way of paying off his debt. As the camera tracks them, Raz leads Jade up the stairs of the dingy house. They pause and, as an older man waits in an adjacent bedroom, he tells the confused Jade what's expected.

UK Human Trafficking Centre head, Det Ch Supt Nick Kinsella said: This is happening. We're not saying it's happening on every street corner, but it is happening. We wanted to do something for both youngsters and their families so they'd know what's going on and could take reasonable precautions. 'Internal trafficking' prosecutions can be hard to bring to court because often the girls will not give evidence against their pimp boyfriends - either out of fear or misplaced loyalty.

The authorities admit they also do not have a complete idea of the scale of the problem.

When completed, the film will form part of an education pack to be used in schools nationwide and, it is hoped, to teach youngsters not just how to avoid being drawn in, but also what to do to assist those who have. [...And to convince the general population that there is a problem that needs to be solved by criminalising buyers of sex]

A headmaster caught fishing with an out-of-date rod licence is waiting to hear if he will lose his job for having a criminal record.

Bob Yeomans described his predicament as 'child protection gone mad' after his conviction for forgetting to renew the £25 permit was referred to a council panel.

Yeomans, the head of St John's Church of England Primary in Walsall for 26 years, was caught by a water bailiff last summer while on a fishing trip on the Dove in Derbyshire. Horrified at his oversight, he immediately pleaded guilty. He later paid a £50 fine and £70 costs and considered it the end of the matter.

But almost a year later the offence was flagged up by the Criminal Records Bureau following a routine background check.

The chair of governors was notified there could be an issue with a CRB check and rang to tell me, Yeomans said. I said, 'Is it a member of staff?' and he said, 'No, it's you'.

I was shocked. In effect, he was being asked if I was fit to work with children for forgetting to renew my rod licence.

As required by procedure, the chairman referred the matter to a council panel that decides whether staff can continue teaching.

It's a bit of a joke in the school now, he said. But you'd have thought someone would have had some common sense at an earlier stage. It was just child protection gone mad. It was clear the offence was irrelevant.

Mick Brookes, of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: He forgot to renew his fishing licence... that is the level of trivia that is bedevilling us all - it's petty.

A spokesman for Education Walsall, part of the Serco group which runs education with the council, said the panel dealing with such cases looked at factors including the seriousness of the offence or allegation, the history of offences and time since the event in question. In the vast majority of cases, a positive trace will not mean that a person cannot be employed or continue to be employed.

Thousands of Indian sex workers protested Thursday in West Bengal state, demanding better rights.

Around 3,000 sex workers in India, joined a pre-dawn May Day torchlight rally in the state capital Kolkata, saying they should be covered by labour laws.

Give us the legal status of entertainers, said banners carried by women in Kolkata’s largest red light district, Sonagachi, city police commissioner Gautam Chakraborty said. Others carried candles and shouted: We want the right to work! and Sex workers need social justice.

Prostitution is illegal in India, with police turning a blind eye to the flourishing trade or demanding money from sex workers.

Sex workers will soon launch a campaign across India to press their demand for legal recognition as prostitutes, said Bharati De, who heads the Committee for Indomitable Women, a group for sex workers that spreads awareness about sexually transmitted diseases.

New South Wales police have raided a number of adult shops in Sydney's Blacktown and St Marys over the last week, ostensibly looking for X18+ videos and DVDs.

It is illegal to sell films that have been classified X18+ by the Federal government, in NSW. Most people do not know that non-violent, sexually explicit films showing consenting adults, are illegal to sell in NSW or any of the Australian states for that matter.

It is estimated that up to 50 police officers spent at least 10 hours each performing these raids and that at least another 200 police hours will be spent on classifying and processing the thousands of DVDs that were seized. Approximately 30 robberies and a dozen assaults would have taken place in the Blacktown and St Mary’s precincts during the time that these raids were enacted.

Mostly this is not the fault of the police. It’s the fault of the state government who would rather that they spend unnecessary amounts of time policing morality - like censorship breaches. What makes this situation worse is that many of the police raids are carried out at the request of the federal government’s Censorship Board. The very same organisation that classifies X18+ films as OK for adults at a federal level.

The Board’s Community Liaison Officer, Ron Robertson, is supposed to go around and visit retailers and inform them if they are selling material outside of the law. Instead, he now takes it upon himself to encourage state police to waste their time busting adult retailers for selling x18+ films that his own Board has classified! If this sounds like bureaucracy gone mad, you’re right. The NSW Attorney General should get out and about and talk to a few of the 30% of the state’s adults who regularly buy and watch X18+ films. And the Federal censorship Minister, ( former NSW Attorney General) Bob Debus, needs to have a serious talk to all state Attorneys about the massive waste of police resources in each state on policing the sale of adult films.

Microsoft has developed a small plug-in device that the authorities can use to quickly extract forensic data from computers.

The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a USB "thumb drive" that was quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies last June. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith described its use to the 350 law-enforcement experts attending a company conference

The device contains 150 commands that can dramatically cut the time it takes to gather digital evidence, which is becoming more important in real-world crime, as well as cybercrime. It can decrypt passwords and analyze a computer's Internet activity, as well as data stored in the computer.

It also eliminates the need to seize a computer itself, which typically involves disconnecting from a network, turning off the power and potentially losing data. Instead, the investigator can scan for evidence on site.

More than 2,000 officers in 15 countries, including Poland, the Philippines, Germany, New Zealand and the United States, are using the device, which Microsoft provides free.

An annual survey of media freedom has reported a mixed picture in East Asia - with some losses and some gains.

The US-based Freedom House organisation says China tightened some restrictions in 2007, but also tolerated more investigative journalism into cases of official corruption and enforced child labour. Gains were offset by an elaborate web of regulations and laws, which allowed the tightening of media control and internet restrictions in China.

The report noted gains last year in Thailand and Malaysia, but said Vietnam and Laos continue to fare poorly.

It ranked North Korea as the world's most restricted media environment. Freedom House said the Burmese media environment remained among the most tightly restricted in the world during 2007, with conditions worsening in August and September due to the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations. As many as 15 journalists were detained during the unrest.

The report said Vietnam had reversed some of the gains in press freedom that had been made in 2006, with a crackdown on dissident writers. For every step forward in press freedom last year, there were two steps back. It said the country's fledgling community of online pro-democracy writers was targeted by the government - with six cyber-dissidents imprisoned within one week in May.

Freedom House says press freedom has declined in the world overall. Finland and Iceland are described as the world's freest media environments.

One month before Euro 2008 kicks off in Basel, the Swiss Aids Federation has launched "fairplay" guidelines for people who visit prostitutes.

Postcards have been handed out in Basel, Bern, Geneva, Zurich and Chur – the first four being tournament host cities – urging politeness, respect and cleanliness when paying for sex.

They also call on men to keep their word when paying the agreed amount and remind them that alcohol reduces staying power as well as inhibitions.

Punters can also consult the Don Juan advice centre for information on forced prostitution.

According to the Swiss Aids Federation 230,000 men aged 17-45 pay for sex. Prostitution is legal in Switzerland but prostitutes have to register with city authorities and health authorities and get regular health checks.

A bill outlawing the possession of "extreme pornography" is set to become law next week. But many fear it has been rushed through and will criminalise innocent people with a harmless taste for unconventional sex.

Five years ago Jane Longhurst, a teacher from Brighton, was murdered. It later emerged her killer had been compulsively accessing websites such as Club Dead and Rape Action, which contained images of women being abused and violated. When Graham Coutts was jailed for life Jane Longhurst's mother, Liz, began a campaign to ban the possession of such images.

Until now pornographers, rather than consumers, have needed to operate within the confines of the 1959 Obscene Publications Act (OPA). While this law will remain, the new act is designed to reflect the internet age, when pornographic images may be hosted on websites outside the UK.

