LOS ANGELES – Several city officials on Tuesday sharply criticized a planned bikini contest to raise money for spaying pets, saying the “Hooters for Neuters” event was degrading to women.

Hosted by the Hooters restaurant chain, the July 13 fundraiser will donate money to the spay and neuter programs at Los Angeles Animal Services.

“Are we going backward here?” said City Controller Laura Chick. “We are a city with all kinds of progressive programs that empower women and end discrimination in the workplace, and now we’re being connected with a Hooters bikini contest. It isn’t right.”

Councilwoman Jan Perry said the department’s attempt to be creative in telling pet owners to sterilize their animals “crosses the line.”

“I was surprised and amazed with the photograph on the flier, and I don’t think it projects a good image for the city of Los Angeles,” Perry said.

Animal Services Director Ed Boks apologized for making people upset, but said the “Charity Benefit Bikini Contest” would go on as scheduled.

“These people have gone out of their way in helping us, and I would hate to deny these businesses from helping to save the lives of animals in our shelters,” Boks said.

Boks promised a more rigorous vetting process for future fundraisers.

The fundraiser is not city-sponsored, but a promoting flier is posted on the Animal Services Web site.

The original flier showed a bikini-clad woman, but the latest version shows a dog wearing a T-shirt that says “Hooters for Neuters.”

Boks said that the owners of Hooters approached him about the fundraiser a month ago. He said the ads were made without consulting the department.

“When somebody steps up and says they want to help your agency raise money, your inclination is to say `Yes,’” Boks said. “But, we probably won’t be involved in any future bikini contests.”

BEIJING (Reuters) – The case of a poor mother from the Chinese countryside hired to breastfeed an affluent city-dweller’s baby has stoked controversy over the ethics of the ancient practice of wet nursing.

Professional wet nurses have appeared in major cities across China, the Beijing News reported Wednesday, fueled by rising incomes and a demand for healthy milk.

China has been dogged by a number of health scares regarding bogus baby milk formula. In 2004, at least 13 babies died from malnutrition in the country’s impoverished eastern province of Anhui after being fed fake baby milk.

But the right of a woman to sell her breast milk, an occupation in China, that like the West, disappeared decades ago, has sparked heated debate, the Beijing News said.

Yue Jiangmei, a 22-year-old mother from China’s northern Hebei province, left her baby with a relative to work in Wenzhou, a city in the booming eastern province of Zhejiang, the Beijing News said.

“My daughter was 7 months old and able to be nourished with baby food and milk powder,” the paper quoted Yue as saying.

She responded to an advertisement offering five times her salary, or about 4,000 yuan ($500) a month, to work as a wet nurse for a Wenzhou family.

“The company trained her for a week, which included knowledge of breast care, baby massage exercises, post-pregnancy exercises…” the paper quoted Hu Wei, a manager at the company, as saying.

“She was also taught Tang dynasty poems and lullabies,” Hu said.

Yue’s case has fired debate, the paper said, on whether wet-nursing can be regarded as “ethical work.”

“Some people say … children of rich families have breast milk while cash buys the rights of the mother’s own child to enjoy her mother’s milk.”

Hu thought the market potential for wet nurses huge.

“The affluent level of society has the purchasing power, while the high wages will attract many women,” Hu said, adding that professionals were appearing in major cities across China.

“Given the market has this demand, this shows that there is value and reason in it.”

BATON ROUGE, La. – An LSU student has learned the cost of stripping naked and running across the field in Tiger Stadium during a football game: $1,624.75.

That’s what Bretton Somers was ordered to pay Monday after accepting a plea deal that allowed him to escape a felony rap.

Instead of having to face the charge of obscenity, Somers pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts of disturbing the peace, resisting an officer and criminal trespass. State District Judge Richard Anderson ordered Somers to pay a $500 fine, $500 to the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney’s Office, $300 to the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office, $200 to the LSU Police Department and $124.75 in court costs.

Anderson also forbid Somers from attending any sporting events at LSU while on probation for a year.

