BEIJING (Reuters) – China has ordered all hotels, holiday resorts and public showers to provide condoms, part of nationwide efforts to fight the spread of AIDS, a newspaper said on Friday.

The regulation, issued by the commerce and health ministries, also required pamphlets about AIDS prevention to be displayed, the Beijing News said.

The move follows an unusual step by the booming eastern province of Zhejiang in March to fine hotels and bars if they did not provide condoms.

China originally stigmatized AIDS as a disease of the decadent, capital West — a problem of gays, sex workers and drug users. Traditionally, none of these officially existed in communist China.

It has belatedly woken up to the problem and health experts have warned the virus is now moving into the general population.

But a lack of sex education and unwillingness to talk about sex still hampers the fight, health experts say.

TORONTO (Reuters) – On the premise that laughter is the best medicine for testicular cancer, a Toronto actor has developed a one-man show, “My Left Nut”, that he hopes to tour across Canada later this year.

Daniel Schneiderman, 29, originally chronicled his experience with the disease from diagnosis, to surgery (his left testicle was removed), to treatment in candid and humorous e-mails sent to friends and family in late 2005. Urged by the several friends and his mother, he has now turned the material into a show.

“The e-mails, for me, were a great outlet to just think about it and also to deal with it,” Schneiderman said. “And the way that I dealt with it is finding humour in the situation. And, you know, it’s about balls, so there was a lot of material to find humour in.”

Schneiderman said early detection and diagnosis were key to his treatment. Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in males aged 15 to 34.

“My Left Nut” is being performed as part of next week’s Help Kick Cancer in the Balls! fund-raiser in Toronto. The event also features stand-up comedians and a giant testicle-shaped pinata.

Schneiderman hopes to take the show on tour, targeting high schools. Teenagers, he noted, are often a challenging audience because of embarrassment and fear of body-related issues.

PAINESVILLE, Ohio – A judge known for giving unusual sentences has ordered three men who pleaded guilty to soliciting sex to take turns dressing in a bright yellow chicken costume.

Painesville Municipal Judge Michael Cicconetti agreed to suspend a 30-day jail sentence if they wear the costume between 4 and 7 p.m. Friday outside the court while carrying a sign that reads “No Chicken Ranch in Painesville.”

The sign and costume refer to the “World Famous Chicken Ranch,” a prostitution house in Nevada where sex-for-money is legal.

Daniel Chapdelaine, 40, of Perry Township; Martin Soto, 44, of Ashtabula; and Fabian Rodriguez-Ramirez, 29, of Painesville, solicited sex from an undercover Painesville police officer earlier this summer.

Cicconetti has used barnyard animals to dispense justice in the past.

He ordered a man who called a policeman a pig to stand next to a live pig in a pen and hold a sign that read “This Is Not a Police Officer.” A couple who stole a baby Jesus statue from a manger were sentenced to dress as Mary and Joseph and walk with a donkey.

READINGTON, N.J. – Organizers think they’ve found the secret to good weather for this weekend’s Quick Chek New Jersey Festival of Ballooning — a virgin.

According to an imported superstition, good weather can be assured through a ceremony involving a virgin, some knives and fresh, whole onions and peppers.

And, no, Victoria Brumfield won’t be sacrificed.

Festival organizer Howard Freeman said a colleague heard about it in Singapore several years ago. For the past two years, it has worked in Readington. Partly because of the superstition, Freeman no longer buys weather insurance for the event, which is expected to draw 175,000 people.

Brumfield, 28, has worked with Freeman in the past and is a devout Mormon, proud of her adherence to the church’s rules, including not drinking, smoking, gambling or cursing — and no sex before marriage.

She became the festival’s official virgin last year after her younger sister, who had that role in 2005, moved to California.

It’s a mixture of “fun and embarrassment,” she told the Star-Ledger of Newark.

Here’s how she does it: She drives a golf cart to the four corners of the festival site, picks up some grass, mumbles some random words, then penetrates the produce with a knife before jamming it and the knives into the ground. The ritual was scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

The pressure is on this weekend. The National Weather Service says there’s a chance of rain each of the three days of the festival, which was scheduled to start Friday.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese police have seized more than a tonne of fake drugs for impotence, bird flu and malaria, including at least 18,000 fake Viagra tablets, state media reported Wednesday.

