COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho – Security guards refused to allow a woman into a federal courthouse until she removed a bra that triggered a metal detector.

Lori Plato said she and her husband, Owen Plato, were stunned when U.S. Marshals Service employees asked her to remove her bra after the underwire supports set off the alarm.

“I asked if I could go into the bathroom because they didn’t have a privacy screen and no women security officers were available,” Plato said Wednesday. “They said, ‘No.’

“I wasn’t carrying a shank in my bra. If it’s so dangerous, why did they give it back and let me put it on?”

Patrick McDonald, the U.S. Marshal in Boise, said appropriate security protocols were followed in the Sept. 20 matter, and guards suggested she simply remove the bra in her car outside, or find a restaurant bathroom.

“She’s inflating it,” McDonald said. “All of a sudden she just took it off. It wasn’t anything we wanted to happen and it wasn’t anything we asked for her to do. She did it so fast.”

Plato, of Bonners Ferry, said she was parked on a busy street and wasn’t familiar with downtown Coeur d’Alene businesses. So her husband held up his coat to shield her from the rest of the people in the courthouse lobby while she removed her bra underneath her shirt.

Generally, McDonald said, undergarments aren’t considered a danger to security.

“I don’t think they’re considered a weapon, really, the last time I looked,” he said.

He declined to discuss other ways the federal courthouse guards could have screened Plato for weapons.

Plato wants the Marshals Service to apologize and stop forcing women to disrobe.

“It was very humiliating,” her husband, Owen Plato, said. “They could have handled it with a much more professional attitude.”

BANGKOK (Reuters Life!) – A Thai bank is pitching into the battle against HIV/AIDS and handing out condoms to customers too shy to get them at the shop.

Despite Bangkok’s reputation as one of the world’s sex industry centers, Thailand is a generally conservative country.

Kasikorn Bank launched the “Condoms for Confidence” campaign at 600 branches nationwide and said it would start giving out the sheaths, branded K-Condom and K-Excellence, later this month.

“HIV/AIDS is returning to Thailand since the government awareness campaign started 20 years ago has fizzled out,” said a bank spokesman who declined to be identified.

“We want the teenagers to be aware of the problem.”

Despite a tenfold plunge of overall new HIV/AIDS cases from 15 years ago, the health ministry has said it was concerned about the numbers of teenagers and homosexuals still being infected.

Disease Control Department chief Thawat Suntrajarn said embarrassment about buying condoms and ignorance in using them were the main causes of the new cases.

“Research papers from all sorts of agencies have a consensus that many condom users are embarrassed to buy condoms from counters,” Thawat told Reuters.

“Women who buy condoms from convenience stores always get a strange look from people, so condom handouts are a good way to avoid such embarrassment.”

New HIV/AIDS cases in Thailand, once praised by international health agencies for its aggressive campaign to tackle the epidemic, had fallen to 13,000 in 2006 from more than 100,000 a year in early 1990s, Thawat said.

But the worrying sign was that many of the new patients were teenagers and homosexual men, not heterosexual men in their 30s and prostitutes as in the past, he added.

A Health Ministry-commissioned survey last year showed 48 percent of 5,712 male high school students used condoms.

About 43 percent of 7,712 female high school students said their sex partners used condoms, it said.

Spurred by the findings, Thawat’s department is running a television advertisement encouraging people to buy condoms despite criticism from conservatives who argue it encourages teenagers to be sexually active.

“Even those bank customers who don’t need to use the condoms, they can pass them on to their families or friends,” he said.

JAKARTA (Reuters) – An Indonesian businessman’s bid to make polygamy easier was rejected by the country’s constitutional court on Wednesday.

Indonesia allows polygamy, but according to the marriage law, a man can only get court approval to take a second wife if his first wife agrees, or if she is disabled or cannot have children.

Businessman Muhammad Insa, the petitioner in the court case, argued that those conditions effectively prevent polygamy, and this has meant that many men avoid registering their second marriages. As a result, children from unregistered marriages often lose their inheritance rights and other benefits.

The court said in its ruling that the articles were not against the constitution or against the tenets of Islam, which allows multiple marriages on condition that wives are treated fairly.

“These articles … are intended to protect the basic rights of wives and prospective wives of men who engage in polygamy,” court chief Jimly Asshiddiqie said.

Insa said the decision was unfair.

“I’m not happy. With such conditions, polygamy cannot be practiced,” he told reporters, adding “I will continue my struggle with other people or groups.”

The polygamy debate in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, heated up last year after a popular Islamic cleric announced that he had taken a second wife.