Somers, 33, and his attorney Alex St. Amant declined comment after the hearing.

Prosecutor Tracey Barbera said Somers’ actions could not go unpunished.

“The important thing is that he accepted responsibility and he’s facing consequences for his actions,” Barbera said. “This kind of behavior will not be tolerated.”

According to a sheriff’s office affidavit, Somers ran onto the LSU field on Sept. 4, 2004 — a rainy night in Tiger Stadium where thousands of fans gathered for a football game against Oregon State.

Deputies said Somers was extremely intoxicated but Barbera said that does not excuse his actions. The affidavit said that Somers was already naked when he got onto the field in the northwest end of the football field. He then ran toward the middle of the football field and eluded several deputies and officers from LSU and Louisiana State Police.

Police estimated between 80,000 and 90,000 people were in the stadium when Somers ran across the field.

An obscenity charge carries a minimum sentence of six months in jail. First offenders face up to three years and a fine of up to $2,500.

TAIPEI (AFP) – Members of a Taiwanese conservation group will stage a nude protest next week in the hope of pressuring the government to cease construction work on a nuclear power station, its spokesman said.

“We demand the government stop building the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant to preserve the Fulung beach,” said Ho Tsung-hsun, secretary general of the Taiwan Enviromental Protection Union.

The protest, titled “Rather Nude than Nuke,” is set to take place Monday at Funlung beach in northern Keelung county where the plant is under construction.

Ho said 25 people, including 22 men and three women, had signed up for the event to form the English words “No Nuke” with their bodies.

Construction of the island’s fourth nuclear plant has been mired in controversy due to strong opposition from environmentalists and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) before it took government in 2000.

Abolishing the project was one of President Chen Shui-bian’s major policy platforms during his campaign for the March 2000 presidential election, which he won.

In October 2000, the DPP scrapped the partly built 5.6-billion US dollar plant without consulting parliament, as required by Taiwan’s constitution, plunging the island into months of political turmoil.

The government reinstated the project in February 2001, having added billions of dollars to its cost from delay compensation and extra expense.

The plant is scheduled to be completed in five or six years with its two reactors carrying a combined capacity of 2,770 megawatts.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A former handyman has won more than $400,000 in a lawsuit over a penile implant that gave him a 10-year erection.

Charles “Chick” Lennon, 68, received the steel and plastic implant in 1996, about two years before Viagra went on the market. The Dura-II is designed to allow impotent men to position the penis upward for sex, then lower it.

But Lennon could not position his penis downward. He said he could no longer hug people, ride a bike, swim or wear bathing trunks because of the pain and embarrassment. He has become a recluse and is uncomfortable being around his grandchildren, his lawyer said.

In 2004, a jury awarded him $750,000. A judge called that excessive and reduced it to $400,000. On Friday, the Rhode Island Supreme Court affirmed that award in a ruling that turned on a procedural matter.

“I don’t know any man who for any amount of money would want to trade and take my client’s life,” said Jules D’Alessandro, Lennon’s attorney. “He’s not a whole person.”

A lawyer representing both Dura-II manufacturer Dacomed Corp. and the company’s insurer declined to comment. Dacomed maintained that nothing was wrong with the implant.

The implant consists of a series of plastic plates strung together with steel surgical wire, almost like a roll of wrapped coins. Springs press against the plates, creating enough surface tension to simulate an erection, D’Alessandro said.

Lennon cannot get the implant removed because of health problems, including open-heart surgery, his lawyer said. Impotence drugs could not help Lennon even if he were able to have the device taken out, because tissue had be to removed for it to be implanted.

Dacomed was later acquired by a California company whose sales dropped when Viagra was introduced on the market. The company filed for bankruptcy the following year.

TOKYO (Reuters) – More sex.

That’s what one expert says is needed to solve Japan’s baby shortage.

“Japanese people simply aren’t having sex,” Dr. Kunio Kitamura, director of the Japan Family Planning Association, was quoted as saying by the Japan Times, an English language daily.

