BERLIN (AFP) – Sex workers in Berlin have reportedly gone into extra time at the World Cup and are doing double shifts to cash in.

“Berlin’s hookers are groaning – all brothels are creaking at the seams,” mass daily Bild reported.

“In some establishments the girls already have to put in double shifts owing to the World Cup,” the paper added, saying clients were virtually queuing up to get in to the host nation’s ‘Freudenhauser’ (literally, joy houses).

One taxi driver was quoted as saying he had taken a fare from four would-be customers of some of the capital’s estimated 8,000 prostitutes.

“But they were turned away. The places are too full.”

German police said last week there were no signs of forced prostitution being on the rise.

Be that as it may, with around a million fans having come over for the month-long football showpiece and with prostitution legal in Germany, supply is clearly meeting demand.

Bild quoted Josephine Conte of Berlin’s upmarket Bel Ami establishment, one of 400 “joy houses” in the city, as saying demand had gone through the roof and that her employees were having to put in “special shifts.”

She explained: “We have VIP reservations right through to the end of the tournament. Sometimes we don’t know where to put all the men!”

According to ‘Joy’, a 21-year-old woman doing the morning shift with seven colleagues, “the guys come for a massage as they want to relax before the game.”

But “the guests must be patient with waiting times of up to two hours,” according to Conte.

It’s hard work, says another ‘Joy,’ a blonde aged 23 who says she sometimes puts in a 16-hour day, though some of that is on call after a regular shift.

“We are earning as much much in one day as we normally would in a week.

“But after the World Cup I’ll need a holiday.”

International organisations and foreign governments warned in the run-up to the tournament that women were being forced to travel to Germany for the World Cup to serve as prostitutes for an army of football fans and that up to 40,000 women could be abused in this way.

Last Friday, on the opening day of the tournament, the International Organization for Migration kicked off a campaign in Geneva aimed at raising awareness of the risk of human trafficking and forced prostitution on the sidelines of the tournament.

Germany legalised prostitution in 2002 meaning that brothels can advertise their services openly, which many are doing. Procuring, however, remains illegal.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China will hand out relatively lenient punishment to poor first-time prostitutes in the country’s booming east under updated laws on sex for sale, state media reported on Friday.

The new laws would apply in Jiangsu, which borders Shanghai to the south, where prostitutes driven into the trade by poverty would get smaller fines and lesser prison sentences.

“They will be detained for less than five days and fined less than 500 yuan (33 pounds),” the Shanghai Daily quoted Jiangsu police as saying, as opposed to 10 to 15 days and a maximum fine of 5,000 yuan for persistent offenders.

The new laws follow regulations issued in February ordering owners of karaoke clubs and discos — notorious haunts for prostitution and drugs — to install cameras and windows into back rooms.

Prostitution was virtually wiped out in the years after the Communist Party swept into power in 1949, but along with pornography and other perceived western vices has staged a comeback in the wake of reforms over the last three decades.

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian brothel owners want an exemption to anti-smoking laws for sex workers and their clients because, they say, one thing leads to another.

Newspapers reported Sunday that the Australian Adult Entertainment Industry had written to Victoria state officials seeking an exemption to laws which ban smoking in workplaces for fear they will drive prostitutes back onto the street.

“People smoke when they drink, and people smoke when they fornicate,” the industry group’s William Albon was quoted as saying by Australian Associated Press.

Smoking is banned in most public buildings across Australia and will be outlawed in hotels and other licensed premises in Victoria in July.

Albon said the ban would force “men, women and transgender persons” who work as prostitutes out of the state’s 87 legal brothels and onto the streets, where they could potentially become targets for violence.

“Having them standing dressed in terms not conventional for the street might be a magnet for violent, anti-social behavior,” he said.

BANGKOK (AFP) – A rights group has warned Thai sex workers against going to Germany during the World Cup, saying they could be subject to “all kinds of abuse,” a report has said.

