SANTIAGO (AFP) – A high-class Chilean prostitute touched by a charity telethon’s bid to raise money for handicapped children has stepped forward with her own contribution: 27 hours of sex.

That’s how much paid sex work the escort, Maria Carolina, has said she wants to contribute to the Teleton association.

The 5,400 dollars she earns from the marathon session, scheduled for November 30-December 1, will go to the charity, Carolina said, explaining she earns 300 dollars per 90-minute session.

She said she would post a picture of the bank deposit slip on her website afterwards to dispel any doubts.

“I am going to contribute with my work to a purpose that touches me deeply,” said the prostitute, who has spread her message through several online sites and television programs.

But the administrator of the Teleton foundation, television presenter Mario Kreutzberger, has thrown cold water on the proposition, saying it falls well outside his moral guidelines and he cannot accept it.

Carolina, though, said she was determined. “How can someone question a person who wants to put her job at the service of a noble cause?” she asked.

BANGKOK, Thailand – Vote-buying is an old practice in Thai politics, but one candidate for December’s Thai election has reportedly come up with a new tactic — handing out Viagra instead of cash.

The allegation, made Thursday by a campaign worker against a rival party, comes as rules about handing out favors to voters have become stricter than ever, barring even the distribution of free T-shirts and soft drinks.

Sayan Nopcha, a campaigner for the People’s Power Party in Pathum Thai province just north of Bangkok, said the drug used to treat sexual dysfunction in men was being distributed to elderly male voters at social functions.

Viagra is supposed to be used only on a doctor’s advice, but is generally available over the counter in Thailand.

“The politician is giving out Viagra to gain popularity and votes,” said Sayan, a local government official whose older brother is the PPP candidate. “I think this is a very bad way of vote-buying.”

He would not identify the candidate who allegedly handed out the pills.

Under a tough new law, both the supplier and recipient of vote-buying can face criminal charges. Candidates can be disqualified and their party disbanded, as was the case with the old law, while voters who accept money or gifts can now face from one to 10 years in prison.

More than 4,200 candidates from 41 parties are competing for 480 seats in the lower house of parliament in the Dec. 23 polls — the first to be held after a bloodless military coup ousted elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in September last year.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German police have arrested a 60-year-old landlord after discovering he used cameras and microphones to spy on his tenants for a decade while they bathed and slept.

The man had installed surveillance in the bedrooms, bathrooms and living areas of two flats 10 years ago in the southern city of Ingolstadt, Bavarian police said Tuesday.

He taped at least seven current and previous tenants — and an unknown number of their guests.

He was arrested on charges of invasion of privacy after one of his tenants discovered the bugging last week while she was cleaning the flat.

The landlord admitted to police he had been watching and recording tenants and guests. Police suspect he had sexual motives.

“Why do you think someone would put a camera in the bathroom — to see if it was being cleaned correctly?” asked Bavarian police spokesman Ulrich Poepsel.

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. – A Montana man was arrested in Oregon’s Klamath County after a state trooper found nearly two pounds of marijuana wrapped as a Christmas present in the man’s car.

Oregon State Police said the trooper found about three pounds of marijuana and four firearms in Jimmie Cumbee’s car after a traffic stop Monday night on U.S. 97 about 10 miles south of Klamath Falls.

Cumbee, 42, was stopped for driving 75 mph in a 55 mph speed zone. He was traveling with his 17-year-old son, who also was arrested. Both are from Highwood, Mont., east of Great Falls.

Trooper Dave Chambers also found a marijuana pipe, and said that one of the four weapons was loaded and concealed in a box next to the driver’s seat.

Jimmie Cumbee is accused of unlawful manufacture, delivery and possession of a controlled substance, and carrying a concealed weapon.

NEW YORK – To activists concerned about AIDS and prisoners’ rights, it’s an urgent, commonsense step that should already be nationwide policy — letting inmates have condoms to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases behind bars.

Yet their efforts have run headlong into a stronger political force: Authorities’ desire not to encourage inmates who flout prison rules against sex. Only one state, Vermont, and five cities regularly hand out condoms to inmates. Mississippi does so only for inmates receiving conjugal visits from their spouses.

Left out are the vast majority of America’s 2.2 million prisoners — many held in facilities where sex between men is common and the risk of STDs is far higher than in the general population.

“I realize this is not a comfortable topic for many people, but it’s one we simply cannot afford to ignore,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif. “When more than 90 percent of incarcerated people return to our communities, taking a head-in-the-sand approach to the fact that our prisons have become a breeding ground for HIV/AIDS poses a serious public health risk.”