The Ministry of Public Security, which launched the national crackdown on counterfeit goods in 2005, announced 10 of its top cases ranging from fake drugs to fake toothpaste Tuesday, the Xinhua news agency said on its Web site.

More than 30 people were detained on suspicion of either making or selling the drugs.

Police in the eastern province of Zhejiang raided a gang making counterfeit Viagra and selling the tablets to 12 countries, including the United States and Holland, it said, adding that a total of 18,000 pills were seized.

In Guangdong, police had arrested 12 people and seized 1 tonne of fake drugs and two production lines and large quantities of raw materials for making “sildenafil citrate,” the scientific name of Viagra.

Police detained 19 suspects and shut down six factories in May last year for making fake Tamiflu, a bird flu drug, and selling it to the United States via the Internet, the agency said.

In April last year, police cracked a ring making and selling pirated toothpaste across the country and arrested five suspects, it said.

Chinese media report on scandals involving substandard or fake drug and food almost every day, and the issue burst into the international spotlight when tainted additives exported from China contaminated pet food in North America.

Public fears about food safety grew in China in 2004 when at least 13 babies died of malnutrition after they were fed fake mild power with no nutritional value.

LAKE CITY, Fla. – The state attorney general’s office removed the toll-free number for a sexual assault counseling center from its Web site after an girl was connected instead to a sex chat line.

The North Central Florida Sexual Assault Center shut down months ago, and the company that runs the chat line bought the number.

The girl’s mother, Karen Carter, said her daughter called because she witnessed inappropriate behavior two years ago, but at the time, was not ready to talk about it. Carter said it was nothing serious enough to involve authorities.

On Sunday, the girl approached her mother and said she wanted to talk. Carter decided to call the toll-free number she found in the phonebook hoping the operators would offer advice to her daughter. She said she handed her daughter the phone and walked away to give her privacy.

“I come back a few seconds later and she has this look on her face of surprise and then horror and then her eyes start tearing up,” Carter said. “I never thought in my wild’s dreams that she would get a sex line. I was trying to help my daughter.”

The chat line’s number has been removed from the attorney general’s Web site, and his office has apologized to the girl’s family.

“Again our sincerest apologies to the family that was affected,” said Sandi Copes, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Bill McCollum.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A mysterious blonde paid a visit to a petrol station shop in the small eastern German town of Doemitz on Sunday — wearing nothing but a pair of golden stilettos and a thin gold bracelet.

The tall, slender woman strolled into the shop in the town of Doemitz on the warm afternoon and bought cigarettes, petrol station employee Ines Swoboda told Reuters on Monday.

“I wasn’t surprised because she’s come in naked before — she’s a very nice woman,” Swoboda said, adding none of the other customers were bothered. The woman could have faced charges of creating a public disturbance if anyone had complained.

A quick-witted customer did, however, snap pictures of the woman believed to be about 30 years old as she walked back to a waiting Ferrari and climbed into the passenger seat. Several of those photos appeared in the German media on Monday.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Two Austrians and a German were fined for cycling naked along the banks of the River Danube in Serbia where a heatwave has sent temperatures soaring.

“Police arrived after being alerted by passers-by,” said police spokesman Stevan Krstic in the northern city of Novi Sad.

Temperatures in Serbia and other parts of the Balkans have hovered stubbornly for the past week at around 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

The there men were brought to a magistrate on charges of disrupting public peace and order and were fined 10,000 dinars (125 euros) each.

BRATTLEBORO, Vermont (Reuters) – A Vermont town that is gaining national attention for brash displays of nudity — from teens in the buff to naked elderly people — awoke on Wednesday to an emergency ban on nakedness in most public places.

Officials in Brattleboro voted 3 to 2 on Tuesday night for a temporary 30-day ordinance prohibiting people from going about in the nude.

Public nudity made headlines last summer when the weather grew hot and a couple of dozen teens took to holding hula hoop contests, riding bikes and parading past stores wearing only their birthday suits. The disrobing has resumed this summer.

But many locals say it has gone too far. Some cite a case in which a senior citizen from Arizona strolled through the center of town wearing only a waist pack and sandals.

“We’ve received quite a number of complaints on this,” Assistant Town Manager Barbara Sondag said. “This was brought up last summer … and kind of died down. Then a couple of incidents again this summer have got the issue to resurface.”