The June-July event becomes a magnet for prostitutes as the 64-match tournament sees millions of football fans flood into Germany.

The Empower Foundation, a Thai non-profit organization helping to protect sex workers’ rights, said Thai prostitutes could earn double what they get at home but warned that they might face “unfair working conditions.”

“Thai sex workers in a foreign country face risks, especially if they aren’t fluent in the language,” said Porntip Pakwai from the foundation, according to the Thai English-language daily Nation.

“Although prostitution is legal in Germany, only Germans are allowed to work in the industry,” she said, urging Thai workers to keep phone numbers such as that of the Thai embassy handy in case of emergencies.

It warned that “mafia-style” figures were often involved in the sex industry.

Women’s rights activists have forecast that around 40,000 prostitutes, mainly from eastern Europe, could swell the numbers already working in the sex trade in Germany during the World Cup.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A brothel has become the first in Berlin to offer special deals for virgins with prostitutes trained in the delicate art of catering for customers who have never had sex, a German newspaper reported Friday.

The brothel in the red light area of the Kreuzberg district of the city charges 60 euros for a half an hour of sex and works within the laws of Germany where prostitution is legal.

“These are men who either never had sex before or have never been in a brothel before,” the brothel’s operator was quoted as saying in Berlin’s B.Z. tabloid.

“It’s the first house of love in Berlin that specializes in taking care of beginners,” wrote the daily on its front page.

Prostitutes are given “sensitivity training” for first-time clients, who the brothel operator said are not necessarily young but often 40 or older: “They need to be aware of how much courage it takes to go to a brothel the first time.”

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) – Prostitutes in the Brazilian city of Salvador are starting up their own radio station.

The Association of Prostitutes of Bahia state has won government permission for the project, enabling FM station Radio Zona to start broadcasting in the second half of the year, project coordinator Sandro Correia said on Thursday.

“We are not going to apologize for prostitution but we are going to struggle for the dignity of the profession,” Correia told Reuters.

The aim was not to attract women to the business. The station will feature programs about the trade but will also discuss issues such as human rights, social questions, and sexual abuse, Correia said.

“The idea is that we have diverse programs that look at health issues, AIDS prevention, and racism, for example,” he said.

Working girls and media professionals such as Correia will staff the station and will give prostitutes training in an alternative job. Funding will come from association funds, advertising and sponsorship.

Prostitution is widespread in Brazil, especially in Bahia state and other parts of the impoverished northeast.

International rights organizations have criticized the country as a destination for sex tourism and child prostitution.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Dutch prostitutes gave the public a peek behind the curtains of Amsterdam’s famed Red Light District on Saturday, hoping to stave off an attempt by city politicians to stop lingerie-clad women from advertising themselves in neon-lit windows.

Thousands of tourists and Dutch visitors took up the offer by the district’s sex clubs and topless bars to step in for a free drink and a look around to counteract the establishments’ seedy reputation.

Women allowed visitors into the cubicles where they conduct their business to explain hygiene regulations and the alarm system used when a prostitute encounters a difficult customer.

“The Red Light district has received a lot of negative publicity recently,” said organizer Mariska Majoor, an ex-prostitute who runs the district’s Prostitution Information Center. “We want to show the world that it is safe out here.”

The open house came in response to proposals by the head of Amsterdam’s Labor Party, the city’s largest party, to discourage women from marketing themselves in windows.

The intimately lit rooms were sparse, with just a bed, a bedside table and a shower.

A young woman showing a room to a group of five men said customers are immediately offered condoms and asked if they want to shower before their 15-minute session, which normally costs $60.

“You would not expect to find something like this in conservative Cambridge,” British tourist Leigh Shaw-Taylor said after wandering past sex clubs and shops selling sex toys.

In a book released a few months ago, Labor party leader Lodewijk Asscher urged the authorities to crack down on window prostitution, saying it fostered crime and attracted pimps, drug addicts and human traffickers.

