KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – A man who apparently severed his penis in an attempt to convince his wife that he was faithful to her was recovering after surgery to reattach the organ at a northern Malaysian hospital, a news report said Tuesday.

The 41-year-old man, who was not identified, got into an argument last Friday with his wife, who found a text message on his mobile phone from another woman. The man was heard by his son shouting that he wanted to prove he was not having an affair, the New Straits Times reported.

The assertion was followed by loud screams and the man emerged from his room bleeding profusely, his 14-year-old son quoted as saying. His wife rushed him to hospital.

KEY WEST, Fla. – A man wearing a purple women’s bathing suit and carrying a flare gun was arrested after he told a bartender he was going to “get rid of all the dirt bags in Key West,” authorities said.

Jeffrey C. Anderson, 55, was charged with carrying a concealed firearm Monday after he brandished the flare gun, which was under a skirt he was wearing, Key West police spokeswoman Christie Phillips said.

The bartender, who was not identified, was working in the downstairs bar of The Bull and Whistle, a popular Key West watering hole located on Duval Street.

“She reported she had seen a man, later identified as Anderson, dancing in the street showing tourists his private parts, and asking people for money when they took his picture,” the news release said.

The bartender said Anderson then approached her, telling her he was going to get rid of the city’s “dirt bags” before displaying the gun, police said.

Police quickly located Anderson and found an orange 12-gauge flare gun in his possession, Phillips said. He was transported to the Monroe County detention center. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian brothel owners want an exemption to anti-smoking laws for sex workers and their clients because, they say, one thing leads to another.

Newspapers reported Sunday that the Australian Adult Entertainment Industry had written to Victoria state officials seeking an exemption to laws which ban smoking in workplaces for fear they will drive prostitutes back onto the street.

“People smoke when they drink, and people smoke when they fornicate,” the industry group’s William Albon was quoted as saying by Australian Associated Press.

Smoking is banned in most public buildings across Australia and will be outlawed in hotels and other licensed premises in Victoria in July.

Albon said the ban would force “men, women and transgender persons” who work as prostitutes out of the state’s 87 legal brothels and onto the streets, where they could potentially become targets for violence.

“Having them standing dressed in terms not conventional for the street might be a magnet for violent, anti-social behavior,” he said.

THURSDAY, May 25 (HealthDay News) — The rate of severe complications associated with chlamydia, the most commonly reported sexually transmitted disease, might be lower than commonly thought.

That’s good news for women who have had chlamydia, but it also means that the benefits of widely touted screening programs for the infection have also been overestimated, experts said.

“Gains from screening that are predicted from mathematical models have probably been exaggerated,” said Dr. Nicola Low, senior lecturer in epidemiology and public health at the University of Bern, in Switzerland. “These gains are in terms of reductions in female reproductive tract problems like pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility, reduced transmission of chlamydia in the population, and the money saved by avoiding these conditions.”

Low is lead author of a study on the finding, which appears in the current issue of Sexually Transmitted Infections.

Others, however, were not convinced by the findings.

“Their methodology and what they found really has a few limitations,” said Dr. Rhoda Sperling, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, as well as medical infectious diseases, at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. “I’m not sure it adds anything new to what we know about chlamydia.”

Importantly, Sperling added, the study only looked at hospital-reported complications, while most complications are not diagnosed in a hospital.

Infection with chlamydia trachomatis is the most common preventable cause of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) in young women. PID, in turn, can lead to ectopic pregnancy and infertility.

Some sources have claimed that up to 40 percent of untreated chlamydia will progress to PID, and that 20 percent to 25 percent of women with PID will have an ectopic pregnancy or become infertile. It’s been unclear, however, if these numbers apply to all women.

A chlamydia infection is easily treated, often with a single dose of antibiotics. Detection is also easy, with a urine-sample test; results are generally available within a day.

The authors of this study wanted to estimate the incidence of severe complications from genital chlamydia infection in women.

To do this, they turned to Sweden, which has the world’s oldest chlamydia-control program with screening undertaken nationally since the late 1980s. Specifically, they focused on close to 44,000 women aged 15 to 24 in Uppsala county, where chlamydia screening is recommended for women aged 15 to 29 who attend family planning clinics, who are pregnant or who frequent youth clinics.

By the time they were 35, only 5.6 percent of women with chlamydia infection had developed PID, while 3.9 percent of all women had PID. The rate was 4 percent in women who had ever tested negative for chlamydia, and 2.9 percent in those who were never tested.

Overall, 2.3 percent of women had an ectopic pregnancy, 2.7 percent of those testing positive for chlamydia, 2 percent of those testing negative and 1.9 percent for those never screened.

Four percent of the entire group and 6.7 percent of those testing positive for chlamydia became infertile. For those testing negative, the rate was 4.7 percent and 3 percent for those who had never been screened.

