TOKYO (Reuters) – A Japanese man has been found guilty of sexual harassment for forcing a female work colleague to pluck his beard.

“Asking a female colleague to pluck your beard is totally inappropriate and illegal,” media reports quoted the judge as saying as he ordered the man and the government, as his employer, to pay a total of almost $5,000 (2,700 pounds) in compensation.

According to the lawsuit filed by the woman, the man — an employee in his 30s in an office affiliated with the Labour Ministry — had repeatedly asked her to pluck his beard.

The woman, also in her 30s, told him he should do it himself but finally was forced to give in, Kyodo news agency said.

Media reports said the man had been warned previously for sexually harassing the woman, including sending her notes demanding she come on a company trip in her “best bathing suit.”

Japanese attitudes towards workplace sexual harassment, long considered to be relatively lax, have grown stricter over the past few years.

NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas – As officials attempt to crack down on rowdy behavior during traditional summertime tubing river trips through the city, a San Antonio topless club is planning a tubing excursion featuring strippers.

Trey Maddox, a manager at Palace Men’s Club, said Sunday’s excursion — during which men can pay $25 to join the strippers — isn’t meant to fly in the face of the city’s new rules.

“We’re not hookers, dope dealers or Mafia thugs,” he said, noting that the strippers will be appropriately dressed. “We’re just coming to have a good time.”

City Councilman Ken Valentine isn’t so sure.

“I’m really disappointed that this is going to occur on Sunday when people should be in church,” he said. “I hope they behave themselves and keep their clothes on, but I’m not sure they will because strippers are trained to take off their clothes.”

The New Braunfels City Council has been cracking down on rowdy behavior on the Comal and Guadalupe rivers in recent months, banning drinking devices known as beer bongs, increasing the maximum fine for noise ordinance violations and prohibiting sound amplification between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.

A new ordinance banning containers with a liquid volume of 5 ounces or less — an attempt to ban Jell-O shots — will take effect after the next city council meeting.

DUBLIN (Reuters) – It started as an April Fool’s joke but an Irish bookmaker’s proposal to hold the world’s biggest strip poker contest will become reality next month.

Paddy Power floated the idea as a joke but it generated so much interest — and hundreds of requests to take part — that the Dublin-based company decided to organize a contest.

So next month, 200 poker buffs will risk baring all in an attempt to become the first World Strip Poker Champion — and earn a place in the Guinness Book of Records.

The winner will also receive a “Golden Fig Leaf” trophy plus 10,000 pounds ($18,630) in cash.

“This will be the most fun you can have with your clothes on — or off!” Paddy Power said in a statement for the tournament, which will be held in London on August 19.

TIRANA (Reuters) – Albanian police were speechless when around 30 Scandinavian women went topless, shocking local bathers and causing an uproar in an Albanian beach resort.

“Police only watched … they could not approach the tourists because they spoke no English,” a local newspaper in the southern Albania coastal town of Sarande said.

Albanian mothers dragged their children away and police received a barrage of complaints over the Scandinavian tourists.

The Scandinavians left after two hours when their guide was informed that nude bathing was banned on public beaches. Nudity and topless bathing are still taboo in the poor Balkan country.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) – Police have arrested a man on suspicion of stealing anti-impotence drugs from dozens of pharmacies in the past year and were seeking his accomplice in what they are calling the “Viagra gang.”

“One was arrested and we know the other one’s identity and are looking for him,” a Rio de Janeiro police spokesman said on Wednesday.

The men are suspected of holding up more than 35 pharmacies in the same drugstore chain. Police said they stole anti-impotence drugs such as Viagra as well as money from registers. The chain estimated its losses at some $220,000.

Police said the partners sold the drugs on the black market and were so successful that they drew criticism from an unlikely source — the criminal underworld.