Under the new rules, criminal responsibility shifts from the producer - who is responsible under the OPA - to the consumer.

But campaigners say the new law risks criminalising thousands of people who use violent pornographic images as part of consensual sexual relationships.

People like Helen, who by day works in an office in the Midlands, and enjoys being sexually submissive and occasionally watching pornography, portrayed by actors, which could be banned under the new legislation. She feels the new law is an over-reaction to the Longhurst case: Mrs Longhurst sees this man having done this to her daughter and she wants something to blame and rather than blame this psychotic man she wants to change the law but she doesn't really understand the situation. Do you ban alcohol just because some people are alcoholics?

She has an ally in Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer, a Liberal Democrat peer who has fought to have the legislation amended.

Obviously anything that leads to violence against women has to be taken very seriously, says Baroness Miller: But you have to be very careful about the definition of 'extreme pornography' and they have not nearly been careful enough.

She has suggested the new act adopt the legal test set out in the OPA, which bans images which tend to deprave and corrupt.

But the government has sought to broaden the definition and the bill includes phrases such as an act which threatens or appears to threaten a person's life.

Speaking from her home in Berkshire, Mrs Longhurst acknowledges that libertarians see her as a horrible killjoy. I'm not. I do not approve of this stuff but there is room for all sorts of different people...BUT...anything which is going to cause damage to other people needs to be stopped.

To those who fear the legislation might criminalise people who use violent pornography as a harmless sex aid, she responds with a blunt hard luck.

There is no reason for this stuff. I can't see why people need to see it. People say what about our human rights but where are Jane's human rights?

Baroness Miller says the new law threatens people's privacy: The government is effectively walking into people's bedrooms and saying you can't do this. It's a form of thought police.

She says there's a danger of criminalising kinkiness and fears the legislation has been rushed through Parliament without proper debate because it is a small part of a wider bill.

Deborah Hyde, of Backlash, an umbrella group of anti-censorship and alternative sexuality pressure groups, has similar concerns: How many tens or hundreds or thousands of people are going to be dragged into a police station, have their homes turned upside down, their computers stolen and their neighbours suspecting them of all sorts?

Such "victims" won't feel able to fight the case and will take a caution, before there are enough test cases to prove that this law is unnecessary and unworkable.

Another opponent of the new law is Edward Garnier, an MP and part-time judge, who questioned the clause when it was debated in the Commons.

My primary concern is the vagueness of the offence, says Garnier: It was very subjective and it would not be clear to me how anybody would know if an offence had been committed.

Opponents have also seized on what they see as an ideological schism in the new law, noted by Lord Wallace of Tankerness during last week's debate in the House of Lords.

If no sexual offence is being committed it seems very odd indeed that there should be an offence for having an image of something which was not an offence. Having engaged in it consensually would not be a crime, but to have a photograph of it in one's possession would be a crime. That does not seem to make sense to me.

Bahrain's gay community and human rights activists were furious over a parliamentary campaign to stamp out homosexuality.

MPs are demanding the Interior Ministry stop granting residence permits to foreign homosexuals and that it deports any that are already here, as soon as they are detected.

They also called for regular inspections to root out homosexuals at massage parlours, health clubs and hair salons. The MPs also want monitoring in schools and for pupils who veer towards homosexuality.

One gay man, who was once married, said MPs seemed to have a misconception that homosexuals are perverse and dirty. He said some homosexuals had given the gay world a bad image by selling their bodies and preying on young boys: They must separate respectable gays and those from Thailand and the Philippines who are prostitutes and paedophiles. [Talk of the pot calling the kettle black!]

Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society regional and international relations director Faisal Fulad said that while Bahrain's tradition and religion should be respected, the parliament proposal was illogical and out of date for modern times: In the modern world it's normal, it's not a disease - many homosexuals are lawyers, doctors and ministers. Punishment never cures society, it should be through education and awareness in the family.

A Thai Embassy spokesman said homosexuality was globally accepted and it was against human rights to discriminate against gays: Everything has to abide by human rights and international law and Bahrain has signed the agreements.

Sweden has decided not to ban sexist advertising, saying it would risk undermining the country's cherished right to freedom of speech.

But the decision puts the country at odds with its Nordic neighbours. Norway and Denmark have strict limits on the use of such images for commercial gain.

In Norway, sexist advertising has been banned since 2003. The ban forms part of a much broader package of legal limits on advertising, protecting the depiction of religion, sexuality, race and gender.

Basically, if something is offensive or it makes the viewer feel uncomfortable when they look at it, it shouldn't be done, explained Sol Olving, head of Norway's Kreativt Forum, an association of the country's top advertising agencies: Naked people are wonderful, of course, but they have to be relevant to the product. You could have a naked person advertising shower gel or a cream, but not a woman in a bikini draped across a car."

Norwegian firms that refuse to remove or alter offensive adverts after having a complaint upheld face a hefty fine of 500,000 Norwegian kroner (£49,000; 62,500 euros).

Both Norway and Denmark are keen to emphasise that their advertising limits do not prevent freedom of speech, stifle creativity or mean that there is never a beautiful naked human form on display.

Denmark's advertising ombudsman Henrik Oe says many advertisers are becoming increasingly creative, using humour to stretch the boundaries and appeal to Danish consumers. He says he receives only around 10 complaints about sexist advertising each year and that firms normally remove the offending images quickly.

Sweden, however, despite commissioning a special government rapporteur to look into the matter, is not following the legal professor's advice that freedom of speech does not extend to commercial messages and limits are needed.

This law would be against freedom of speech, which is protected by the constitution, said Malin Engstedt, spokesperson for Equality Minister Nyamko Sabuni: The minister is not convinced that this law would improve things.

See Also:

• Sexist ice cream enrages Swedish consumer watchdog
  
  The Swedish Consumers Association (Sveriges Konsumentråd) has reacted angrily to one of the ice pops in GB's new line. 'Girlie', a star-shaped, pink ice-cream with glitter make-up stored inside the stick, is entirely inappropriate, according to the association...
   
• Jägermeister - Sexist advertising?
   
• Sweden mulls ban on sexist ads
   
• Underwear ads slammed as 'too sexy'
   
• Swedish transport bosses ban boobs
   
• Underwear campaign bottoms out in Sweden
   
• Swedish school stops topless hockey pics
   
• Female road sign rejected

A Briton escaped from the Philippines with his girlfriend and baby daughter after being threatened with seven years in jail for adultery.

David Scott was remanded in custody last year with his married girlfriend Cynthia Delfino. The couple were accused of adultery by officials in the devoutly Catholic country.

They were told that their daughter, Janina, was to be handed over to Ms Delfino’s estranged husband, Noriel Delfino, on the grounds that the child was born before the Delfinos’ marriage was annulled, officials said.

Update: Escaped to Britain

20th August 2008m see article from dailymail.co.uk

A British man who faced a seven-year prison sentence in the Philippines for adultery is being allowed to return to the UK with his girlfriend and baby this week.

David Scott, 37, has had his application for partner Cynthia Delfino to accompany him granted by the Home Office on humanitarian grounds.

It cost £14,000 to create, but clearly no-one at the smart London design outfit that came up with the new logo for HM Treasury thought to turn it on its side.

The new logo, for the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has generated howls of mirth when it was unveiled to employees. They spotted the clanger within seconds. Staff have apparently now stripped their office of souvenirs bearing the logo.

A spokesman for OGC said: It is true that it caused a few titters among some staff when viewed on its side, but on consideration we concluded that the effect was generic to the particular combination of the letters OGC - and it is not inappropriate to an organisation that’s looking to have a firm grip on Government spend.

Sweden has appointed a special investigator to evaluate the effects of a law that targets the buyers of sex instead of the prostitutes.