For all of these complications, the rates were still much lower than expected, the authors stated.

This is particularly good news in light of the results of one survey that found the great majority of sexually active young American women enrolled in health plans were ignoring recommendations that they get routine screening for chlamydia.

Advice for women who do have chlamydia has not changed, however.

“Any woman who has chlamydia diagnosed either through screening, or because of a test done to investigate symptoms, should take an appropriate course of antibiotics and should ensure that anyone she has had sex with in the past six months also receives antibiotics,” Low said. “To avoid becoming re-infected, she should not have sex until both she and her partner have finished their antibiotics.”

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – The head of the Nepal Mountaineering Association urged the government Saturday to take action against a sherpa who reportedly stripped on top of Mount Everest.

The Himalayan Times had reported Friday that the Nepali climbing guide, whose name it gave as Lakpa Tharke, stood naked for three minutes in freezing conditions on the 29,035-foot summit of the world’s highest peak.

If confirmed, he would be the first person known to have stripped atop Everest, considered by Nepali Buddhists as a god.

Ang Tshering Sherpa, head of Nepal’s top mountaineering body, said he could not confirm that the incident had happened.

“But if he did it, it is very shocking because Sagarmatha is the goddess mother,” he said, using the mountain’s Nepali name.

“The government must enforce strict ethics for climbing.”

Authorities have yet to comment.

But the climb’s organizers seemed happy enough with Lakpa Thaeke’s strip.

“We are planning to file his extraordinary feat for the Guinness Book of World Records,” the paper quoted an official of the hiking group that employs Tharke as saying.

At least 1,345 people have climbed Everest since 1953 from either the Nepali or Tibetan side.

BOSTON (Reuters) – A man charged with murder in Massachusetts was so angry with his lawyer’s performance he attacked the attorney in court, trying to strangle him as a shocked judge looked on, Boston radio reported on Wednesday.

“I think he just didn’t like the way some of the rulings the judge was making was going yesterday morning,” attorney Bruce Carroll told WBZ Radio of the Tuesday morning attack by defendant John Gomes in Boston’s Suffolk Superior Court.

“He eventually stood up, started saying something and reached over and grabbed me by the throat,” said Carroll.

Several officers intervened before the 6-foot (1.8-meter), 250-pound (113-kg) Gomes was separated from Carroll, the radio reported. Carroll had tried to withdraw from the case last week but the judge denied his request.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – An armless man stopped for speeding was driving with one foot on the steering wheel and another on the pedals, a policeman testified in court.

Colin Smith, who was born without arms and has never held a driver’s license, appeared in court Thursday charged with driving in a manner likely to be dangerous to the public.

The police officer who stopped Smith said the driver’s seat was reclined and the armless man appeared to be using one foot to steer the car and the other to work the accelerator and brake. Smith, 31, entered no plea but said he would defend himself against the charges.

He told the court he had been driving for years, using his feet to steer, and had never had an accident.

BECKLEY, W.Va. – Shrubbery next to the Raleigh County Courthouse has been ruined by homeless people who urinate there and must be replaced, the county commission president says.

Sandblasting of the courthouse caused some damage to the shrubbery, but the homeless are exacerbating the problem by urinating on the bushes, said John Aliff.

“It’s turning yellow,” Aliff said. “That’s why we decided to get some bids on replacing some of that stuff. So we’re going to look at the bids when they come in and see whether it’s the correct thing to do and whether we can afford it.”

Aliff said the commission would seek the advice of bidders on how to protect the shrubbery. One solution might be plant new shrubs farther away from the building, he indicated.

“We don’t want any more bathroom use there,” Aliff added.

REXBURG, Idaho – Law enforcement agencies depend on citizens in the community to be their eyes and ears. But officials in this southeastern Idaho town aren’t sure how to respond to reports of skimpy bikinis, lost TV remotes, menacing squirrels, and a report of a neighbor’s shrub trespassing.

“You try to help, you don’t want to seem uncaring,” said Randy Lewis, a captain with the Rexburg Police Department.

Those kinds of calls come in daily to the police, including one where Lewis ended up using a lasso to capture a hissing badger running loose in an apartment.

“What a mistake,” he said. “It about drug me off.”

Even though many calls don’t fall within what police normally do, officers still respond to complaints of loitering ducks and children who won’t mind their parents.

Lewis said the Rexburg police probably get more of those types of calls than larger departments.

“We don’t have a high frequency of serious crimes, though we do have murders, rapes, child molestations and bank robberies,” Lewis said. “Thank goodness they don’t happen every day.”

Rexburg Police Lt. Ron Larson said he thinks many of the calls are caused by residents not knowing the difference between civil and criminal offenses.

“It might not have anything to do with the police, but they don’t know who else to call,” he told the Post Register.

Most of the unusual calls come during the summer, he said, and already the department has fielded calls about mean notes taped to trash bins and reports of residents receiving offers of being hypnotized over the phone.

