STUART, Fla. – A man with mischief afoot entered a home and licked the toe of a sleeping woman over the weekend, police said. The man reportedly licked the woman’s left big toe while she was sleeping early Sunday, the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers reported.

The woman was sleeping next to her husband, who chased the suspect from the house and down the street.

The suspect was wearing a black, hooded sweat shirt, white shorts and white shoes.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – As Aaron Strickler sees things, the world would be better off if others could see him having sex on film.

“Filming sex is fun and bringing joy and levity to other people is the biggest thing we can do in this life,” he said before he premiered a short film of explicit footage in a split-screen, black-and-white format.

Strickler, 36, and the other six finalists at San Francisco’s Amateur Erotic Film Competition were following a long tradition of homemade porn that has often helped inspire the mainstream industry.

People have filmed sex since soon after the invention of movies, and such “stag” movies were in underground circulation by World War One.

The introduction of video recorders in the 1970s and 1980s gave people cheap tools to film their own exploits. Then the Internet sparked a new wave of home production.

The competition’s runner-up, with a film about three swinging couples, said he wanted to make movies that were more real and compelling than commercial pornography.

“I’m so fed up that there is nothing to watch,” Mark Fowler said.

One pioneering effort started in 1949, when famed researcher Alfred Kinsey filmed his own home sex movies, pressing members of his staff, their wives and others to have sex before a camera in his attic.

“I performed because I thought it was necessary. How could I refuse to refuse to perform if I was asking other people to do so?” Paul Gebhard, 89, a close Kinsey associate, said this week in an interview from his Indiana home.

“We were quite interested in finding out how people behaved during sexual response,” said Gebhard, who succeeded Kinsey as director of the Institute for Sex Research from 1956-82.

HOME GONZO

Explicit home movies have helped change commercial pornographic films. Out went the contrived plots and dialogue leading to sex popular in 1970s films, as filmmakers focused instead on hard-core action in a style known as “gonzo.”

“It could also be argued … that this amateur stuff with the camcorder really inspired a huge segment of the market which is called ‘gonzo’, which is the dominant form of pornography now,” said Mike Ramone, editor in chief of Adult Video News, a trade publication.

He said amateur porn made cheaply with camcorders helped inspire professional directors, including the one seen as perhaps the greatest porn movie maker, John Stagliano.

In a telephone interview, Stagliano, 55, a director and actor also known as “Buttman,” said at its best amateur erotica brings a reality missing in much professional porn.

“The really, truly great thing about amateur is that you find somebody incredible, some really sexy girl who wants to show off and it’s all real,” he said.

“Whereas in the conventional business it’s mostly real in the very first few scenes and then it kind of becomes more professional as you go on.”

A few amateur filmmakers at the San Francisco competition tried to take an artistic approach by using experimental editing techniques or a different approach to erotica.

“We hope to make revolutionary headway in the world of pornography,” said Tallulah Sulis, whose film featured eight women including herself.

In the end, the judges awarded the $500 first prize to Cory Wees for a film portraying his bondage and discipline by a woman.

WAUKESHA, Wis. – A Hartford man has been ordered to serve 60 days in jail and placed on two years’ probation for putting photographs of his genitalia on cars driven by women in Menomonee Falls.

Jeffrey J. Hein, 41, was sentenced Monday by Waukesha County Circuit Judge Kathryn Foster on three counts of misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

He pleaded no contest to the charges, which accuse him of putting photos on cars parked outside department stores.

Defense attorney Patrick C. Brennan said at the hearing Monday that his client got involved in the activity at a time when he was depressed about three deaths in his family and the failure of his marriage.

Hein is also scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in Washington County Circuit Court on six counts of disorderly conduct accusing him of engaging in the same behavior in Germantown, Hartford and West Bend.

LONDON, Oct 25 (Reuters Life!) – Researchers are struggling to understand a rare medical condition where sufferers unknowingly demand, or actually have, sex while asleep, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday.

Research into sexsomnia — making sexual advances toward another person while asleep — has been hampered as sufferers are so embarrassed by the problem they tend not to own up to it, while doctors do not ask about it.

As yet there is no cure for the condition, which often leads to difficulties in relationships.

“It really bothers me that I can’t control it,” Lisa Mahoney told the magazine. “It scares me because I don’t think it has anything to do with the partner. I don’t want this foolish condition to hurt us in the long run.”

Most researchers view sexsomnia as a variant of sleepwalking, where sufferers are stuck between sleep and wakefulness, though sexsomniacs tend to stay in bed rather than get up and walk about.

While sleepwalking affects two to four percent of adults, sexsomnia is not thought to be as common a problem, according to Nik Trajanovic, a researcher at the sleep and alertness clinic at Canada’s Toronto Western Hospital.

But an Internet survey of sexsomniacs carried out in 2005 that drew 219 reliable respondents concluded it was more prevalent than medical case reports alone might suggest.

“Most of the time sleep sex occurs between people who are already partners,” Mark Pressman, a sleep specialist at Lankenan Hospital in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, told the New Scientist.

“Sometimes they hate it,” added Pressman of the reactions of sexsomniacs’ partners. “Sometimes they tolerate it. On rare occasions you have stories of people liking it better than waking sex.”