Vermont has a live-and-let-live tradition, allowing skinny-dipping and nude sunbathing. Brattleboro, the first permanent English settlement in the state in 1724, is home to a community of writers, artists and musicians as well as transplanted entrepreneurs from Boston and New York.

Although skinny-dipping and nude sunbathing will stay legal in the state, doing the “full monty” in the middle of this town has now become taboo. A violation can cost $100.

The topic is hotly debated at Harold & Son’s Barbershop, where Heather Birmingham, 30, cuts and colors hair.

“(Nudity) does rub some people the wrong way,” she said.

“Some people say ‘to each his own’. But some of the older people say ‘be respectful’.”

She disagrees with the ban. “This whole town is about peace and about being your own person. So if it is, then why isn’t nudity accepted?”

Caleb Morris, 15, said he wasn’t surprised by the town’s tough response because outsiders could find the nudity offensive, but he added that Vermont has always been unique.

“It’s a lot more free-spirited than some other states. We don’t have a lot of laws banning things here.”

The ban covers nudity in the main part of town and near schools and churches and is part of a broader anti-nudity proposal that is likely to be decided next month. Breast feeding in public will still be allowed.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – A 20-year-old Syracuse woman who left children in her care to go pose for nude photos is facing several charges of endangering the welfare of a child.

Police say Michelle Rendino was supposed to be watching four young girls yesterday when she left them alone and went into the woods near Syracuse’s Inner Harbor to have a man take nude photos of her.

A man fishing saw the children crying and called police. When police arrived, the oldest girl — a six-year-old — told police that “Aunt Michelle” went into the woods to take “nasty pictures.”

Rendino says she asked the man to take nude photos of her so she could get back at her ex-boyfriend.

The children were returned safely to their mother.

LONDON (Reuters) – A teen-ager whose teachers had stopped her wearing a “purity ring” at school to symbolize her commitment to virginity lost a High Court fight against the ban Monday.

Lydia Playfoot, 16, says her silver ring is an expression of her faith and had argued in court that it should be exempt from school regulations banning the wearing of jewelry.

“I am very disappointed by the decision this morning by the High Court not to allow me to wear my purity ring to school as an expression of my Christian faith not to have sex outside marriage,” Playfoot said in a statement.

“I believe that the judge’s decision will mean that slowly, over time, people such as school governors, employers, political organizations and others will be allowed to stop Christians from publicly expressing and practicing their faith.”

Playfoot’s legal challenge was the latest in a series of disputes in British schools in recent years over the right of pupils to wear religious symbols or clothing, such as crucifixes and veils.

Last year, the Law Lords rejected Shabina Begum’s appeal for permission to wear a Muslim gown at her school in Luton. That case echoed a debate in France over the banning of Muslim headscarves in state schools.

Playfoot’s parents are key members of the British arm of the American chastity campaign group the Silver Ring Thing, a religious group which urges abstinence among young people.

Those who sign up wear a ring on the third finger of the left hand. It is inscribed with “Thess. 4:3-4,” a reference to a Biblical passage from Thessalonians which reads: “God wants you to be holy, so you should keep clear of all sexual sin.”

During the case, Playfoot’s lawyers argued that the ban by her school in Horsham, West Sussex, breached her human rights to “freedom of thought, conscience and religion” which are protected by the European Convention on Human Rights.

Lawyers for the school denied discrimination and said the purity ring breached its rules on wearing jewelry.

They said allowances were made for Muslim and Sikh pupils only for items integral to their religious beliefs and that, for the same reason, crucifixes were also allowed. But it argued that the purity ring was not an integral part of the Christian faith.

Playfoot said in her statement she would consult her legal team to consider whether to appeal.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – An Indian firm has launched a paan-flavoured condom designed to evoke the pungent taste of the betel nut and tobacco concoction chewed and then spat out by millions of South Asians, newspapers reported on Tuesday.

Hindustan Latex is targeting the new condom range at prostitutes, who are among the most vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS, the Hindustan Times reported.

The company ran taste tests with sex workers, including prototypes with chocolate, banana and strawberry flavours, but the paan flavour came out tops.

“The community loved it as most of the sex workers chew paan,” Sanjeev Gaikwad was quoted as saying at the launch in Mumbai. Gaikwad is a director at Family Health International, a public health organisation that helped develop the condom.