Lewis said the hypnotist calls could be coming from students at Brigham Young University-Idaho as part of their homework.

But a university official said he is not aware of any class requiring that type of assignment.

Meanwhile, Rexburg police will continue to take the calls in stride.

“We don’t want to discourage anyone from calling in,” Lewis said.

BANGKOK (AFP) – A rights group has warned Thai sex workers against going to Germany during the World Cup, saying they could be subject to “all kinds of abuse,” a report has said.

The June-July event becomes a magnet for prostitutes as the 64-match tournament sees millions of football fans flood into Germany.

The Empower Foundation, a Thai non-profit organization helping to protect sex workers’ rights, said Thai prostitutes could earn double what they get at home but warned that they might face “unfair working conditions.”

“Thai sex workers in a foreign country face risks, especially if they aren’t fluent in the language,” said Porntip Pakwai from the foundation, according to the Thai English-language daily Nation.

“Although prostitution is legal in Germany, only Germans are allowed to work in the industry,” she said, urging Thai workers to keep phone numbers such as that of the Thai embassy handy in case of emergencies.

It warned that “mafia-style” figures were often involved in the sex industry.

Women’s rights activists have forecast that around 40,000 prostitutes, mainly from eastern Europe, could swell the numbers already working in the sex trade in Germany during the World Cup.

LONDON (Reuters) – Around 100 animal rights campaigners stripped naked in central London on Sunday to protest the use of traditional bearskin hats worn by military guards on ceremonial parade.

Wearing nothing but bear masks and carrying placards saying “Bears Slaughtered for the Queen’s Guards — Indefensible”, the group gathered to call on the Queen and the Ministry of Defence to end use of the foot-high bear pelt hat known as a busby.

“The Ministry of Defence has blood on its hands while it allows bears to be slaughtered for ceremonial caps when beautiful synthetics are available”, says PETA’s Anita Singh.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said they were looking for alternatives to the Canadian bearskin used for the hats but that it was proving very difficult.

The ministry told the BBC three years ago that skins for the hats are a by-product of bear culls by the Canadian government.

Soldiers wearing the hats can be seen all year outside the Buckingham Palace, where the changing of the guard is a popular tourist attraction.

Wearing bearskins is thought to have been a tradition of some regiments since 1815 when the monarch granted the right to don the head gear in recognition of the defeat of Napoleon’s bearskin-wearing Imperial Guard at the Battle of Waterloo.

LONDON (AFP) – The world’s first “theme park” dedicated to sex and relationships is set to open in London’s bustling West End later this summer, its promoters said.

Amora: The Academy of Sex and Relationships, featuring “high-tech and interactive exhibits together with new media displays,” expects up to 600,000 visitors within its first year in the Trocadero Centre at Piccadilly Circus.

“Titillation is not the goal,” the promoters — who include sexologist and self-help book author Sarah Brewer — said in a statement, refuting comparisons with museums of erotica in Amsterdam, Barcelona and Paris.

“Our vision is to build a Kinsey-type institute in Europe for Generation X and Y to bring modern thinking around sexuality. … It truly is the world’s first theme park dedicated to sex and relationships.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) – A Canadian bank robber has discovered that stripping off his clothes in public was not the best way to escape the police.

The man disrobed after robbing a bank in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby on Wednesday, but then was unable to get taxi driver to give him a ride.

“The quick thinking cab driver assessed the fare’s unusual clothing, or lack of, and relied on his gut instincts and denied him access to his cab,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement.

Police said the suspect then attempted to flee the scene via a public transit station, but was spotted by officers and tackled.

FAJARA, Gambia (Reuters) – The young Gambian man in the yellow string vest calls out to a European woman walking along a wide golden beach shrouded in a fine sea mist.

“Hey nice lady! Nice lady, I want to talk to you,” he yells. She keeps walking.

“It’s nice to be nice,” he grumbles as he returns to his friends, his matted hair escaping from his cap.

The young man is one of Gambia’s “bumsters,” youths who offer to walk with tourists as they visit markets and beaches in this tiny West African nation and who fend off the attentions of rivals for a small fee.

What is left unsaid but understood is the possibility of a more intimate relationship, that could be a ticket, however temporary, out of poverty.

A week-long relationship could mean three hot meals a day for the Gambian man and a luxury hotel bed to sleep in, plus money for beer or cigarettes.

“I experienced one time when there was a young boy who was trying to get me to his house for ‘the real Gambian Experience’ as they call it,” said Wilma, 35, from the Netherlands.

“It was very hard to get rid of him. Yes, he was trying to sell himself,” said Wilma, who did not want to give her surname.

In many African countries, it is common to see older white men with young local black women, but Gambia, along with some resorts in neighboring Senegal, has earned a name as a place for older European women to meet young African men.