Despite such warnings, recent efforts to expand behind-bars condom access have gone almost nowhere. Prison officials contend that condoms can be used to conceal drugs, and law-and-order politicians scoff at what they depict as a step that would encourage both consensual and coercive sex.

“Removing the freedoms of criminals is in itself a deterrent,” said California Assemblyman Paul Cook. “Allowing condoms into prisons simply sends the wrong message and confirms what we all suspect: Our prison system has serious and severe behavioral and inmate-control issues.”

A measure introduced by Lee in Congress this year to allow condom access in federal prisons has made little headway. A bill in Illinois failed to clear a legislative committee in March. And a bill in California was vetoed last month by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said the proposal conflicted with prison regulations banning sexual activity.

Yet Ron Snyder, an HIV-positive Californian who served 19 months in the state’s prison systems for embezzlement, said sex was widespread despite the rules. Some inmates used rubber gloves as makeshift condoms, and some supervisors allowed romantically involved men to share cells, he said.

Schwarzenegger, in his veto message, offered a ray of hope to advocates of condom access. He described it as “not an unreasonable public policy” and instructed corrections officials to assess the feasibility of a pilot program at a yet-to-be-selected state prison.

Snyder predicted a “tough struggle” to extend any such program systemwide because of staff attitudes. Many of the correctional officers are from rural areas, “and they assume men don’t have sex with men,” he said. “They just don’t understand the picture.”

California already is home to two of the local condom programs, at jails in Los Angeles and San Francisco. New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., also have programs — New York’s dates back to 1987.

In Los Angeles, the condoms are distributed by an activist group, the Center for Health Justice, only in a special unit reserved for gay men who ask to be assigned there. San Francisco, for nearly 20 years, has allowed prisoners to be issued condoms by the health staff; distribution was expanded in April in the form of a condom-dispensing machine placed in a jail recreation hall.

Mary Sylla, the Center for Health Justice’s policy director, said there have been no security problems in either city.

“If there was a case of somebody doing something horrible with a condom, we would have heard about it — it would be all over the corrections community,” she said. “But it doesn’t happen.”

Though disappointed by Schwarzenegger’s veto, Sylla is hopeful that a pilot program will indeed get started in the state prison system. She said corrections officials already had visited the Los Angeles unit to see that local program in action.

But Sylla acknowledged that the cause is tough to promote.

“It’s easy to make fun of,” she said. “People don’t like to think about prisoners having sex, even though everybody knows it goes on.”

Vermont’s Corrections Department, although it holds relatively few HIV-positive inmates, has been making condoms available in prisons since 1992 — even though sexual activity remains officially prohibited.

“It’s a courageous position that Vermont took then and continues to have now,” said the department’s health services director, Dr. Dolores Burroughs-Biron.

Under the program, inmates are granted a single condom at a time if they request one from a nurse. Burroughs-Biron said there had been no reports of any security problems.

But corrections officials insist there are dangers. Glenn Goord, New York State’s former corrections commissioner, told the Legislature that inmates use condoms to transport drugs within prison grounds. He also said condoms might embolden prison rapists, who could use them to avoid leaving DNA evidence after their assaults.

There is no authoritative U.S. data on the extent of HIV behind bars, but the federal Centers for Disease Control did conduct a detailed study in Georgia which found that 856 male inmates — about 2 percent of the state’s total — were HIV-positive, and that 76 of them apparently got the virus while in prison.

The CDC report, published last year, suggested that lawmakers consider the condom policy.

Patrick Sullivan, the CDC epidemiologist who led the study, said sex among inmates was common in Georgia despite being prohibited. He said many of the sexually active inmates used condoms — or some improvised substitute — even though they were considered contraband.

In several foreign countries — including Canada, Australia and much of Western Europe — condoms have been freely distributed to prisoners for years without security problems.

Though activists are convinced condom access would reduce STD transmission, they are cautious in making specific health claims.

“I don’t know how we’d ever be able to prove how much they reduce HIV,” said Ron Snyder, who now works for the Center for Health Justice. “But if we could affect one or two people who wouldn’t bring it back to their women when they get home, that’s dramatic impact right there.”

ROME (Reuters) – An Italian teacher has been suspended from school because of her extra-curricular activities as a porn star, local authorities announced Thursday.