Taped phone conversations show members of a powerful drug gang from the same slum where the two lived complaining that their illicit business was drawing too much police attention to the shantytown near Rio’s famed Copacabana Beach.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – As the bikini turns 60, it’s entering the electronic age with a new model featuring a built-in alarm to warn wearers to get out of the sun — and ease concerns that the scanty swimsuits damage health.

The American Cancer Society advises that the best way to lower the risk of skin cancer, the most common form of the disease in humans, is to avoid too much exposure to the sun and other sources of ultraviolet light.

So the Canadian company Solestrom has come up with a new bikini that goes on sale next month with a UV meter built into its belt and an alarm that beeps to tell wearers when to head to the shade.

“There’s so much concern about sun exposure and skin cancer that we saw the demand and designed something to be safe for the wearer,” Solestrom spokeswoman Emily Garassa said.

Garassa said the meter on the $190 bikini displays a level of UV intensity on a scale from 0 to 20. A person’s sensitivity to UV depends mainly on skin type, but generally three to five would be considered moderate strength, 8-10 very high and anything above 11 extreme.

Garassa said the company was already seeing high demand from Australia and South Africa, which have the world’s highest skin cancer rates. The United States has about 1 million new skin cancer cases each year.

Despite increasing awareness of the sun’s dangers, sales remain strong for the bikini, which celebrated its 60th anniversary this month.

A new survey by U.S.-based market research company NPD Group found the number of the suits sold in the United States rose 18.8 percent to 33.6 million in the year ended in April 2006, with sales worth a total of $811 million.

The two-piece suit was officially named the bikini in July 1946 by French automotive engineer Louis Reard who persuaded nude dancer Micheline Bernardini to appear in his design at a Paris beauty contest.

Reard named the design after Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, where the United States tested an atomic bomb, because he thought the excitement over it would be like an explosion.

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A male lawyer who appeared in a New Zealand court dressed in an ankle-length skirt, lace stockings and a diamond brooch said Tuesday he was protesting against a male bias in the country’s justice system.

Rob Moodie, a former New Zealand Police union secretary, stunned the courtroom Monday when he appeared in women’s clothing at a hearing related to a long-running case involving the death of a man in a bridge collapse on a North Island farm.

Moodie said he wore the two-piece women’s suit because of what he described as a boys’ network in the court room.

“I’m objecting to the male ethos that is dominating this case and from now on I’m going to be dressing as a girl in my daily life,” Moodie told Reuters.

“It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t seen the gung-ho attitude in this case. The more this goes on and the deeper the cover-up gets, the frocks will get prettier,” he said.

Moodie, who said he was wearing a skirt while talking to Reuters by telephone, is married with three children but said he had a strong female gender bias.

“The sexes are not opposite, they’re complementary,” he said, drawing comparisons with New Zealand’s hugely popular All Blacks rugby side.

“The front row of the All Blacks is a very important part of maleness and is not to be disparaged at all, but neither should the guy who wants to do ballet,” Moodie said.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A grand jury has accused a man of sucking on a woman’s toe at the public library in nearby Boardman after he asked to kiss her feet to see her reaction as part of a sociology project

A Mahoning County grand jury has charged Joseph Colella, 28, of suburban Poland Township, on a charge of gross sexual imposition. If convicted, he could be face up to 1 1/2 years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

A 27-year-old woman told police that on July 11 Colella asked to kiss her feet. She turned him down but said she relented when he repeatedly insisted, and he began kissing her foot and then sucked on a toe.

She pulled her foot away and the man asked her reaction, to which she replied she was freaked out.

The woman left to clean her foot and he was gone when she returned. She called police and picked him out of a photo lineup.

Detective Michelle DiMartino said Colella also was a suspect in a similar case in 2000.

Colella could not be reached for comment. A message seeking comment was left Tuesday at his home.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A stripper from New Jersey faced criminal charges on Wednesday after police found a severed hand and six human skulls in her home.

Linda Kay, 31, was due to be arraigned on Wednesday for improper disposition of human remains. Police said she was arrested on Friday.

