LONDON; and STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Britain is seriously considering adopting a controversial approach to prostitution pioneered in Sweden that targets the customer instead of the sex worker, making it a crime to buy – but not to sell – sex.

A government minister, Vernon Coaker, is heading to Stockholm Thursday to discuss the impact of the Swedish reform. Officials in Stockholm claim the 1999 law has dramatically reduced the street trade and spared Sweden the attention of traffickers who ship unfortunate, vulnerable women around Europe in the thousands.

But sex workers argue that the law has made life more dangerous and precarious for them. Swedish prostitutes say that rather than reducing prostitution it has merely driven it underground; their British counterparts say importing the law would be disastrous.

“The [Swedish] government claims that prostitution has been cut, but where have the women gone?” asks Sarah Walker of the English Collective of Prostitutes. “Everything has been driven underground.”

Ana Lopez, founder of the International Union of Sex Workers, says the move would force the trade into the shadows.

“It may seem like a good idea because it shifts the blame from the sex worker onto the client, but it still creates a lot of trouble,” says Ms. Lopez, adding that clients nervous of breaking the law will be more capricious, more hasty, giving the sex workers less time to assess the danger level. “What we have been learning from Sweden is that sex workers are not better off with this model…. Whether you criminalize the client or the sex worker, it’s the same result.”

Mr. Coaker is expected to meet government officials and assess whether the Swedish experience would improve the situation in Britain. The plight of British prostitutes was given added urgency a year ago when five women were murdered in short succession near Ipswich, England.

With an estimated 80,000 people involved in prostitution in Britain, many of them caught up in the wretched industry of trafficking, the government has consistently said it wants to get a grip on the trade.

Measures tackling “supply” that would use carrots and sticks to get women off the streets are currently going through Parliament, so now ministers are interested in targeting demand. A recent survey in Britain found that 4.3 percent of men have paid for sex in the past 10 years. “Looking at the demand issue is something we want to focus on,” says a spokeswoman for Coaker.

Stockholm streets: one-third fewer workers
Sweden is the only nation in the European Union that has criminalized prostitution, and the only country in the world to make it illegal to buy – but not sell – sex services.

The law reflects a commonly held belief among Swedish feminist groups and government officials that prostitution victimizes women and that tackling the demand for sex is more effective that criminalizing people who sell their bodies.

To date, about 1,000 sex customers have been arrested. Of those, about 260 were formally charged and fined up to 40 days of their salary, according to the Stockholm city government’s prostitution unit.

“The law has helped,” says Agneta Borg, who has headed the unit since 1996. “We know that street prostitution is down, and we have no evidence that it’s increased elsewhere.” In Stockholm, the number of street workers has fallen from around 300 in 1999 to around 200 today, she says.

Ms. Borg also points to statistics showing that illegal trafficking of prostitutes, many of whom are young Eastern Europeans, is now less of a problem here than in other Nordic countries. Sweden receives an estimated 400 to 500 such women a year. By comparison, up to 15,000 travel to Finland every year and 6,000 to Norway and Denmark, Borg says.

“Police tell us that they’ve learned from wire-taps and other detective work that many of these trafficking gangs now try to avoid Sweden because we’ve focused so much on this issue – not just by passing the law, but because we’ve kept it high on our political agenda,” she says.

Borg will meet Coaker on Thursday and plans to tell the minister that Sweden’s model works.

Still, there is no evidence that the 1999 law has reduced prostitution in Sweden as a whole. A recent report by the country’s National Board of Health and Welfare acknowledged that there is no hard data backing up claims that fewer men buy sex – only that the venue for prostitution has changed.

Prostitutes say law makes their job riskier
Swedish Sex workers and Allies Network, a trade organization with 50 members, estimates that only 10 percent of sex workers walk the streets today. The rest make contact with their customers at clubs, bars, casinos, underground brothels and, above all, in cyberspace.