The out-of-hours behavior of Anna Ciriani, who calls herself “Madameweb” in hard-core videos on the Internet and at erotic shows, was “not compatible with educational activity,” the head of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia education authority said.

Ciriani, dubbed the “porno-prof” by Italy’s main newspapers, said she never let her hobby get in the way of her teaching.

“My behavior at school has always been professional and irreproachable,” she was quoted as saying by the AGI agency.

“I am a normal woman, with my family and my work as a teacher. I am (also) looking for transgression and sex.”

Five years ago Ciriani was transferred from her post as teacher of Italian literature in a secondary school in the north-eastern town of Pordenone after students covered the toilets with nude photos of her downloaded from the Internet.

Since then she has been giving evening classes to foreign adult students in a nearby town.

Madameweb’s popularity surged after a video of her shot at the Venus erotica festival in Berlin last month attracted a wide Internet following, prompting the authorities to suspend her from teaching altogether.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden – A group of Swedish women is making waves by taking their tops off at public swimming pools in a protest against what they call gender-biased rules on swim wear.

About 40 women have joined the network and staged topless protests in at least three cities, said Sanna Ferm, 22, one of the founders of the group called Bara Brost, or Bare Breasts.

“The purpose of the campaign is to start a debate about why women’s bodies are sexualized,” Ferm said Wednesday.

She said the fact that men can be bare-chested in public swimming pools but not women is “a concrete example of how women have fewer rights than men.”

Reactions from other swimmers have ranged from support and encouragement to anger and even indifference, she said.

The network was formed after two women who were swimming topless in a public swimming pool in Uppsala, north of Stockholm, were asked to cover up or leave.

Women can sunbathe topless in the summertime at beaches around Sweden, which is known for its relaxed attitude toward nudity, but they are required to wear tops at public swimming pools.

Inger Groteblad, a manager at the swimming facility in Uppsala, said it was a matter of security.

“We want to make sure that girls don’t get subjected to sexual harassment,” she was quoted as saying by tabloid Aftonbladet.

The women have filed a complaint against the facility to Sweden’s Equal Opportunities Ombudsman.

LONDON (AFP) – A 101-year-old British pensioner has posed topless for a nude calendar to raise money for a local football team, a report said Wednesday.

Nora Hardwick will be Miss November in the calendar, aimed at raising money for her children’s team Ancaster Athletic in her village in Lincolnshire, eastern England.

Nora, who likes a tipple at her local pub The Ermine Way — where the photo-shoot took place — said she was slightly nervous when stripping off for the camera, albeit draped in a tasteful pink scarf.

“I am always game for anything, especially if it’s for charity,” she said, according to the Lincolnshire Echo. “And I did enjoy it, though I don’t suppose I will do it again.”

Pub landlady Donna Moodie, 37, added: “I thought if Nora would do it, then everyone would. She’s amazing.”

Nora was not alone in getting her kit off. Local councillor Sandy Ford-Pain, whose nine-year-old used to play for the team and husband Jonathan still coaches the youngsters, said they hoped to sell 400 calendars.

“It’s a great way of raising money, it’s a laugh and it’s a way of getting Ancaster on the map,” said the 35-year-old, who is Miss December according to a report on the paper’s website at www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk.

The calendar was intended as a low-key local event — although since news of the event spread, media enquiries have come in from as far afield as Brazil and New Zealand.

Ford-Pain added that locals had raised 1,000 pounds last year when men in the village posed nude in a similar stunt.

The initiative echoes a calendar put together by the Rylstone and District Women’s Institute in North Yorkshire, the story of which was turned into a hit film in 2003. Called “Calendar Girls”, the firm starred Helen Mirren and Julie Walters.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) – A group of 26 beauty contestants were prevented from watching the Brazil football team train this week.

The young women were said to be particularly keen on getting a glimpse of this year’s favourite to land the European Footballer of the Year award, AC Milan’s Kaka.

However the backroom staff of coach Dunga did not allow them access to the training facilities, though they remained behind the perimeter fence shouting encouragement to the players.

Brazil meet Peru in Lima on November 17 and then Uruguay in Sao Paolo on November 21 in South American World Cup qualifiers.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Beijing is seeking women presenters for medals ceremonies at the 2008 Olympics — but only those who are tall and thin need apply.

Hundreds of young women will be recruited as volunteers to present medals and raise flags at ceremonies for the Games, which open on August 8, but they must meet stringent criteria.