Abdullah Gymnastiar, a turban-clad, leather-jacketed preacher, is a household name in Indonesia because of his relaxed sermons on Islam that strike a chord with ordinary people charmed by his chatty, youthful style.

But his popularity declined after his second marriage was made public.

Though not widely practiced among ordinary Indonesians, polygamy has some prominent advocates, including restaurateur Puspo Wardoyo who has four wives, and who has been at the forefront of a campaign to promote multiple marriages.

Wardoyo’s popular chain of restaurants is renowned for its “polygamy juice,” a mixture of four tropical fruits, and “polygamy vegetables,” a four-vegetable combo.

LAPEER, Mich. – The Lapeer County sheriff wants to help two bank robbery suspects tie the knot.

“I’ll volunteer to marry them in the jail if they surrender,” Sheriff Ron Kalanquin said Monday. Kalanquin said he wanted the Lapeer couple off the streets before their cash ran out and they attempted another robbery.

A 24-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman are suspected of taking about $5,000 in the Sept. 19 robbery of a Lapeer County Bank & Trust branch in Deerfield Township, about 60 miles north of Detroit.

Detectives determined that the robbery money was used to buy wedding rings, pay back rent and pay the woman’s attorney for work done in a child custody case, The Flint Journal reported.

The couple met after the man was released from the county jail and was introduced to her by another ex-inmate, Kalanquin said.

“We believe they could still be in the area, but could also be somewhere in Michigan or beyond,” Kalanquin said. He appealed to the couple’s relatives and friends to alert police to their whereabouts.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Days after banning “sexually provocative sounds” on television, China has now stopped networks showing “saucy” adverts for push-up bras and figure-hugging underwear ahead of a major Communist Party meeting next month.

Other targets of the crackdown are “low-brow and base” commercials for sex toys and those featuring famous people or experts attesting to the efficacy of medicines, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said on its Web site (www.sarft.gov.cn) Friday.

“Every television advertisement management bureau and television station must strengthen their political consciousness and responsibility toward society,” Tian Jin, deputy head of the regulator, was quoted as saying.

The order is the latest in a raft of measures which have included axing reality shows featuring sex changes and plastic surgery and banning talent contests during prime-time.

The media watchdog’s edicts have reached fever pitch in recent weeks, ahead of a meeting of the 17th Party congress, a sensitive five-yearly meeting at which key national leaders are appointed and policy set for the next few years.

It earlier urged the country’s increasingly freewheeling broadcasters to forgo vulgarity and bad taste in the pursuit of ratings in favor of providing “inspiring” content for the masses imbued with “socialist” values.

“Create a positive atmosphere for public opinion,” the regulator cited state television head Zhao Huayong as telling his staff in preparation for the congress.

“Strictly adhere to propaganda requirements; do not rush to report, do not report impulsively, and make sure there are no mistakes from reports on any large events,” Zhao added.

WASHINGTON – Who cares if they’re free? Residents in the nation’s capital say the condoms being handed out have a serious problem.

As many as 70,000 condoms given away in a citywide campaign to reduce HIV and AIDS were returned this week by community groups. Another 100,000 condoms were returned in early September because of complaints their paper packaging can be easily damaged and could make the condoms ineffective.

City health officials agreed that complaints about the packaging were damaging to their citywide distribution campaign, but they have insisted the condoms were safe. They said this week they will distribute brand-name substitutes.

Since the problems were publicized, the city’s condom manufacturer offered to replace all remaining supplies with Trojan, Lifestyles and other products found on drugstore shelves.

A spokeswoman for Mayor Adrian Fenty said the city has received 125,000 of the new condoms and 400,000 more are expected in the next two weeks.

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysian doctors have reattached a man’s nearly severed penis after his first wife, enraged by his comparison of her sex skills with those of his younger second wife, decided to chop it off with a kitchen knife.

The man, a 43-year-old Indonesian worker in southern Johor state, was lying in bed with his 48-year-old wife talking about his newly wed second wife, who is in her 30s, when the incident happened, the New Straits Times newspaper reported.

Despite his shock and pain, the man managed to pull on his trousers and ride his motorcycle to a nearby hospital, where doctors had to put in 11 stitches to reattach the organ.

The man later complained to police, who arrested the woman and plan to charge her with voluntarily causing grievous hurt with a dangerous weapon, which carries the penalty of a three-year jail term and a fine, the newspaper reported.

BLOOMSBURG, Pa. – Marriage proposals have been displayed on billboards, announced on scoreboards and even written into newspaper crossword puzzles.