“I have many customers who would never dare to contact me on the street,” says Isabella Lund, a sex worker based in the southern university city of Lund. “But on a whole, our industry has exploded after the Internet came – just like in every other country.”

Ms. Lund, who uses a fictitious name to protect her two teenage children, argues that criminalizing the trade has made it more dangerous for workers. Customers are now much more reluctant to reveal personal information, which makes it tougher to sort “good guys” from “bad.”

Lopez adds that it has also made clients far less likely to report nefarious situations in which they detect the shadowy presence of traffickers. “Many police [investigating] trafficking start with clients calling in; but if they are doing something against the law the last thing will be to call the police.”

British prostitutes would rather their government cast the net a little wider in the search for foreign models from which to borrow. They scoff at the legal brothels in parts of Europe which they say amount to slave labor, and call instead for more attention to be paid to New Zealand, which decriminalized prostitution four years ago.

But Borg argues that Sweden’s approach will build a national intolerance to prostitution, and it and its problems will start to wither. When the law was passed, most Swedes opposed it. Today, she said, 80 percent are in favor. “So perhaps, when we’re at 95 percent, there won’t be so many men willing to buy sex,” Borg said.

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.

LA PAZ (Reuters) – Prostitutes in the Bolivian city of El Alto sewed their lips together Wednesday as part of a hunger strike to demand that the mayor reopen brothels and bars ordered closed after violent protests by residents last week.

“We are fighting for the right to work and for our families’ survival,” Lily Cortez, leader of the El Alto Association of Nighttime Workers, told local television.

“Tomorrow we will bury ourselves alive if we are not immediately heard. The mayor will have his conscience to answer to if there are any grave consequences, such as the death of my comrades,” she said, surrounded by about 10 prostitutes who had sewn their lips together with thread.

Some 30 other women were shown fasting inside a medical clinic nearby.

Mayor Fanor Nava told local radio he would not reopen the brothels and bars closed after city residents fed up with underage drinking and crime stormed the red-light district in El Alto, an impoverished city just north of La Paz.

Prostitution in Bolivia is legal but pimping is outlawed.

Student activists who want the bars and brothels permanently shut down were also on a hunger strike, along with the leaders of an association representing bars, restaurants and karaoke establishments.

“It’s not only us owners and the sex workers who are affected, there are thousands of waiters, cooks, bartenders, taxi drivers and street vendors who will be without income,” said Ramiro Orellana, spokesman for the business group.

El Alto is one of the largest urban areas in Bolivia, with nearly 1 million inhabitants, mostly Aymara and Quechua Indians.

LA PAZ (AFP) – Hundreds of outraged prostitutes are ready to fight a morality campaign targeting their trade by marching nude in the streets of Bolivia’s capital, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

The threat comes after angry mob on Wednesday destroyed bars and brothels in El Alto, a suburb near La Paz.

After the violence, authorities decided to close more than a thousand houses of prostitution in El Alto.

Lily, speaking on behalf of the prostitutes, warned that prostitutes would “march nude in the streets of La Paz” and threatened to forsake checks from health authorities.

“Our businesses are burned and we are left in the street, our money is stolen and we are beaten,” Lily told local television, adding “they want to deprive us of our source of income.”

Local press reported a prostitute was beaten by the mob on Wednesday, stripped of her clothes and robbed of some 300 Bolivianos (40 dollars), her earnings for the night.

For three days, about 30 bars and more than a dozen brothels have been ransacked and furniture torched, said Ronald Perez, a security official.

Organizers of the morality campaign have demanded the mayor close several hundred illegal brothels and enforce a ban on minors visiting them. The activists have also called for ensuring the houses of prostitution operate a good distance from churches, schools and hospitals.

The police have sent in reinforcements to the turbulent area but the campaign has spread to other towns and provinces.

SEOUL (AFP) – South Korea Wednesday announced a crackdown on its nationals evading the country’s tough anti-prostitution law by buying sex abroad instead.