An association survey of 936 people between the ages of 16 and 49 showed 31 percent had not had sex for more than a month “for no particular reason” — a condition known as “sexless.”

“As much as subsidies and welfare programmes are important, sexlessness is also a critical issue in this problem.”

Japan’s fertility rate — the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime — fell to an all-time low of 1.25 last year. Demographers say a rate of 2.1 is needed to keep a population from declining.

Japan came last among 41 nations in a poll last year by condom manufacturer Durex, with lovers there having sex just 45 times a year compared to a global average of 103 times a year.

Kitamura said that while many men in workaholic Japan are simply too “stressed out” from their jobs to have enough energy for sex, many other couples simply do not have sex regularly.

In the association’s survey, 44 percent of the people who said they weren’t having much sex felt that having a relationship with the opposite sex was “very tiresome” or “tiresome.”

Kitamura’s advice? Couples should talk to each other.

“Ultimately, it’s these interactions with the opposite sex that bring out the inevitable animal instinct in us — to reproduce,” he said.

OWATONNA, Minn. – A sheriff’s deputy is accused of exposing himself to a woman during a birthday party at a local bar.

Deputy Scott Ringhofer is charged in Steele County District Court with fifth-degree sexual misconduct and indecent exposure related to the May 4 incident.

According to a criminal complaint, a woman sitting at a table with Ringhofer at the party said Ringhofer exposed himself after she dared him in jest. Another deputy who was sitting at the same table confirmed the details of the complaint, according to court records.

Ringhofer, who was placed on paid administrative leave, was slated to appear in court Aug. 18.

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian hospitals are bracing for a baby boom in July as expectant mothers try to delay imminent births to take advantage of a new welfare payment, researchers said Monday.

From July 1, a baby bonus paid to the parents for every newborn child will increase by A$1,000 ($740) to A$4,000.

Economists said that after the baby bonus was introduced in July 2004 about 700 births were delayed by a week to take advantage of the new payment.

Melbourne Business School economist Professor Joshua Gans and Australian National University colleague Andrew Leigh said that around 300 births were moved by more than two weeks.

Most of those births involved caesarean sections or induced deliveries, they said.

In a bid to overcome Australia’s low fertility rate and aging population, Prime Minister John Howard’s conservative government has urged couples to have more children.

Treasurer Peter Costello suggested two years ago that Australian couples should have “one for mum, one for dad and one for the country.”

Getting paid to make babies, think it’s time for me to move..:)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – For some individuals prone to migraine, this susceptibility may not necessarily interfere with their sex life and may in fact improve their libido, according to research published in the journal Headache.

“The goal of this research was to understand migraine better,” lead author Dr. Timothy T. Houle told Reuters Health. “By better understanding how the brain is altered with this syndrome, we can develop better drugs in the future.”

“Migraines have other commonly associated symptoms, such as sleep abnormalities and a higher risk of depression. Altered sex drive may be another quirk of being a migraine,” he added.

Although it is commonly believed that sex drive is reduced by headaches, and sexual intercourse can cause specific types of headaches, Houle and his associates note, other research has suggested that sexual intercourse may alleviate the pain of migraine in some patients.

Houle, from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and his associates tested the theory that migraine and sexual desire may both be associated with serotonin. Evidence for this is the reduced libido that often accompanies depression treatment with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, which increases brain levels of serotonin, whereas migraine is associated with reduced serotonin levels.

To investigate this complex relationship, Houle, and his associates recruited 59 adults who had at least 10 headaches annually. Twenty-three subjects (7 men and 16 women) were classified as having migraine, and 36 (18 men and 18 women) as having tension-type headache.

The subjects completed the self-administered Sexual Desire Inventory (SDI), which includes nine items measuring dyadic desire and five measuring solitary sexual desire. “It allowed the subjects to rate how much they think about sex and how much they desire sex,” Houle told Reuters Health.