“We have some very clear conditions and demands,” explained Zhao Dongming, director of the Cultural Activities Department at Beijing’s Organizing Committee for the Games.

“We have certain requirements for their height, since they are to present the medals to our athletes. They need to be of a height between 1.68 and 1.78 meters. That’s above average.”

There was no requirement on their weight, Zhao said, but he added: “Generally speaking, they can’t be too fat. Their figure should be good. They shouldn’t be too heavy.”

The guidance was so the women, who must be between 18 and 25 and university students, would fit into the uniforms being prepared for them, he said.

But good looks alone won’t cut it.

“It is not enough just to have a beautiful appearance. They need to be healthy and they need to have dedicated training,” Zhao said.

“They also must have a very clear understanding of the Olympic spirit and the Olympic movement.”

RIPON, Calif. – Six cheerleaders are fighting suspensions after they flashed football fans a message on their underpants. Vice Principal Ken Goeken ordered the girls to serve suspensions Tuesday and Wednesday for defying their coach and going ahead with a special cheer they choreographed for the last day of the football season.

At the end of the cheer, the girls bent over, lifted their skirts and showed the crowd the words “Indians No. 1″ on their bloomers.

The girls — who missed reading scenes from William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and fear their grades will suffer — are asking to make up coursework and instead be banned from cheering at an upcoming basketball game.

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – More Australian voters would like to see Labor Opposition leader Kevin Rudd naked than their current prime minister, John Howard, a poll showed on Sunday just two weeks out from a hard-fought general election.

The question was posed in a Galaxy poll of 1,200 voters and published in Zoo magazine, the Australian Associated Press reported.

The survey found 34 percent of respondents wanted to see Rudd, 50, with his gear off, more than double the 16 percent who said the same thing about Howard, 68.

Even Howard’s usually strong following among the over 50s slipped, with the poll showing just 16 percent wanted to see him naked compared with 27 percent for Rudd.

“No one wants a prime minister who doesn’t look good naked,” Zoo editor Paul Merrill was quoted as saying.

More conventional polls have consistently shown Howard’s conservative government trailing well behind Labor, although the gap has narrowed slightly ahead of the November 24 general election.

TOKYO (Reuters) – A publisher has taken to Japan’s top court his eight-year fight over the banning of imported images of male genitals in a book of pictures by the late American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Publisher Takashi Asai told Reuters he expected to win his case because the court had taken the step of agreeing to hear his appeal of a lower court ruling that the book, which includes sado-masochistic homosexual images, was obscene.

Asai, who heads a film distribution company, translated and published a collection of Mapplethorpe’s works in Japan in 1994, based on imported negatives that customs did not check.

But when Asai carried a copy of his book back from the United States in 1999, it was seized by customs officials and he has battled with courts since to reverse the move.

Japan’s domestic obscenity laws were relaxed in the 1990s to allow pictures of pubic hair, but imported publications are handled by customs and it still bans images of genitals.

“It’s meaningless to have to cover nude photos in this day and age when images are being freely accessed on the Internet,” Asai said in a telephone interview this week.

The book is in the Japanese parliament’s library, he said, and copies were offered for sale on the Web.

In 1992, four of the raunchiest photos in Madonna’s book “Sex” were scratched out by Japanese censors. But a Japanese language edition was published untouched a few months later.

Asai said the Supreme Court hearing would be held in January, but a date for the ruling had yet to be set.

It was unclear if a win in the Supreme Court would pave the way for other nude images to be imported, but it could clear legal hurdles for Mapplethorpe’s work to be exhibited, Asai said.

A Tokyo Customs spokeswoman declined to comment on the case.

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – Decades after some women cast aside their bras as an act of feminist radicalism, a group of Swedish women have launched a campaign to go topless in local swimming pools.

The Bara Brost (Bare Breast) campaign began two months ago in the south of the country, one of the campaigners, Astrid Hellroth, told AFP.

Already about 50 women supported the campaign, she said, and a vanguard of 15 women had started direct action, swimming topless in local pools.

“Our aim is to start a debate about the unwritten social and cultural rules that sexualize and discriminate against the female body,” said Hellroth, a 21-year-old student.

They also had a blog, she added: barabrost.blogg.se. Their site links to a Canadian sister organisation, the Topfree Equal Rights Association.

“It’s important that women have the same rights as men,” said another campaigner, 22-year-old Ragnhild Karlsson.

“When you say we are more attractive topless, we say men should not be able to abuse women because they are topless.”