The government will revise the law so that its citizens caught buying sex in foreign countries will have their passports confiscated, the gender equality ministry, the justice ministry and the foreign ministry said in a joint press briefing.

An inter-ministerial team has also been formed to clamp down on brokers who help South Korean girls obtain visas to sell sex abroad and travel agents who arrange sex tours for South Korean men, they said.

“The government agencies share the view that the country’s image is being damaged greatly by the purchase of sex (by South Korean travellers) in overseas countries and decided to step up crackdowns on sex trafficking here and abroad as well,” they said.

South Korea brought in a tough anti-prostitution law in 2004, punishing clients with fines and throwing pimps in prison.

Last year alone, courts prosecuted 35,000 clients, 2.5 times higher than the number of those who were caught buying sex in 2003.

Incidents of South Koreans caught up in the foreign sex trade are increasing sharply, Yonhap news agency said.

The latest government initiative followed a local TV report last week about South Korean high school students allegedly buying sex while they were on field trips to China.

The MBC TV network showed South Korean teenagers venturing into a massage parlour in China. Some said it was common practice.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – About a third of Amsterdam’s red-lit windows for prostitutes will disappear from the city center as one of the main brothel owners is set to sell his empire to a real estate company.

A housing company is to buy 18 premises, currently featuring 51 windows, for about 25 million euros ($35 million), Amsterdam city council said.

Last November, the city revoked the trading licenses of 33 brothels because they were suspected of criminal activities including money laundering and drug dealing. However, the brothel owners appealed successfully against the decision.

Tourist authorities acknowledge the 700-year-old red-light district — a maze of narrow alleys and canals lined with sex shops, prostitutes behind windows and marijuana-selling “coffee shops” — is as much of a draw as other attractions such as the Van Gogh museum or the Anne Frank House.

Mayor Job Cohen said he had no plans to rid Amsterdam of prostitution but the concentration of sex in the city center was too high.

SYDNEY (AFP) – Sydney’s brothels are preparing for a business boom as thousands of delegates and journalists descend on the city for a major Asia-Pacific summit this week, local media reported Monday.

One well-known bordello is offering “The Presidential Platter” with a variety of pleasures or a “United Nations” double with women from a range of countries, according to the news and gossip website Crikey.

A former tax office auditor turned legal brothel industry lobbyist, Chris Seage, wrote that Sydney’s brothels had been fielding phone calls from overseas for the past two weeks.

The most frequently asked questions revolved around how discreet a visit could be during the high-profile Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit that starts Saturday, Seage said.

Due to the expected increase in patronage many of Sydney’s “best” sex workers would not avail themselves of the special public holiday declared for Friday ahead of the weekend summit, he said.

APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United States and Vietnam.

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.

ROME (Reuters) – An Italian town’s mayor hopes to shame men into not using prostitutes by photographing cars that pick them up and publishing the details in local newspapers.

Cesare De Martin, mayor of the northern town of San Fior near Venice, said on Friday he planned to give local police digital cameras and instruct them to photograph any cars seen stopping to liaise with prostitutes on the side of the street.

Advertisements in local newspapers with the number plates will then be published, he said.

The number of prostitutes on Italian streets has increased dramatically in recent years and the Vatican earlier this week called for new laws to punish clients of prostitution.

The mayor, however, said his reasons for tackling the issue were entirely “secular” and far more mundane.

“I think it’s more important to protect the rights of citizens who have to be at work early but are kept up at night by the sound of cars,” he told Reuters.

He is awaiting approval from lawyers on whether the plan violates privacy laws.

Clients of prostitutes are not punished in many countries, including Italy. Italian law effectively turns a blind eye to prostitution, punishing only “exploiters of prostitution”, meaning pimps.