“Men reported about 24-percent higher sex drive than did women,” the researcher said, “and the difference between migraine and tension-type headache was almost equivalent — 20 percent.” Thus, women with migraines reported about the same relative levels of sex drive as men with tension type headaches.

On the nine-point scale the subjects specifically rated their own sexual desire compared with that of others of the same age and sex. The migraine patients reported the highest level (5.0), which is “above the expected median (4.0) on this item,” Houle and his colleagues note. Those with tension-type headaches gave themselves an average rating of 3.7 for this item.

What was even more interesting, Houle said, was that the migraine patients were aware that they rated their sexual desire higher than that of other patients in the group.

However, he added that “there was no evidence that their sexual desire was beyond that of high normal or that they are hypersexual.”

“It can now be hypothesized that a serotonergic link may be implicated in both migraine headaches and sexual desire,” the researchers conclude. Also, serotonin receptors also appear to be involved in several aspects of sexual functioning.

On the other hand, they point out that there are multiple classes and subtypes of serotonin receptors. Therefore, they conclude that “any neurochemical mechanism(s) that might link serotonin and migraine would likely be sophisticated and multifactorial.”

Houle concluded: “Our research is now focused on mathematical modeling to predict migraine activity, to see if we can figure out for any individual patient when they are at increased risk of an attack so it can be aborted.”

BERLIN (AFP) – Sex workers in Berlin have reportedly gone into extra time at the World Cup and are doing double shifts to cash in.

“Berlin’s hookers are groaning – all brothels are creaking at the seams,” mass daily Bild reported.

“In some establishments the girls already have to put in double shifts owing to the World Cup,” the paper added, saying clients were virtually queuing up to get in to the host nation’s ‘Freudenhauser’ (literally, joy houses).

One taxi driver was quoted as saying he had taken a fare from four would-be customers of some of the capital’s estimated 8,000 prostitutes.

“But they were turned away. The places are too full.”

German police said last week there were no signs of forced prostitution being on the rise.

Be that as it may, with around a million fans having come over for the month-long football showpiece and with prostitution legal in Germany, supply is clearly meeting demand.

Bild quoted Josephine Conte of Berlin’s upmarket Bel Ami establishment, one of 400 “joy houses” in the city, as saying demand had gone through the roof and that her employees were having to put in “special shifts.”

She explained: “We have VIP reservations right through to the end of the tournament. Sometimes we don’t know where to put all the men!”

According to ‘Joy’, a 21-year-old woman doing the morning shift with seven colleagues, “the guys come for a massage as they want to relax before the game.”

But “the guests must be patient with waiting times of up to two hours,” according to Conte.

It’s hard work, says another ‘Joy,’ a blonde aged 23 who says she sometimes puts in a 16-hour day, though some of that is on call after a regular shift.

“We are earning as much much in one day as we normally would in a week.

“But after the World Cup I’ll need a holiday.”

International organisations and foreign governments warned in the run-up to the tournament that women were being forced to travel to Germany for the World Cup to serve as prostitutes for an army of football fans and that up to 40,000 women could be abused in this way.

Last Friday, on the opening day of the tournament, the International Organization for Migration kicked off a campaign in Geneva aimed at raising awareness of the risk of human trafficking and forced prostitution on the sidelines of the tournament.

Germany legalised prostitution in 2002 meaning that brothels can advertise their services openly, which many are doing. Procuring, however, remains illegal.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – A marriage-minded man ran naked through his neighborhood, trying to show his hesitant girlfriend that taking risks is important. He got more than he bargained for when he ended up being chased and shot at.

“Just when you thought you had heard everything,” Ann Arbor police Detective Sgt. Jim Stephenson told The Ann Arbor News.

The couple were discussing marriage early Wednesday when the woman said she wasn’t sure if she was ready, according to Ann Arbor police reports. The man responded that taking risks is an important part of life and, to prove his point, jumped out of a first-floor window and ran naked across the street.

Before he could return, he spotted a couple walking and hid in some bushes to avoid them. A 28-year-old man noticed the bushes rustling and bare feet underneath, then drew a .40-caliber handgun and ordered the naked man out, police said.

