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.

SHIRLEY, N.Y. – Male drivers who paid $5 for a topless car wash ended up getting hosed. Young women held up signs along a parkway advertising the car wash on Sunday and telling the drivers where to go. But hidden behind a big blue tarp, it was shirtless male firefighters who were washing the cars.

“A little bit of a bait-and-switch,” Assistant Chief Donald Prince admitted. “All the guys back there are all topless.”

Female drivers didn’t seem to mind the shirtless firefighters. Male drivers, though, felt they were getting burned.

Mike Matias was hugely disappointed when a man soaped up and rinsed his car. But he said at least his $5 went to a good cause: All the money raised will benefit school booster clubs and charities, the Brookhaven fire department said.

NEW YORK – A woman arrested for exposing her breasts has accepted a $29,000 settlement from the city, her lawyer said.

Jill Coccaro, 27, was arrested on a topless stroll two years ago, despite a 1992 state appeals court ruling that concluded women should have the same right as men to take off their shirts.

Coccaro, who now goes by the name Phoenix Feeley, remained in custody for 12 hours before she was told prosecutors were not going to pursue charges.

Her attorney, Jeffrey Rothman, told the Daily News that his client won the civil rights settlement from the city, which did not admit or deny wrongdoing.

“We hope the police learn a lesson and respect the rights of women to go topless,” Rothman said.

Feeley told the New York Post that she was not treated well after her Aug. 4, 2005, arrest in Manhattan’s Lower East Side section. She claimed in an October lawsuit that a police officer yanked her out of a patrol car by her hair and police took her to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.

She told the newspaper she had gone bare-breasted after running the 2004 city marathon without police bothering her.

“I’ve always just felt that was something natural,” Feeley said of going topless. “I’ve kind of always done it out of practicality.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A topless Britney Spears has posted a new message on her Web site to thank her fans for their prayers “during this trying time.”

Alongside a photograph of herself in a blonde wig, posed topless with white-gloved arms crossed over her chest, the pop singer said she was “blessed” to be so cared about.

“The reason for this letter is to let everyone know that their prayers have helped me,” Spears wrote.

“I am so blessed that you care enough about me to be concerned and will continue to live in this brighter state with all of you by my side during this trying time.

“We are all lights of the world and we all need to continuously inspire others and look to the higher power. You are all in my prayers. Godspeed. Love Britney.”

Spears’ professional achievements have been overshadowed by her personal crises in the past year.

The pop singer split up from her second husband, aspiring rapper Kevin Federline, with whom she has two children, and entered rehab for undisclosed problems after a spree of high-profile partying and erratic behaviour such as shaving off her hair.

Spears, 25, has not released an album since 2003.

But she is now trying to stage a comeback, performing for the first time in more than three years this month with a series of 15-minute shows at various nightclubs.

She is reportedly recording her fifth album, which she started working on last year with red-hot hitmakers like R&B singer Ne-Yo and Swedish producer Max Martin.

CANBERRA (Reuters) – A nude car wash offering an X-rated sideshow and topless cleaning in Australia’s tropical Queensland state has been given the all-clear after police and officials said they were powerless to scrub it.

The Bubbles ‘n’ Babes car wash in Brisbane prompted a flood of complaints with a topless car wash for A$55 ($45) and a nude car wash with X-rated lap-dance service for A$100. “If it was approved for a car wash then I can’t imagine how we can stop them,” Lord Mayor Campbell Newman told a council meeting with worried local lawmakers.

Professional car washes have boomed in most cities with drought-stricken Australians banned from washing their own cars due to tough water restrictions.

Queensland police denied any cover-up in a state where their image has been dented by past accusations of police corruption and involvement with organized crime.

The raunchy wash, set up by a strip-club owner, was screened from the public and used recycled water to avoid breaching water use restrictions, they said.

“We don’t want any traffic accidents caused by people looking at the girls instead of looking at the road,” Superintendent Colin Campbell told local media.

TOKYO (Reuters) – A troupe of dancers in skin-coloured body suits had Japanese national broadcaster NHK apologising to viewers of its New Year’s Eve music special for what seemed to be a full-scale Janet Jackson-style wardrobe malfunction.

The dancers, who all appeared to be topless and wore skimpy bikini-style bottoms and feathered head-dresses, covered the stage during a performance by singer DJ OZMA, prompting about 250 viewers to phone in and complain.

“The dancers were wearing body suits, but we apologise for any misunderstanding,” a presenter announced towards the end of the 57th annual “Red and White Song Contest”.

“I guess it looked a bit too real,” local media quoted the singer as telling reporters after the show, which regularly tops viewer ratings on New Year’s Eve in Japan.

TIRANA (Reuters) – Albanian police were speechless when around 30 Scandinavian women went topless, shocking local bathers and causing an uproar in an Albanian beach resort.

“Police only watched … they could not approach the tourists because they spoke no English,” a local newspaper in the southern Albania coastal town of Sarande said.

Albanian mothers dragged their children away and police received a barrage of complaints over the Scandinavian tourists.

The Scandinavians left after two hours when their guide was informed that nude bathing was banned on public beaches. Nudity and topless bathing are still taboo in the poor Balkan country.

BEIJING (Reuters) – A Chinese TV presenter issued a public apology after posing topless with two other women in hospital advertisements for women’s health, the Beijing News said Tuesday.

Chen Dan, a presenter on Changsha TV’s “Women’s channel” in the southeastern province of Hunan, drew fire from Internet chat-rooms and station bosses after her “Clever Girls Love Themselves More” advertisement appeared at bus stops and on billboards in Hunan’s capital, Changsha.

Chen, who was suspended from presenting duties said it was a “public interest advertisement,” the Beijing News said.

“My intentions were good,” the paper quoted her as saying. “I hoped to draw people’s attention to women’s health, but because the format was inappropriate it caused a huge backlash. In future I will choose more suitable ways of publicizing women’s health.”

The advertisement provoked fierce debate online and in local media over the morality of using nudity to promote public interest causes, and whether the article was a commercial stunt for the women or Changsha’s Shangmei Gynecology Hospital.

“What a shame breasts have become the leading actor,” the official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.

“This is a serious attack on women,” fumed an online commentator. “It goes completely beyond the moral and aesthetic baseline.”

The “Clever Girls” advertisement furor followed a controversy over several actresses who posed nude in support of breast cancer prevention in a lifestyle magazine in October 2005.