Many of the growing number of prostitutes in Italy come from the former Soviet Union or Nigeria and authorities say many are victims of human trafficking.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A best-selling novelist who pretended she was a 19-year-old male prostitute sought to defend herself in court on Wednesday against claims she defrauded a film company that bought the rights to her book.

“Sarah,” about a transgender boy who works alongside his mother as a truck-stop prostitute, was published in 2000 under the name J.T. Leroy, who was described as a teen-age male prostitute. But it was actually written by Brooklyn mother Laura Albert, who is now 41 and lives in San Francisco.

Antidote International Films bought the rights to adapt “Sarah” as a movie, it said, in part because of the unique life story of its author.

Its lawyers said in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Wednesday that Albert had constructed elaborate ruses to mislead people about her identity. The company claims it was falsely induced into the movie contract and is seeking to recover $110,000.

For example, in radio interviews done by telephone to publicize the book, one of which was played for the jury, Albert pretended she was Leroy, speaking in a West Virginia accent. When Leroy needed to appear for a reading or a photo shoot, Savannah Knoop, the half-sister of Albert’s boyfriend, donned a blond wig and play the part.

Albert said in court she did not mean to trick anyone and had assumed the identity of Leroy to help cope with painful episodes of abuse in her own life.

Addressing a packed courtroom and breaking down repeatedly on the witness stand, Albert described a New York City upbringing in which she was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriends, teased mercilessly about her weight and eventually given up by her parents and sent to a home for troubled girls.

Bloomsbury Books, the novel’s publisher, has said it did not know J.T. Leroy was not real. The book was well reviewed and sold briskly in the United States and Britain.

While authors have written under pen names for centuries, Albert’s efforts to make Leroy seem real, including enlisting someone to impersonate him, were far more elaborate.

Albert repeatedly denied that Leroy was made-up but the truth came out in 2006 in a New York Times article.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German tax revenues could rise by about 1.4 billion euros (705 million pounds) a year if there were a more efficient system of taxing prostitutes, whose work is mostly legal, according to an economist.

Richard Reichel estimates sex workers generate about 7 billion euros each year in Germany’s “red-light sector” and that most of that goes untaxed.

“About 1.4 billion euros could be expected,” Reichel told Friday’s Die Welt newspaper about his study “Prostitution — The Unrecognised Economic Factor”.

Many prostitutes working outside brothels under-report or do not report income. Few pay taxes.

Reichel, an economist at the university of Erlangen-Nuremberg, said the income tax rate on prostitutes should be on average about 20 percent. He assumes two-thirds of the prostitutes in Germany have income under 2,000 euros per month.

When the cities of Cologne and Berlin introduced flat daily tax rates on prostitutes revenues soared and German Finance Minster Peer Steinbrueck recently floated the idea of a nationwide daily flat rate tax for prostitutes.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Amsterdam’s sex workers came to work early on Saturday to offer a free look at the city’s famed red-light district.

Hundreds of wide-eyed visitors queued in the sunshine to enter the dimly-lit sex clubs and peep shows that draw thousands to the city and to snoop around prostitutes’ neon-lit boudoirs.

“I think the open day is a great idea,” said Love, an erotic dancer at Amsterdam’s Banana Bar, who was on hand to answer questions and pose for photographs in fluorescent negligee.

“It is especially interesting for women. If they learn what we do here they will realize it is not a big deal if their husbands or boyfriends want to come here.”

Organisers staged the open day to counter bad publicity surrounding the 800-year-old district after harrowing reports of forced prostitution, human trafficking and organized crime.

More than 30 brothels are fighting closure after officials revoked their licenses last year over suspected links to money laundering and drug dealing.

But tourism authorities say the district — a warren of narrow alleys and canals lined with sex shops, brothels and neon signs – - is as big an attraction as Amsterdam’s art museums and coffee shops, where marijuana is freely smoked and sold.

Every night visitors throng the streets, agog at scantily clad women sitting behind huge red-lit windows, and who sell their services for as little as 50 euros ($66.58).