The new campaign has been closely followed by the Swedish sex education journal, Ottar.

It recorded the launch of the campaign in September in Uppsala, 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the capital Stockholm, when two young women left their bikini tops in the dressing room.

When the lifeguard at the leisure centre challenged them, they refused to cover up and were told to leave the premises.

“Swimming pools generally require men to wear swimming trunks, and women to wear either bikinis or one piece swimsuits,” Inger Grotteblad, a spokesman for the Uppsala leisure centre told the online newspaper The Local.

“There are three reasons for this. First, there is a security aspect, then there is a hygiene issue and finally there is what we call ‘prevailing manners and customs’.”

In October, the campaign switched to a swimming pool in the southern town of Malmo, The Local reported. But here again, health and safety prevailed.

Another attempt in the southern town of Lund also failed.

This month the local ombudsman will decide whether or not to mediate in the matter.

SEOUL (AFP) – South Korean prosecutors said Monday they have charged a well-known belly dancer with forging an undergraduate degree to get a job teaching the skill at university.

Ahn Yoo-Jin will face trial for allegedly forging a graduation certificate from a university in Sydney, Australia. She used it to get a job as a part-time lecturer in belly dancing at Kwangju Women’s University in 2006 but has now been sacked from the post, Yonhap news agency reported.

Ahn, also known as Xena Ahn, is the head of the Korea Belly Dance Association. She established the Belly Korea Academy in 1995 and hosted several televised belly dance lectures.

South Korea’s fake degree scandal has spread far and wide since it erupted in early July, when prosecutors investigated Dongkuk University professor Shin Jeong-Ah for fabricating a Yale doctorate.

A probe followed into the academic backgrounds of thousands of professors and civil servants.

In recent months dozens of figures from the cultural, entertainment and religious worlds have either confessed to faking their academic records or were found out.

CROSSVILLE, Tenn. – Police have charged a woman with aggravated domestic assault. The aggravating factor? A frying pan. Neighbors called police after hearing a woman screaming as she ran down a street early Sunday.

Police said Jennifer LeeAnn Simoneau, 24, told them her boyfriend had shoved her into a glass table, but she had no visible injuries.

Investigators said her boyfriend Robert Eugene Davis was found bleeding from several cuts on his face and arms and he told police Simonseau had attacked him with a frying pan.

Davis’ 11-year-old daughter told police that after the attack on her dad ended, he ran from the house. She said her mother dragged her by the hair to a bedroom.

That got Simoneau a citation for domestic assault on a minor.

The arresting officer reported Simoneau appeared to be drunk.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German bank manager gave loans to a woman for sex and then embezzled thousands of euros to buy the silence of her relatives, authorities said on Thursday.

When the man realized he could not offer the jobless woman a loan because of her poor credit history, he offered to lend her the money personally in return for sexual favors, said a spokesman for a court in the southern town of Tue bingen.

The 31-year-old then stole the money from the bank. The pair continued their arrangement for the next three years.

In total, the man diverted some 520,000 euros ($760,000) from clients’ accounts, of which he gave about 70,000 euros to the woman, and kept 40,000 euros for himself.

The biggest chunk of the cash went to her relatives who were blackmailing the bank manager, a married man with children. The manager had himself told her cousin about the sex deal.

“As incredible as it sounds, that’s what he told us,” the Tue bingen court spokesman said. “The cousin was suspicious and she called him to ask how the woman had got a loan.”

The court said bank officials uncovered the ruse after probing irregularities linked to the man’s handling of other loans. The court gave the man, who confessed, a jail sentence of three years and nine months.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A tale of online love inspired usually cynical New Yorkers this week to help a young man find the girl of his dreams after he spotted her on a crowded subway train.

For Web designer Patrick Moberg, 21, from Brooklyn, it was love at first sight when he locked eyes with a rosy-cheeked woman while riding in Manhattan on Sunday night. She was writing in her journal.

The train was so full that he lost her in the crowd when they both got off, so he set up a Web site dedicated to finding the mystery woman.

He drew a picture of the girl, who was wearing blue shorts, blue tights, and a red flower in her hair, and posted his cell phone number, e-mail address and an appeal for help finding her.

It worked.

Within hours Moberg’s inbox was overflowing with e-mails and his phone ringing non-stop. He told the New York Post that he even received e-mails offering him love. “Some people said I’m not the girl but you’re so adorable, pick me instead.”

Tuesday night a friend of the woman contacted him and sent him a picture so he could confirm her identity. “Found Her! Seriously!” a notice on his Web site said.