Now a British hotel manager is working to get the bumsters off the beaches and into legitimate jobs in order to improve Gambia’s image.

Precise numbers for the sex tourism industry are hard to get. A 2003 report by UNICEF said 60-70 percent of visitors to one of the main tourist areas near the capital Banjul were there for “sun relaxation and cheap sex.”

Flights from Britain regularly arrive with a high proportion of women traveling alone, often visiting younger Gambian men they met on previous visits.

A lasting relationship can mean continued financial support — invaluable in a country ranked as one of the 25 poorest in the world — and, if all goes well, a visa to live in Europe.

For European women, it is a chance to have a young and potentially attractive holiday companion.

But for those not interested in a liaison with a local man, being approached in this way can be unpleasant — and that was what spurred British hotelier Geri Mitchell to create jobs for the men annoying her guests.

Mitchell, 52, who manages The Safari Garden Hotel, a leafy oasis in the Fajara beach area near Banjul, selected a group of young men and sent them to train as tourist guides.

They now charge tourists a set rate of 30 Dalasi ($1) an hour or 50 Dalasi ($1.75) for a one-off trip. The hotel offers them a formal introduction to the guests.

The project, which built on a previous government initiative to train reformed bumsters as guides, has provided much needed financial relief to Lamine Bojang, a guide in his mid-twenties.

Bojang’s father died when he was young and so he is the family’s chief earner, and has to pay his siblings’ school fees.

“In my family, I play a big role,” he said.

Before becoming guides, Bojang and his friends used to collect firewood in the forest and sell it to make ends meet.

Now, they say, they are able to make a basic living and they have earned the respect of the hotel and its guests.

Part of the guides’ training involves learning how to recognize and report sex tourism involving an underage person.

The majority of prostitutes in the tourist area near Banjul where the guides work, are underage, with some as young as 12, according to the UNICEF report.

The U.N. agency has also said it is concerned the former British colony is increasingly becoming a destination for sex tourists as countries in southeast Asia take steps to shake off their image as havens for pedophiles.

Mitchell said the tourist guides also help monitor sex tourism.

“That’s a message that we really want to get out to sex tourists: don’t come, because everybody is out there and taking responsibility for what’s going on,” she said.

Rachel, 25, traveled alone from Britain to Gambia for a holiday, and praised efforts to deal with the bumsters.

“I just think the worst thing about the Gambia is that you can’t step outside of your hotel for a minute without being hassled. I think the Gambia would be a much better place without that. I think official tour guides are probably the best way of doing that,” she said.

LARNACA, Cyprus (Reuters) – Costas Kyriakou is promising Cypriot voters Utopia and that means sex.

A colorful candidate among a sea of suited businessmen and lawyers, Kyriakou says he is offering voters an alternative in the island’s May 21 parliamentary elections.

“My new order will give people … lots of love for all,” he says.

His nickname, “Utopos,” combines two Greek words which coined the term “Utopia,” meaning “No Place.”

A strapping man with piercing blue eyes, he draws on ideas from Plato and Christian apocalyptic scriptures for his ideal city-state where people live in communes and share everything.

But central to his Utopia is sex, a campaign pledge which draws guffaws of disbelief from deeply conservative Cypriots.

“I propose a regime of free love,” he declares.

“The men will see it as a system of free love, the women as a matriarchy … they will be able to carry the sperm of the most handsome men, and give the child her name.”

Utopos, an independent candidate for the western region of Paphos, has hit the campaign trail running. Literally.

Sporting a black bandana, jeans and sandals, he has crossed most Cypriot towns on foot, chatting with locals and handing out his pamphlets.

Utopos, 48, quit philosophy school in his third year and is now a farmer. “I knew more than they did. I was against others trying to stuff my head with ideas.”

It is his second run for parliament, which he sees as a stepping stone to the presidency.

He ran in the presidential election of 2003, where he won 0.44 percent of the vote, the highest figure among a smattering of fringe non-party candidates.

Utopos disputes this. “I received 73 percent,” he said.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – King Abdullah has told Saudi editors to stop publishing pictures of women as they could make young men go astray, newspapers reported Tuesday.

The king’s directive, made in a meeting with local editors, caused surprise as the monarch has been regarded a quiet reformer since he took office in the ultra-conservative country last August.

In recent months, newspapers have published pictures of women — always wearing the traditional Muslim headscarf — to illustrate stories with increasing regularity. Usually the stories have had to do with women’s issues. The papers have also started publishing a range of views on causes that are not generally accepted in Saudi Arabia — such as women having the right to drive and vote.

The king told editors on Monday night that publishing a woman’s picture for the world to see was inappropriate.

“One must think, do they want their daughter, their sister, or their wife to appear in this way. Of course, no one would accept this,” the newspaper Okaz quoted Abdullah as saying.