“I am here because my wife was interested in coming along,” said 63-year-old Evert Rijnders from Haarlem.

His wife Jos added: “This has been a chance to look behind the scenes, and some things have definitely surprised me.”

Organizer Jacco Wanders displayed a typical prostitute’s bedroom, usually concealed behind red velvet curtains and fitted with an emergency alarm bell in case a client turns violent.

He laughed as visitors posed in the tall street-facing window or bounced around on the mattress.

“This day is to help break down taboos around prostitution and to create more understanding and respect,” he said.

The “open day” concludes with the unveiling of a statue to an unknown sex worker, intended to honor those employed in the industry world-wide, including those without the same protection found in the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal.

Amsterdam’s window-prostitutes are self-employed tax payers, hiring their own windows at around 110 euros per night.

“People who work in the sex industry don’t get enough respect,” said Mariska Majoor, a former prostitute who now runs the red-light district’s information center.

“There are millions of them and many are in trouble. Some are abused by clients or pimps and it is important for them to know that they deserve respect.”

TRENTON, N.J. – A man who touted himself as “Pimp of the Year” was sentenced Friday to more than 23 years in federal prison. Matthew “Knowledge” Thompkins pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to transport minors to engage in prostitution and conspiracy to engage in money laundering.

Authorities said that the Bronx, N.Y., man had prostitutes working for him in New York; Atlantic City; Las Vegas; Philadelphia; Youngstown, Ohio, and other cities.

When he was arrested in December 2005, authorities found two huge trophies in his home proclaiming him “Pimp of the Year.”

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson asking for leniency, Thompkins, 37, wrote that at times he and the prostitutes who worked for him — some of them as young as 14 — “bonded as a family.”

Wolfson was unmoved. She gave him nearly the maximum sentence.

“You wouldn’t send your sister or your daughter out to do that,” she said. “That’s no family.”

One former prostitute, Melissa Smith, spoke at the sentencing, saying she was practically a slave.

“If he gets out, I know he’ll do it again,” she said. “That’s all he ever talks about — pimping and ho-ing.”

A Thompkins associate, Demetrius Lemus, 37, of Bronx, N.Y., also was sentenced Friday to eight years in prison.

Five women have also pleaded guilty in the case and are awaiting sentencing.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A brothel in Germany hopes to capitalise on the growing number of pensioners by offering them a 50 percent discount for sex in the afternoon.

The “Pascha” in the western city of Cologne has introduced reduced rates for sex sessions for clients aged 66 and above — provided they can prove they are old enough.

“All clients need to do is show us some proof of age,” said a spokesman for the brothel’s managing director Armin Lobscheid. “A ‘normal session’ costs 50 euros (34.20 pounds) with us — and we’re now paying 50 percent of that for these older guests.”

“We don’t earn as much money, but we’re establishing ourselves across a broader range of age groups,” he added.

After testing the water with reductions for senior citizens once a week, the Pascha decided earlier this month to offer 50 percent off sex services between midday and 5 p.m. every day.

“There’s been plenty of demand and people have certainly been taking advantage of the offer,” the spokesman said. “Older folks are more active than you think.”

The brothel’s Web site is keen to stress this point.

“Life begins at 66!” it says in an advert for its “senior citizens afternoon” next to a picture of a motorcycle rider.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Berlin plans to levy a flat rate daily tax on prostitutes from April to raise some extra revenues for its strained finances.

Following a model used by Cologne, which collected over $1 million (514,000 pounds) last year with its own flat tax, the German capital plans to tax prostitutes 30 euros (20 pounds) per working day. Berlin has rising debts of more than 60 billion euros.

Prostitution is legal in most places in Germany and sex workers are required to pay income tax as well as value-added tax (VAT). However, tax collectors have long suspected their income and VAT was not being fully reported on tax returns.

Local leaders in the Verdi service sector union have warned that the 30-euro tax will push up prices in Berlin, Germany’s biggest metropolis with some 3.4 million inhabitants.