A recent study found that despite health rules, about 7 percent of Dutch prostitutes have HIV/ AIDS.

“You must draw a line between tolerance and disinterest,” Asscher wrote on his Web log. “Tolerance means legalizing prostitution, but then you must also be ready to combat the problems associated with it.”

Local authorities already have closed down the red-light district in the eastern town of Arnhem.

The open house idea was supported by the information center, Amsterdam’s Sex Museum, and the Salvation Army, which is active in the area.

Majoor said not all the sex workers were happy about opening their business premises to gawking, photograph-taking tourists.

“I completely understand their anger, she said. She said she hoped the women would see the intention was not to “humiliate, but promote their work.”

Prostitution in Amsterdam boomed during the city’s 17th century Golden Age, when women catered to sailors from merchant ships in what was then the world’s richest port city.

The area in the city center became a major tourist draw in the 20th century. The Dutch government legalized prostitution in 2000 with an eye to making it easier to tax and regulate.

SAUSALITO, California (Reuters) – As several naked couples watched a live demonstration of sexual technique, Xaviera Hollander, the former prostitute and author of “The Happy Hooker,” stayed dressed but freely shared details of her past lovers, men and women alike.

Hollander, 62, was in the San Francisco area to attend the screening of a new documentary about her, to speak at a sex workshop and to reflect on her colorful past that made her a matriarch of the sexual revolution.

“I want to be remembered as a living legend. I don’t want to disappear like Mae West or Greta Garbo,” she said in an interview.

During a three-and-a-half hour seminar led by an outgoing couple, Hollander — who insisted she was not an exhibitionist — let the others do the heavy breathing. As the woman leading the workshop assisted by a male partner moaned with pleasure, another woman in the audience was so moved by the show that she too went into ecstasy.

Hollander watched the event sponsored by the Center for Sex and Culture passively from a few feet away. But as her memoir of more than 30 years ago tells, she has seen it all before.

Born Vera De Fries in Indonesia to Dutch parents, Hollander and her life are the stuff of movies, and four years ago, she approached director Robert Dunlap to document her story.

The filmmaker, who is married to Hollander’s cousin, jumped at the chance. He spent the next few years following her around Europe, interviewing friends and past lovers and searching through thousands of family photos.

WARTIME SUFFERING

The movie “Xaviera Hollander: The Happy Hooker” begins somberly with a little-known fact: For the first three years of Hollander’s life she and her parents lived in a Japanese concentration camp during World War Two in Indonesia.

From there the film continues through her humble beginnings as a secretary, her first foray into prostitution and her rise to fame after the release of “The Happy Hooker.” Throughout, Hollander provides detailed accounts of some of her more memorable sexual encounters.

The film, which has not yet found a distributor, also tackles rough spots, including her family’s backlash when they discovered her profession. Hollander’s mother was outraged; an aunt burned the book.

Her father — with whom she was very close– had died years earlier. She says had he lived, she probably would not have become a prostitute. “I wouldn’t have wanted to disappoint him,” she said.

That is quite a statement for a woman whose fame and fortune is rooted in her sexual exploits. She has written nearly a dozen books on the subject and speaks frequently at seminars and conventions for sex therapists and sex workers. For 30 years she has penned a column in Penthouse magazine title “Call Me Madam.”

“I had so much fun,” she said about her career. “I was pretty much a one-woman show.”

Does she get tired of being referred to as the Happy Hooker? “It will always be the moniker on my back. I don’t mind — as long as they remember me,” she said.

Since its release, “The Happy Hooker” has sold 15 million copies. Asked why the book has endured all these years, Hollander attributes it to honesty.

“It was a true book, not a phony book, based on reality,” she said, dressed in a cream-colored house coat with bright stitching and flip-flop sandals. “It showed that sex can be fun.”

Quick to laugh and pepper her conversation with salty language, her green eyes and pale lips show no signs of botox or plastic surgery. The once svelte body has given way to a heavier-set figure.