“The youth are driven by emotion … and sometimes they can be lead astray. So, please, try to cut down on this,” he said.

Although the king has broached topics — such as women eventually acquiring driving licenses — that were previously seen as nonstarters, his instruction to editors indicates that Islamic conservatives remain a powerful force in the kingdom and brake on reform.

The country adheres to a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Women are not allowed to vote and stand in municipal elections — the only type of election permitted in the kingdom.

The king also called on editors to stop printing stories that portray the country in a negative light.

“Don’t write anything that can be harmful to the country. Some reporters, they want to stand out and they end up going too far and this should not be allowed to happen,” Abdullah said according to Okaz.

The king added that newspapers should ignore the foreign press, especially when what it publishes is “against Islam or against Arabs.”

All media in Saudi Arabia are either state owned or state guided.

RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia has postponed plans to replace male sales assistants in lingerie shops, saying it wants to give outlets more time to prepare for the move which has irritated the influential religious circles.

The government, which wants more women to work as part of its efforts to reduce reliance on foreign labor, took the decision last June and businesses were given a year to prepare for implementation.

“Based on pleas by shop owners … that they were unable to comply with the deadline, the ministry’s decision is postponed until all the required preparations are finalized,” state news agency SPA quoted the Labor Ministry as saying.

While women in Saudi Arabia are forbidden from mixing with men outside their immediate family in public, they have little alternative to buying their most intimate items of clothing from men.

Many clerics and Islamists in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam which imposes a strict version of Sunni Islam, have opposed the idea as the start of reform process promoted by King Abdullah that they fear will liberalize the stringent system.

A Western diplomat said the move had irritated some of the most influential clerics in kingdom, where women are not allowed to drive and face employment restrictions because of the need to segregate sexes.

“The ministry may very well be honest in its argument (for the postponement). But the facts hint at a setback for the ministry future efforts in integrating Saudi women in the job life,” the diplomat said.

Labor Minister Ghazi Algosaibi, who is despised by hardline Islamists as a liberal reformer, said plans to allow women to work in other sectors would go ahead, citing a group of government-backed clerics who have approved the reforms.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – During the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the proportion of teenagers and young adults engaging in oral sex and, less commonly, having anal intercourse, according to data from STD clinics in Baltimore, Maryland.

The finding is not all that surprising, Dr. Emily Erbelding from Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore told Reuters Health.

She explained that “a few national surveys conducted recently have suggested that oral sex may be a behavior that teenagers are increasingly participating in. For example, in the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, most teenagers reported having oral sex and many had not had intercourse.”

She presented the current study findings Tuesday in Jacksonville, Florida at the 2006 National STD Prevention Conference sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In examining the 1994 medical records of 2,598 12- to 25-year olds, and the 2004 medical records of 6,438 subjects of the same age, attending STD clinics in Baltimore, Erbelding and colleagues found that over the 10-year period the prevalence of self-reported oral sex in the previous 90 days doubled among males (from 16 percent to 32 percent) and more than doubled among females (from 14 percent to 38 percent).

There was also an increase in rectal sex among young women, “but it was a lot less common than oral sex,” Erbelding said. Among young women, the prevalence of self-reported anal sex over the period rose from 3 percent to 5.5 percent.

There may be a general feeling out there that oral sex is safer than intercourse, Erbelding said, and it probably is for some diseases.

However, Erbelding emphasized that oral and anal sex may result in the transmission of STDs that will not be detected in urine tests. “A urine test is not going to pick up gonorrhea or Chlamydia that might have been acquired through rectal or oral sex, with gonorrhea being the more significant infection for oral sex.”

Therefore, “clinicians need to routinely ask their adolescent and young adult patients about the full range of sexual behaviors and educate young people in general about what the relative risks are for different types of STDs for various sexual behaviors,” Erbelding said.

VIENNA (Reuters) – A bikini-clad beauty queen protesting plans for a pulp mill in Uruguay pushed into a photo shoot of European and Latin American leaders at a summit on Friday and Venezuela’s president said he blew her a kiss.

Evangelina Carrozo, Greenpeace activist and carnival queen from the Argentine town of Gualeguaychu, evaded security as she stripped to a tasselled bikini and thigh-high leather boots carrying a sign protesting plans for the pulp mill.

“She was very pretty and I blew her a kiss,” said Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, who spoke to reporters in Vienna after security ejected Carrozo from the room where the joint summit photo was taken.

“It was one of the best things that have happened at this summit,” said Chavez, a left-winger who has become an icon of the anti-globalisation movement but has been criticised by other Latin American leaders in Vienna for his confrontational style.

Argentina has called for Uruguay to drop plans for the $1.7 billion pulp project along the Uruguay river that borders both countries, saying it will cause pollution.

The mills are being built by Finland’s Metsa-Botnia and Spain’s Ence.