Kevin Weaver’s engagement to Karen Slusser got off to a smashing start — he painted his proposal on a car and drove it in a demolition derby.

“Every woman I know says she wants to announce it to the world when she gets engaged. I figured I’d announce it for her and make it well noted,” said Weaver, 34, of Danville.

Slusser, 47, of Mifflinville, knew Weaver was entering the derby. She saw him paint the car white and light blue, then top it with a stuffed bunny to advertise her rabbit-breeding business.

But this past week, Weaver moved the car to a friend’s garage, saying he needed to keep it out of the rain. While it was hidden inside, he painted “Karen Slusser will u marry me?” from the hood along the driver’s side and up the trunk.

He also attached a large stuffed ring — with fabric diamond — to the bunny’s paws.

When the car appeared in the derby arena Saturday, Slusser read the message and her family cheered.

Weaver finished third, then met Slusser at the gate to the drivers’ pit and asked for her answer.

“Yes!” she said with a laugh.

And with that, Weaver handed her a real diamond ring.

RACINE, Wis. – Melody Kloska and Matt Behrs take it as a sign they were meant to get married.

After tying the knot on a Lake Michigan beach on Aug. 18, they released a bottle containing their wedding vows. A few weeks later, the bottle was found by Fred and Lynnette Dubendorf, of Mears, Mich., who were also married on a beach — exactly 28 years before Kloska and Behrs.

“It was meant to be,” Kloska said. “This was a sign to me.”

Kloska, 46, and Behrs, 41, have been together for five years, but with several failed marriages between them, they had doubts about remarrying.

They finally did it in a sunrise ceremony near the Wind Point Lighthouse in Wind Point in southern Wisconsin. They invited a few guests, read their own vows and released two balloons.

When it was time to throw the bottle sealed with their name, address and wedding vows into the lake, Behrs went to the rock farthest out in the water.

He threw it underhand, but the bottle landed back on the sand where Kloska was standing.

“After laughing so hard, I tossed it back to him to release it again into the lake,” she said. “It landed not too far from where he threw it. My thought was that with our luck, it would wind up in front of the house next-door to the lighthouse.”

Instead, it floated across Lake Michigan and landed in the path of Lynnette Dubendorf, who was scanning the beach for trash to clean up while she walked her dogs. She spied the clear plastic bottle partially buried in the sand and noticed the note inside.

“I opened it and read it and said, `Oh, this is pretty cool, it’s somebody’s wedding vows,’” she said. “I thought, `Wow, how funny, we were married on the beach, too, and on the same day.’”

She initially didn’t plan to respond, thinking an answer would only encourage people to toss litter into the lake.

“Then I thought, `That’s selfish, I really should respond,’” she said. So she wrote Kloska and Behrs to tell them of her discovery.

The letter read, “We thought you would want to know where your message in a bottle ended up! We picked it up on the beach between Pentwater and Silver Lake on Sept. 19. An ironic note, we were also married on the beach! Here in Michigan by Pentwater. Even more ironic, it was on August 18, 1979. We wish you both the best of luck in your new lives together.”

Behrs and Kloska had to read the letter several times to believe it. Kloska was surprised the bottle made it across the lake.

“I took it to mean that there’s hope yet,” she said.

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – Brides in Stockholm who want their fathers to walk them down the aisle are likely to be told it can’t be done, as some pastors are refusing to allow the practice they say is sexist, a pastor said on Friday.

“In Sweden we have worked hard in many different ways to eliminate everything that is unequal,” a Lutheran Church vicar in the Stockholm region, Yvonne Hallin, told AFP.

She said she would not allow the custom in her parish, and noted that Stockholm’s bishop issued a recommendation in 2003 that pastors discourage it.

Couples who marry “are equal when it comes to finances, politics, values … but when they come to the church … the woman suddenly turns into a man’s property,” she said.

Hallin said she has informed a father who was to walk his daughter down the aisle on Saturday that he would not be doing so.

The mother of the bride, who was shocked by the news, told Swedish news agency TT that the ceremony would go ahead as planned but that the couple had had to give in to the pastor’s wishes.

“In this case it wasn’t the couple who became angry but the parents,” Hallin said, adding that most people “don’t find it strange.”

She noted that the custom of fathers walking their daughters down the aisle “is not a Swedish tradition. It has been imported from American and British films.”

NEW YORK – For richer, for poorer? It’ll have to be for poorer after Luke Jacunski and his girlfriend were robbed at gunpoint just seconds after he proposed.