With no cure, addressing triggering factors — stress or sleep deprivation — can help, while Michael Mangan, a psychologist at the University of New Hampshire in the U.S. has set up a Web site, www.sleepsex.org, to help sufferers.

Meanwhile Trajanovic is devising a procedure for diagnosing sexsomnia in legal cases where sufferers have been accused of sexual assault.

LONDON (Reuters) – Vampyres are prowling for new recruits in London as Halloween approaches to partake in wild parties, trips to Transylvania and bat spotting nights — but coffin-dwelling, blood drinkers need not apply.

With a penchant for custom-made fangs, striking make-up and gothic clothes, members of the London Vampyre Group (LVG) say it’s their fascination with the romantic notion of vampires, rather than any darker intent, that draws them together.

“People who think they’re un-dead, hundreds of years old, or that you have to drink blood if you’re interested in the dark side of things, we can put them right on that,” LVG’s Mick Smith, 57, told Reuters in an interview in a London pub.

“The drinking of blood is a taboo. It’s a point of view that we don’t tend to represent, but we think it is something that should be articulated,” said Smith, wearing a sombre black suit.

They may be conservatively attired lawyers or computer programmers by day, but Vampyres are transformed by flamboyant clothes after dark for the Dance of the Damned Vampire Ball and Requiem of the Resurrected parties with gothic belly dancing.

The Halloween Goth Ball in Whitby, where Bram Stoker was inspired to write “Dracula,” is a major calendar fixture. Trips are planned to the Czech Republic’s gothic castles and ossuaries, and to New Orleans, setting for Anne Rice’s “Interview with the Vampire.”

FANG FIXATION

“I’d always been fascinated by vampires, they are often portrayed as powerful and beautiful. It’s the romanticism of it all,” said Rebecca Summers, 35, social secretary of LVG which was formed about 12 years ago, a splinter group from parent organisation The Dracula Society.

“It gets you out of that mundane world. And if you can live forever and remain beautiful then most people would want to do that,” said Summers, who works as a business consultant.

With flowing black hair, red lips and a range of corsets, bustles and PVC outfits in her wardrobe, she says her work colleagues are unperturbed by her fixations with vampires and vampire myths which go back thousands of years and occur in almost every culture around the world.

But persuading her husband to ditch his “Coldplay” CD collection and have fangs fitted is a bigger challenge, said Summers, who carries her own set of sharp teeth in her handbag.

Few LVG members believe that the blood-sucking maniacs portrayed in Hollywood horror movies are roaming London’s streets, wearing black capes and sucking blood from humans and animals to maintain immortality.

But some do believe in vampire-like personalities.

“There are people who believe in psychic vampires, that there are people who act as vampires, are very predatory, they take energy from other people,” said Summers.

“You do get the odd strange people who believe they need to drink blood to survive. I’ve only had email dealings with them.”

LVG is keen to project vampire fans in a positive light after coming under scrutiny several years ago when a German woman, convicted with her partner of a satanic murder, said she became a vampire at so-called “bite parties” in London.

“In one sense, we have a positive social function — rectifying bad ideas,” said Smith, who edits LVG’s Chronicles magazine, with articles on vampires in literature, coffin-shaped sleeping bags and the “Vindicator” agony aunt advice.

“For me the most horrific things that happen in the world are on the news every day, not what you see in a horror film.”

SINGAPORE (AFP) – Singapore’s sole cable television operator StarHub Cable Vision was fined 10,000 Singapore dollars (6,350 dollars) for showing footage of lesbian sex and bondage in a reality programme, the industry regulator said.

The Development Authority said in a statement uploaded on its website Monday that the scenes “were deemed to be sexually suggestive and offensive to good taste and decency” and that the reality series, entitled Cheaters, promoted lesbianism as a lifestyle.

It said the scenes, aired in May and repeated in August, contained footages of a woman engaging in sexual acts with another woman.

While the scenes were pixelated, “it was still obvious to the viewers that that the women were naked and engaging in unnatural sex acts”, the regulator said.

The programme, which exposes people caught cheating on their partners, also showed a woman tied to a bed in a “bondage session” with two other women, it said.

The regulator noted that the programme was carried on a channel available for viewing by a general audience.

“This episode of Cheaters was therefore found to be in breach of the Subscription TV Programme Code as it failed to comply with guidelines which disallow the promotion, justification and glamourisation of lesbian lifestyles and their explicit depictions,” the regulator said.

A StarHub spokeswoman told the Straits Times newspaper it was disappointed with the regulator’s decision, but said it would ensure such incidents were not repeated.

The spokeswoman said Cheaters had been shown in countries like China, India and Indonesia “without any difficulty”, adding that the episode in question was aired in Singapore at midnight.

Homosexual acts are still outlawed in Singapore under laws dating back to British colonial days.

Singapore’s penal code states that anyone who “voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animals”, is liable to a possible life prison term and a fine.

However, gay-friendly establishments like pubs and saunas are doing a roaring trade catering to both locals and foreigners.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A Dutch mayor has raised eyebrows by backing the idea of sending prostitutes to accompany Dutch troops on foreign missions.

“The army must consider ways its soldiers can let off steam,” Annemarie Jorritsma, mayor of the town of Almere in central Netherlands and a member of the ruling VVD liberals, told Dutch television.