“The prostitutes will have no choice other than to pass the cost on to the customers,”, Verdi spokesman Andreas Sander was quoted as saying in German daily newspaper Bild.

Katharina Cetin, of the prostitute support organisation Hydra, said sex workers earn less than city leaders estimate.

“The income level here in Berlin is rather low,” she said. “A daily tax rate of 10 to 15 euros would be more appropriate.”

Cologne, home to roughly 1 million, has been a worldwide pioneer in taxing prostitution at a flat rate of 150 euros per month. It earned 828,000 euros in 2006 after 790,000 euros when the “pleasure tax” on sex services was first levied in 2005.

SYDNEY (AFP) – Foreign backpackers funding their Australian travels through illegal sex work are robbing the legitimate industry of profits and threatening clients’ health, a brothel lobbyist has warned.

Many young tourists to sun-soaked northeastern Queensland state were making a quick buck as black market prostitutes, undermining registered operators’ attempts to uphold health and safety standards, the Queensland Adult Business Association’s Nick Inskip claimed.

“Especially when you go up to northern Queensland, it’s not unusual for them to be working in the illegal escort industry,” Inskip said.

Having fewer overheads, they could often undercut the legal sex industry on price, making it harder for the state’s 23 legal brothels to make a profit, he said.

“They can charge less because they are not paying GST (goods and services tax), staff costs for managers and receptionists,” Inskip said.

The tax office, which recently began a drive to collect tax from the industry, was also hard pressed to keep tabs on their undercover activities, he said.

“No one asks to see their passports. If you go to a licensed brothel the first thing they do is ask for your passport and whether you are here legally.”

Although prostitution at registered brothels is legal in many parts of Australia, recent research suggests the taxman’s attempts to target the industry has sparked an exodus towards riskier illegal sex work.

Academics have also noted that the crippling cost of higher education in Australia has forced some foreign students to seek work as illegal prostitutes to make ends meet.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – As the rich and slim flocked to waterfront convention centre for Rio de Janeiro’s glitzy biannual fashion show, prostitutes in a downtown square took to a cobblestone catwalk for a show of their own.

Sex service workers from Davida, a Brazilian organisation that defends the rights of prostitutes, strutted through the streets wearing their new line of fall/winter clothes.

The brand’s name is Daspu, is a play on “Daslu,” one of Brazil’s most expensive and exclusive fashion names being displayed across town by top models like Gisele Bundchen.

Gabriela Leite, a founder of Daspu, said it was no mistake that her show was running on Fashion Rio’s biggest night.

“This fashion show today makes up part of our fall/winter collection that is not on the official agenda of Fashion Rio because we were never invited. Once again, social responsibility does not appear where it should appear,” Leite said.

According to organizers, the new 2007 fall/winter line draws from the deep well of artists inspired by prostitutes, from Toulouse Lautrec and Pablo Picasso to Madonna and Sting.

Hired models and prostitutes walked a makeshift catwalk in an alleyway in Rio’s red-light district, throwing condoms to an animated crowd of hundreds.

There were spartan and utilitarian shirts with black and white blocks, colorful prints and plenty of eye-catching incarnations of the staple of the industry: the miniskirt.

An eclectic group of spectators – including deserters from Fashion Rio looking for something different – ended the evening dancing samba to a live drum troupe.

THE HAGUE (AFP) – Amsterdam’s red light district is reportedly to receive a bronze statue dedicated to prostitutes around the world.

According to the Dutch agency ANP, sculptress Els Rijerse made the statue at the request of a former prostitute Mariska Majoor, who a decade ago founded a centre on prostitution in the Dutch capital.

Majoor was quoted as saying by ANP that the statue would be a first of its kind and that it had received the blessing of the city authorities.

The statue represents a self-assured woman, her hands on her hips, looking sideways towards the sky, and standing on a doorstep, ANP said.