The naked suitor ran away, but the armed man gave chase and threatened to shoot, police said. The gunman fired a shot and the naked man fell to the ground, suffering minor injuries.

A resident called police, who arrested the gunman on charges of aggravated assault and carrying a concealed weapon. He was taken to the Washtenaw County jail but released following further investigation, police Sgt. Patrick Hughes told The Associated Press.

The naked man was not arrested and didn’t want to pursue charges, Hughes said.

BEIJING (Reuters) – A Chinese TV presenter issued a public apology after posing topless with two other women in hospital advertisements for women’s health, the Beijing News said Tuesday.

Chen Dan, a presenter on Changsha TV’s “Women’s channel” in the southeastern province of Hunan, drew fire from Internet chat-rooms and station bosses after her “Clever Girls Love Themselves More” advertisement appeared at bus stops and on billboards in Hunan’s capital, Changsha.

Chen, who was suspended from presenting duties said it was a “public interest advertisement,” the Beijing News said.

“My intentions were good,” the paper quoted her as saying. “I hoped to draw people’s attention to women’s health, but because the format was inappropriate it caused a huge backlash. In future I will choose more suitable ways of publicizing women’s health.”

The advertisement provoked fierce debate online and in local media over the morality of using nudity to promote public interest causes, and whether the article was a commercial stunt for the women or Changsha’s Shangmei Gynecology Hospital.

“What a shame breasts have become the leading actor,” the official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.

“This is a serious attack on women,” fumed an online commentator. “It goes completely beyond the moral and aesthetic baseline.”

The “Clever Girls” advertisement furor followed a controversy over several actresses who posed nude in support of breast cancer prevention in a lifestyle magazine in October 2005.

SHERIDAN, Wyo. – A woman woke up over the weekend to find a man she didn’t know climbing into her bed, according to police.

Eva Olson, 40, said she felt her bed move and heard the man say he wanted to talk to her, according to police.

Olson didn’t know William O’Dell, 48, of Sheridan, but O’Dell allegedly told police he knew Olson because she was a bartender. He allegedly said he’d stopped by her house to visit.

Olson asked O’Dell to leave, then showed him out the door without incident.

Police said they found O’Dell at his home, smelling heavily of alcohol. He was jailed and charged with criminal entry.

CHANDLER, Ariz. – Police have arrested a mother and father and accused them of giving marijuana to their young sons — as a reward for good behavior.

Toni Lynn Carlson, 31, and Aaron Virgil Carlson, 23, were booked on suspicion of possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia, possessing marijuana for sale, contributing to the delinquency of minors and endangerment, police said Friday.

The couple were taken into custody Thursday night after detectives served a search warrant at their home and found a quarter-pound of marijuana.

Police said the boys — ages 12 and 11, and a 4-year-old girl — were in the care and custody of a family member.

The investigation began after authorities received tips from a neighbor about the possible usage and sale of drugs at the home, police said.

Detectives said they didn’t know about the family possibly smoking marijuana together until the parents and children were interviewed.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – A sheriff’s deputy who is accused of going topless at a campground has been fired and charged with indecent exposure and disorderly conduct.

Dawn Rene Roberson, 38, of Royal, was fired Wednesday after she turned herself in on the misdemeanor charges.

According to incident reports, a marine patrol deputy and a park ranger told a topless Roberson to cover up in separate encounters Sunday.

Later, authorities received a complaint that a woman without a top was in view of children.

One report said a grandmother complained that the topless woman became “loud and disorderly” after she told the woman to cover up. Another camper told authorities the woman became belligerent when confronted.

In both instances, the topless woman said she was a law officer, according to the reports.

The next day, one of the people who complained identified Roberson in a photo of members of the jail staff, officials said.

A July 18 court appearance was set for Roberson. She could face up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine on the exposure charge and up to 30 days in jail and a $100 fine on the disorderly conduct charge.