“We’ve been put in touch with one another and we’ll see what happens.”

The mysterious subway brunette was named Thursday as Camille Hayton, an intern at magazine BlackBook from Melbourne, Australia, who also lives in Brooklyn.

“This is crazy. I can’t believe it’s happening,” Hayton, 22, told the New York Post.

But Moberg said he is now pulling the shutters on his love life, scribbling out the cell phone number on his Web site and leaving a message on his phone saying he will do no more interviews.

“In our best interest, there will be no more updates to this website,” he wrote.

“Unlike all the romantic comedies and bad pop songs, you’ll have to make up your own ending for this.”

Some New Yorkers may already, wondering if Moberg had made it sound too easy to find a needle in a haystack in this city of eight million people

LONDON – The underwear-obsessed telephone stalker’s undoing proved to be the opening of a gym opposite the apartment that the 40-year-old shared with his mother.

Detectives caught Paul Kavanagh on film, leaning over the balcony of the West London apartment, just as he was peppering the gym’s female receptionists with calls.

Jailed for 2 1/2 years Friday, Kavanagh admitted making some 15,000 such harassing calls to women, asking them questions about their underwear. He posed as a clothing researcher and claimed to be gathering marketing data for a retailer.

He had been making the calls for 12 years, usually starting off his conversations with seemingly innocuous questions about the women’s socks and cardigans. Then he would move on to their underwear, making lewd suggestions to his victims.

Kavanagh had been “making these calls for the purposes of sexual gratification and, I must say to my mind, for the purposes of cruelty,” Judge Peter Testar concluded.

Using unregistered pay-as-you go phones, Kavanagh was finally caught targeting the gym’s female staff, commenting on their clothes and the way they wore their hair.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German flasher stunned lawyers during his appeal hearing on a flashing conviction by stripping off in court, authorities said Thursday.

“The court withdrew for deliberations and during the adjournment the man removed his clothes again,” said a spokesman for the court in the western city of Duisburg. “It appears he sees it as art, and views himself as a living work of art.”

The 60-year-old was in court to appeal against his conviction for running onto the pitch naked during a girl’s soccer match and striking a range of “body builder poses,” the spokesman said.

State prosecutors filed fresh charges of indecent behavior against the man after the court incident.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) – A Canadian judge said a Vancouver suburb cannot bar nude swimmers from holding a private gathering at a local pool, and chided town officials for being a bit too prudish.

“For those who came of age in the 1960s, skinny-dipping would hardly seem to be a threat to the moral fibre of western civilization. Not so, however, for some of the good burghers of Surrey,” Justice Paul Williamson said in a ruling on Thursday.

The nudist group had rented an indoor town swimming pool in suburban Surrey, British Columbia, in 2002 and 2003 for late-night members-only gatherings, but the permit was cancelled after a newspaper story prompted public complaints.

Surrey argued that nude swimming might be a health hazard, and said it was unfair to make lifeguards protect swimmers “not in suitable bathing attire”, since those who objected for personal reasons would lose potential overtime income.

The judge dismissed those arguments and noted that, since the swimmers could not be seen from outside the building, any complaints would be from people “shocked by what they had neither seen nor heard, but suspected.”

CLARKSTOWN, N.Y. – Thou shalt not use a church’s telephone to call a sex hot line, saith police in this Hudson Valley town.

A homeless man has been accused of breaking into a Valley Cottage church by picking a lock so he could dial a sex line.

James Macnair was arraigned Monday night before Clarkstown Justice Scott Ugell on charges of burglary, possession of a burglar’s tools and petty larceny. He admitted he had sinned before, breaking into the Elim Alliance Church days earlier for the same reason, the judge said.

A church treasurer found Macnair on the phone both times, police said. The first time, when he was in an office, she told him to leave, but the second time, when he was in a basement area used as a nursery for children, she called 911, they said.

Macnair, 35, was being held without bail Tuesday at the Rockland County jail and was due in court Wednesday. A desk officer at the jail said it wasn’t possible to put Macnair on the phone to speak to a reporter.

TOKYO (AFP) – Japanese women with environmental concerns close to their hearts may one day be able to wear a bra which can carry their own personal chopsticks to cut down on waste.

Women’s lingerie maker Triumph Japan on Wednesday unveiled new bra with cups fashioned to look like a bowl of rice and a bowl of miso soup complete with side pouches to hold compact chopsticks.