Chavez said: “I didn’t see anything about pulp, I was just looking at her.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A 23-year-old with a foot fetish has admitted he tried to kiss, fondle and lick the legs and toes of more than 70 women on the New York subway over the last three years, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

In a handwritten confession to police released by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Joseph Weir said his aim was “to make them laugh and smile and open to talk to me.”

Weir, who was arrested late last week after attacking a woman on a subway in lower Manhattan, is charged with forcible touching, sex abuse and unlawful imprisonment — the latter charge referring to his habit of grabbing his victims’ legs and not letting go.

He faces up to a year in jail if convicted and has been released on $6,000 bail until a court hearing on June 26.

In a rambling confession peppered with grammatical errors, Weir, who lives in Brooklyn, detailed how he accosted the women while riding the subways between Manhattan and the borough of Queens.

“I get on my knees, bow, grab their feet, kiss them. I grab their hand and tell them ‘You’re so beautiful. I’m not worthy,’” he wrote. “I do not give me real name. If they ask I will tell them my name is Anthony, Jason or Careem.”

Weir said his motivation was to get to know the women, but he recalled that often they would move away when he tried to “taste and touch them.”

“Some women had kick(ed) me and screamed,” he wrote. “I’ve done this to about 70 women, mostly black.”

Prosecutors said dozens of women had started to come forward to identify Weir, who told detectives in his confession that he lived with his parents and two sisters.

“I am currently unemployed,” he wrote, adding that he had been fired from his previous job with a sightseeing company.

In his confession, Weir apologized to his victims, saying: “I don’t mean to hurt no body and I am sorry.”

SAN LUIS, Ariz. – Two police officers have been suspended for five days without pay for pulling a prank involving a sex toy, the mayor of San Luis said.

Mayor Nieves Riedel said the incident involved an officer who planted a phallic sex toy in a patrol car as a joke on another officer last week. One of the department’s sergeants learned about the incident and an investigation led to the discipline.

She said she was briefed by the city’s police chief, Heriberto Bejarano.

“Boys are going to be boys,” Riedel said, while adding that officers are supposed to set examples for the community and saying the incident was in “bad taste.”

“They didn’t stop and think. … You have got to be careful about the things you do because it reflects on you,” Riedel said.

Police spokesman Ernesto Lugo declined to discuss specifics, but said such cases are treated as sexual harassment by the department.

“We have a policy against sexual harassment, against playing with stuff like that in the workplace,” Lugo said.

TOKYO (Reuters) – How about a little relaxation with your robbery?

A burglar gave a 35-year-old woman a shoulder massage for several hours after breaking into her apartment in central Tokyo and tying her up, police were quoted as saying Friday.

He stole 210,000 yen ($1,900) in cash and her bank cash card, though he later mailed the card to her as she requested after withdrawing 980,000 yen from her account, Kyodo news agency said.

It said Lee Jin-se, 29, a South Korean, admitted the burglary and told police he lingered in the woman’s apartment and gave her the massage “to relax her.”

Police believe Lee waited there until business hours began for bank cash machines, virtually none of which operate around-the-clock in Japan, Kyodo said.

A police spokesman confirmed the robbery but declined to comment on the reported massage. He said the woman did not appear to have been physically assaulted.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Around the world, middle-aged and elderly men tend to be more satisfied with their sex lives than women in the same age group, a survey released on Wednesday said.

Substantial majorities of people who are married or who have a partner remain sexually active throughout the second half of their lives, according to a survey of 27,500 people aged 40 to 80 in 29 countries.

“There was very little effect of age on sexual well-being,” though other factors such as health problems or depression had a substantial impact, said lead researcher Edward Laumann of the University of Chicago in a telephone interview.

The survey published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior looked at how they viewed their sex lives, their health, and their happiness.

It found that a greater proportion of people in Europe, North America, and Australia, where men and women have more or less equal relations, enjoyed sex physically and emotionally, Laumann said.

A smaller percentage of people reported satisfying sex lives in male-dominated cultures in poorer countries, the research showed.

But the gender gap persisted around the world.

“There’s a systematic disparity between men and women, where men are on the average substantially — or about 10 points — higher in their levels of satisfaction as women in that country,” he said.

Most of those surveyed at random were married, though there was an obvious bias toward participants who were willing to talk about sex, and toward urban populations in less-developed nations.

“Pleasure is not part of the story” in sexually conservative cultures in the Far East — China, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, Laumann said. “Procreation is the rationale for sex. Many women … characterize sex as dirty, as a duty, something they endure” — and often stop having it after age 50.

But roughly two-thirds of adults in Western nations reported their sex lives were very to extremely satisfying — though some countries appeared happier than others.

Roughly four out of five middle-aged to older Austrians, for instance, rated their sex lives highly, while considerably fewer adults in France and Sweden shared that sentiment.