The precise place where the statue will be laid and its title have not yet been announced, it said.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Cologne will earn a record 828,000 euros ($1.1 million) in “sex tax” revenues this year, a figure well above expectations when the levy was first introduced by Germany’s fourth largest city in 2004.

Cologne officials, who say their city is a worldwide pioneer in taxing prostitution, were quoted in local media reports on Friday saying the sex tax component of the “pleasure tax” had jumped from 790,000 euros in 2005 to about 828,000 this year.

Cologne, which introduced the tax two years ago to raise money after national reforms left the city woefully short of cash, has been charging prostitutes a flat 150-euro per month tax since 2004, replacing a voluntary reporting scheme.

The so-called “pleasure tax” (Vergnuegungssteuer) was first levied on casinos and amusement arcades but widened in 2004 to include brothels, massage parlors and table-dancing clubs.

In 2006, the city introduced a new 6-euro per day fee for “part-time” prostitutes who had claimed the 150-euro monthly fee was unfair. Authorities said many prostitutes had documents proving they were only working a few days each month.

Prostitution is legal in Germany and sex workers are required to pay tax on their income and a value-added tax.

MANCHESTER, N.J. – A police officer who claimed he was conducting his own prostitution sting and strip search ended up being the one arrested. Authorities arrested James Michael Jackson, a police officer with the state Department of Human Services, and charged him with sexual assault and sexual misconduct for the so-called sting.

According to authorities, Jackson, 34, of Toms River, arranged through a service for a woman to meet him Wednesday at a local hotel in Manchester.

When she arrived, Jackson, carrying a badge and gun, told her she was under arrest. He made her take off her clothes and consent to a body cavity search before letting her go, said Ocean County Assistant Prosecutor Martin Anton.

The prosecutor said Jackson overstepped his bounds as a law enforcement official when he placed the female prostitute under arrest and performed a strip search.

As a police officer, Jackson had authority to make arrests, but not through an undercover operation of his own, Anton said.

“And a male to strip-search a female is just not done,” he added.

The woman reported the incident to authorities the next day, after she talked to law enforcement officers she knew who said Jackson’s behavior was illegal.

Jackson had been a police officer with Human Services for about six years. The department has about 75 officers working in various institutions and psychiatric hospitals or, in Jackson’s case, with children’s services case officers.

Jackson was assigned to the Division of Youth and Family Services’ Monmouth South office in Asbury Park.

Ed Rogan, a spokesman for the state Department of Human Services, expected that Jackson would be suspended by Monday, with proceedings leading to his termination starting soon after.

Jackson, who is free on $50,000 bail, faces five to 10 years in prison if convicted.

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.

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.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – A police sting took an odd turn when an officer pretending to be a john met a suspected prostitute pretending to be an officer.

Police spokesman Sgt. Tom Connellan said here’s what happened Thursday:

A male undercover officer driving in a neighborhood known for prostitution was flagged down by a woman. The woman got in his car and they went to a nearby parking lot to negotiate a price for sex.

She asked the officer if he was a cop and he said no.

“That’s OK, because I am,” the woman said as she pulled out handcuffs and a two-way radio. She barked into the radio: “Move in!”

The officer, concerned the woman was armed and looking to rob him, forced her from the car. Moments later, officers who had been monitoring the situation arrived and grabbed Greene and her radio.

A male officer pretending to be female used the radio to find out who was on the other end. That person was waiting in a car in a nearby alley.

Police charged Lisa Greene, 31, with first-degree criminal impersonation, prostitution and fifth-degree conspiracy. Elena Irwin, 20, was charged with fifth-degree conspiracy and possession of a hypodermic needle.

“We believe these people were going to rob people or extort money,” Connellan said.

He did not know if they had successfully used the scam in the past.

LEVITTOWN, Pa. – Police in Bucks County have charged 12 women after an investigation into prostitutes who allegedly have been advertising on the Web.