The “My Hashi” or “My Chopsticks” bra was designed reduce the waste generated by people throwing away their disposable chopsticks.

The company said the design was in response to a growing trend of Japanese who carry their own personal chopsticks around so they would not have to use disposal ones provided in restaurants or with lunch boxes.

And the bra has benefits beyond protecting simply the planet — the chopsticks tucked in both sides of the bra will give lift to the breasts and “gently accentuate cleavage”, Triumph Japan said.

For now, however, there are no plans to put the bra on sale.

KATMANDU, Nepal – Women in a Nepal mountain village have been mailing condoms to their husbands working overseas to protect them from sexually transmitted diseases, a news report said Tuesday.

The women of Pang village have been writing their husbands letters urging them not to have sex with others — but they have been enclosing condoms just in case, the Kantipur newspaper reported.

Social workers have been counseling the women about sexually transmitted diseases.

“As I learned that unsafe relations make a person vulnerable to HIV, I sent a condom along with the letters to my husband,” one of the village wives, Laxmi Sunar, told the newspaper.

An estimated 3 million people from impoverished Nepal work overseas, most as manual laborers, and send money home to support their families.

MILWAUKEE – Bust out the boxers, shake what nature gave you, and you might be the $5,000 winner of Jockey’s UnderWars. The Kenosha-based maker of intimate apparel is sponsoring an online competition for adults to post videos of themselves dancing in their drawers.

Aspiring exhibitionists have until Nov. 15 to upload their videos. The competition will be capped at 32 participants, who will be randomly divided into tournament brackets and will advance based on online votes.

Dancers — alone or in groups — are given plenty of freedom to be creative, as long as men are wearing boxers or briefs and women are wearing panties. Males and females can also wear T-shirts or jackets, as long as their skivvies — of any brand — are partially visible.

“We’re trying to keep it clean,” said Patty McIntosh, the Internet marketing manager for Jockey International Inc., “The bottom line is, we’re just letting people do their thing and have fun.”

Because of copyright concerns, dancers have to choose from one of 16 musical clips on the Jockey Web site. The selections range from a 45-second pulsing tango to a 3 1/2-minute techno blast.

For people who don’t want to compete in the UnderWars tournament but still want to know whether they’re better than their friends at shaking their moneymakers, the site also offers head-to-head challenges for Web surfers to judge.

In the three weeks since the site was launched, there have been about 35 individual matches.

“Those winners don’t get money, but they do get bragging rights,” McIntosh said.

One participant featured in the Web site’s Main Match on Monday was BustAmove, a man wearing sunglasses, a white T-shirt and black briefs with white polka dots. The one-minute video shows him dancing on the roof of a bar, a clip that is at once entertaining and slightly disturbing.

The idea for the Web site evolved from a separate Jockey site launched earlier this year as a way to increase brand awareness among the high school and college set. The site, stopsquirming.com, features a man and woman each demonstrating 15 amusing ways to furtively adjust one’s undergarments in public.

“Both sites are targeted toward a younger demographic,” McIntosh said. “We’ve just introduced ourselves to this audience — now we’re starting to learn a lot about them.”

The early entrants in the UnderWars tournament are seen dancing alone, most in a bedroom or bathroom. But to win the $5,000 prize, Jockey spokesman Mo Moorman speculates the challengers will need more than spiffy dance moves and the looks of a supermodel.

“This is a lighthearted site — sexy’s not going to take it,” he predicted. “You’ll have to have the whole package.”

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Twenty Chinese men, including several on the country’s richest list, paid $8,000 a head to attend a matchmaking party with 30 “single young beauties,” state media said Monday.

Saturday’s controversial party was held at a luxury European-style villa in Shanghai, the birthplace of China’s Communist Party in 1921, with guests arriving in stretch limousines and getting the full red-carpet treatment.

“To disguise their identities from photographers’ cameras, all guests scurried into the venue wearing a face mask, some even using a paper bag,” the China Daily said.

Market reforms in the past three decades have lifted China out of dire poverty, but they have also fostered a culture of quick wealth and money worship and as the income gap widens, resentment of the rich grows.

Each male guest paid a 58,800 yuan ($8,000) entrance fee, while the women, chosen for their “looks, kindness, thought and taste,” were selected from tens of thousands of candidates, according to the social network Web site (www.915915.com.cn) which organized the event.

The site, which boasts a membership of 100,000, held a similar party on a boat in Shanghai last year, drawing criticism from many observers for treating women as objects.