CHICAGO (AFP) – The T-shirt says it all: “95 percent of Americans like cereal; 57 percent like sex.”

A new restaurant chain is poised to capitalize on the most important meal of the day by offering consumers tantalizing combinations of their favorite cereals in trendy shops that scream fun.

Bright colors and pajama-clad servers greet customers who are offered their choice of name-brand hot and cold cereals and toppings that range from bananas and molasses to mini marshmallows and malted milk balls.

Tucked into kitschy cardboard boxes and coupled with an optional “sloop” spoon that acts as a straw, Cereality is also a chance to indulge the inner child on the go.

The aim is to create a “metabrand” that draws on the existing consumer loyalty to breakfast cereals and creates a unique experience, said co-founder David Roth over breakfast Monday at the flagship store in the heart of Chicago’s business district.

“The goal is to be ubiquitous in the culture where we’re showing up in all the places where people want cereal and being another option for people when they want to snack,” Roth said.

Cereality has recently partnered with Dodge to create roving vans — modeled on the ice cream-truck — which sell cereal, drinks and snacks at suburban soccer games, zoos, shopping centers and even night clubs.

It has also started a catering operation serving everything from office meetings, to wedding rehearsals to the after-party for the Broadway premier of Harry Connick Jr. in “The Pajama Game.”

Quick-serve restaurants are planned for hotels, airports, college campuses and storefronts across the United States as the company prepares to launch franchise operations after having generated two years of media buzz through three prototype locations and a savvy marketing campaign.

“We’re looking at 30 development deals with multiple units of 10 to 20 stores by the end of 2007,” Roth said, adding that Cereality expects to expand to Canada and Britain before considering other markets in Europe and Asia.

Roth, who spent years working as a brand development consultant, came up with the idea for Cereality during a meeting with a client in New York.

“He’s in a Brooks Brothers suite and snacking on Coco Puffs,” Roth said. “And he said look around, everyone’s doing it.”

Roth did some research and approached Rick Bacher, 38, an art director and designer who had done extensive work on branding.

Instead of trying to simply make cereal more portable, or to try to come up with their own cereal, Roth and Bacher decided to exploit the familiarity of existing brands in a new environment.

“People have very strong emotional connection to their cereal,” Roth said. “People will come in here and have their Lucky Charms even though it’s not what’s best for them — it says something about you what cereal you eat.”

While Roth focused on drawing in partners like oatmeal giant Quaker Foods and customers like Old Navy — which offered a million free breakfast bars to customers who showed up early for the biggest shopping day of the year — Bacher created the look that makes Cereality both hip and homey.

Comfy sofas, bar stools and farmhouse tables are used to create seating areas that look like living rooms, dining rooms and home-style kitchens. A sense of fun was created with snappy (and trademarked) slogans like Always Saturday Morning and the Moo Machine milk bar.

“The moos get fatter as you move from skim to whole” milk, Bacher explained as he pointed to the logos.

The T-shirts — or Cereali-Tees — worn by servers are also for sale with slogans like “United Flakes of America,” “Captain of Crunch” and “Go Ahead. Flake out.”

Early reviews have been good.

“I love cereal and I like to mix it up,” said Randy Alaniz, 28, a hog and cattle futures trader who regularly takes breaks from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to indulge in a four dollar carton of Captain Crunch and Reese’s Pieces.

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) – One less thing for Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo to worry about in the run-up to the World Cup — his supermodel girlfriend says she will never pose in the nude.

Raica Oliveira said in an interview published on Tuesday in the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo that she planned to marry and to have children, but had no timetable set.

Asked if there was any work she would not do, she said: “I could not pose nude. Nothing against those who do, but I never felt right about it. It’s not something that would make me proud.”

Raica, 22, spent Monday with Ronaldo at the Brazilian team’s hotel in Konigstein, Germany, before heading back across the Atlantic for modeling assignments in New York and Rio de Janeiro.

“Raica, the solution for Ronaldo,” Folha said, noting that she had helped him deal with his blistered feet. He has been recuperating from blisters on both feet but resumed training with the team on Tuesday, Brazil’s squad doctor Jose Luis Runco told reporters in Germany.