“There was once the suggestion that a few prostitutes should accompany troops on missions. I think that is something we should talk about,” she said, adding that the prostitutes would keep soldiers from turning to local women.

Her comments have drawn a mixed response in the Netherlands, renowned for its liberal prostitution laws.

“I don’t think my wife would find it a good idea,” Wim van den Burg, a spokesman for the military service trade union told Dutch newspaper Volkskrant on Monday.

Andre van Dorst of sex industry organisation VER told the same paper: “I can see something in this, though it’s a very strange idea.”

The Netherlands has more than 2,000 soldiers serving abroad, most of them in Afghanistan as part of a NATO peacekeeping force, and in Bosnia.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Loretta Nall, the Libertarian Party’s write-in candidate for governor of Alabama, is campaigning on her cleavage and hoping that voters will eventually focus on her platform.

“It started out as a joke, but it blew up into something huge,” said Nall, a 32-year-old with dyed blond hair.

Her campaign is offering T-shirts and marijuana stash boxes adorned with a photo of her with a plunging neckline and the words: “More of these boobs.” Below that are pictures of other candidates for governor — including Republican incumbent Bob Riley and Democratic Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley — and the words: “And less of these boobs.”

Her Web site has a cartoon of someone stuffing bills down the front of her low-cut top. And for $50 donation she apparently offers to show a cartoon of herself flashing her breasts.

Nall, who spoke in an interview Friday on the Capitol steps, realizes that is about as close as she is going to get to the governor’s office. But her outrageous antics have helped her attract attention not normally enjoyed by write-in candidates.

Nall is calling for the withdrawal of the Alabama National Guard from
Iraq, tax credits for sending children to private school and home schooling, opting out of the No Child Left Behind Act, legalizing marijuana, and not complying with the Patriot Act and the Real ID Act.

The Libertarian Party could not collect the 40,000 voter signatures needed to get her name on the ballot, and she has not reached the $25,000 threshold in contributions that would require her to file a campaign finance report.

Despite the political handicaps, she knows how to get free attention.

Early in her campaign, she talked about how her misdemeanor arrest for marijuana possession in 2002 led her to start the U.S. Marijuana Party.

Then she entertained readers of her campaign Web site with lots of information about her personal life, including a discussion of why she doesn’t wear panties.

CAIRO (AFP) – Two young Egyptians caught in the act of kissing in public in Cairo during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan have been fined 100 pounds (175 dollars) each, newspapers reported.

A court in Kasr al-Nil district found the pair guilty of offending public morals when they kissed in broad daylight on the banks of the Nile.

The man, aged 25, argued in his defence that his 21-year-old friend was a colleague whom he regarded as a “sister” and with whom he would exchange a kiss every time their paths crossed.

The holy month of Ramadan is a time for abstinence and religious reflection during daylight hours.

TORONTO (Reuters) – An undergraduate program at Canada’s august University of Toronto offers discussions on flogging, restraint, and role-play, as well as an arts course called “Queerly Canadian.” But teachers and students insist it’s a serious academic program that isn’t simply about sex.

“It’s not sexy sex sex, where we’re talking about whips and chains, but we will talk about whips and chains,” said graduating student Robbie Morgan, 33, who left her job teaching sex education in Chicago to attend the Sexual Diversity Studies program, one of the largest of its kind in North America.

“We’ll talk about whips and chains in a political, social, cultural, religious context of sexuality and how that sexuality affects those institutions.”

The Sexual Diversity program appears one of the edgier ones on offer at the university, which was founded in 1827 and is best known for its science and medical research. Alumni include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lester B. Pearson, insulin inventors Frederick Banting and Charles Best, author Margaret Atwood and film director David Cronenberg.

The program promises an academic approach to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and heterosexual issues — from history and law to the performance of sadomasochism.

“It’s a very serious analytical exercise and it isn’t what a lot of people think it is,” director David Rayside told Reuters during a visit to the school, which is located in the original Romanesque-style University College building at U of T’s leafy downtown campus.

The program, established eight years ago, got a C$1 million (424,906 pounds) boost this week with a donation from Canadian winemaker Mark Bonham to expand the curriculum. There are plans for Canada’s first undergraduate major in sexual diversity studies, and for master’s and doctorate programs from 2008.

“This is a long-neglected area and Canada provides an ideal environment to take up these questions creatively,” said Bonham in a statement.

The program includes a drama course called “Sexual Performance: Case Studies in S/M (sadomasochism)” and the arts and literature course “Queerly Canadian,” for which one student wrote an in-depth review of a male strip show.

But it also focuses on traditional academic discussion — from Plato to same-sex marriage, with courses like “Theories of Sexuality” and “Sexual Diversity Politics.”

Canadian provinces were the first jurisdictions in North America to legalise gay marriage — and Toronto, with one of the largest gay and lesbian communities in the world, is a perfect backdrop for such a program, said Rayside.

“This is a city that has diversified a lot, and is muddling through how to recognise that diversity in ways that are quite interesting,” he said.

“We’re located in the heart of a tremendous laboratory where cultural and international differences actually play a role, and that’s part of what we do.”

Students were keen to dispel the perception that the program caters only to activists and gays.

“The stereotype is it’s a bunch of queers talking about sex and gay rights,” says Kirstin Caspersen, 22, who wants to apply her degree with criminology to look at how gender and sexual issues affect people in the justice system.