Officers responded to a report of a man wanting to kill himself with a hammer, but instead discovered a hand inside a jar filled with formaldehyde on a dresser in a bedroom. Six human skulls were found in an upstairs bedroom, South Plainfield Police Capt. Paul Brembt said.

“The Middlesex County medical examiner responded to the scene and determined that the hand and all the skulls were from humans,” Brembt said.

Brembt said Kay, who works for Hott 22, a juice bar with topless waitresses in Union, N.J., refused to tell authorities where she got the body parts.

Two people who knew Kay told The Star-Ledger newspaper of Newark that the hand, which Kay nicknamed “Freddy,” was given to her by a medical student who frequented Hott 22.

Guys might be thinking twice about taking strippers home now.

ROME, Georgia (Reuters) – A young man’s plan to propose to his girlfriend on a small chartered plane almost ended in disaster when the plane crashed and the engagement ring was lost in the wreckage.

Adam Sutton, 19, told Erika Brussee, 18, they were going on a date to the movies but instead took her to the airport in Rome, a U.S. town in northwest Georgia, for a chartered flight on Friday, according to the WSB-TV Web site.

The plan was for family members to hold up a large sign on the ground with the words “will you marry me” on it. But Brussee only saw the word “marry” because part of the sign was obscured before the plane, flying slowly at low altitude, stalled and crashed on the tarmac at Rome’s airport.

The couple were not seriously hurt, Mike Mathews, airport manager at Richard B. Russell Regional Airport, told Reuters on Monday.

Brussee finally said “yes” to the proposal in the ambulance, Mathews said, but Sutton wasn’t able to give her the ring. Only the ring’s box could be found after the crash.

The plane’s pilot was knocked unconscious by the crash and Sutton had to pull him from the plane.

LONDON (AFP) – Three-quarters of British sport fishermen would rather go fishing than go to bed with their partners, a survey showed.

More than half of the 1,000 anglers surveyed by bookmaker Totesport also said they would rather catch a record-breaking trout or salmon than spend a night with a supermodel.

Fishermen who took part in the poll spent, on average, eight times as much money on fishing equipment than on gifts for their partners.

“It is odds on that there are fishing widows the length and breadth of the country that can relate to these results,” Paul Petrie, a spokesman for Totesport, said.

Forty-six percent of respondents also said they lied about the real size of their catch to impress their peers.

WELLINGTON (AFP) – A New Zealand policewoman is receiving counselling after the discovery she had been moonlighting as a prostitute but has kept her job on the force.

The Auckland officer had taken up part-time work as a prostitute “for a limited time”, said police media communications manager Jon Neilson.

“(Deputy police commissioner) Lyn Provost deemed the nature of the secondary employment as incompatible with policing and the officer is receiving counselling,” Neilson said.

Prostitution has been legal in New Zealand since 2003.

The Wairarapa Times-Age newspaper quoted a source as saying the officer had taken up prostitution because of financial difficulties but senior police had found out the nature of her second job in the past month.

Legislator Ron Mark, the law and order spokesman for the New Zealand First political party, said although prostitution was legal, organised criminals still had a major investment in New Zealand brothels and the officer would have been vulnerable to extortion.

“I know a hell of a lot of police officers who struggle with the cost of living in Auckland but they don’t all rush out and become prostitutes,” Mark said.

ROME (Reuters) – Forcing your wife to kneel down and scrub the house floor clean is a crime because it amounts to mistreatment, Italy’s highest appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

The court upheld a conviction for ill-treatment handed down to a man who was left by his wife after what she said were years of abuse and threats.

“The husband humiliated and burdened her in every way, to the point of forcing her to clean the floor on her knees as a punishment for the insufficient dedication that in his view the woman put into housework,” the court said.

The man was sentenced to pay unspecified compensation to his wife, who has since returned to live with her parents, and provide child support for their son.