Justice Minister Beatrice Ask said the evaluation, to be completed by 2010, is warranted partly because of the growing international interest in the law, which was introduced in 1999.

There are many good reasons to prevent prostitution and the harm it can lead to for individuals as well as for society, Ask said in a statement. An investigation to thoroughly analyze these issues is both important and long-awaited.

Many countries considering a similar law are eager to find out whether it has reduced the sex trade in Sweden, or merely driven it underground.

Buying sex is punished by fines or up to six months in prison under the so-called "Sex Purchase Law." But selling sex is not a crime because prostitutes are viewed as victims.

In January, a high-level British delegation came to study the Swedish approach as Britain reviews its own prostitution laws, which prohibit soliciting and loitering for sex, but not buying sex. Norway's plans to introduce a Swedish-style prostitution law in 2009.

Swedish Supreme Court Justice Anna Skarhed will lead the investigation.

Adult industry attorneys today blasted a Georgia lawmaker, who has introduced a proposal that would further restrict adult material sold at military exchange stores.

The Military Honor and Decency Act, introduced last week by Representative Paul Broun would amend a provision of the 1997 Defense Authorization Act that limited sales of sexually explicit material on military bases.

Broun said in a statement that he wants to bring the Defense Department into compliance with the intent of the 1997 law so that taxpayers will not be footing the costs of distributing pornography. The Military Honor and Decency Act will right a bureaucratic — and moral — wrong, he said.

Broun’s proposal would require the Defense Department to review on an annual basis all material that is not deemed sexually explicit now, and is therefore allowed in military stores, to determine if it should be prohibited.

Broun’s legislation also would modify the current definition of sexually explicit, to lower the threshold required to deem material sexually explicit. It also adds a new definition of “principal theme,” adds a definition of “lascivious” that is broader than what is included in the current definition, and adds a definition of “nudity” that makes it much more difficult for the sale of sexually explicit material.

Attorney Greg Piccionelli told XBIZ that he was offended by the proposal by ignorant and intolerant hypocrites like Broun and his ilk that are currently plaguing the planet.

May I remind the congressman that our troops honor stems from their willingness to lay down their lives to preserve the very freedom that he is so willing to take away from them. They are defending our way of life, which fortunately includes our ability to read Playboy and Penthouse magazines. How dare he insult our brave soldiers by claiming they can be sullied by viewing ink on a page.

If one of our troops, who daily risks being blinded or killed by a roadside explosive tomorrow, would like to view nude images of one of God's greatest creations, a woman, on what could be his last day of sight, how dare this hypocritical imposter of a patriot try to take that sacred right away from one of our true guardians of freedom. Shame, shame, shame on you Mr. Broun.

US economists are citing some dire portents of a recession these days, but they've missed one indicator I find especially disturbing: The porn business has suddenly gone flaccid.

The drop in porn rentals and sales is worrisome on several fronts: Till now, porn has been a recession-proof business. Further, with the country already in a dispirited mood, the fact that porn has gone limp may indicate a true plunge in consumer confidence.

DVD porn is down between 10% and 30%, depending on which nook and cranny of the business you scrutinize. Joy King, executive vice president of Wicked Pictures, and a smart analyst of the business, says the smallest dropoff is in "couples-friendly porn". By contrast, that sector called the "gonzo" side of the business is in serious need of fiscal Viagra. Guys with an appetite for "gonzo" are going unrequited, which may help account for the closing of many DVD emporiums like the Movie Galleries in the Midwest.

One beneficiary of these trends is online porn -- a business that's lofty in traffic but shrivelled in terms of revenue.

Porn proprietors are doing what they can to meet their business challenges. Wicked Pictures, for example, is recycling its biggest hits, so customers can acquire Space Nuts, Manhunters and Flashpoint in one package.

At the same time, other producers are cutting production costs and special effects. Since these films already are made on skimpy budgets of $50,000 to $75,000, these cuts are not welcomed by the porn filmmakers.

Still, veterans of the porn trade are edgy about the downturn. A generation ago, they recall, when authorities cracked down on Deep Throat and closed many of the porn palaces, the country promptly fell into a serious recession. Economists attributed this setback to the ups and downs of energy prices, but porn analysts insist other sorts of fluctuations play a more urgent role in consumer confidence.

There's gotta be a better way to get it into 34inches

In 2005, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare pronounced that roughly one middle-aged person in two was at risk for so-called "metabolic syndrome" -- caused by smoking, drinking, eating and other excesses combined with a sedentary lifestyle -- that raised the likelihood of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and strokes.

The ministry's policy now obliges people between the ages of 40 to 74 to take medical examinations to check for excessive internal fat, high blood pressure and high blood-sugar levels, and to receive health advisories when warranted.

It was bound to happen. The middle-aged spread has given rise to a completely new type of sex business: the "Datsu-metabo fuuzoku" -- sex shops with services designed to help pudgy, middle-aged men bang their way back to health and enjoy themselves in the bargain.

Asahi Geino identifies five such shops with special health sessions on their menus, three in Tokyo and two in Osaka. Their names, telephone numbers, prices and the details of their services, starting from as little as 8,000 yen, are included.

We have designed our play sessions to provide beneficial effects, not only on blood sugar levels and triglycerides, but on your gamma GPT as well, according to the lovely Ms. Kazuki, age 23, who works at a massage shop in Tokyo's Sugamo district called Mania Space.

Asahi Geino's reporter gives it a try. After disrobing he lies facing down on the massage table. Powdering his back and lower torso, she then suddenly slips a finger into his anus.

The intrusive digit is followed by a larger object that turns out to be a battery-powered vibrator. Despite himself, the stimulation to our reporter's prostate causes him to develop a whopper of an erection.

She then grasps his erection and coaxes out a few drops of discharge. This was just the preamble, however, and after oiling up his shaft with lotion she artfully manipulates his scrotum -- while the vibrator in his anus continues to hum -- giving him the mother of all erections.

She then squats over his face and, leaning forward over him, tickles his body with her nipples and sets to work with her hands until he feels the urge to spring a gusher. But she slacks off at the last second and repeats this process -- of sensual stimulation halting just before the point of orgasm -- until he begs for release.

What is this supposed to be good for, anyway? he pants to Kazuki.

If you don't do it long enough you won't get the full benefits of aerobic exercise, she advises him: If you can hang on for a full hour, you can lose 3 centimeters off your tummy.

Marriott International will meet in Washington May 14 with anti-porn nutters that have petitioned the hotel chain to remove adult movies from its rooms.

Coming in response to an April 3 letter signed by 47 "pro-family" groups, the meeting may or may not serve to further the groups' agenda, as making such a broad change to the corporation's policy would be a very complex proposition, Marriott officials say.

Marriott is a publicly traded company, so Mr. Marriott would not make a unilateral decision, said VP of communications Roger Conner, referring to CEO J.W. Marriott Jr., to whom the letter was addressed.

This is the first time a major hotel chain has agreed to meet with anti-adult lobbying groups, but even so, Conner stressed that it's the individual properties and not Marriott International that decide whether or not to offer adult programming, and that receive compensation for it from Lodgenet and other providers.

Adult industry attorney Paul Cambria, however, pointed out to Cybercast that, Adult entertainment is completely protected by the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court has said so time and time again.

When two police officers came to interview Jamie Bauld, a polite, friendly Down’s syndrome boy with a mental age of about 5, he welcomed them with a big smile and a handshake. As the officers read him his rights and charged him with assault and racial abuse, he agreed with everything they said, then thanked them for coming to see him.

Jamie, 18, cannot tie his shoelaces or leave home on his own, nor can he understand simple verbal concepts such as whether a door is open or shut. But his parents said that he was charged with attacking a fellow student, an Asian girl who also had special needs.