In the United States, about three-quarters of men and two-thirds of women reported they were very satisfied with the physical and emotional aspects of their sex lives.

In Japan, by contrast, just 18 percent of the men and 10 percent of the women answered positively about their sex lives. And in Taiwan, only 7 percent of the women said sex was very important in their lives.

Satisfying sex is not the same as a satisfying sexual relationship, Laumann said the survey showed.

“People who are dating have higher levels of sexual satisfaction than (married) couples … but when they think the relationship is temporary, they’re not going to feel as positive about sex,” he said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A former Walt Disney World dancer who used to dress up as Cinderella and Snow White was named Playboy magazine’s Playmate of the Year on Thursday.

Kara Monaco, 23, an aspiring actress from Lakeland, Florida, received a check for $100,000, a car and a sports motorbike from Playboy Enterprises Inc., company founder Hugh Hefner announced at the Playboy Mansion.

Monaco, a blonde, hopes to leverage her new role to boost her modeling and acting career.

She was Miss June in 2005.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A brothel has become the first in Berlin to offer special deals for virgins with prostitutes trained in the delicate art of catering for customers who have never had sex, a German newspaper reported Friday.

The brothel in the red light area of the Kreuzberg district of the city charges 60 euros for a half an hour of sex and works within the laws of Germany where prostitution is legal.

“These are men who either never had sex before or have never been in a brothel before,” the brothel’s operator was quoted as saying in Berlin’s B.Z. tabloid.

“It’s the first house of love in Berlin that specializes in taking care of beginners,” wrote the daily on its front page.

Prostitutes are given “sensitivity training” for first-time clients, who the brothel operator said are not necessarily young but often 40 or older: “They need to be aware of how much courage it takes to go to a brothel the first time.”

MANILA (Reuters) – Burps, slurps and thirsty cries echoed around the Philippine capital on Thursday as 3,738 mothers gathered to break the world breastfeeding record.

The large number of tired moms was a coup for organisers, trying to promote breastfeeding in a country where many poor families believe that expensive powdered milk is more nutritious.

Around 16,000 children die every year in the Philippines because their milk formula is mixed with dirty water or the wrong amount of powder, according to the World Health Organisation.

Only 16 percent of Filipino mothers breastfeed their children for the first six months of their lives, local health authorities say.

The previous record for the largest number of women simultaneously breastfeeding was 1,135 in the Californian city of Berkeley in 2002.

YUBA CITY, Calif. – A taxpayer advocate has complained to Sutter County supervisors that metal detectors at county buildings are so sensitive they are being set off by underwire bras.

Sutter County Taxpayers Association member Roberta Fletcher said the male security guard seemed to enjoy waving the handheld metal detector over her chest.

“It is, at a minimum, for a woman, embarrassing. And at a maximum, it is sexual harassment to hold your arms outstretched while a male officer waves a wand in front of your breasts,” Fletcher told supervisors at their meeting Tuesday.

Sheriff Jim Denney said courthouse guards work for the court system, not the sheriff’s department, but defended use of the metal detectors.

“That’s the nature of the business — to maintain security,” Denney told Fletcher. “I’m not going to answer any more absurd questions.”

Fletcher also had little sympathy from board Chairman Larry Munger and other supervisors.

“I don’t think it’s harassment; it’s protection,” Munger said.

“Men just don’t get it,” Fletcher told the supervisors.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An executive at a heart disease charitable foundation who embezzled close to a quarter of a million dollars over two years to pay a dominatrix to beat him was sentenced Tuesday to two to six years in prison.

Abraham Alexander, an accounts payable executive at the Manhattan Cardiovascular Research Foundation, admitted to stealing $237,162 and spending most of it on services provided by a Columbus, Ohio-based dominatrix called Lady Sage.

Manhattan prosecutors said Alexander, a Singapore-born citizen of India, had forged or altered checks payable to himself, to two credit card companies and to an online-based dominatrix company called Through the Looking Glass.

Alexander, 45, bought airline tickets for trips between New York and Ohio, paid for car rentals in Ohio and charged purchases at stores called Wicked Naughty Accessories and Leather Creations and at Victoria’s Secret, prosecutors said.

In jail since his arrest in November, Alexander pleaded guilty to grand larceny in Manhattan Supreme Court in March.

His wife, who is raising their two daughters in their Long Island home, filed for divorce after Alexander was arrested.

Judge Renee White told Alexander that if he came up with more than half of the $237,162 he stole, she would shorten his prison term to one to three years. He had faced up to 15 years in prison had he been convicted at trial.

Lady Sage’s Web site features dozens of photographs of the stern, unsmiling dominatrix carrying a whip. She is seen in some pictures wearing a feathered boa over leather or with a metal-studded thong bikini in high-heeled boots.