Italy’s Cassation court is often called on to settle what might seem like unusual legal disputes for a high court.

The floor-scrubbing verdict came one day after it ruled that calling someone a “faggot” is a punishable insult. Both sentences will go some way to appeasing critics of the court, who say its judges are mostly conservative macho men.

In two recent controversial judgments, the court ruled that calling a foreigner “dirty negro” is not necessarily racist and that sexually abusing a teenager is less serious a crime if the girl is not a virgin.

In recent years it has returned a verdict that an “isolated and impulsive” pat on a woman’s bottom at work did not constitute sexual harassment, and stated that a woman could not have been raped because she was wearing skin-tight jeans.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Fighting people smugglers and drug runners is old hat for China’s border police who now have a new duty — defusing marital squabbles and other disputes.

Police officials said on Tuesday that the policy — called “love the people, consolidate the borders” — made perfect sense, as a happy populace that trusts the authorities helps make China’s frontiers safer.

“It provides a protective screen for the social and economic development of the country in this important strategic period,” Chen Weiming, director of the Ministry of Public Security’s frontier bureau, told a news conference.

The police along China’s 22,000-km (13,700-mile) land border and in coastal areas were involved in everything from advising Inner Mongolian herders on when to get the best prices for wool to sorting out family strife, Chen said.

That even extended to helping stop a quarrelling couple from seeking divorce, he said.

But Chen, who spent much of the hour-long event talking up his force’s social work record, was tight-lipped about more sensitive topics, such as the flow of asylum seekers from North Korea.

“The situation along the North Korea border is good, though there are foreigners and illegal immigrants,” he said. “Our staff and soldiers are working on it and it will be dealt with properly.”

LAS VEGAS – Strippers and hookers are trying to get some respect in Sin City. The so-called sex workers demonstrated yesterday on the steps of the courthouse in downtown Las Vegas. They’re calling for more legal protection and decriminalization of the world’s oldest profession.

Starchild, a 36-year-old former Army Reservist stood amid rallying sex workers in Las Vegas on Thursday and boasted of his bid for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

“And that ballot is going to say ‘escort/exotic dancer,’” he said, beaming.

Protesting prostitutes, strippers and men and women of the night said they came to the downtown courthouse steps to try enable others like Starchild — active advocates for sex workers. The group called for more respect and stronger legal protections for legal and illegal workers in the sex industry. They complained that a series of new antihuman trafficking laws restrict their freedom and called for the decriminalization of the world’s oldest profession.

“No one here would say prostitution is good for everyone,” said Elizabeth Nanas, 33, a former prostitute and sex worker advocate who organized the rally to cap off a three-day conference. “We’re saying the attention and money should be spent on areas where there are problems.”

Organizers said the conference, sponsored by the Sex Workers Outreach Project-USA, was the largest meeting of academics, advocates and prostitutes in nearly 10 years. On the agenda were discussions on police brutality, online organizing and a lecture about journalism for sex workers.

“Overall, the biggest issue was looking at criminalization policies and asking, are they doing anything to stop prostitution? Are they protecting and empowering women? Are they making our communities safer?” said Kate Hausbeck, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas sociology professor and advocate. “Are they improving the health, safety and well-being of prostitutes?”

The group met in a state in which 10 rural counties allow prostitution in 28 operating brothels.

But the nation’s only legal bordellos aren’t a model for advocates, said Priscilla Alexander, a 67-year-old activist with COYOTE, a sex workers’ rights organization. Nevada brothels often hire women to work for just weeks at a time, require prostitutes to live on the premises and mandate costly STD tests too frequently, she said.

“Most sex workers don’t want to work in those restrictive conditions,” she said.

Alexander said sex workers’ claims of rape and violence too often are ignored by police, and some departments use scant evidence, like carrying condoms, as cause for arrests.

But she said one of the most pressing threats to sex workers were antihuman trafficking laws passed on the federal and state level that can be interpreted as applying to strippers, dancers and escorts.