The incident in question took place last September at the special needs department of Motherwell College, in Lanarkshire, where Jamie is a student. Fiona Bauld, Jamie’s mother and full-time carer, claimed that the Asian student, who is only slightly older than Jamie, had been following her son and staring at him. Jamie had earlier complained to his parents that her behaviour scared him, and they had advised him just to walk away.

But one day, his mother said, the girl came close up to Jamie as he was eating lunch. He pushed her with one hand and told her to go away. Mrs Bauld said she received a phone call from the college to say that Jamie had been told off for pushing the girl, and that the girl had been reprimanded as well.

Soon after, however, the Baulds heard that a notice had been placed in a Motherwell newspaper asking for witnesses to a “racial assault” at the college on the day in question. It is not known who placed the advert but afterwards two police officers came to Jamie’s house in Condorrat, Lanarkshire, and interviewed him.

Jim Bauld, Jamie’s father, who was present at the interview, said: They asked Jamie if he had slapped the girl on the face and he said yes, because he thought that was what they wanted him to say – because Down’s syndrome [people] always try to please. I sat and listened in absolute disbelief when they read him his rights and charged him.

Shortly after the visit came a letter from the Procurator Fiscal in Hamilton saying that the authorities now had enough evidence to charge Jamie.

It was 7½ months after the initial incident when they received a brief letter from the Procurator Fiscal to say he would not be proceeding with the prosecution. There was no apology.

Update: Newspaper Inspired Apology

See full article from the Times

[Only after adverse press coverage], the Crown Office in Scotland offered a rare apology yesterday to the family of Jamie Bauld, the Down’s syndrome teenager who was accused of a racist assault.

We appreciate that the case was not concluded as quickly as it may have been and we apologise for any distress the family have suffered.

It is further understood that another factor delaying the dropping of proceedings was the reluctance of the family of the Asian girl to withdraw their complaint against Jamie, who stood accused of slapping the girl in the face and calling her “blackface”. His family say he simply pushed her because she had been following him.

The Baulds say that the incident amounted to an argument between five-year-olds and that their son does not even understand what racism means.

Politicians condemned the actions of the authorities. Paul Martin, Scottish Labour’s public safety spokesman, said: This case shows a clear lack of understanding on the police’s part. It is essential that they have a basic understanding of how to deal with someone with a learning disability.

Margaret Mitchell, Conservative MSP for Central Scotland, said: This is an example of legislation which has enabled common sense to fly out the window. Down’s syndrome people are loving individuals who occasionally get upset but in general would do anything to try and please. The idea that they have any concept of racism is, frankly, ridiculous.

Miah and Kian Flanagan are just five years old. But already they are seasoned fighters, taking part in an alarmingly fast-growing 'sport' that pits children against other children in the terrifying public arena of the boxing ring.

The opponents - some of them barely old enough to be at school - kick and punch in chilling scenes, while parents shout impassioned advice from the sidelines.

Welcome to the world of child Thai boxing, one of the fastest growing martial arts in the UK with now over 500 registered clubs teaching this sport.

The chilling snapshot into a pastime that is legal is laid bare on a Cutting Edge documentary to be shown on Channel 4 later this week.

In the strictly governed world of conventional boxing youngsters must be at least 11 to compete. But in MuayThai boxing there is no such limit. There is also no requirement for protective headgear, despite regular blows to the skull.

Parents have to sign a disclaimer before a fight, relieving promoters of any blame should their children be injured as they compete - sometimes in front of paying adult audiences.

Miah and Kian Flanagan live with their father Darren, a quantity surveyor, and mother Lisa, a nail technician, in Wigan. The twins were enrolled in boxing lessons at their local gym seven months ago. Mr Flanagan is so passionate about the sport that he has converted the spare room into a gym so he can give the twins extra tuition.

Flanagan believes that the training will help his daughter take care of herself: If someone grabs Miah when she's 15 what do you think is going to happen? She knows all the defence moves.

Every time she goes in that ring, there is always a worry she will start crying," said Flanagan, who says he has told his daughter she can give up if she does not enjoy it.

Another child featured is Thai Barlow, already a veteran fighter at 10 and named after his parents burning passion for Thai boxing. His dad Mark is his trainer who runs his own gym and mother Maxine was herself a successful fighter. Both Thai and his 14-year-old sister, a double world champion, have followed their parents' love of the sport.

On March 28 Thai took part in his first cage brawl, fighting inside a 23ft metal cage in front of a huge crowd paying 335 a ticket. His opponent was nine-year-old Connor Butler, from East London. Both were shouted on by their parents, but Thai eventually lost for only the third time in 59 fights. Despite his youth, his victories apparently include two knockouts.

Cutting Edge: Strictly Baby Fight Club is on Channel 4 on Thursday at 9pm

Fifteen people arrested as part of an operation targeting brothels operating via the internet in central London are still being questioned by police. The arrests were made when more than 100 officers searched 19 premises.

Police suspect that those arrested are part of a criminal network involved in prostitution and people-trafficking. It is alleged the network operates by trafficking women from abroad, the majority from Thailand, and then coercing them to work as prostitutes.

Up to 110 officers are involved in Operation Gib, led by the Metropolitan Police with support from Surrey Constabulary and Norfolk Constabulary.

Police believe criminals have been using an internet escort agency as a front for prostitution. It is believed that the network, which police have been monitoring for about four months, has been running the women on their own but also acting on behalf of other pimps selling on their women, police have said.

Police said they hoped to rescue an estimated 60 foreign women who they believe had been forced into prostitution. 30 women had been taken to a specialist centre staffed with interpreters, health workers and officers trained in sexual offences interview techniques.

Ch Supt Ian Dyson from the Metropolitan Police said: What we can say is the exploitation takes a variety of forms and while there may be no evidence that might emerge of physical violence being used, what is clear, and we are certain of, is that there's been a significant financial exploitation of all the women involved in this case.

A Met spokesman said three men aged 31, 32, and 25 and one women aged 35 had been arrested on suspicion of trafficking into and within the UK, controlling prostitution for gain and money laundering offences. Another 11 people were arrested at addresses in central London in connection with trafficking within the UK and controlling prostitution.

Update: Six Thais Arrested

22nd April 2008

Five men and four women have been charged with people trafficking offences, police said. At least six are Thai nationals. All are charged with conspiracy to traffic women within the UK for sexual exploitation, conspiracy to control prostitution and money laundering.

Update: Extradition

23rd April 2008

Thailand will seek the extradition of Thais arrested in Britain for alleged involvement in human trafficking-related offences, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Tarit Charungvat. He said the Thai embassy in London is coordinating with British police to verify the nationalities of the 15 arrested people who are believed to be Thai.

Have you got a licence for that camera?

Phil Smith thought ex-EastEnder Letitia Dean turning on the Christmas lights in Ipswich would make a good snap for his collection.

The 49-year-old started by firing off a few shots of the warm-up act on stage. But before the main attraction showed up, Smith was challenged by a police officer who asked if he had a licence for the camera.

After explaining he didn't need one, he was taken down a side-street for a formal "stop and search", then asked to delete the photos and ordered not take any more. So he slunk home with his camera.

People were still taking photos with mobile phones and pocket cameras, so maybe it was because mine looked like a professional camera with a flash on top, he says. It's a sad state of affairs today if an amateur photographer can't stand in the street taking photographs.

Austin Mitchell MP has tabled a motion in the Commons that has drawn on cross-party support from 150 other MPs, calling on the Home Office and the police to educate officers about photographers' rights.

Mitchell, himself a keen photographer, was challenged twice, once by a lock-keeper while photographing a barge on the Leeds to Liverpool canal and once on the beach at Cleethorpes.

Photographers have every right to take photos in a public place, he says, and it's crazy for officials to challenge them when there are so many security cameras around and so many people now have cameras on phones. But it's usually inexperienced officers responsible.