Rayside said the sexual orientation of students in the program is as diverse as the studies themselves.

“I would estimate — of course I don’t ask — that 50 percent of our students are not queer-identified by any use of that term, which is great,” he said.

“A lot of the people from the university, from the president on down, think that what we’re doing is important work. But there’s still a lot entailed at persuading more and more people that what we’re doing is legitimate.”

FERNDALE, Mich. – A Detroit man with a history of smashing store windows to grab female mannequins has been accused of indulging his fetish again. Ronald A. Dotson, 39, was arrested and jailed Oct. 9 after breaking a window at a cleaning-supply company to get at a mannequin in a black and white French maid’s uniform, police said.

A judge Thursday ordered him to undergo a psychiatric examination to determine whether he is competent to stand trial on charges of attempted breaking and entering.

“Mr. Dotson went to prison and they haven’t helped him,” said his lawyer, Edward Cohn. “He got out of prison and he was right back out there. It’s pretty bizarre.”

Dotson had been out of prison for less than a week when he was caught. His erotic pursuit of mannequins over the past 13 years has led to at least six convictions for breaking and entering and a stint in prison, police said.

“He told his parole officer he was going to buy a mannequin so he didn’t have to do these break-ins anymore,” said Detective Brendan Moore said. “Apparently that didn’t work out.”

BERLIN (Reuters) – Claudia Schiffer believes models are now too skinny to be attractive even though the German supermodel may herself be slightly underweight despite a voracious appetite and predilection for chocolate.

“It doesn’t really look good any more,” the 36-year-old was quoted as saying in an interview with Germany’s Bunte magazine.

“Fashion looks good on thin models, but when you look at today’s models you can not help but think there is something wrong. They are way too thin. It is only bones that stick out.”

Schiffer — who was part of a powerful band of 1990s jet-setting supermodels that included Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Christie Turlington and Linda Evangelista — was adding her voice to recent criticism of underweight models.

Madrid asked models below a certain weight to stay away from its fashion show. Models with a body-mass-index (BMI) — which takes into account height and weight — of less than 18 were banned.

“Models have always been thin. But today, they are even thinner, which is unbelievable,” said Schiffer, who has been on the cover of more than 550 magazines during her career.

She said she was on the heavy side when she began in 1988.

“I was one of the fattest when I started,” said Schiffer, who according to a German magazine website “Modellkartei” nevertheless has a BMI of just under 18. The Web site lists Schiffer as 1.82 meters (5 ft 11 in) tall and weighing 58 kg (128 lb).

“Ever since I started having children, I can eat whatever I want. I eat chocolate almost every day and drink whole milk so that I don’t lose any more (weight),” said Schiffer, who has two young children.

“When media started writing that I looked too thin and ill, I went to the doctor. He said I was healthy,” she said. “I didn’t gain weight after the pregnancies. I hope it stays like that.”

ORLANDO, Fla. – Somehow, a thief or thieves was able to swipe a 50-pound bronze statue of a nude woman from an art gallery downtown in broad daylight.

The statue, titled “Crissy” and valued at $12,600, disappeared as visitors were perusing three private galleries at the CityArts Factory in downtown Orlando.

It was last seen at about 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, and may have been rolled on a trail of T-shirts and windbreakers workers came back to that lead out the door.

“I thought, is there a naked person in there?” said Cassy Turiczek, executive director of the Downtown Arts District, after seeing the clothes.

“Crissy” had been at CityArts Factory for a little more than two weeks on a 4-foot pedestal in the building’s community gallery, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

It featured a woman with an arched back and a swirling mane of thick hair.

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israeli police say they are on the lookout for 40 vibrators and a 200-dollar dildo after thieves plundered the automobile of a noted sexologist in Tel Aviv.

“Thieves broke into her car and apparently stole from her a caseload of vibrators,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP. “It’s difficult to say the exact value of the items stolen, but obviously we’re searching for these items just as with any other incident of theft.”

The thieves were likely surprised by the contents, Rosenfeld said Wednesday.

The two metal cases stolen from Shelly Pasternak’s car Friday resembled those used for expensive audio-visual equipment, but instead contained massage oils, dildos, whips, Chinese balls and handcuffs, as well as vibrators.

In all, the thieves made off with about 2,000 dollars worth of sex toys, Pasternak said, adding that the most valuable item was an elaborate vibrating dildo that sells for 200 dollars.

“It’s a very unique one because it gives very high pleasure to women,” she said.

However, Pasternak said she was most concerned about a book of receipts inside the case which contained the names of customers who purchased sex toys, many of whom prefer to remain anonymous.

Pasternak, 32, is a sexologist who hosts a sex program on Israeli television, holds workshops and lectures at bachelor and bachelorette parties.

EVANSVILLE, Ind. – Revealing tops are out and bras are now a must for women visiting prisoners at the Vanderburgh County Jail. Jail officials imposed a new dress code policy after several incidents in which women visiting the jail exposed themselves to male prisoners.

The new policy, posted at the jail’s front desk, states that women cannot wear halter tops, sleeveless dresses and shirts, see-through garments, revealing dresses, and shorts cut higher than 2 inches above the knee.

Spandex and “extremely tight fitting” jeans or pants also are frowned upon.