Paan is a mildly intoxicating preparation wrapped in a leaf, usually containing tobacco, betel nut and flavourings, and is hugely popular across South Asia. It is chewed to a mouth-staining red pulp before being spat out.

The condoms will at first be made available only to prostitutes, but will we launched to the general public in a few months, the newspaper said.

LA PAZ (Reuters) – The winner of a Bolivian beauty contest for indigenous women was stripped of her title moments after her coronation when judges noticed she was wearing false plaits, organizers said Saturday.

The Miss Cholita Pacena pageant, held in the Andean city of La Paz late Friday, seeks to instill pride in indigenous women who choose to wear the traditional dress of wide skirt, bowler hat and long plaited hair.

But doubts over whether the winner was a genuine Cholita Pacena — the name for Indian women from La Paz — led judges to strip her of her victor’s sash and call for a rerun, said pageant organizer Walter Gomez from La Paz’s city government.

The judges “disqualified the winner because they realized she didn’t have plaits, that the plaits she had were false,” he told Reuters. “Having short hair means they don’t live like Cholitas.”

Friday’s contest was a far cry from the mainstream beauty contests that are popular in Bolivia, in which the South American nation’s indigenous majority are under-represented.

Not a bikini in sight, the toughest test for the 14 contestants was making a speech in the native Aymara language to prove their Cholita credentials.

It is not the first time scandal has hit the pageant. In 2004, the winner caused a stir after her coronation by saying she did not normally wear traditional dress.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German bus driver threatened to throw a 20-year-old sales clerk off his bus in the southern town of Lindau because he said she was too sexy, a newspaper reported Monday.

“Suddenly he stopped the bus,” the woman named Debora C. told Bild newspaper. “He opened the door and shouted at me ‘Your cleavage is distracting me every time I look into my mirror and I can’t concentrate on the traffic. If you don’t sit somewhere else, I’m going to have to throw you off the bus.’”

The woman, pictured in Bild wearing her snug-fitting summer clothes with the plunging neckline, said she moved to another seat but was humiliated by the bus driver.

A spokesman for the bus company defended the driver.

“The bus driver is allowed to do that and he did the right thing,” the spokesman said. “A bus driver cannot be distracted because it’s a danger to the safety of all the passengers.”

HOUSTON – A Houston woman is suing a former high school classmate who took her name and starred in pornographic movies.

Kristen Syvette Wimberly, 25, is asking that Lara Madden and film distributor Vivid Entertainment Group stop using or publicizing her name, which Madden took as a stage name.

The two met in ninth grade at Kingwood High School. According to the lawsuit, they “were friends but eventually that friendship ended due to conflict.”

Madden, 25, began her adult-film career in 2004 and has appeared in about a dozen adult films using the name Syvette Wimberly.

As a result, the lawsuit claims, Madden and the distributor have inflicted “humiliation, embarrassment, loss of enjoyment of life, emotional distress, mental anguish and anxiety.”

Caj Boatright, attorney for Kristen Syvette Wimberly, said her client started being contacted by friends and acquaintances asking about her career in pornography.

“The purpose of the lawsuit is to get her to stop using this name,” Boatright said. “We’re not out looking for millions of dollars.”

Kent Schaffer, Madden’s attorney, said his client chose the name simply because she liked the sound of it.

“There is no bad blood between them,” Schaffer said. “Lara never meant to harm this other girl.”

Madden no longer performs in pornographic films, Schaffer said. Vivid Entertainment had no comment because it hadn’t been served with the lawsuit, a spokesman said.

The lawsuit, filed June 26 in Harris County District Court, seeks unspecified damages, but Schaffer said Madden will agree to stop using the name if that’s all the plaintiff wants.

“They’ll never get a penny from her,” he said. “She doesn’t have any money, for one thing, but even if she did this suit will never hold up in court. I’m not aware of any court that has upheld such a lawsuit. If I use your name to defraud somebody, that’s different.”

BEIJING (Reuters) – Condoms of all shapes and sizes were on display at a Beijing fashion show on Wednesday featuring dresses, hats and even lollipops made of the said item.

Models fought through extravagant soap bubble special effects to show off tight-fitting wedding gowns, scaly-looking evening dresses, outrageous bikinis and other garments made entirely of condoms, inflated or otherwise.