Brazil, the defending champion, plays Croatia in its first game next Tuesday in Berlin.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Beijing police have made their first ever raid on a male escort nightclub, the China Daily said Wednesday, part of a crack down on 46 bars and other places suspected of various vices.

“Police officers found 98 male escorts and dozens of women customers when they raided the nightclub in April,” the newspaper said in its online edition, quoting the Beijing Morning Post.

“To the astonishment of police officers, a man was performing a striptease on top of a table in front of some female audience.”

Most of the male escorts come from northeastern China and were in their early 20s, the newspaper said.

“Many of the female customers were off-duty escorts, some of the male escorts said. Businesswomen were also found mingling in the crowd, who, police believe, patronize the club quite frequently.”

Prostitution was virtually wiped out in the years after the Communist Party swept into power in 1949, but along with pornography and other perceived western vices has staged a comeback in the wake of reforms over the last three decades.

LONDON (Reuters) – Forget the quintessential image of the butler as the epitome of discreet decorum.

“Butlers in the Buff” has proved such a business success as half-naked waiters in Britain that the firm is now off round the world to market the ultimate “male order” service.

The company, whose waiters wear only a bow tie, collar, cuffs and a bottom-revealing apron, is the brainchild of former Royal Marine Jason Didcott who turned entrepreneur after serving in the Gulf and Bosnia.

Determined to find a tasteful alternative to strippers and pole dancers, he lays down strict rules — each waiter undergoes a scrupulous police check and drink-fuelled clients are firmly told to keep their hands to themselves.

“What we are looking for is James Bond in a butler outfit. We want them to be cheeky but clean,” he told Reuters.

“At the end of the party they can have their photo taken with the butler but that is as far as it goes. If they have too much wine and try to undo the apron, he says No Touching.”

“We want nice, charming, gentlemanly types. At the interview we just check their upper body. We take their bums on trust.”

The waiters readily admit to first night nerves — but they soon conquer them.

Butler Dan Atkins said: “I love the job. I couldn’t think of a better way to earn money. At first you’re nervous but you soon forget your bum is on display and you get on with serving drinks and mingling.”

Didcott, and his company partners Will Jones and Stacey Lynn, has 75 part-time butlers on his books to staff hen parties, corporate functions and the fast growing market of gay wedding receptions.

The butlers range from actors, dancers and students to personal trainers and even a hypnotherapist. “We are desperate to find more. We never have enough,” he said.

Didcott is now ready to expand the horizons of Butlers in the Buff.

“We have a business model we want to franchise out. We have had so many people passing through London who have rung us and said they would like to do it. I’m thinking of North America, Australia and South Africa as first stops.”

But Didcott, who when launching the firm did his first party for free as a half-naked butler, draws the line at any more parading of himself.

“At 37 I am over the hill in butler terms. My bottom retired three years ago.”

STUART, Fla. – A Martin County sheriff’s review board found just cause in the firing of a former deputy who was relieved of duty for using his patrol car’s dashboard-mounted camera to film bikini-clad girls at the beach.

Jack Munsey was fired Jan. 30 after an internal investigation found his behavior was not criminal but violated department policies. Munsey had sought reinstatement.

The panel took just four minutes Wednesday to determine his firing was justified.

The daylong hearing included testimony about two previous investigations involving Munsey, including one in 1997 when he used a department computer to view pornography on the Internet while on duty. He was suspended for a week. In 2004, he was suspended after he totaled a patrol car while speeding on his way to work.

Munsey’s attorney Larry Fagan called the videotaping a brief lapse in judgment that should not warrant termination.

“This is something that will follow him forever,” Fagan told the panel.

Munsey declined to comment after the hearing.

Sheriff Robert Crowder said Munsey likely will not lose his law enforcement certification that could get him a job elsewhere.