“Adult female visitors, as well as females who would have need of a bra, shall be required to wear a bra,” the draft policy also states.

Since the draft policy was posted last month, the jail has turned away a few women, said Katie Roy, a receptionist. Those include two women who tried to get in with low-cut shirts with spaghetti straps.

“When they came back, they had on hooded sweat shirts,” Roy said. Unfortunately for those two, the jail also forbids hooded sweat shirts because they can conceal contraband.

The jail’s commander, Maj. Dave Wedding, said some women have exposed themselves to male inmates in video visitation booths, located in plain view in the jail’s main lobby.

Inmates who encourage women into acts of indecency can lose their visitation privileges for weeks, Wedding said. Inmates are permitted up to three 30-minute visits per week.

Many female visitors bring children, and Wedding said he hopes the dress code will create a more family friendly environment.

He expects to complete a final version of the policy within a month.

Wedding said he modeled his dress code after a similar one used by the Branchville Correctional Facility outside Tell City. The prison has turned away visitors, mostly for inappropriate tops, said spokesman Richard Newton.

“We’ve actually had people leave and drive into Tell City and buy a shirt at Wal-Mart,” Newton said.

TOLEDO, Ohio – A teenager who put her bra on a car antenna before it flew off and led to a highway accident will be charged with littering, a prosecutor said. Emily Davis, 17, of Bowling Green, told investigators she took her bra off while her friend was driving on Interstate 75.

James Campbell, who was driving behind the girls, said he swerved to avoid the bra and his car flipped several times. Campbell, 37, broke a vertebra in his neck during the Sept. 26 accident. His passenger, Jeff Long, 40, broke several ribs.

A State Highway Patrol crash report, obtained by The Blade, said that the girls told investigators that before the accident the men were motioning to them to lift up their shirts. Both men denied making the gestures.

Davis will be charged next week with misdemeanor littering, said Tim Atkins, a juvenile prosecutor in Wood County. Atkins said he’ll meet with troopers before filing the charge.

The girl’s friend, Tabitha Adams, 17, of Bowling Green, said she told Davis not to hang her bra outside because she knew it would fly away, according to the report.

Atkins said no other charges were expected.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actress Tara Reid, whose botched breast surgery made her a Hollywood laughingstock two years ago, underwent additional surgery to repair the damage, according to a report in Us Weekly.

In an interview released on Wednesday, the “American Pie” actress told the magazine she had surgery last month to reduce the scarring on her breasts and to even out her stomach after cosmetic surgery in 2004.

Reid unwittingly exposed the disastrous results when she posed for pictures at a November 2004 party and her dress strap fell down.

“I was on Web sites as having the ugliest boob job in the world. I was devastated,” Reid, 30, told the magazine.

Reid said the surgery hurt her professionally and personally.

“Guys I was dating would be like, ‘What’s wrong with them? They look really bad. You know, you should really get them fixed.’ So embarrassing, I mean, you definitely had to turn off the lights. And then there was my stomach.”

Reid said she had liposuction on her stomach at the same time because she wanted “a six pack.”

“But it went all wrong. My stomach became the most ripply, bulgy thing.”

She told Us Weekly it took her two years to regain her confidence and trust another cosmetic surgeon to sort out the problems.

“I couldn’t wear a bikini. I lost a lot of work. I lost my confidence,” she said. “This was a nightmare I lived through.”

I dont know about you, but I’ve always thought of Tara as a very hot girl, even wih the bad boob job and stomach, I would’nt turn her down.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Walt Disney Co. on Thursday said it took “appropriate action” against employees at its Paris theme park who were caught simulating sex while dressed as Disney characters in a digital video that has received wide attention on the Internet.

Disney would not say whether it had dismissed any of the costumed employees featured in the grainy video, which appears to have been shot with a hidden camera at a backstage dressing room at Disneyland Resort Paris.

“The behavior shown on the video is unacceptable and inexcusable,” Disney said in a statement.

“The video was taken in the backstage area not accessible to guests. Appropriate action has been taken to deal with the cast members involved.”

The video shows Minnie Mouse struggling to free herself as she is grabbed from behind by Goofy and then a giant snowman.

Later, Mickey Mouse simulates sex with the snowman and Goofy does the same with either Chip or Dale, the chipmunks, as laughter is heard on the tape.

The tape is described on the Internet as the “Mouse Orgy.”

CLAYTON, Ga. – Well, that’s a DUI of a different color. Heather Darnell, 22, of Mountain City, Ga., faces a drunk driving charge after she steered the horse she was riding onto the highway and tangled with a car, authorities said. Darnell also was cited for entering a traffic lane.

She remains in fair condition after being airlifted to the Gwinnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville, Ga.

The horse apparently survived, officials said.

Three people who were in the Pontiac Bonneville that struck the horse Friday night were treated at Mountain Lakes Medical Center in Clayton, Ga., and released: Ancella Gragg, 32, of Lakemont, Ga., who was at the wheel; and a 13-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy.

Trooper Anthony Coleman said Gragg did not see the horse until too late and was unable to avoid hitting it.

“If it’s on the public right-of-way, you’re under the same jurisdiction as if you’re in a car,” Coleman said.

OSLO (Reuters) – The birds and the bees may be gay, according to the world’s first museum exhibition about homosexuality among animals.