The show was held at the Fourth China Reproductive Health New Technologies and Products Expo and organized by China’s largest condom manufacturer, Guilin Latex Factory, to promote the use of condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

It also marked World Population Day, organized annually by the U.N. Population Fund.

China, with a population now of 1.3 billion, introduced a strict one-child policy in the late 1970s under which many residents are restricted to one child.

“One (child) is not enough — two are better,” said visitor Song Weiliang.

But the main aim of the condom show was to promote AIDS awareness.

China originally stigmatized AIDS as a disease of the decadent, capitalist West — a problem of gays, sex workers and drug users. Traditionally, none of these officially existed in communist China.

It has belatedly awakened to the problem, and health experts have warned the virus is now moving into the general population. But a lack of sex education and unwillingness to talk about sex still hampers the fight, health experts say.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Condoms of all shapes and sizes were on display at a Beijing fashion show on Wednesday featuring dresses, hats and even lollipops made of the said item.

Models fought through extravagant soap bubble special effects to show off tight-fitting wedding gowns, scaly-looking evening dresses, outrageous bikinis and other garments made entirely of condoms, inflated or otherwise.

The show was held at the Fourth China Reproductive Health New Technologies and Products Expo and organised by China’s largest condom manufacturer, Guilin Latex Factory, to promote the use of condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

It also marked World Population Day, organised annually by the U.N. Population Fund.

China, with a population now of 1.3 billion, introduced a strict one-child policy in the late 1970s under which many residents are restricted to one child.

“One (child) is not enough — two are better,” said visitor Song Weiliang.

But the main aim of the condom show was to promote AIDS awareness.

China originally stigmatised AIDS as a disease of the decadent, capitalist West — a problem of gays, sex workers and drug users. Traditionally, none of these officially existed in communist China.

It has belatedly woken up to the problem, and health experts have warned the virus is now moving into the general population. But a lack of sex education and unwillingness to talk about sex still hampers the fight, health experts say.

LONDON – Scottish bride Teresa Brown’s dream of a perfect wedding day probably did not include attacking the groom with her stiletto shoe and spending the weekend in a cell.

Police arrested the 33-year-old in the couple’s hotel room in April while her wedding reception continued downstairs, prosecutor Alan Townsend said Tuesday at Aberdeen Sheriff Court. She spent the rest of her wedding weekend in a cell.

The distraught groom, Mark Allerton, 40, staggered to the front desk, clutching a bloody towel to his head, Townsend said.

“He indicated that his wife had struck him over the head with a stiletto heel,” the prosecutor said.

Police found Brown, a real estate agent’s assistant, sitting on the hotel room bed, surrounded by broken glass.

Brown told police she and her husband had “been accusing each other of different things,” the prosecutor said, without going into details. Brown said she hit him on the head because he had taken a hold of her, he added.

Brown’s lawyer Stuart Beveridge said the newlyweds began throwing things at each other after an argument in their room turned physical. He said Brown had been on antidepressants at the time and had been drinking.

“She and her husband are still together although this incident has not helped,” he said, adding she is receiving counseling.

Sheriff James Tierney let Brown off on the assault charge with a warning and fined her 250 pounds ($505) for damaging the hotel room and ordered her to pay the hotel 500 pounds ($1,150) in compensation.

Hilton Treetops said in a statement that they were happy the case has closed.

“This has been a very unusual case,” the hotel said.

NEW YORK – A bidet company’s advertising plans in Times Square are too cheeky for the pastor of a nearby church.

Rev. Neil Rhodes, pastor of the interdenominational Times Square Church, is asking a state court to block a billboard company from posting huge ads that feature naked buttocks with smiley faces on them. The display is to go up on two sides of the Broadway building that houses Rhodes’ church, its Bible school and day-care center.

“You walk into a church building, you have naked bodies before your eyes, how are you going to close your eyes and seek God?” Rhodes told the New York Post in an article published Sunday.

The ads promote the Washlet, a bidet-toilet seat that uses warm water and air. They were to go up for 30 days beginning July 1, but the church asked the state Supreme Court to block the displays, saying they would interfere with the church’s religious mission.

Adam Silverstein, a lawyer for the advertising company, Van Wagner Communications, told the newspaper that he did not wish to trivialize the church’s objections, but that “this is Times Square. It’s the billboard capital of the world, and it’s home to some of the most sensational advertisements in the universe.”