Jacunski got on one knee and popped the question to his girlfriend of six months, Mami Nagase, in a romantic spot at a gazebo in Central Park on Saturday night. She had just agreed to marry him when, they said, a gunman jumped from the bushes and yelled, “Give me your money and get on the ground!”

As Jacunski, 30, and Nagase, 24, got on the ground, he was able to slip the engagement ring off her finger and hide it in his pocket.

The robber took a Rolex watch from Nagase and $125 from Jacunski, who had planned to use it to pay for a romantic dinner at a French restaurant. The robber then ran away.

Nagase, an artist from Japan, and Jacunski, a musician from Cincinnati, spent the next several hours at a police station looking at mug shots and sharing potato chips for dinner. They said they still plan to get married.

“It makes for a pretty good story for our anniversary,” Jacunski said.

He said the night could have been much worse: After he proposed, Nagase could have said no.

CARACAS (Reuters) – President Hugo Chavez railed against a new trend in beauty-conscious Venezuela, giving girls breast implants for their 15th birthday.

“Now some people think, ‘My daughter’s turning 15, let’s give her breast enlargements.’ That’s horrible. It’s the ultimate degeneration,” Chavez said late on Sunday on his weekly TV show that lasted a record eight hours.

Venezuela is well known for its beauty queens, who have regularly won world crowns, and many women have plastic surgery in the oil-rich country where there is widespread spending on consumer items that would be considered luxuries elsewhere.

But Chavez, the anti-U.S., self-styled revolutionary who came to office in 1999, is seeking to change those attitudes to create what he calls the “new man” to build a socialist society in this South American nation.

Chavez complained about the new fad of giving the plastic surgery operation at 15 — when Latin Americans celebrate a girl’s coming-of-age — during a diatribe against what he says are Western-imposed consumerist icons such as Barbie dolls.

While breast implants are advertised on TV and banks offer special credit lines for such operations, if girls do get the enlargements they are not expected to become sexually active afterward.

Venezuelans’ have a habit of avid consumerism since the 1970s oil boom in the OPEC nation. They have won the nickname of the “Give-Me-Twos” in the tourist destination of Florida for buying double the amount of typical consumers.

Breast implants cost thousands of dollars in Venezuela.

Chavez’s answer? He has told his supporters to give away any extra goods they do not need, urging them to leave out in town squares items such as fans or refrigerators.

“I am calling on your conscience, fathers of this country, mothers of this country, they are our sons, they are our daughters,” Chavez said.

Still, Chavez, who happily describes himself as ugly, may struggle to change Venezuelans’ mind-set to spending on plastic surgery.

In elevators, at huge, jam-packed shopping malls, women can be overheard openly boasting about their recent, conspicuous operations.

WARSAW (AFP) – A new Polish women’s political party risks shocking the majority Catholic country by plastering nude posters of their female candidates for the upcoming October 21 parliamentary election.

Seven women, including Women’s Party (Partia Kobiet, PK) founder and president, writer Manuela Gretkowska, have launched their campaign with nude posters of themselves with the logo “The Party of Women. Poland is a Woman” masking their private parts.

The poster also incorporates their electoral slogan: “Everything for the future… and nothing to hide.”

“This poster is intended to shatter stereotypes in the anachronistic world of politics, which is more often dominated by uncommunicative men with their black tie outfits,” Gretkowska told AFP.

“We are beautiful, nude, proud. We are true and sincere, body and soul. This is not pornography, there is nothing to see in terms of sex, our faces are intelligent, concerned, proud. We do not have our mouths open nor our eyes closed,” she said.

“All that interests us is the future, the position of women in society. We will open the archives of the former secret communist agents, we will make known their corrupt affairs,” said Gretkowska.

The pursuit of former communist secret police agents and the business of corruption has remained at the heart of Polish political life since the twin brothers Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski came to power in 2005.

Founded at the beginning of the year, the Women’s Party has 1,500 members today. Many party members include female celebrities, such as actress Krystyna Janda or women’s boxing champion Agnieszka Rylik.

“The last debate launched by the League of Polish Families (LPR) regarding stiffening of the anti-abortion law is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Gretkowska, regarding her decision to enter the political arena.

According to the latest poll made on September 16 by the TNS OBOP Institute, the Women’s Party received three percent of voter’s intentions, less than the five percent needed to hold a seat in parliament.

“It’s a good result, with room to grow,” she said.

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.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Staff at a German butcher’s shop were shocked to discover a customer had hidden two sex toys in their sausages for transport to Dubai, police said on Wednesday.