“He’s not a bad guy, but I think his judgment perhaps was flawed and maybe he’s learned from this, and maybe he’d be able to work somewhere where this wouldn’t be held over his head,” Crowder said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Former Playboy Playmate model, reality TV star and would-be oil heiress Anna Nicole Smith announced on her official Web site on Thursday that she is pregnant, but offered few other details.

Smith, 38, revealed the news in a brief home video clip in which she appears to be lounging on an inflatable raft in a backyard swimming pool, with two yapping poodles visible in the background.

“Hi, it’s me, Anna Nicole,” she says, smiling into the camera. “I’ve been hearing a lot of gossip in the papers … Is she pregnant? She’s pregnant by some guy? Well, let me stop all the rumors. Yes, I am pregnant.”

Smith goes on to say that she is “very, very happy about it” and that “everything’s going really, really good.”

But she never says when she’s expecting, nor offers any hint of the father’s identity.

The video was shot at a close camera angle that reveals little more than Smith’s face and shoulders, though she promises future updates that will “let you see me as I’m growing.”

The video was posted on Smith’s official Web site (http://www.annanicole.com) with a message promoting the footage as a first installment in what will become, starting next week, a subscriber-supported video diary.

Unconfirmed reports that Smith was pregnant began surfacing weeks ago on the Internet, gossip columns and supermarket tabloids, but her lawyer-spokesman Howard K. Stern had previously declined to confirm the stories.

Last month, Smith won a U.S. Supreme Court decision giving her another chance to collect millions of dollars left by her late Texas oil tycoon husband, J. Howard Marshall by allowing her to contest a probate court judgment in federal court.

The former Vicki Lynn Hogan from Mexia, Texas, she met Marshall at a Houston strip club and was 26 when she married the wheelchair-bound, 89-year-old billionaire in 1994.

His death after 14 months of marriage triggered a legal battle over his estate between Smith and his son, E. Pierce Marshall.

She has a son Daniel Smith, born in 1986 during her first marriage.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China will hand out relatively lenient punishment to poor first-time prostitutes in the country’s booming east under updated laws on sex for sale, state media reported on Friday.

The new laws would apply in Jiangsu, which borders Shanghai to the south, where prostitutes driven into the trade by poverty would get smaller fines and lesser prison sentences.

“They will be detained for less than five days and fined less than 500 yuan (33 pounds),” the Shanghai Daily quoted Jiangsu police as saying, as opposed to 10 to 15 days and a maximum fine of 5,000 yuan for persistent offenders.

The new laws follow regulations issued in February ordering owners of karaoke clubs and discos — notorious haunts for prostitution and drugs — to install cameras and windows into back rooms.

Prostitution was virtually wiped out in the years after the Communist Party swept into power in 1949, but along with pornography and other perceived western vices has staged a comeback in the wake of reforms over the last three decades.

OTTAWA (AFP) – Canada’s biggest city will host what is believed to be the world’s first “feminist porn” awards ceremony, to highlight “really great” female erotica.

“There is so much bad porn out there. A lot of it is really, really bad — not just sexist but racist, too,” organizer Chanelle Gallant told AFP by telephone from Toronto.

“We wanted to celebrate filmmakers who are making really great porn, the kind that makes us feel good about sex, makes us feel good about our bodies and treats sex as something fun and good,” she said.

Some 300 guests from the United States and Canada are expected to attend the awards ceremony at a chic century-old hotel on Toronto’s west side, including the so-called leading lady of female erotica, Candida Royalle, and producers Tristan Taormino — whom organizers described as the “gonzo butt queen” — Dana Dane, Abiola Adams and Jen Bowers.

Eleven awards will be handed out in three categories: porn flicks that depict “genuine female pleasure” or “women having a good time,” films that were produced or directed by women, and adult movies that “expand the range of pleasure for women,” Gallant said.

There will also be a naughty poetry reading, sneak previews of upcoming porn titles, a roundtable discussion with directors and a burlesque show.

“It’s only for North America right now, because I don’t know the overseas industries well enough, but we hope to branch out in the future,” Gallant said.