A ruling was expected Monday.

MASON, Ohio – A man who was arrested in a park wearing a woman’s wig and a bikini accepted a plea deal Thursday that dropped a charge of public indecency.

Steven S. Cole, a former volunteer firefighter, pleaded guilty to a charge of operating a vehicle while intoxicated and disorderly conduct.

Municipal Court Judge George Parker sentenced Cole to attend a mandatory driver intervention program and placed him on two years’ probation. Cole was ordered to stay out of the city’s public parks during that time and pay a $250 fine.

Parker also suspended Cole’s driving privileges for six months, except for work, counseling sessions, family appointments and visits with his probation officer.

Police arrested Cole on April 4 in his truck as he was leaving Heritage Oak Park in this Cincinnati suburb after parents complained about a man dressed in women’s clothing.

Police said they found an open, half-empty bottle of beer in the truck, along with a gym bag containing wigs, bikinis, silver go-go boots and other women’s garments.

Cole’s blood-alcohol test registered 0.17, more than twice Ohio’s legal driving limit of 0.08, police said.

The arrest report said Cole told an officer he was on his way to a bar in Dayton to perform as a woman in a contest offering a $10,000 prize.

CANBERRA (Reuters) – Condom makers say it’s the world’s best job, a “sexecutive position”. An Australian company is seeking real life testers for its condom products.

“Got what it takes to be an official condom tester?” asks an advertisement launched by Durex Australia next to a photo of a busty young woman in a revealing nurse’s outfit.

“With this job on your CV, it really will be a chance to brag to your mates about the special skills you possess, not to mention that your new role will work wonders with the opposite sex,” Durex Marketing Manager Sam White told local media.

The “bed-testing” position is unpaid, but 200 selected testers would be up for free pack of Durex products, plus a bonus prize of A$1,000 (425 pounds) for one lucky winner, White said.

In return, testers would have to report back on the feel and performance of the company’s products.

Only Australians need apply, and would-be testers will be asked to explain why they should be considered. Humour would help in the application, Durex said.

“To apply, simply explain why you think you’re right for the position (missionary is acceptable) and you could be eligible for the employee bonus of $1,000,” said the ad.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Talk of monetary union and wine quotas gave way to controversy over orgasms and innuendo at the European Commission on Wednesday as it defended a risque Internet video clip highlighting its backing for European cinema.

The EU executive’s usually dry daily news briefing sprung to life with questions over whether a 44-second clip of 18 couples achieving ecstasy in a variety of positions and venues was the best way to show how Brussels uses taxpayers’ money.

The raunchy clip is made up of snippets from various general release films that have been funded by the EU, including “Amelie” and “Good Bye Lenin!”.

Some reporters also took a swipe at the title of the sequence, asking whether “Let’s Come Together” was acceptable innuendo — and if it was, whether the pun worked in the 27-member Union’s other official languages.

A Commission spokesman insisted it had not received a single complaint in the 14 weeks since the clip first appeared on Internet site YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKFTfAWnYh8), suggesting the Brussels press corps should relax and get with the times.

“Let us for once also have a good sense of humour and let us not start the old wars of the fifties about what is sex, what is pornography and what is simply normal to watch on television,” spokesman Martin Selmayr appealed.

RUTLAND, Vt. – A man who police say exposed himself to two Victoria’s Secret store clerks while trying on women’s underwear faces two felony counts and a misdemeanor charge of retail theft. Police say Robert K. Scott, 47, went twice to the lingerie store in the Diamond Run Mall in April and May.

At his arraignment Monday, Scott was released on conditions, including that he abide by a curfew and stay away from the mall and the store.

The Rutland County Sheriff’s Department, which provides security at the mall, investigated the incidents.

Sheriff’s Deputy Andrew Cross wrote in a sworn statement that Scott went to the store on April 22 and told a female clerk he wanted to try on some lingerie and panty hose.

“Scott asked her to stay close by while he was in the dressing room,” Cross wrote,” adding that “Scott then had her look at him to see how the items looked on him.” When she looked, “she could tell he had no underwear on.”

Scott returned to the store May 6, picked out several items, went into a dressing room and then began calling a female clerk for help.

Scott then opened the door, wearing a white top, red heels and no underwear, exposing himself to her, Cross wrote. The clerk said Scott made no attempt to cover himself, the affidavit stated.