“Most human trafficking is not about sex work, it’s about construction,” Alexander said.

Federal officials say 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked to the United States a year; about 75 percent of federal prosecutions have involved sex trafficking.

“We just want the government off our backs,” said Starchild, adding he used the conference to link up with other sex workers interested in restoring the “spirituality and dignity” the profession enjoyed in Elizabethan England.

“We’re like courtesans,” he said.

Hausbeck acknowledged that the political climate may not be ripe for a mass decriminalization movement.

But she and other advocates won the sympathy of 76-year-old Mary Ellen Hopkins, a quilting expert who held a seminar in the conference room next to the sex workers’ meeting.

Hopkins said she and the quilters at first laughed at their neighbors and then listened to their arguments. She ended up outside the courthouse addressing reporters in front of a banner reading, “Support your local sex worker.”

“I think it’s better to legalize it,” she said. “If you legalize it, maybe you’ll get rid of all the ugly stuff that comes with it.”

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. – A nude sunbather is suing for the right to bask “au naturel” with his rat terrier, Cheekies, at his side. The plaintiff, former bodybuilder Mark DelCore, says he needs Cheekies with him because he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

He says sunbathing is a balm for a skin condition he developed after exposure to World Trade Center toxins while leaving a lower Manhattan gym.

Those are the arguments DelCore presents in his suit, filed in federal court in Central Islip.

DelCore, of Forest Hills, Queens, favors a “clothing optional” beach near Kismet, on Fire Island. But officials at the Fire Island National Seashore say Cheekies is not welcome.

The park allows only guide dogs on its swimming beaches. DelCore says his dog’s healing presence qualifies him as a “service dog.”

LONDON (Reuters) – Women going on boozy nights out have been warned by police to “wear nice pants” in case they fall down drunk in the street.

A Suffolk police safety campaign magazine shows pictures of young women slumped on the ground next to messages urging them: “If you’ve got it, don’t flaunt it.”

“If you fall over or pass out, remember your skirt or dress may ride up,” the magazine says. “You could show off more than you intended — for all our sakes, please make sure you’re wearing nice pants and that you’ve recently had a wax.”

Readers are also told to stick with friends, book a taxi home and watch the amount they drink.

Police said the Safe! magazine’s gossipy, tongue-in-cheek style was designed to alert young women to the dangers they could face if they get drunk during a night out.

“We need to raise their awareness of potential problems,” said Chief Superintendent David McDonnell. “They become more vulnerable whilst under the influence of alcohol.”

LONDON (Reuters) – Was your father a thief? Because he stole the stars from the sky and put them in your eyes.

Equipped with that pick-up line, you can be certain to score in the universal language of love. So say the authors of a new top 10 list of pick-up lines which have been translated from English into Czech, French, Italian, Spanish and German by the publishers Chambers.

Taking inspiration from its new range of pocket-sized phrasebooks, Chambers compiled its own list of the definitive top 10 pick-up lines.

The UK publisher picked the lines from the assorted phrase books and compiled their own light-hearted list, to assist vacationers heading out to European destinations this summer.

Anna Stevenson, from Chambers Harrap, said “The French and Italians are especially renowned for their romantic ways but it seems that chat-up lines are the same no matter what language you are speaking.”

“Our chat-up lines show budding English- speaking Romeos how to impress the girl of their dreams whatever country she is from, but it also allows British women to wise up to the charms and cheeky ways of foreign suitors,” said Stevenson.

If their top-rated suggestion does not have the desired effect, then try in one of six languages to say: “Didn’t it hurt when you fell from heaven?”

Or maybe: “You must be tired because you’ve been running through my mind all day.”

Scraping in at Number 10 in the romance parade comes “The only things your eyes haven’t told me is your name.”

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Writer and musician Kinky Friedman, who once sang “They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore,” may include the name by which he is best known on the ballot to choose Texas’ next governor in November, the state’s top election official said on Monday.

Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams said Friedman’s nickname was not a slogan and thus did not violate state law. His name will appear on election ballots as Richard “Kinky” Friedman.

But Williams, a Republican, said Carole Keeton Strayhorn, who is also running as an independent against incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Perry, cannot include “Grandma” as a nickname on the ballot.

Strayhorn’s campaign advertising calls her “One Tough Grandma.”

Williams said Strayhorn, the state comptroller who left the Republican Party to challenge Perry, never used “Grandma” as a nickname before the campaign.

Perry is leading the polls but if either Friedman or Strayhorn win, it would be the first time an independent won a race for Texas governor since Sam Houston did it in 1859. Friedman would be the state’s first Jewish governor.

Friedman, who has written a series of detective novels, first became famous as the leader of satirical country and western band The Texas Jewboys.

Some have dismissed Friedman’s campaign as a publicity stunt, but Friedman has hired a consultant who helped former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura win the Minnesota governor’s race in 1998 to run his campaign.

In conservative Texas, Friedman has used humor to state his support for controversial ideas like same-sex marriage.

“I support gay marriage,” Friedman said in 2005. “I believe they have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us.”

MUMBAI (Reuters) – An Indian prince has been disowned by his family after he publicly announced he was gay in a country where homosexuality is outlawed by a 145-year-old law.

Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil, who belongs to one of the country’s richest royal families that ruled the former Rajpipla principality in the western state of Gujarat, has been disowned for “activities unacceptable to the society,” one disinheritance notice placed by his parents in a newspaper said.

Last month, his parents issued notices in a Gujarati language daily withdrawing his right to the family property.

“Henceforth, no one must refer to my name as mother of Manvendra,” one notice signed by his mother said. “If any individual or organization dares to do so, it will invite contempt proceedings.”

But Gohil, 40, who announced he was gay this year, says he has found happiness among Gujarat’s gay community and is not interested in his inheritance.

“I could not have lived a lie forever,” he told Reuters on Friday.

“I will not stake my claim to the property. I have found a family in the (gay) community and am happy working for the community,” said Gohil, who runs an NGO working on HIV/ AIDS among homosexuals.

“As an activist, I thought it right to come out of the closet first. Otherwise, it would have been living a lie.”

Homosexuality is banned in India and punishable by up to 10 years in jail, but gay activists are trying to lift the veil of secrecy over the community in a country where public hugging or kissing even among heterosexuals invites angry stares, lewd comments and even beatings.

Gay support groups say the anti-homosexuality law — framed by British colonial rulers in 1861 — must be scrapped for an effective fight against HIV/AIDS because many homosexuals refuse to come out in the open fearing harassment by authorities.

UNAIDS says there are an estimated 5.7 million Indians living with HIV, many of them homosexuals.

India abolished princely kingdoms after independence from Britain in 1947, but many royal families continue to lead lavish lives in sprawling palaces.

BEIJING (Reuters) – A Chinese actress who played Hollywood movie star Zhang Ziyi’s naked body double in “The Banquet” wants her name in the movie’s credits, state media reported Friday.

“The Banquet,” a Feng Xiaogang-directed film set for release in China in the autumn, stars “Memoirs of a Geisha” actress Zhang Ziyi and features several body doubles to play her in nude and fight scenes, the Nanfang Daily newspaper said.

Shao Xiaoshan said she was paid 20,000 yuan ($2,500) for shooting several nude scenes in comments carried by the paper.

“Feng Xiaogang was very satisfied with my body, and asked me to play the ‘naked double’,” the paper quoted Shao as saying.

But the actress feared a lack of exposure, hearing that her name would not appear in the credits and having her calls ignored by the director, the paper said.

“Zhang Ziyi at Venice told the whole world’s journalists that her naked back was someone else’s, so I just want everyone to know that it was mine,” Shao said.