With documentation of gay or lesbian behaviour among giraffes, penguins, parrots, beetles, whales and dozens of other creatures, the Oslo Natural History Museum concludes human homosexuality cannot be viewed as “unnatural”.

“We may have opinions on a lot of things, but one thing is clear — homosexuality is found throughout the animal kingdom, it is not against nature,” an exhibit statement said.

Geir Soeli, the project leader of the exhibition entitled “Against Nature”, told Reuters: “Homosexuality has been observed for more than 1,500 animal species, and is well documented for 500 of them.”

The museum said the exhibition, opening on Thursday despite condemnation from some Christians, was the first in the world on the subject. Soeli said a Dutch zoo had once organised tours to view homosexual couples among the animals.

“The sexual urge is strong in all animals. … It’s a part of life, it’s fun to have sex,” Soeli said of the reasons for homosexuality or bisexuality among animals.

One exhibit shows two stuffed female swans on a nest — birds sometimes raise young in homosexual couples, either after a female has forsaken a male mate or donated an egg to a pair of males.

One photograph shows two giant erect penises flailing above the water as two male right whales rub together. Another shows a male giraffe mounting another for sex, another describes homosexuality among beetles.

BURN IN HELL

One radical Christian said organisers of the exhibition — partly funded by the Norwegian government — should “burn in hell”, Soeli said. Laws describing homosexuality as a “crime against nature” are still on the statutes in some countries.

Greek philosopher Aristotle noted apparent homosexual behaviour among hyenas 2,300 years ago but evidence of animal homosexuality has often been ignored by researchers, perhaps because of distaste, lack of interest or fear or ridicule.

Bonobos, a type of chimpanzee, are among extremes in having sex with either males or females, apparently as part of social bonding. “Bonobos are bisexuals, all of them,” Soeli said.

Still, it is unclear why homosexuality survives since it seems a genetic dead-end.

Among theories, males can sometimes win greater acceptance in a pack by having homosexual contact. That in turn can help their chances of later mating with females, he said.

And a study of homosexual men in Italy suggested that their mothers and sisters had more offspring. “The same genes that give homosexuality in men could give higher fertility among women,” he said.

OSLO (Reuters) – German drugs maker Schering warned consumers on Thursday not to use haemorrhoid cream on their faces.

The warning came after a male stylist said on Norwegian television that many photo models used the cream in the morning to get rid of puffy eyes, which the drug company said seemed to have boosted demand for such products at pharmacies.

“This is a pharmaceutical and not a cosmetic,” the group’s Norwegian subsidiary Schering Norge AS said in a statement, warning especially to keep haemorrhoid cream out of the eyes.

It said the warning applied to its product, Scheringproct, which it said was “a pharmaceutical that is used on haemorrhoids and around the opening of the large intestine”.

NAIVASHA, Kenya (Reuters) – A couple caught having sex in a Kenyan mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan have been sentenced to 18 months jail for what the judge called an “abominable” affront to religion.

Peter Kimani and Jennifer Wairimu pleaded guilty to the charge of having sex in a place of worship after being caught on October 3 at the Abubakar mosque in Gilgil, about 100 km (60 miles) north of Nairobi. Neither is a Muslim.

A worshipper heading for evening prayers found the couple having sex after investigating what the prosecution described as strange noises emanating from a dark corner of the mosque.

Kimani and Wairimu both pleaded for clemency at Monday’s hearing, saying they were too drunk to know where they were. Kimani told the court he thought he was in a lodging house.

John King’ori, senior magistrate in nearby Naivasha, dismissed their plea.

“Having sex in a mosque is a most abominable thing to religion and only a custodial sentence can add justice to this,” he said.

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Flaunting bunnies, booze and blackjack, the first Playboy Club in nearly two decades opened in Las Vegas on Saturday night with high hopes that its time-tested combination of sex and celebrity will attract a new generation of high rollers.

With a distinctly vintage feel, Playboy bunnies wearing the distinctive ears and cottontail delivered drinks and dealt cards to a mostly male crowd at the Palms Casino Resort.

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner surrounded himself with a bevy of blonds — and one brunette — in a red corner booth while pulsating music filled the smoky room.

“There’s a new generation ready to come out and play,” Playboy Enterprises founder Hugh Hefner told Reuters before the party, saying the Playboy brand was just as relevant today as it was when he started the men’s magazine in 1953.

“Playboy has always stood for something — a social, sexual and political agenda that has real meaning,” the 80-year-old Hefner said.

Almost a half century has passed since Hefner opened his first club in Chicago in 1960 and helped usher in the sexual revolution while the Playboy bunny and the Playboy centrefold skyrocketed to American icon status.

Now, the flagship magazine faces depressed advertising and lower newsstand revenues amid competition from magazines like Maxim and Internet porn.

At the same time, however, Playboy has attracted new fans through “The Girls Next Door,” the reality television show about Hefner’s three live-in girlfriends, and a successful licensing business.

While once controversial, the brand appears almost quaint amid today’s X-rated offerings, said Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, who says that Playboy represents a pivotal moment in American culture.

“(Hefner) was starting a revolution to break down fusty, infantile, puritanical mores that probably needed to be broken down,” Thompson said. “At the same time he was creating a cultural climate that made many women who were just starting to make progress in the young feminist movement very uncomfortable.”