“It was two latex dildos with a natural look,” said a spokesman for police in the southwestern city of Mannheim.

After shopping there earlier in the day, the man, who spoke broken English, returned to the butcher’s with two large “Schwartenmagen” sausages. He asked a shop assistant to wrap and cool them until he departed for Dubai the next day.

But the assistant noticed the goods had got heavier and alerted police. Officers discovered the man, who was about 50, had removed some of the meat and packed the dildos inside.

“He could have used a loaf of bread,” the spokesman said. “It’s not against the law here. But obviously I can’t speculate on what customs in Dubai will have to say about it.”

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. – A man who made more than 600 telephone calls to a shoe store and other businesses to ask women about their shoes and feet must pay a $200 fine.

James Lee Fink, 31, placed 119 calls from his cell phone to the Chambersburg (Pa.) Mall, 513 calls to a Holiday Inn in Havelock, N.C., and 17 calls to a Comfort Inn in Chambersburg between Jan. 1 and May 8, 2006, Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Jeff Bopp said Thursday.

The caller would ask the women what kind of shoes they were wearing and whether they would show him their feet if he came into their store.

The man identified himself as Brian Thompson, but State Police used phone records to link the telephone number to Fink, whose last known address was in Martinsburg.

Fink pleaded guilty to harassment in August in Franklin County Court in Pennsylvania. He was sentenced Wednesday.

In addition to a fine, Franklin County Court Judge John Walker ordered Fink to serve a year on probation. Fink also was ordered to stay away from The Shoe Department in Frederick, Md., and one woman whom he continuously harassed.

TRENTON, N.J. – It’s a fashion that started in prison, and now the saggy pants craze has come full circle — low-slung street strutting in some cities may soon mean run-ins with the law, including a stint in jail.

Proposals to ban saggy pants are starting to ride up in several places. At the extreme end, wearing pants low enough to show boxers or bare buttocks in one small Louisiana town means six months in jail and a $500 fine. A crackdown also is being pushed in Atlanta. And in Trenton, getting caught with your pants down may soon result in not only a fine, but a city worker assessing where your life is headed.

“Are they employed? Do they have a high school diploma? It’s a wonderful way to redirect at that point,” said Trenton Councilwoman Annette Lartigue, who is drafting a law to outlaw saggy pants. “The message is clear: We don’t want to see your backside.”

The bare-your-britches fashion is believed to have started in prisons, where inmates aren’t given belts with their baggy uniform pants to prevent hangings and beatings. By the late 80s, the trend had made it to gangster rap videos, then went on to skateboarders in the suburbs and high school hallways.

“For young people, it’s a form of rebellion and identity,” Adrian “Easy A.D.” Harris, 43, a founding member of the Bronx’s legendary rap group Cold Crush Brothers. “The young people think it’s fashionable. They don’t think it’s negative.”

But for those who want to stop them see it as an indecent, sloppy trend that is a bad influence on children.

“It has the potential to catch on with elementary school kids, and we want to stop it before it gets there,” said C.T. Martin, an Atlanta councilman. “Teachers have raised questions about what a distraction it is.”

In Atlanta, a law has been introduced to ban sagging and punishment could include small fines or community work — but no jail time, Martin said.

The penalty is stiffer in Delcambre, La., where in June the town council passed an ordinance that carries a fine of up to $500 or six months in jail for exposing underwear in public. Several other municipalities and parish governments in Louisiana have enacted similar laws in recent months.

At Trenton hip-hop clothing store Razor Sharp Clothing Shop 4 Ballers, shopper Mark Wise, 30, said his jeans sag for practical reasons.

“The reason I don’t wear tight pants is because it’s easier to get money out of my pocket this way,” Wise said. “It’s just more comfortable.”

Shop owner Mack Murray said Trenton’s proposed ordinance unfairly targets blacks.

“Are they going to go after construction workers and plumbers, because their pants sag, too?” Murray asked. “They’re stereotyping us.”

The American Civil Liberties Union agrees.

“In Atlanta, we see this as racial profiling,” said Benetta Standly, statewide organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. “It’s going to target African-American male youths. There’s a fear with people associating the way you dress with crimes being committed.”

LINCOLN, Neb. – The defendant in a state senator’s lawsuit is accused of causing untold death and horror and threatening to cause more still. He can be sued in Douglas County, the legislator claims, because He’s everywhere.

State Sen. Ernie Chambers sued God last week. Angered by another lawsuit he considers frivolous, Chambers says he’s trying to make the point that anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody.

Chambers says in his lawsuit that God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents, inspired fear and caused “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.”