Steve Carroll was another hapless victim of this growing suspicion. Police seized the film from his camera while he was out taking snaps in a Hull shopping centre. They later returned it but a police investigation found they had acted correctly because he appeared to be taking photographs covertly.

And photographer enthusiast Adam Jones has started an online petition on the Downing Street website urging the prime minister to clarify the law. It has gained hundreds of supporters.

Holidaymakers to some overseas destinations will be familiar with this sort of attitude - travel guides frequently caution readers that innocently posing for a snapshot outside a government building could lead to some stern questions from local law enforcers.

But in Britain this sort of attitude is new. So what is the law?

If you are a normal person going about your business and you see something you want to take a picture of, then you are fine unless you're taking picture of something inherently private, says Hanna Basha, partner at solicitors Carter-Ruck. There are also restrictions around some public buildings, like those involved in national defence.

Child protection has been an issue for years, says Stewart Gibson of the Bureau of Freelance Photographers, but what's happened recently is a rather odd interpretation of privacy and heightened fears about terrorism: They [police, park wardens, security guards] seem to think you can't take pictures of people in public places. It's reached a point where everyone in the photographic world has become so concerned we're mounting campaigns and trying to publicise this.

There's a great deal of paranoia around but the police are on alert for anything that vaguely resembles terrorism. It's difficult because the more professional a photographer, paradoxically, the more likely they are to be stopped or questioned. If people were using photos for terrorism purposes they would be using the smallest camera possible.

The National Union of Journalists has staged a demo to highlight how media photographers are wrongly challenged by police.

In May last year, Thames Valley Police overturned a caution issued to photographer Andy Handley of the MK News in Milton Keynes, after he took pictures at the scene of a road accident.

Guidelines agreed between senior police and the media were adopted by all forces in England and Wales last year. They state that police have no power to prevent the media taking photos. They state that once images are recorded, [the police] have no power to delete or confiscate them without a court order, even if [the police] think they contain damaging or useful evidence.

And in the case of Phil Smith, an official complaint about the Christmas lights incident helped sort matters out. Not only did he receive a written apology from Suffolk Police, but also a visit from an inspector, who explained that the officer, a special constable, had acted wrongly.

A number of US states are considering legislation to lower the legal drinking age from the current standard of 21 - if only to allow troops coming home from Iraq to drink.

The move would defy a generation of federal law and public opinion, which is strongly opposed to lowering the drinking age. In 1984 Congress set a uniform legal age of 21, threatening to cut highway funding to states which did not comply.

Despite the risk of penalties, however, seven US states are exploring lowering the drinking age - partly for under-age Iraq war vets and more broadly in recognition that teenagers are going to drink anyway.

If you can take a shot on the battlefield you ought to be able to take a shot of beer legally, said Fletcher Smith, who has sponsored legislation to lower the drinking age in South Carolina.

Kentucky, Wisconsin, and South Carolina have introduced legislation to lower the drinking age for troops to 18.

Four other states - Missouri, South Dakota, Minnesota, and most recently Vermont - would extend the privilege to the general population. However, South Dakota would only allow 18-20 year olds to buy low-alcohol beer. Advocates of a lower drinking age argue that teenagers are drinking, and that the secrecy encourages binge drinking among young people.

Our laws aren't working. They're not preventing underage drinking. What they're doing is putting it outside the public eye, Hinda Miller, a Vermont state senator, told reporters yesterday, after a committee took up her bill to study lowering the drinking age: So you have a lot of kids binge drinking. They get sick, they get scared and they get into trouble and they can't call because they know it's illegal.

While the move would be popular with college students and other young people obliged to pay for fake ID if they want a night on the town, there is concerted opposition to lowering America's drinking age. Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other nutter groups say raising the drinking age a generation ago has cut traffic related deaths among young people by 13%.

States that do lower their drinking age would also pay a heavy penalty under current legislation that would require them to forfeit 10% of their highway fund from the federal government.

Nevada is the only state in the US that allows legal prostitution, but in its largest city, Las Vegas, prostitution is illegal. When the mayor suggested changing the law, it sparked a huge debate.

Mayor Oscar Goodman grabs the headlines whatever he says or does - and he relishes it. He is proud of Las Vegas' image as "Sin City" and happily calls it "an adult playground".

He boasts about his love of gin, cigars and pretty women and calls himself the happiest mayor in the universe.

But when he suggested legalising prostitution and creating a red-light district and a string of magnificent brothels in downtown Vegas, the mayor got his most dramatic headlines yet.

He had opened up a debate on a taboo subject: Las Vegas' illegal prostitution. Everybody knows it goes on, many businesses profit from it, but in-keeping with the city's slogan What happens here, stays here, it is rarely discussed.

It's disingenuous when people say they don't want to legalise it, says Goodman: Right now it's uncontrolled and unregulated. There's no check and balance as far as the women's health is concerned and legal brothels could be an important revenue-raising device for the city.

It is estimated that there are as many as 10,000 prostitutes operating illegally in Las Vegas, in an industry that may be worth as much as $6 billion a year.

Over 150 pages in the Las Vegas phone book advertise "escorts" and "massage", and leaflets promising to deliver hot babes direct to your room in 20 minutes are handed out to tourists openly on Las Vegas Boulevard.

There are women who get propositioned in the casinos, bars and hotels. There are women who do 'extras' out of strip clubs and who 'give pleasure' in massage parlours. Women who do what we term 'outcall'. There are women who work by print ads or on-line. And every casino host has a bevy of girls to call at a moment's notice to satisfy their high-rollers.

In fact, Nevada is the only state in the US to allow legal brothels, which stems from a 1970 state law allowing Nevada's individual counties to licence their brothels. But this only applies to counties with populations under 400,000, which excludes Las Vegas and Reno. There are nearly 30 state-sanctioned brothels in Nevada.

But some religious nutters, academics and campaigners say that all prostitution is wrong and legalising it does not stop sex trafficking or the abuse of women.

Kate Hausbeck, a sociology professor at the University of Las Vegas, has spent nearly 10 years researching both the legal and illegal sex trade in Nevada. She concludes that the best model for Nevada - and any country in the world - is the decriminalisation of prostitution.

Empower the women who do the work. Give them labour protection and the rights given other workers. Because it's a job and a choice for many women, she says.

But, when asked about Mr Goodman's idea of legal brothels for Las Vegas, she says she doesn't think prostitution will ever be legal here: There's too much money to be made from the illegal sex trade. The casinos and convention industry fear it would be a step too far.

A poll by the charity, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, has uncovered a widespread belief that faith - not just in its extreme form - was intolerant, irrational and used to justify persecution.

Pollsters asked 3,500 people what they considered to be the worst blights on modern society, updating a list drawn up by Rowntree, a Quaker, 104 years ago.

The responses may well have dismayed him. The researchers found that the “dominant opinion” was that religion was a “social evil”. Many participants said religion divided society, fuelled intolerance and spawned “irrational” educational and other policies.

One said: Faith in supernatural phenomena inspires hatred and prejudice throughout the world, and is commonly used as justification for persecution of women, gays and people who do not have faith.

Many respondents called for state funding of church schools to be ended.

The findings contrast with Rowntree’s “scourges of humanity”, which included poverty, war, slavery, intemperance, the opium trade, impurity and gambling.

Poverty and drugs remain, but are joined by issues such as family breakdown, young people’s behaviour and fears over immigration.

Tom Butler, the Bishop of Southwark, rejected the indictment of faith. He said: People meeting together, week after week, for worship, support and education in church, synagogue, temple, gurdwara and mosque can not only help people build local community but can teach children to become good citizens.

However, Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said he was extremely pleased. Britain has had it with religion, he said.

The mean minded Norwegian government proposed on Friday to fine or jail clients of prostitutes for up to six months supposedly in a bid to stamp out human trafficking, and said the law would also apply to its citizens abroad.