The clerk called the sheriff’s office, Cross arrived, went to the dressing room and told Scott to remove any clothing belonging to the store and put his own clothes back on.

Cross escorted Scott to the sheriff’s office at the mall, pat-searched him and found him still to be wearing white underwear with a Victoria’s Secret security tag attached.

“When I asked Scott about the underwear with the security tag, he stated, ‘I didn’t mean to take them,’” the deputy wrote.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Watch-maker and clothier Fossil Inc. agreed to pay $3,600 to a woman who was barred from breast-feeding her infant while visiting a company showroom, the New York Civil Liberties Union said on Tuesday.

Lass King, 37, a buyer for a Maine clothing store and a mother of two, said she received a letter of apology and the payment from Fossil after threatening the company with a lawsuit.

In its letter to King, Fossil also said it had issued a policy affirming that breast-feeding was permitted in all Fossil stores and showrooms, said Galen Sherwin, director of the NYCLU’s Reproductive Rights Project.

Representatives of Fossil could not immediately confirm details of the settlement.

New York law states that women are permitted to breast-feed “in any location, public or private, where the mother is otherwise authorized to be.”

The case follows another settlement, reached in September, when the Toys R Us toy store chain agreed to lift its restrictions on where a woman can breast-feed.

King called her experience humiliating.

In August 2006, while meeting with a salesperson in a Manhattan showroom, King was told she was making others feel uncomfortable by breast-feeding her 8-month-old son, Cody.

King was taken to another floor to finish feeding Cody but was then not allowed back into the showroom. In January, as she made plans to again visit a Fossil showroom, she was told by a Fossil representative that breast-feeding was forbidden.

“I wanted to be apologized to. I wanted not to be humiliated or for anybody else to be humiliated either,” she told Reuters of her decision to contact the civil liberties organization.

OTTAWA (AFP) – A new pizza restaurant in western Canada that delivers pornography with every pie has once again proven the adage: sex sells.

Porno Pizza in Winnipeg has been doing brisk business since opening last week, titillating the hungry with racy pictures at the bottom of every pizza box.

“They range from softly-lit, lube-on-the-lens pictures like in Playboy, to raunchy, hardcore photos that would make Larry Flint blush,” pizzeria owner Corey Wildeman told AFP. “The image is revealed as you eat the pizza.”

The “ultra erotic” marketing gimmick has attracted “scowls” from some observers, “hooting and hollering” from others and at least one “drive-by flashing” of breasts, he said.

“We live in a society that is so steeped in porn that people have it delivered to the dinner table,” Roz Prober of child advocacy group Beyond Borders lamented in the Winnipeg Free Press.

Indeed, Wildeman, 30, is already in talks with potential partners to open franchises across Canada after selling hundreds of pizzas in one week.

“You’ll never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator,” he explained. “Everyone knows: sex sells.”

Wildeman said he came up with the idea for the naughty pizzeria while talking with friends about classic porn flicks in which “pizza delivery guys meet lonely ladies and deliver more than just pizza.”

Unexpectedly, more than 75 percent of his customers turned out to be women, he noted.

TOLEDO, Ohio – A golf outing for local Democrats left some participants embarrassed after they found out strippers were handing out drinks at the event.

One participant said he saw a woman flash a group of golfers. Others at the fundraiser for the Lucas County Democratic Party said they didn’t see any inappropriate acts.

“When the word got out that these girls are strippers, it gave the party a black eye,” said Clerk of Courts Bernie Quilter. “Every elected official out there was embarrassed.”

Quilter said he did not see any improper behavior.

Ryan Kemp, a general manager for a local strip club, said he paid for four people to golf at the outing and had club waitresses staff it.

Domenic Montalto, the Democratic Party’s executive director, would not comment. Party chairman John Irish he did not know the strippers were at the golf course.

“It would be something that I would not approve of, but this is sort of a surprise to me,” Irish said. “I was there all day. And there was nothing that I was aware of that was inappropriate that happened at all.”

About 130 people were at the golf outing Friday.

Lucas County Treasurer Wade Kapszukiewicz said he saw one woman lift up her top and show her chest to a group of golfers. She then lowered her shorts, he said.

“What I saw was inappropriate, offensive and wrong,” Kapszukiewicz said. “What I saw did not represent the values of the Democratic Party.”