Tan Chao, the site’s marketing director, said the company provided different services, including dating arrangements.

“For those who pay most, we will try different means, not within our own club, until we find them the right one,” he was quoted as saying.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Wedgie-proof underwear earned twin boys a spot Friday on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” Using rigged boxers and fabric fasteners to hold together some seams, they came up with the “Rip Away 1000.”

“When the person tries to grab you — like the bully or the person tries to give you a wedgie — they just rip away,” Justin explained Thursday by phone from Los Angeles, where the TV segment was taped Wednesday.

The third graders from Gables Elementary School began brainstorming one day after they were horsing around, giving each other the treatment. Their mother’s partner sarcastically said someone ought to invent wedgie-proof underwear, the family said.

The project got the boys to the finals of a central Ohio invention competition earlier this year, followed by the television appearance.

STAMFORD, Conn. – An alleged drunken driver will get a new trial after court officials say he was represented by a fake lawyer. Howard Seidler, 62, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was arrested Thursday when he returned to Stamford Superior Court for his client’s sentencing.

“This was a terrible fraud on the court,” State’s Attorney David Cohen said.

Court officials charged Seidler with unauthorized practice of law and criminal impersonation. He may also face charges of first-degree larceny and forgery, Cohen said.

Authorities said Seidler claimed to be a real New York attorney named Harold Weber while representing Ismet Idrizaj of Norwalk on a drunken driving charge. A jury deliberated for just eight minutes before convicting Idrizaj, who spent $18,000 on legal fees.

Federal authorities are investigating cases across in the country in which Seidler may have posed as Weber, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. Seidler was convicted in the 1980s of grand larceny, as well as posing as a lawyer or a doctor in the 1970s.

Prosecutor David Applegate, who tried the Stamford drunken driving case, said Seidler asked strange questions during jury selection.

Most defense attorneys ask standard questions such as whether jurors understand reasonable doubt.

“If you were in a forest and you came to a clearing, and you saw a house, could you describe the house,” Seidler asked one potential juror, according to a transcript.

“Just a little plain house, kind of disheveled,” the juror answered.

“That is good enough,” Seidler responded. “She is acceptable by me.”

He asked another juror whether he consumed alcohol like the fraternity brothers in the movie “Animal House,” then asked whether the juror liked animals.

After the trial, Applegate looked up Weber in a database and found two matches, then discovered Seidler’s biography was a mix of details from the men’s lives.

Officials decided to see if Seidler would show up at court for Idrizaj’s sentencing. He did, carrying a briefcase with his real name engraved on it.

The state’s legal investigators said they will probably try to get Idrizaj’s money back. He did not return a call for comment.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – A woman who doesn’t want her breast milk to go to waste has taken out a newspaper ad in hopes of selling it. Martha Heller, 22, of Tiffin, took out the ad in The Gazette, offering 100 ounces of her breast milk for $200 or the best offer.

Heller said her freezer is overflowing with breast milk that she has pumped since August. Her 4-month-old daughter won’t drink from a bottle and the supply is piling up.

Heller now donates to the University of Iowa’s Mother’s Milk Bank, but the 100 ounces of milk she wants to sell was pumped before going through the screening process for the bank and cannot be donated.

Linda Klein, a lactation consultant at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, said breast milk can generally be stored in a freezer for up to six months.

Heller said she researched laws regarding the sale of breast milk and couldn’t find any in Iowa.

Don McCormick, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Public Health, said he was not aware of any laws in Iowa restricting the sale of breast milk, but that state health officials advised against it.

Heller said she hasn’t received any legitimate calls about her ad.

“There was one prank caller,” she said.

BERLIN (AFP) – A Bulgarian woman and a Romanian man have the world’s best-looking bottoms, according to the jury of a backside beauty contest sponsored by a lingerie firm, a company spokeswoman said Thursday.

Beyond a 10,000-euro (14,400-dollar) cash prize, Kristina Dimitrova, 19, and 24-year-old Andrei Andrei each won a modelling contract for the company’s next international advertising campaign as well as a year-long insurance policy for their rear ends in case of injury.

Some 15,000 people from 29 countries responded to a call by the European company Triumph to post photos of their backsides on the Internet three months ago.

The site drew more than five million visitors, of whom 130,000 registered to pick their 10 favourite male and female bottoms from each country.

A total of 45 men and women qualified for the final contest in Munich before a seven-member jury including representatives from the fashion and fitness industries.