She lists her services at $250 for the first hour and $200 for each additional hour. An eight-hour session costs $1,500 and 12 hours runs clients $2,000. Lady Sage also commands $1,000 a day in travel expenses if she has to beat a customer on his own turf.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – About three-fourths of middle-aged and older women are sexually active and two-thirds of them are at least somewhat satisfied, according to a new study. Black women are more satisfied with their sex lives than their white counterparts.

Dr. Ilana B. Addis of the University of Arizona in Tucson and colleagues also found in their survey of just over 2,000 women aged 40 to 69 that better mental health was associated with more sexual satisfaction, while heavier women were less likely to be sexually satisfied.

There has been little research on the sex lives of middle aged and older women, in particular on sexual dysfunction among women in this age group, Addis and her colleagues write in the April issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

To investigate, they analyzed results from 2,109 women participating in a study of incontinence, all of whom were long-term members of California’s Kaiser Permanente health plan. The women had completed questionnaires on how frequently they had sex, their satisfaction with their sex lives, and any sexual problems.

Seventy-one percent of the women reported having sex in the past year, while 37% had sex monthly or less often and 33% had sex weekly or more frequently. One-third of sexually active women reported having some type of sexual dysfunction, including lack of interest in sex, inability to relax and enjoy sex, or difficulty in becoming aroused or having an orgasm.

Twenty-four percent of the sexually active women said sexual dysfunction was “somewhat of a problem” or “very much of a problem.”

Richer or more highly educated women had more sex, the researchers found, while moderate alcohol consumption, lower body mass index and better health also were tied to more frequent sexual activity. Younger women and those in a significant relationship were also more likely to have sex more frequently.

African-American women were 32% less likely than whites to report being dissatisfied with their sex lives. The researchers also identified a link between better mental health and more sexual satisfaction, and higher body mass index and less satisfaction.

In an editorial accompanying the study, Dr. Brenda S. Gierhart of the US Food and Drug Administration in Silver Spring points out that defining sexual dysfunction in women can be extremely difficult. “The reader is advised to approach all female sexual dysfunction prevalence studies with caution until researchers accept a standard definition,” she writes.

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Heather Veitch, a tall, shapely blonde, made a career out of baring it all at strip clubs. Now when she walks in a club, it is just to deliver her naked truth about God.

“If you are a Christian, see us in ACTION,” she says in a faith-based tease on her website, www.JCsgirls.com, geared toward women in the sex industry as well as men who turn to it.

Last month she was introduced on evangelist Pat Robertson’s “The 700 Club” as a “holy hottie.”

At 32, Veitch still has a girlish strain to her voice, but she has done a fair amount of living, surviving a failed, turbulent marriage; having a child at 18; spending five years in the trenches as a stripper; making four appearances in “soft porn” and fetish movies; and having a second daughter with her current husband, who has brain cancer.

For three years, she has been a preacher for the non-denominational Christian church JC Girls Girls Girls. The “JC” stands for Jesus Christ, and the “Girls” for the three women who are its main evangelists: Veitch, Lori Albee — also a former stripper — and Tanya Huerter, a schoolteacher.

Their church in Riverside, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) from Los Angeles, is a sedate setup compared with the elaborate services they hold in Las Vegas and their pink-and-glossy website. And they are generating a flock: They now have about 2,100 members.

It is all not-for-profit, the women say.

“If people want to donate, there’s no problem, and it goes to pay the rent, maintain the church,” Veitch says.

Leaders of the California Southern Baptist Convention — with which JC’s Girls Girls Girls’ home church is associated — support the ministry but admit that the website may not appeal to church members.

“I think many Southern Baptists might feel uncomfortable with that look,” spokesman Terry Barone told local media.

Though in Riverside she reads psalms and sings Christian songs to guitar music, Heather’s real mission comes once a month, when she sets out with volunteers and visits the clubs.

“About three years ago now, I found out that a girlfriend of mine that I worked with had died, and she died of alcoholism. When I found out, I was living a life, like a good Christian life. I didn’t talk to anybody from my past, I didn’t know anybody from my past anymore, and when I found that out, it really broke my heart that my friends were dying,” Veitch says.

“They weren’t just girls that were stripping and not doing good. No, they were actually dying. And I knew that I needed to go back and tell those girls that there was another way, and there’s God and God cares about them. So even if they don’t choose another way, … they know that they can call upon God for help.”

Now well known from her media appearances, Veitch is often approached by the strippers, who ask her for advice or tell her their troubles.

“A lot of people think we are trying to get them out of the industry or we’re trying to help them change, but really we’re trying to have them have a relationship with God.

“We want her to change her heart, and then if she changes her life because of that, then great, but it is not a requirement,” she says. “We totally go by the Bible, like, we believe that the Bible is 100 percent truth.”

“My goal is that I know that never again will a stripper — or anybody — feel like God is not for them. That’s my goal,” Veitch says, but she adds: “I would love them not to dance, because I know it is damaging and it is hard.”