In their heyday, the dozens of clubs reached as far as Japan and Jamaica and featured the hottest entertainers of the time like Sammy Davis Jr. and Sonny & Cher.

But the symbols of flesh and free wheeling began shuttering their doors in the late 1980s amid escalating costs, and a sense among many that the bunny brand had peaked.

Now, Playboy is banking that its retro appeal will lure younger fans into the club.

DON’T TOUCH THE BUNNIES

The bunnies have been told how to deliver drinks and how to “perch” themselves delicately on the backs of seats.

“Bunnies don’t sit,” said bunny Ashley Rovenheiser, who said she loved being a bunny. “It’s so exciting.”

Patrons have rules, too, said bunny dealer Charity Mays.

“It’s kind of like at the zoo — don’t touch the bunnies!” she said.

According to Palms owner George Maloof, the Playboy club will be a welcome respite from the X-rated offerings available elsewhere in Vegas. Maloof said he expects young women to frequent the club, along with bachelor parties and high rollers.

“There’s plenty in Vegas to do if you want to go to a strip club,” Maloof said earlier this week. “This is a sophisticated place.”

Cocktails are served up at the bar adorned with thousands of diamond-shaped crystals, while Playboy’s famous rabbit ears adorn everything from the carpet to ashtrays to gambling tables. The bathroom walls are covered with centrefolds, with mirrored centrefold images on bathroom stalls.

Bunnies say the best part of their job is the outfit. Still, it has its drawbacks, said bunny dealer Mays.

“People kept taking the bunny tails — now they’re attached so they can’t come off.”

WETHERSFIELD, Conn. – It’s not your garden variety calendar. Members of the Men’s Garden Club of Wethersfield stripped naked and posed for a calendar intended to raise money for the club and its projects. The man, who ranged in age from 40 to 80, were photographed in the buff in secluded areas around town. Modesty prevailed, however, as garden objects were strategically placed for the shoots.

The calendar also offers their favorite recipes and monthly tips for caring for roses. The group maintains the Frank Weston Rose Garden is town.

Richard Prentice, 69, aka “Mr. January” is featured seated in a wheelbarrow and shares his recipe for margarita pie.

“Maybe everybody has some desire to be naked, if they have the opportunity,” said Prentice, a retired science teacher.

The club couldn’t get enough men to pose for each month, and so November features a group shot of all the men fully clothed. They aren’t the first group of men in the state to bare all for charity. Last year, a group in Lyme posed for a calendar to raise money for affordable housing.

The $15 calendar goes on sale this weekend at a crafts fair and at Spicy Green Bean Deli and House of Images Gallery on Main Street.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German lawyer hopes to drum up more business by pursuing state compensation claims for people who believe they were abducted by aliens.

“There’s quite obviously demand for legal advice here,” Jens Lorek told Reuters by telephone on Thursday. “The trouble is, people are afraid of making fools of themselves in court.”

Lorek, a lawyer based in the eastern city of Dresden who specializes in social and labor law, said he hoped to expand his client base by taking on the unusual work.

He has yet to win any abduction claims, but says there are plenty of potential clients, noting that extra-terrestrial watchdogs report scores of alien assaults every year.

“These people could appeal for therapies or cures,” he said.

Lorek, 41, is pinning his hopes for success on a German law which grants kidnap victims the right to state compensation.

Asked if he was worried he might look ridiculous by seeking justice for clients haunted by aliens, Lorek was unfazed.

“Nobody has laughed about it up until now.”

SYDNEY (AFP) – The Australian taxman is driving prostitutes underground, risking public health and causing a skills crisis in the world’s oldest profession, sex workers have told Sydney Morning Herald daily.

Australian tax authorities decided to audit the sex industry earlier this year to try to recoup some of the millions of dollars in revenue they feared was being lost every year by prostitutes not declaring their earnings.

But the clampdown has spooked many sex workers who were not used to paying tax, were unwilling to give up unemployment benefits and were uncomfortable with providing personal details to the taxman, the paper said, citing industry professionals.

“Whenever the ATO comes in and asks about service providers, they (sex workers) go straight out the back door and into the illegal industry,” the owner of one well-known brothel said, referring to the Australian Tax Office.

He estimated 30 percent of workers had left the “legitimate” sex industry this year, while another brothel owner reported staff losses of up to 60 percent.

Operating underground would make prostitutes less likely to observe health standards or report violence, according to Jo Holden, manager of the Sex Workers Outreach Project.

She said New South Wales state, of which Sydney is the capital, has an estimated 750 brothels and 10,000 sex workers.

Assistant tax commissioner Greg Topping said that authorities were not just targeting the visible side of the industry but also searching for illegal operators by combing through sex advertisements in newspapers and acting on information from police, councils and community groups.

“The Tax Office does not distinguish between businesses characterised as legitimate or otherwise,” he said.

PEREIRA, Colombia (Reuters Life!) – Every weeknight millions of Colombians tune in to watch a smash television series about the indignities suffered by a teen-age girl willing to do anything to get her breasts enlarged.

Tired of being poor and going to school with no good jobs in sight after graduation, Catalina decides to do what her friends have done and get breast implants in order to snag a gangster boyfriend who can take care of her.