After police received a tip in August about alleged prostitutes advertising on the site, investigators called cell phone numbers in local listings that advertised “GFEs” — girlfriend experiences — asking for payment in “ro$e$” or “125 donations.”

The undercover investigators agreed to meet the women at motels, and almost all 12 were arrested within two minutes, he said.

Several of the women who were arrested had brought along their boyfriends, and five men were arrested on drug charges, police said.

Similar sting operations have led to prostitution charges against women in states including Maryland, New York, Oregon and New Hampshire.

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Hot and bothered by rising pump prices? Australian brothels are offering clients discounts based on their gas bills.

Brothel owners claim the system works much the same way as supermarkets which offer shoppers discounted gas prices by presenting their grocery bills when they fill up their tanks.

“If you come in and spend time with one of our lovely ladies, we’ll give you a discount of 20 cents a liter,” Kerry, manager of Sydney brothel The Site, told Reuters Wednesday.

There is no link between brothels, petrol providers or supermarkets but brothels like The Site and Madame Kerry’s say the system is simple.

Once you’ve filled up your car, bring your receipt to the brothel and they’ll discount the price of your visit.

The bill for a full 50-liter tank at 126.9 cents per liter comes to A$63.45 ($48.22). With the offered 20c a liter discount, the petrol bill would have instead come to A$53.45.

That A$10 difference is taken off the A$150 cost of a 30-minute session with one of the brothel’s “service providers.”

The Site has taken out cut-out newspaper ads offering the service.

“We’re getting more media exposure, if you want to put it that way, than basically bums on beds,” Kerry said.

Brothels are legal across most of Australia, but states have strict laws against soliciting and running brothels in residential areas, and near churches or schools.

BEIJING (Reuters) – A centuries-old brothel teetering on the verge of collapse has red-faced Chinese officials pondering heritage versus morality behind closed doors, state media reported on Thursday.

A local government in Jinggang, a town in central Hunan province, must decide whether to restore crumbling Hongtaifang, a brothel established in 1733, and face the ire of residents who see it as debauched, Xinhua news agency said.

“The brothel was a place where women were humiliated in the old society,” Xinhua quoted Xiao Yisheng, a retired university professor, as saying.

“Its restoration could be seen as promoting prostitution.”

Tan Feng, a student from Xiao’s alma mater, begged to differ, saying the site was bound to prompt different reactions in different people.

“When I entered the brothel, it reminded me that it was a place where the ancients indulged in sensual pleasures,” Tan said.

The debate has spilt over on to the nation’s newspapers and internet chatrooms, with one commentator arguing that demolishing an ancient building would not stop prostitution.

Others, however, pointed out that China had protected other buildings linked to awkward aspects of history, including Xian’s World Heritage-listed terracotta warriors, housed in a mausoleum for Qinshihuang, one of China’s more ruthless dictators.

“The aim of protecting the historic relics is to make people aware of history,” Xinhua quoted Chai Xiaoming, a heritage official, as saying.

“Many relics with negative associations are well preserved in China,” he said.

LONDON (AFP) – A British prostitute reportedly took a client to court after he admitted he could not afford to pay her after sex.

Tracy Harper complained to police after unemployed Matthew Bushell, 33, told her he could not afford the 720 pounds (1,000 euros, 1,400 dollars) he owed her for their six-hour liaison, the northwest England regional daily the Liverpool Echo reported.

Bushell from Southport, near Liverpool, was bankrupt and owed 15,000 pounds from using phone sex lines and escort girls, the evening newspaper added in its court report from the town.

He pleaded guilty to dishonestly obtaining sexual services and was made subject to a two-year supervision order. Magistrates also ordered him to pay 65 pounds in court costs at a hearing on Monday.

No compensation order was made for Harper, from Bradford, northern England.

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

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

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

Prostitution has been legal in New Zealand since 2003.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We’re like courtesans,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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