The movie’s producer, Huayi Brothers & Taihe Movie Investment Co., questioned Shao’s motives.

“The movie hasn’t even screened yet. How could she know that her name isn’t in the credits? Isn’t this clearly a beat-up?” the paper quoted Wang Zhongjun, the production company head, as saying.

Huayi’s deputy head, Xu Li, said Shao’s name wouldn’t appear in the movie’s credits due to contractual issues and decried the actress’s posting of the dispute on her blog.

“We don’t understand this action. These things can be discussed. There’s no need to adopt such measures.”

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A Dutch design student bored with conventional advertisements has set up a fake online agency offering advertising space for beer, cars and TV stations on prostitutes’ thighs and cleavage.

On his website, Raoul Balai also proposed painting brand names on zoo animals and floating huge billboards off popular beaches to get vacationers’ attention.

“I was getting sick and tired of advertising everywhere,” Balai told reporters. “But I don’t want to preach, and I thought satire would work better.”

Far from taking his ideas as a joke, an Amsterdam zoo had its lawyer threaten Balai with a defamation suit after his website depicted fish from the zoo bearing the brand name of a frozen fish company.

Prospective customers phoning his fake agency are kept on hold and bombarded with sales pitches until they give up.

ROME (Reuters) – An Italian man escaped from house arrest and begged police to put him in jail because he could not bear living with his grandfather, his lawyer said Monday.

The 30-year old, who could only be identified by his initials A.M., had been placed under house arrest for six months in the Sardinian town of Sassari after a scuffle with a policeman.

But he escaped, and Sunday showed up at a police station in the northern city of Genoa, asking them to arrest him and put him in a cell.

“He said he could not face staying with his grandpa anymore,” defense lawyer Pietro Bogliolo told Reuters by phone.

The lawyer said he did not know what the problem between the two was. “It’s probably irreconcilable differences,” he said.

A Genoa court however ruled Monday that A.M. should return to his grandfather’s house and spend an additional two months and 20 days there because of his escape.

Saturday, a Sicilian man also asked police to put him in prison rather than have him confined to his house, saying he did not have enough money to buy himself food. He later returned to house arrest after police gave him food supplies for a few days.

SONKAJARVI, Finland (Reuters) – Finishing upside down clinging to a man’s back may not be the most graceful way of winning gold, but it sure helped Sandra Kullas and Margo Uusorg to the world wife-carrying crown on Saturday.

The Estonians were among 40 pairs from eight countries who competed in the annual event in Sonkajarvi, in central Finland.

They raced along a 250-meter track, complete with pools and hurdles, with the men running or walking and carrying the women on their backs.

The championship, being held for the 11th time, evokes the legend of robber Rosvo-Ronkainen who made people trying to join his gang run through a forest carrying heavy sacks.

Uusorg, 26, finished in 56.9 seconds, a world record, while Kullas, 19, clung to his back upside down with her legs around his neck. They beat Uusorg’s bother Madis by 3 seconds.

“I was a bit nervous before the start, but when I started running it felt fine,” Margo Uusorg said after the race. “I wanted to jump over the hurdles, but I was afraid I might fall and get penalty seconds.”

It was Uusorg’s fifth world-championship and he said it might be his last.

The winning Estonians received laptop computers and Kullas’ weight, 49 kg, in beer.

LONDON (AFP) – It will be cheaper to make love in Britain from Saturday thanks to a reduction in sales tax on condoms announced by the Treasury Friday.

Value added tax (VAT) on condoms and other non-presciption contraceptive products will be five percent, rather than the standard 17.5 percent, “leading to immediate reductions in the prices paid by consumers”, it said in a statement.

“Safe sex has never been cheaper,” said Public Health Minister Caroline Flint, who cautioned that couples still bear responsibility for halting the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Reduced VAT for condoms was promised in Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown’s budget three months ago. Birth control pills and other prescription contraceptives are sold without any sales tax.