She tries to prostitute herself to get money for the operation but, in a kind of Colombian Catch 22, has trouble winning clients due to her small cup size.

The show, based on a true story, is both loved and hated for displaying the culture of easy money here in the world’s biggest cocaine-exporting country.

Convinced that an overflowing bosom will be her “passport to heaven,” Catalina continues her quest, which instead leads to episode after episode of treachery and violence.

Some call the series an insult to Colombia, which is trying to end four decades of guerrilla war driven by the drug trade. Others, who enjoy the show’s black humor, say it is helping the country confront its demons.

Gangsters, called “traquetos” after the “traqua traqua traqua”-like sound made by their automatic weapons, are known to send their girlfriends for all kinds of aesthetic surgery.

Younger and younger women are getting operated on in the hope of landing a traqueto of their own.

“Vanity is pushing the girls of Colombia to do crazy things. We are addressing this in the show, not celebrating it,” said actress Margarita Rosa Arias, who plays Vanessa, one of the big-breasted characters Catalina tries to emulate.

‘TELE-TRASH’

In real life, Arias points to herself as an example of responsible augmentation, having had her breasts done by a well-qualified doctor when she was 28, at the behest of her husband.

The show’s main character is based on last year’s novel by Gustavo Bolivar about a 14-year-old girl played by Maria Adelaida Puerta, a long-necked, flat-chested beauty from Medellin.

When the book was released, people in the city of Pereira where the story is set were offended. The television show it inspired is like salt in the wounds to local business leaders who were already struggling to improve Pereira’s image.

“We will not be defined by this tele-trash!” city spokesman Luis Garcia told Reuters. “All the guys in the story are assassins and the girls sell themselves in order to augment their breasts. It is the stereotype we object to.”

For years Pereira, in the heart of Colombia’s coffee-growing region, was known as one of the country’s top party towns, where drug smugglers, coffee workers and truck drivers could blow money on famously beautiful prostitutes.

Defenders of the show say it reflects the conflicts that girls face in places like Pereira, a short drive from the home base of the still-powerful Norte del Valle cocaine cartel.

While Colombia has become safer thanks to a U.S.-backed crackdown on the drug trade, Pereira’s murder rate remains above the national average and many young people still turn to the drug-trafficking world as a way of escaping poverty.

“People are angry about “Sin Tetas” (“Without Tits”) but I think it’s OK because it shows the reality of a lot of girls,” said a woman in Pereira’s town square, declining to give her name.

LONDON (Reuters) – Over a million motorists think about sex rather than the road ahead and millions more who don’t indulge in intimate thoughts are worrying about work or thinking about their families, a survey said on Thursday.

Research from car insurer More Than found one in five drivers admit to concentrating behind the wheel less than 75 percent of the time, with 1.2 million thinking mostly about sex.

And sex wasn’t the only non-traffic thoughts motorists have. For 3.2 million drivers work was the main focus and for 2 million more it was family issues that dominated.

“Unsafe habits can be unlearned just as easily as they can be learned, but first, drivers must recognize the risk they face by not concentrating on their driving,” said Lisa Dorn, director of Driver Research at Cranfield University of the findings.

The study also revealed drivers’ pet hates.

Topping the list were tailgaters (28 percent), lane hoggers (20 percent) and drivers who cut in (11 percent).

Other road users who drove too fast and those who drove too slowly were also rated on 11 percent.

The research carried out by Sky Living for More Than questioned 4,497 adults in June, 2006.

LACONIA, N.H. – Police said a couple were arguing about their marriage when the wife grabbed an ax and charged at her husband, chasing him around the house.

The ax is considered a collector’s item and is used for display, but investigators said it has a very sharp blade and is capable of causing serious injury or death.

Linda Masse, 50, defended herself in court Monday and called the ax a toy.

“I didn’t threaten him or to kill him or anything,” she said.

Investigators said that the couple had been drinking, and Masse’s husband told her that he wanted to leave her. The argument then became violent, police said.

Police said that while chasing her husband, Masse destroyed several things inside their home, including a glass door and his car.

Her husband ran to a neighbor’s house, where he locked the door and called police.

TOKYO (AFP) – Playboy magazine, well known for its racy shots of women, has dared Japan’s new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to bare all himself.

But in case readers are looking for naked shots of Japan’s youngest post-World War II prime minister, the magazine made clear its challenge to Abe dealt with policy.

In between pictures of less than decent women, the men’s magazine devoted a seven-page cover story to accusing Abe of being opaque on his agenda.

“Our weekly magazine’s motto is and always has been, ‘Be more naked!’” Playboy said in an issue marking the 40th anniversary of its Japanese edition.

“Men and women, and Japan, be more naked! Shinzo Abe and your fellow men, are you ready?” it said, referring to Abe’s male-dominated cabinet.

Playboy featured contributions from commentators ranging from an independent politician to journalists to comedians to offer their views on Abe, who took office on September 26.

They criticized Abe for not giving clear explanations on issues ranging from restoring Japan’s finances to the perceived widening gap between rich and poor.

Abe, 52, enjoys high public approval ratings but has come under a barrage of criticism by the media accusing him of failing to offer a clear agenda.

Abe has been most outspoken on security and foreign-policy issues and champions rewriting Japan’s post-World War II pacifist constitution.