PAMPLONA, Spain (AFP) – Hundreds of animal rights activists took part in a “Running of the Nudes” Thursday to protest the traditional running of the bulls ceremony in the Spanish town of Pamplona.

The demonstrators ran stripped to their underwear and sporting plastic horns, as well as the traditional red bandana worn by those who take part in the famous Spanish event.

The running of the bulls involves the release of bulls every morning into the streets of the city in northeast Spain.

Daredevil revellers, including many foreigners, run ahead of the stampeding bulls as they are herded down the narrow streets towards the city’s bull ring.

Runners are sometimes caught and either gored or trampled by the running bulls and 14 people have been killed in the event since 1911.

The bulls that run in the morning are used in bullfights the same evening.

Thursday’s protest was organised by the animal rights group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), which said people from more than 30 countries took part.

Thousands of tourists are expected to attend the week-long festival of the bulls, which starts on Friday.

NEW YORK – A peacock that roamed into the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant was attacked by a man who vilified the bird as a vampire, animal-control authorities said.

Beaten so fiercely that most of his tail feathers fell out, the bird was euthanized, said Richard Gentles, a spokesman for the city’s Center for Animal Care and Control.

“It’s just unbelievable that someone would do something to a poor, defenseless animal and do it in such a cruel fashion,” he said.

The peacock, a male several years old, wandered into a Burger King parking lot in the New York borough of Staten Island and perched on a car hood Thursday morning. Charmed employees were feeding him bread when the man appeared.

He seized the iridescent bird by the neck, hurled it to the ground and started kicking and stomping the creature, said worker Felicia Finnegan, 19.

“He was going crazy,” she said.

Asked what he was doing, she said, the attacker explained, “‘I’m killing a vampire!’”

Employees called police, but the man ran when he saw them. Authorities were looking for the attacker, described as in his teens or early 20s.

It was not clear how the bird made his way to the Burger King, but a Staten Island resident who raises peacocks said he had given some to a person who lives near the restaurant.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Erotic dancers in adult bars in most parts of this Spring Break city are going to have to wear as much clothing as most people on the beach.

A federal appeals court upheld municipal zoning and nudity ordinances on Thursday after the city and Lollipops Gentlemen’s Club made their cases before the court on March 23.

“The bottom line is the 11th Circuit Court (of Appeals) upheld the city’s authority to enforce its zoning regulations and public nudity ordinance with regard to the adult entertainment establishments,” City Attorney Bob Brown said.

In other words, dancers at adult clubs that serve liquor are required to wear conservative bikinis. G-strings and pasties won’t be enough to meet that requirement, the court said.

Both sides were trying to reverse previous rulings.

A district court ruled in January 2006 that Daytona Beach’s nudity laws were unconstitutional because they violated the right to free speech, and dancers at adult clubs had been going nude ever since.

Lollipops officials wanted the appeals court to reverse a court ruling from December 2004 that upheld the city’s zoning laws, which regulate where adult businesses can operate.

Lollipops lost that one, too.

An attorney for Lollipops said they were prepared to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I don’t think it means anything,” said lawyer Brett Hartley of Daytona Beach. “We don’t see (this) ruling as a major setback. This is just part of the dance.”

BEIJING (Reuters) – China plans to sack all officials found to have secretly “kept and supported” mistresses, in a move aimed at raising social morals, state media reported on Friday.

The step hardens up previous policy.

“It is a misunderstanding that officials who have mistresses would only be sacked when the situation is serious,” the Beijing News quoted a Ministry of Personnel spokesman as saying.

Mistresses and “second wives” are common among government officials and businessmen in China, and Chinese media have said the financial pressures of keeping mistresses have driven some officials to seek money through bribes or abuse of power.

Corrupt officials are a major cause of public outrage in China, and the country’s Communist rulers have warned that if graft is not checked it could threaten the party’s grip on power.

The ministry said it had studied the issue and found it “necessary to make a clarification and emphasis” on the punishment for officials who supported mistresses.

“The morality of government officials shown in their management or power operation… directly affects the moral level of the whole society,” the spokesman was quoted as saying.

“Therefore, officials should set up good examples, and abide by social morality rules.”

Last year, a Chinese vice admiral was jailed for life on embezzlement charges after one of his many mistresses blew the whistle on him when he refused to give in to her demand for money.