Norway signalled in mid-2007 that it would make it a criminal offence to buy services from prostitutes, following the example of Scandinavian neighbour Sweden which introduced a similar ban in 1999.

The amendment will now be put to parliament for approval and if passed will take effect in January 2008, officials said.

Prostitution is currently allowed in Norway although procuring, or "pimping," is illegal. A rise in street prostitution in the capital, Oslo, in recent years has triggered calls for a ban.

Proponents of the measure say it makes sense to try to stop prostitution by punishing those who use the service rather than the women themselves, who are often poor, young immigrants.

Opponents of the ban say it will jeopardise women in the trade by driving prostitution underground where they will be even more vulnerable.

The justice ministry said the punishment could be fines on rising scale according to the offender's financial means or a jail term of up to six months, or both.

Jail sentences of a year could be imposed in aggravated cases involving adult prostitution and of up to three years where child prostitutes are involved, the ministry said.

The number of assaults on prostitutes in Edinburgh has soared in the past year. Attacks reported to support group Scotpep have almost doubled from 66 in 2006 to 126 last year, including eight reported rapes and 55 violent assaults.

Support workers say making kerb-crawling illegal has resulted in the trade becoming more dangerous as prostitutes are forced "underground".

While the figures cover the whole of last year, Scotpep says that it has become even more dangerous for vice girls since the new law came into force last October.

It comes as latest police figures reveal that a total of 24 suspected kerb-crawlers have been arrested and charged in Scotland's capital in the first six months since the legislation came into force.

Some prostitutes are said to have turned to handing out a mobile number to potential clients in order to set up meetings. Scotpep believes this new tactic has left women more vulnerable as they are meeting men in more isolated locations.

Ruth Morgan Thomas, Scotpep's co-ordinator, said: The need for cash to support drug habits has not gone away. Prostitution is being pushed further underground. Women are having to work longer hours and changing the times they work. It makes it harder for us to provide support.

Kerb-crawlers can now face a criminal record and a £1,000 fine.

High-profile police activity has been cited for driving away many men. But those most likely to be violent against prostitutes continue to use their services. Ms Morgan Thomas added: There's been a decrease in those on the street, but not the number selling sex in the city.

Thanks to a content platform developed by BT, ITV will now broadcast their on demand service to viewers located around the world.

The platform will be using the BT Mosaic service; this will allow ITV to share their content with various networks and different devices. This service will also give ITV the option of allowing other broadcasters to opportunity to access the archive.

It is believed that other broadcasters would be able to censor programmes so that they fit into and fall well within the regions laws and customs which is said to be an important factor.

There are already over twenty thousand programmes that have digitised and ready for distribution to consumers.

An Iranian police chief in charge of fighting vice in Tehran was jailed today for reportedly consorting in a brothel.

General Reza Zarei was jailed after being caught with six naked women at a brothel in the Iranian capital.

Ali Reza Jamshidi, a spokesman for Iran’s judiciary, confirmed today that Zarei had been taken to jail. He refused to elaborate further about the case. But officials, speaking anonymously, have supported the allegations.

The order to raid the alleged brothel was reportedly given directly by Iran’s Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi.

Zarei was in charge of a program to clean cities from corruption and in recent months had reported arrests of young men and women for illicit relationships and not respecting the Islamic dress code.

Under Iranian law prostitution is punishable by death. But in the past decade, prostitutes are becoming more visible on Iranian streets, mainly due to economic hardships. The rise in prostitution has led to suggestions that brothels be legalised and monitored. Some Iranians say brothels could be run according to Islamic rules, perhaps under the Shiite Muslim tradition which allows men and women to enter into “temporary marriages”, sometimes for less than 24 hours.

A deeper investigation into the story that a sex-tape of Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe had been sold to an anonymous New York collector, shows that the sale of the tape is most probably a hoax.

The New York Post's Hasani Gittens broke the story after speaking with Keya Morgan, a memorabilia collector who claimed to have sold the 15-minute reel of a young Monroe performing a sex act on an unidentified male.

However, Morgan is well known in Monroe memorabilia collector circles as being hungry for press to promote his upcoming documentary on the silver screen starlet.

Morgan did not give details or the name of who he sold the alleged tape to, and has not been able to provide evidence that the sale of the tape even occurred.

Collector keeps Marilyn Monroe blow job film to himself

15th April 2008, See full article from the Guardian

A 15-minute film of Marilyn Monroe engaging in an oral sex act with an unidentified man will be kept from public view by a New York businessman who has bought it for $1.5m (£750,000), the broker of the deal said.

Memorabilia collector Keya Morgan said he recently arranged the sale of the silent, black-and-white film from the son of a dead FBI informant who possessed it to a wealthy Manhattan businessman who wants to protect Monroe's privacy.

The gentleman who bought it said out respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the internet and try to exploit her, said Morgan.

Monroe is clothed and the man's head remains out of the frame for the entire 15 minutes of the film, said Morgan, who viewed the footage.

Monroe was rumoured to have had an affair with former US President John F Kennedy, and Morgan said former FBI director J Edgar Hoover, a Kennedy rival, went to great lengths to try to prove it was Kennedy in the film.

Morgan said he learned of the existence of the film while working on a documentary about Monroe. A former FBI agent told him about it, and Morgan said he confirmed it by tracking down the son of the FBI informant, who had provided a copy to the FBI.

Quezon City Police District chief, Senior Supt. Magtanggol Gatdula has ordered a district-wide crackdown on lewd shows in bars.

Gatdula said the campaign would cover gay bars, KTV bars and discos that feature nude shows: I have ordered all station commanders in the district to conduct their respective raids on these nightclubs. I do not expect them to return with zero results, he told Standard Today.

I suppose a hand or blow job is out of the question too?

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. But the move has been protested by the women's affairs minister of Indonesia, where massage parlors are often a front for prostitution.

It is not the right way to prevent promiscuity, Meutia Swasono was quoted as saying in Thursday's Jakarta Post. 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.

The padlocking phenomena has been seen at various parlors and it is something we like, said Imam Suryono, the head of the town's public order authority. He denied media reports that he had formally ordered them to wear padlocks.

The stereotype of the Asian sex slave captures the Australian imagination. When Puangthong Simaplee died in immigration detention in 2001, a story emerged of a girl trafficked to Australia at the age of 12 and forced to have sex as a slave. Her story was given under duress, after the Department of Immigration had taken her into detention, during the first phases of the pneumonia that eventually killed her.

Even when the federal police uncovered the Thai woman's high school diploma, proudly displayed in her family home, and discovered she did not arrive in Australia until aged 21, the image endured of pre-pubescent Asian girls chained to beds in back rooms with barred windows.

Media reports of a thousand sex slaves working in Australia have proved unfounded. But even when the coroner found no evidence that Simaplee was trafficked, the sex industry, not the detention system, continued to be the focus of coverage of her death.

The sensationalism surrounding the sex slave issue has created a government-funded rescue industry. This has diverted the focus from actual cases of trafficking in Australia and prevented an evidence-based response to the problem.

The federal police's transnational sexual exploitation and trafficking team, with the Immigration Department, has swept through the Asian brothels of Australia's capital cities, aided by an anti-trafficking package of tens of millions of dollars since 2003. The Australian Tax Office joined in and media were invited to the raids.

Non-English-speaking sex workers became the most overscrutinised sector of the sex industry. But the "sex slaves" remained elusive and trafficking was difficult to prosecute.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission chimed in with the suggestion to make "consent" irrelevant, but even that could not create victims that did not exist.

The time has come for a new kind of response to trafficking, grounded in labour rights rather than moral hysteria. If the Federal Government wants to improve the conditions of migrant sex workers, it needs to protect their rights as workers.