The Omaha senator, who skips morning prayers during the legislative session and often criticizes Christians, also says God has caused “fearsome floods … horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes.”

He’s seeking a permanent injunction against the Almighty.

Chambers said the lawsuit was triggered by a federal suit filed against a judge who recently barred words such as “rape” and “victim” from a sexual assault trial.

The accuser in the criminal case, Tory Bowen, sued Lancaster District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront, claiming that he violated her free speech rights.

Chambers said Bowen’s lawsuit is inappropriate because the Nebraska Supreme Court has already considered the case and federal courts follow the decisions of state supreme courts on state matters.

“This lawsuit having been filed and being of such questionable merit creates a circumstance where my lawsuit is appropriately filed,” Chambers said. “People might call it frivolous but if they read it they’ll see there are very serious issues I have raised.”

U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf, in an order last week, expressed doubts about whether Bowen’s lawsuit “has any legal basis whatsoever” and said sanctions may be imposed against Bowen and her attorneys if they fail to show cause for the lawsuit.

The Associated Press usually does not identify accusers in sex-assault cases, but Bowen has allowed her name to be used publicly because of the issue over the judge’s language restrictions.

Cheuvront declared a mistrial in the sexual assault trial in July, saying pretrial publicity made it impossible to gather enough impartial jurors.

LONDON (AFP) – A member of an international crime ring which bought fake Viagra and drugs against baldness from factories in Asia before selling them on to unsuspecting customers at a huge profit has been jailed in Britain.

Ashish Halai was described by prosecutors as the British “lynchpin” of the operation, which bought bogus drugs for as little as 25 pence in China and Pakistan before they were sold online for up to 20 pounds per tablet.

Halai, 31, of Borehamwood, was jailed for four-and-a-half years at Kingston Crown Court after the largest investigation of its kind.

Sentencing him, Judge Nicholas Price said it was “an undeniably lucrative business where consumers are easy prey, often too embarrassed to seek help from their doctors”.

He noted that there was no evidence that the fake drugs had caused anyone any harm.

Halai, who was sentenced on four counts of selling fake medication, is one of four men who smuggled the drugs into Britain.

Gary Haywood, 58, of Leicester, Ashwin Patel, 24, of north London and Zahid Mirza, 45, of Ilford, Essex, were found guilty of involvement in the conspiracy in August and will be sentenced next month.

The court heard that the fake drugs involved were almost identical to the real products and contained around 90 percent of the active ingredient found in the genuine drugs.

British officials were alerted to the huge manufacturing and supply ring, which also had operations in the United States, the Bahamas and Mexico, following a chance seizure of thousands of tablets.

Investigators are still trying to work out how much money the men made from the ring.

LANSING, Mich. – A man tired of burglars nearly blew off his hand when bomb-like devices he set around his house exploded in his presence instead, authorities said.

Victor Iacobescu, 50, ran to a neighbor’s house Thursday with a bloody towel wrapped around his right hand.

“Apparently, he was trying to set booby traps to get the next guy who tried to break in,” fire Lt. Maggie Murphy said.

Iacobescu had been the victim of several break-ins, she said.

The neighbor, Patrick Struble, said the explosives were “like a pipe bomb. He accidentally triggered it, and it almost blew his hand off.”

Police were investigating with the intent to pursue charges.

“Anything that goes `bang’ is illegal,” police Lt. Bruce Ferguson said. “I can’t think of any (legal) reason why someone would be making a bomb.”

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – A Cambodian man was arrested after injecting a woman with his own blood in a bizarre scheme to win her affections, police said Wednesday.

The 22-year-old man is being held by police for allegedly causing injury to a 21-year-old woman, said Tan Sophal, a police officer in Battambang province where the attack occurred. It is about 155 miles northwest of the capital, Phnom Penh.

The man allegedly injected a syringe of his blood into the woman’s rib cage and waist as she walked home from school, Tan Sophal said.

The assailant fell in love with the woman when the two were classmates in 2004, Tan Sophal said. After the woman refused his advances, he came up with the scheme to inject her with his blood, he said.

“He thought that if he could not marry her, at least his blood can stay inside her body,” Tan Sophal said. “That’s why he injected her with his blood.”

After the woman reported the assault to police, she was sent to a hospital for an examination to determine among other things whether the blood was tainted, Tan Sophal said.

The man is being held at a police detention center and is expected to be formally charged in the coming days.

WARSAW (Reuters) – A Polish computer programmer could face up to three years in jail for linking a Polish word for penis to the presidential Web site.

