Lima Prison Pageant Showcases Poise
LIMA, Peru - It was an elegant beauty pageant lineup — especially for a Peruvian prison — where contestants showed poise on the catwalk and patience awaiting sentencing.
As an audience of Peruvian dignitaries applauded, a 24-year-old Thai woman was declared the winner of the annual Miss Spring contest at Santa Monica Women's Prison in Lima.
Like many of her rivals in Thursday night's event, Onuma Chumsri was imprisoned for drug trafficking in Peru, the world's second largest producer of cocaine after Colombia. She is awaiting formal sentencing.
Reflecting Peru's sluggish legal system, only 133 of Santa Monica's 927 inmates have been sentenced, officials said.
Prison officials said preparations for the contest started two months ago.
Entrants were required to have good conduct, attend psychological therapy sessions, and participate in some of the prison's permanent workshops, such as cosmetology, drawing, and fabric painting.
"Sex appeal is important but it is not as if we are seeking just the physical aspect but rather the value as a woman, the value of the person is the essence of all of this," said Maria Jaen, director of the prison.
The prisoners themselves chose their representative of their cell areas. Of the 28 semifinalists 11 women were picked for the final, including five foreigners from Thailand, Belgium, Bolivia and Mexico.
Their stories are all-too similar. Lured by the promise of easy money, they came to Peru to smuggle cocaine only to be intercepted at Lima's international airport.
Of the more than 700 foreigners imprisoned in Peru, most were caught smuggling cocaine taped to their bodies, swallowed in plastic pouches or hidden in luggage.
Media boasts land top hooker in jail
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A $2,000 an hour prostitute known as New York's No. 1 Escort pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges of money laundering and prostitution that stemmed from her bragging in the media about her work.
Canadian Natalia McLennan, 25, sobbed uncontrollably in Manhattan Criminal Court after she was unable to post $50,000 bail and was taken away in handcuffs to jail.
The charges against McLennan came after she bragged in several interviews about her professional exploits, including posing provocatively for the cover of New York Magazine under the headline "N.Y.'s # 1 Escort Reveals All."
In that interview, she told the magazine she generated revenues of $1.5 million annually and kept 45 percent of that sum in return for having sex with high-roller clients of NY Confidential, a swanky Moroccan-themed brothel in Manhattan.
McLennan showed up for her arraignment dressed in a skimpy mini-skirt, a see-through blouse and four-inch spike heels, and told the court she had no idea she would remain in custody after the hearing. She wailed as she was taken from the courtroom.
She will remain in jail pending her next hearing on Monday. She faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
Pastor Gets Unwelcome Supply of Viagra
LINCOLN, Neb. - A pastor received an unwelcome supply of Viagra pills by registered mail earlier this month. The 500 pills of the impotence drug was very unexpected, he said.
The pills were charged to his credit card, which the pastor believes was stolen while he was on vacation in Canada, according to the Nebraska State Patrol.
"I do see the humor in it, but it's kind of not the type of humor you'd want for yourself," the pastor said Wednesday.
The company that issued the pills had a Canadian phone number, and the package had a return address in India.
All information gathered was sent to the FBI, and the unordered pharmaceuticals were destroyed.
Canadian province goes courting gay U.S. doctors
TORONTO (Reuters) - Ontario, which in 2003 was the first North American jurisdiction to allow same-sex marriages, is now trying to woo gay U.S. doctors.
Ontario wants to capitalise on Canada's image of being more accepting of the gay community -- highlighted by national legislation permitting same-sex marriages, passed this summer -- as part of its overall effort to sell the merits of Ontario to the rest of the world, David Spencer, a spokesman for the provincial Ministry of Health, said on Tuesday.
George Smitherman, Ontario's first openly gay cabinet minister and its health minister, spent the past weekend at a conference for the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, making a bid to attract its mostly American members.
The province is short nearly 2,200 physicians, leaving almost 1.2 million people without access to a family doctor, the Ontario Medical Association said earlier this month.
A number of members of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association asked Ontario officials about Canadian immigration laws and medical practice requirements following Smitherman's opening speech at the conference on Friday, said Joel Ginsberg, executive director of the San Francisco-based association.
"Canada is leaps and bounds ahead of the U.S. in acknowledging the basic civil and human rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons," said Ginsberg.
"The opportunity to practice medicine in Canada is obviously very attractive," he added.
"I don't know whether large numbers of our members are so upset with the current (political environment in the U.S.) that they're thinking about leaving," Ginsberg said.
"But it's clear that Canada is sort of a shining example of the way things ought to be from a political perspective. And there's no question that that must be attractive to people in a position to consider moving."
Toronto, Ontario's capital and Canada's biggest city, is home to one of North America's largest gay communities.
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