Introducing a visa to allow migrant sex workers to work in Australia legally for short periods of time would pull the carpet from under the trafficking nexus by allowing women to travel here independently to work. Greater access to generic working holiday visas for sex workers from our region would enable travel for work, without having to resort to a third party or "agent".

A tax payer subjected to a lengthy investigation by the Revenue has set up a website to expose what he describes as its bullying, intimidation and waste.

Nick Morgan, a freelance journalist who regularly uses the self-assessment tax system, was told three years ago that an investigation had been opened into his returns. Even though the case involved only £2,500, Morgan says the investigation quickly snowballed into a nightmare.

Inspectors from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) took a forensic interest in his finances, he says, demanding to know details such as how many pieces of paper he used in correspondence and the number of business calls made to London. They even questioned him about £10 he spent on a biography of David Beckham as research for a celebrity interview.

Morgan says he was confronted with a frightening blur of figures and informed that there was a lot wrong with his tax return and that he had shown neglect. He was accused, incorrectly, of receiving undeclared payments amounting to £325.

Infuriated by the aggressive nature of the HMRC inquiries, Morgan filed a request under the 1998 Data Protection Act, which allows anyone to see most of the files held on them by HMRC. He discovered that the HMRC’s internal view of his case was different from the manner in which he was treated.

I was astounded, Morgan said. In a phone call, the investigating officer had told me that things were very bad for me and I was a terrible case exhibiting gross negligence; but in her e-mails to a colleague she drew a very different picture. In one e-mail, the inspector wrote: I’m feeling a bit lost in all this . . . it’s not a large settlement.

The investigation may have cost as much as £50,000, according to Stephen Camm, a former HMRC investigator who is head of tax investigations at Price Waterhouse Coopers. Yet HMRC has offered to settle with Morgan if he will pay just £2,530.

HMRC enjoys draconian powers over taxpayers. Investigations can be started at random, without evidence of wrongdoing. If a “discovery” is made, the previous 20 years of a taxpayers’ finances can come under scrutiny. HMRC can levy hefty fines for offences as simple as late payment - and the burden is on the taxpayer to prove his or her innocence.

More than 99,000 taxpayers complained about HMRC last year.

Morgan concluded: HMRC have a whole range of bullying tactics. They are all legal and practised every day.

Police have arrested 65 young women, aged 18-27, during raids in the past three days in five Quezon City establishments.

Seven male dancers were arrested at the Makisig gay bar on Timog Avenue, Barangay Sacred Heart.

At around 2:30 am, QCPD Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit (CIDU) operatives arrested 13 dancers from the Encounter KTV Bar on Quezon Avenue after receiving information that they were suuposedly forced to perform lewd acts. Policemen also arrested the bar’s floor manager, four cashiers and checkers, and 20 male customers.

The QCPD had arrested or invited for questioning at least 120 persons since it started last week its crackdown on suspected prostitution dens in the city.

Chief Inspector Cherry Lou Donato, chief of QCPD-CIDU’s Women and Children’s Desk, said one of the women was caught dancing in the nude. Donato said the 19-year-old girl told them she and most of the women in the bar were forced by the club owner to do lewd acts on stage: But even if the women consented to what their manager said, it was still a violation of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, Donato told the Inquirer.

About 11 pm Saturday, QCPD-CIDU agents apprehended 22 guest relations officers (GROs) from the Flirt Disco Bar in Cubao. Arrested were floor manager, five waiters and two cashiers. The GROs were later released after presenting work permits from the city government.

Another group of policemen swooped down on Bartolina II KTV Bar, also in Cubao, and arrested 17 GROs and dancers.

Meanwhile, QCPD Station 10 members raided the Executive Spa on Quezon Avenue, Barangay Roxas, after an anonymous informant reported that massage attendants offered sex to clients for P1,500. Thirteen massage attendants were brought to the Kamuning police station but were later freed.

An article on the Psychology Today website reports on a recent study conducted in Denmark which found that men and women generally believe that hardcore pornography has a positive influence on their lives.

The study, which was written by Martin Hald and Neil Malamuth, found that those who watch hardcore pornography the most, pleasure themselves from it the most and who consider their source material to be the most realistic, also perceive the greatest positive effects from it.

The respondents also credited porn with improving their sex lives, their sexual knowledge and attitudes toward the opposite sex, and even their general quality of life.

Lead author Hald did acknowledge, however, that people tend to mitigate the effects of media on their own behavior, sometimes to justify increased consumption. Other studies have come to strikingly different conclusions than the Denmark study regarding porn's impact on individuals and families.

But co-author Malamuth, who is associate professor and chairman of the Department of Communication Studies at UCLA and co-edited of the book, Pornography and Sexual Aggression, published a paper in 2007 that provided a measured assessment of pornography's effect on individual behavior: In certain people who are already inclined to be sexually aggressive. It adds fuel to the fire. But for the majority of men, we don't find negative effects."

The Western Australia (WA) parliament has passed a controversial bill which will decriminalise brothels and give prostitutes basic working rights, including superannuation and workers compensation.

The bill will see the regulation of brothels and escort agencies in WA, where prostitution is legal but running a brothel is not. Nor is living off the earnings of prostitution.

WA's Liberal Opposition opposed the legislation but it passed with the support of independent MP Shelley Archer in exchange for the promise of drug, alcohol and sex education programs for Aboriginal children in the northern Kimberley region.

A Texas woman who claims she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplane has called for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation.

Mandi Hamlin said at a news conference in Los Angeles. My experience with TSA was a nightmare I had to endure. No one deserves to be treated this way.

Hamlin said she was trying to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas on when she was scanned by a Transportation Security Administration agent after passing through a larger metal detector without problems.

The female TSA agent used a handheld detector that beeped when it passed in front of Hamlin's chest, the Dallas-area resident said.

Hamlin said she told the woman that she was wearing nipple piercings. The female agent then called over her male colleagues, one of whom said she would have to remove the body piercings, Hamlin claimed.

Hamlin said she could not remove them and asked if she could instead display her pierced breasts in private to the female agent. But several other male officers told her she could not board her flight until the jewelry was removed, she said.

She was taken behind a curtain and managed to remove one bar-shaped nipple piercing but had trouble with the second, a ring.

Still crying, she informed the TSA officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, and the officer gave a pair to her, said Hamlin's attorney, Gloria Allred.

She said she heard male TSA agents snickering as she took out the ring. She was scanned again and was allowed to board even though she still was wearing a belly button ring.

TSA officials said they were investigating Hamlin's allegations to see if its policies were followed. If an alarm does sound, until that is resolved, we're not going to let them go through the checkpoint, no matter what they're wearing or where they're wearing it, said TSA spokesman Dwayne Baird in Salt Lake City.

Husbands who are not where they are supposed to be could soon be in danger of being “sniffed” out by a mobile phone service that gives suspicious partners an electronic map showing the location of their spouse.

The Social Network Integrated Friend Finder (Sniff) is a new application, accessed via Facebook or mobile phone. The service promises to provide users with a detailed map of their friends’ locations, any time and anywhere. However, there are fears that Sniff could be abused by employers to remove the last vestiges of privacy from staff.

Useful Networks, the American company behind Sniff, promised that only consumers who gave their permission could be electronically tracked by the service, which operates across all mobile carriers. Users can specify who can and can not sniff them, or whether they are open to be sniffed by anyone on the network. The company plans to charge users about 75p for each location “sniff”, with the results for mobile customers sent by return text.

“Sniffing” works through similar technology used by the police to track down suspected terrorists or missing children via their mobile phones. The phone sends a signal to nearby base stations. Positioning software performs a triangulation calculation on the information from the base stations and converts it into a geographical location.

Brian Levin, chief executive officer of Useful Networks, told The Times: Privacy is paramount and sniffing should only be used by people you can trust.