Marek W., 23, created a programme that caused the official home page of Polish President Lech Kaczynski to rank first in the list of results on the Google search engine when “kutas”, a vulgar term in Polish, was typed in by an Internet user.

The computer programme did something similar to a practice known as “Google bombing” that links the Web sites of politicians and companies to insulting words or phrases.

He has been charged with insulting the president and prosecutors said on Friday he could face up to three years in jail if convicted.

“This is not a matter of freedom of speech,” said Andrzej Holdys, a regional prosecutor in the southern town of Cieszyn, where the programmer lives.

“If somebody uses a derogatory word to libel the head of state than it’s a clear insult which violates the law.”

Police said the suspect confessed to writing a programme to test his skills at creating a Google bomb. Police and prosecutors did not give the programmer’s full name, as is usual when someone faces charges in Poland. He has not been detained.

President Kaczynski and his twin brother, the prime minister, have been popular targets for jokes and caricatures both in Poland and abroad. They are referred to as the “ducks” because their name is related to the Polish word for the bird.

Jacek Bialas of Amnesty International in Poland criticised the charges against Marek W.. “If the president felt insulted, he should have sued as a private person,” he said.

ULYANOVSK, Russia (Reuters) – The governor of a central Russian province urged couples to skip work on Wednesday and make love instead.

And if a woman gives birth in exactly nine months time — on Russia’s national day on June 12 — she will qualify for a prize.

“It’s normally something for the home — a fridge or a television set,” Yelena Yakovleva at the Ulyanovsk regional administration press office, said.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or a boy.”

Regional governor Sergei Morozov told employers to contribute to a Kremlin campaign to boost the birth rate by giving couples Wednesday off to have sex.

Russia wants to reverse a trend in which the population is shrinking by about 700,000 people a year as births fail to outpace a high death rate boosted by AIDS, alcoholism and suicide.

This is the third year Ulyanovsk region, famous as the birthplace of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin, has dedicated a day to encouraging couples to produce more babies.

Prizes will extend equally to unwed women who produce children on the right day, though the biggest prizes will go to married couples.

On Russia Day this year, a family won a jeep after their fourth baby was born on the holiday.

This year a record 78 babies were born on June 12 at the main hospital in the regional capital of Ulyanovsk, beating the 2006 total of 26, said chief doctor Andrei Malykh.

“The scheme is working. People want the prizes,” he said.

A mass wedding and special lessons for children at school on how to deal with having a brother or sister are also planned in Ulyanovsk city, which is about 900 km (560 miles) from Moscow.

This week First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a possible successor to President Vladimir Putin, said he wanted to stabilise the population at about 142 million by 2015 and boost it back to 145 million by 2025.

RUMFORD, Maine – A man swiped a pot plant from the back of a pickup truck that was being used by an undercover state drug agent, leading to a chase and drug theft charges against a pair of men.

Travis Child of Peru and Jeremy Belskis of Rumford, both 20, were arrested Wednesday afternoon after the pursuit ended at Child and Sons Auto Sales. The arrest was made by two uniformed Rumford officers while the plainclothes agent stood by.

Child told the Sun Journal newspaper in Lewiston that they’d seen the pickup with marijuana plants in the back and that he hopped out of their car and swiped one of the plants at a stop sign. He said he just wanted “to know what it was.”

Child only managed to get part of one of the 4-foot-tall plants that had been seized earlier in the day, but the agent wasn’t going to let them get away with it, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

“It was blatant the way they did it. One of them jumped out of the car in plain view and broke off part of the plant,” he said.

The pickup gave chase and Child said they were initially fearful that they was being pursued by a drug dealer, not a law enforcement officer.

“It was a bad decision on our part,” Child said. “It was stupid.” Both of the men were released on cash bail.

MOSCOW (AFP) – A Russian who said he discovered a condom wrapper and a suspicious rubber fragment in his bottle of beer is seeking almost two million dollars in compensation, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Pavel Pavlov, an editor at a Russian military publication, says he came across the “torn condom wrapper as well as a piece of rubber resembling a used condom in a bottle of Baltika-3,” said his lawyer, Stalina Gurevich.

Pavlov said he had not been able to drink from bottles since coming across the surprise package in a bottle of Russia’s popular Baltika brand in August 2006.

A fortnight ago he filed a compensation claim for 50 million rubles, or almost two million dollars (1.5 million euros), and is now waiting for a Moscow court to hear his claim, Gurevich told AFP.

Gurevich said experts had certified that the bottle was not opened after leaving the Baltika brewery in Saint Petersburg.