For Dunlap, his film is less about Hollander’s sexual past than about a woman who overcame enormous obstacles.

“It’s the story of an ultimate survivor,” he said. “This is a film about a real person. She lived it, she loved it and she will die having done what she really wanted to do.”

At her home base in Amsterdam, Hollander also runs a bed and breakfast. Two heart attacks nearly three years ago forced her to give up her other job producing cabaret theater. She was even celibate for two years, she said.

But health issues aside Hollander is not one to sit around. Her next project is another book, a collection of the best of her Penthouse column.

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A disgruntled New Zealand doctor has turned from pills to prostitutes, winning a license to convert his former medical practice into a brothel.

Dr Neil Benson closed his practice in Coopers Beach, about 155 miles northwest of Auckland, late last year after a dispute with his local health organization over after-hours care, the New Zealand Herald newspaper reported.

Benson, who has been practicing medicine for the past 18 years, said he decided to turn to the world’s oldest profession after someone else considered renting his empty medical center to open a brothel.

“I thought, ‘why don’t we run it ourselves?’ It would be a viable business and I was unemployed,” he said.

“It’s about providing a private service and maintaining confidentiality, which is what my medical practice was about — so it’s not a big leap, really,” Benson said.

New Zealand legalized prostitution and began licensing brothels in 2003.

Benson, who said he has the support of his wife and four children, has been granted a brothel operator’s certificate and plans to open an upmarket bordello next month named Whalers.

“Everything I have ever done is high quality. The standards of my medical practice were high and that will cross over to the brothel environment,” Benson said.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – A Thai prostitute escaped caning for drug dealing in Singapore after a doctor established that the accused, who was identified in a passport as a man, had undergone a sex change, the Straits Times reported on Friday.

Singapore’s drug laws, which include the death penalty for possession of certain amounts of drugs, provide for different punishments for males and females.

While male offenders can be punished with up to 15 strokes of the rattan cane for drug-related offences, female offenders are exempt from caning.

The Straits Times said Mongkon Pusuwan’s fate had been uncertain for weeks while the court waited for a medical report, which ultimately confirmed that the 37-year-old was a woman following a sex change operation undergone 10 years ago.

The Thai national was arrested close to the city-state’s upscale Orchard Road shopping district last December and charged with trafficking 1.52 grammes of cocaine and 2.5 grammes of ketamine.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) – As Rio de Janeiro’s biannual fashion show moved into high gear on Friday, a group of prostitutes strutted bright garments they designed, stealing some limelight from top models like Gisele Bundchen.

In an open-air show in the centre of the city famous for Carnival jamborees, prostitutes from Davida — a non-governmental organisation that defends the rights of sex service workers — presented their brand of clothing to cheers from hundreds of onlookers and camera flashes.

“We managed to get recognised. Our working clothes exploit sensuality and fetish,” said Doroth de Castro, a self-described veteran prostitute and co-founder of Davida.

The line’s brand name, Daspu, is a play on “Daslu,” the name of Brazil’s most expensive boutique.

Even spectators from the upscale Fashion Rio events cut away to catch the Davida show on a purple-carpeted, narrow street in central Rio, off a square where prostitutes typically solicit customers.

“We’re thin, fat, old and young. Not like those models that are all thin,” de Castro said. “We have flesh that men like.”

Apart from dresses designed to lure clients, the Davida group also makes casual wear for activist work, such as AIDS prevention.

It is not illegal to offer sexual services in Brazil, but pandering is a crime.

With its sun, sea, mountains and sultry lifestyle, Rio is a popular tourist destination. But prostitution is also rife, and the United Nations and other groups have expressed concern that it is growing as a magnet for foreigners seeking cheap sex, especially during Carnival, which starts on February 24.

The Brazilian government launched a campaign in March to stop the sexual exploitation of minors by tourists.

Fashion Rio, where mainly Brazilian designers present their collections, has recently gained fame in the fashion world. Bundchen was a main attraction on Friday night.