But employees who are enjoying a long lunch or a secret liaison instead of the business meeting in their diary could also find themselves “sniffed out”. Levin said: If the employer is paying the phone bill and employees are aware they can be ‘sniffed’, at least everyone knows those are the rules.

Levin also cautioned that sniffing should not be relied upon by parents to track their young children: the service will only place a location within a radius of about 200m.

Useful Networks hopes to introduce “sniffing” in Britain this month.

Update: SNIFF Away

4th June 2008

The SNIFF service which allows friends and family to find out where you are has been launched in Britain.

The technology delivers a map to the inquirer’s mobile phone, giving the location to the nearest 100 metres.

But those behind the idea insisted that such a service can only work if the person being sought gives permission to be found. And if someone has already agreed to be tracked, they have then option to be made “invisible” for as long as they want.

Users will be able to register on the Social Network Integrated Friend Finder (SNIFF) via social networking sites Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, as well as online, and each searching text will cost 50 pence.

The service provider, American-based company Useful Networks, hopes hundreds of thousands of people will sign up. It has been running in Scandinavia for several months and each registered person has an average of five to seven people they track.

Nearly one in five of all baggage weighing scales at London's Gatwick airport gave an inaccurate reading in a spot check test, it has been revealed.

An investigation by Trading Standards showed that 62 of the 321 scales used at the north and south terminals worked against the passenger, showing that bags weighed more than they did.

Airlines could have made vast profits out of the errors

At one airline in particular, 10 out of the 18 scales gave a wrong reading.

Bruce Treloar, from Trading Standards, said the problem was a combination of human error - with the scales not set at zero - and faulty machines: It was an incredibly high number of machines which were giving the wrong reading We are talking about 20% of the scales working against the consumer and it was not a particularly busy day. It was a mix of human error and problems with the machines as they are used so much - a lot of traffic goes across these scales. There is no legal requirement for them to be checked, so there is no way of knowing if they are becoming increasingly inaccurate.

Treloar said the problem was likely to be much more widespread and affect airports across the country: The amount people are allowed to carry with them is going down and it seems as though airlines are finding ways of charging extra.

In its Hiding the Extra Charges in the Baggage report, Trading Standards looked at the much publicised issue of the misleading price of travelling.

It cited the case of a woman who complained about a flight to Tignes on January 19 this year. She said she had been told as she booked online that there was a 20kg weight limit and a £5 per kilogramme charge if in excess of 20kg. Her luggage weighed 23kg at check-in, despite the fact that she had tested it before leaving home and it had weighed 18kg on her scales. Facing an extra charge of £15, she took her bag off the check-in scales which read 5kg when empty. When re-set at zero, her bag weighed 19kg, well within the limit.

Ryanair charges £7.50 per kg if a bag is overweight, Flybe charges £6 per kg, Easyjet charges £6 per kg, while Monarch charges £5 per kg.

Nutters from AIDS-Free Philippines and some church-based groups are campaigning against the airing of advertisements promoting the use of condoms and contraceptives.

Dr. Rene Josef Bullecer, Human Life International–Pilipinas country director, yesterday said these advertisements are sending the wrong message to young people, especially young women. What they are advertising is contrary to what is true, he added. Bullecer claims that these contraceptives cause cancer of the breast and cervix, hypertension and heart disease.

AIDS-Free Philippines, together with the Couples for Christ Bacolod, and Family and Life Apostolate of the Diocese of Bacolod are asking the ADBOARD, the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board, and the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas to immediately stop the airing both on television and radio of all “condoms and contraceptive” advertisement.

In the absence of a vaccine or cure, “abstinence and chastity” still are the best proven and most effective weapons against the world’s dreaded disease – AIDS, the group claims.

People trying to get a UK visa by using false documents or deception will face an automatic ban according to new immigration laws, it was revealed.

The new rules, which came into effect yesterday, also ban applicants who have previously breached UK immigration laws by staying illegally, or working without permission, from returning for a certain period.

The length of time will depend on how the individual left the UK: one year if they left voluntarily at their own expense; five years if they left voluntarily at public expense and 10 years if they were deported.

Applicants who have used a false document, lied, or withheld information in a previous application will be banned from the UK for 10 years, according to a statement released via the British Embassy.

The changes give those who are currently in the country illegally an incentive to leave of their own accord, says the government. Over two million people a year enter the UK on visas and the new measures target the minority of individuals who try to abuse the rules, it says.

A West Lothian town is to become the first in Scotland to ban alcohol off-sales to people under 21.

The pilot scheme in Armadale will initially run for six weeks.

Every off-sale retailer in the town has signed up to the new scheme which means anyone who looks under the age of 25 will be asked for identification.

Those who cannot prove they are at least 21 will be denied alcohol. The aim of the scheme is to prevent people from enjoying themselves

This strategy has been tried before in the north of England. Cleveland Police introduced a similar scheme and it proved so successful in spoiling youngster's fun that it was adopted permanently.

It's a very good example of a local community including fun hating shopkeepers working together to tackle what is obviously a serious problem in many parts of Scotland. The Armadale pilot is a partnership with the local council, police and retailers.

A decision on whether it should be extended to other towns will be taken once the initial six weeks have been assessed.

West Lothian councillor Isabel Hutton backed the project: This initiative will not prevent all youths getting hold of alcohol, but I am sure it will help in reducing alcohol-related, anti-social behaviour, and that will be beneficial to the Armadale community.

Pc Phillip McIntosh, of Lothian and Borders Police, said: Youth disorder is often linked to alcohol, and Armadale is no different to any other town in West Lothian, or indeed Scotland, where a minority of young people can get their hands on alcohol and often leads to anti-social behaviour. Our intention is not only to limit under-age access to alcohol but to educate those who may have been involved in supplying alcohol to children that they are committing an offence.

Few will protest against the latest victory for women's rights. Ladies in Copenhagen will now be allowed to swim and walk around topless in public pools.

The decision is the result of a year-long campaign by a pressure group, the Topless Front, which says women should be treated the same as bare-chested men.

Campaign leader Astrid Vang, 20, who took her shirt off with others to protest at a leisure centre at Christmas, said: We women would like to decide by ourselves when our breasts should be sexual and when not. In swimming pools they should not and that is why the breasts should not be covered - We will bathe topless just like men.

In Copenhagen yesterday, the city's Culture and Leisure Committee voted overwhelmingly to allow topless bathing.

Frank Hedegaard, of the Socialist People's Party, said: I cannot understand what some people find so offensive about women's breasts. This decision is important in order to stop the idea that women's bodies are only sex objects.

Nipplegate 2008 has broken out in Florida! Wrestlers John Cena, Triple H, Randy Orton and Big Show are all proudly baring their nipple-free chests on a huge banner in downtown Orlando.

City officials met with some WWE suits to figure out how to keep the wrestling poster from looking "too provocative." The outcome - the WWE  have airbrushed the nipples into oblivion.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Mayor Buddy Dyer liked the nipple-free poster and added that there was some sort of city ordinance that banned public display of male nipples. But according to the city's press secretary no such ordinance exists.

Amsterdam's famous Yab Yum brothel has lost an appeal against the city's decision to close the sex club as part of a crackdown on supposed organised crime in the prostitution industry.

The city of Amsterdam said its complaints commission had upheld a decision to deny the brothel a new licence because of fears it would be used to commit crimes.

Calling itself the world's most exclusive men's club, the Yab Yum has denied allegations that it is in the hands of the Hells Angels biker gang and said it would seek damages from the city after it was forced to close in January.

Located in a grand house on an Amsterdam canal, Yab Yum charged visitors a 70 euro ($110) entry fee and much more for caviar, champagne and the services of its hostesses.

In December, the city of Amsterdam announced plans to clean up its "red light" district to fight forced prostitution, money laundering and drug abuse. It has withdrawn permits from dozens of sex businesses it accuses of links with organised crime.