But Alexei Kedrin, deputy director of Baltika breweries, told AFP: “This is excluded because the level of equipment at the Russian factories is even higher than in Europe.”

BEIJING (Reuters) – China has banned sexually explicit television shows, such as those featuring sex toys and contraceptives, as it tries to clean up its airwaves and imbue socialist values.

The order follows the axing of controversial “Beautiful Makeover,” a reality program in the southern province of Guangdong showing plastic surgery operations, and the banning of shows featuring “public participation” in sex-change operations.

The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television scolded provincial television stations in the western frontier city of Chengdu for broadcasting “lewd and obscene” footage, according to its online Web site (www.safrt.gov.cn).

“All levels of television broadcasters must not air any vulgar content involving sexual experiences or functions of sex toys and birth control devices, effective immediately,” SARFT said in the notice.

China is worried about sexist and sexually suggestive adverts on screen, and recently instructed state broadcaster CCTV to rein in advertisers.

The administration has moved to crack down on increasingly free-wheeling TV broadcasters, urging them to reject “vulgarity” and “weirdness” in the pursuit of ratings.

“Happy Boys Voice,” China’s male-only take-off of U.S. talent show “American Idol,” cut scenes involving contestants in tears, with wild hair or singing “unhealthy” songs in its first season to comply with the watchdog’s demands.

DENVER – A central Kentucky man accused of exposing his genitals on a Frontier Airlines flight faces trial in October on suspicion of obscene and indecent exposure on an aircraft.

Alan Michael Froula, 42, of Fisherville, about 20 miles east of downtown Louisville, pleaded not guilty Tuesday, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Denver.

Passengers and flight attendants reported seeing Froula’s genitals exposed on Flight 4961 from Louisville to Denver on Saturday, according to an affidavit.

He was freed on $20,000 bond.

A phone message seeking comment from Froula was not immediately returned Wednesday.

Trial was scheduled for Oct. 31.

MARSHFIELD, Wis. – How do you become a celebrity? How about being charged with drunken driving while you and a friend are trying to drive the same pickup truck home. It worked for two men, Harvey Miller, 43, and Edwin Marzinske, 55.

“I always thought I’d be famous, just not this way,” said Miller, a paraplegic who was steering a pickup truck with Marzinske on the gas pedal and brakes when they were stopped on a Friday night in August.

“Pretty much everywhere we go it’s people coming up, ‘Hey, can we get our pictures with you? Can we get your autograph?’” he said Wednesday. “We never expected this to escalate.”

The news also got twisted somewhat, the men said, blaming it in part on a Colby-Abbotsford police report said Miller had no legs. He has his legs but a logging accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. A message left for the police department wasn’t immediately returned Thursday.

Both were cited for drunken driving and driving while revoked. They’re planning to defend themselves in court with an argument that neither had control, so neither was driving.

Miller blew a 0.16 percent blood alcohol reading on the breath test and Marzinske was at 0.09 percent, the police report said. The legal limit is .08 percent.

Miller said he takes drunken driving seriously, “but we were doing things as safe as possible.”

Police clocked them going 35 mph in a 55 zone.

Marzinske acknowledged the arrest was embarrasing.

“I asked my daughter right out, ‘Are you embarrassed about this?’” he said. “She says, ‘A little bit Dad, but it sure is funny.’ So we just have fun with it. There isn’t much else you can do.”

BEIJING (Reuters) – A corrupt senior Chinese official was denounced by his 11 mistresses after some of their husbands were sentenced to death for graft, state media said on Friday.

The news comes just days after a senior provincial Communist Party official was executed for blowing up his mistress with a car bomb.

“Second wives” are common among government officials and businessmen in China and are often blamed for driving men to seek money through bribes or other abuses of power.

Pang Jiayu, 63, former deputy head of the provincial political advisory body in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, was sacked and expelled from the Communist Party for graft, Xinhua news agency reported.

“Pang did not expect that he would be brought down by his own 11 mistresses,” the official People’s Daily said in a report carried on its Web site.

Pang, who was also Party boss of Baoji city, had lured several women, mostly “pretty and young” wives of his subordinates, to be his mistresses, it said.

He helped them “make big money” by assigning them or their husbands huge government or other financial projects, it added.

In one water-diversion project in which Pang’s wife and mistresses were involved, water pipes exploded and collapsed only half a year after completion, it said.

The mistresses decided to denounce Pang to the Party after some of their husbands were sentenced to death for graft in cases related to Pang.

The Party’s discipline inspection commission said in July that they would deal with the case severely.

“What awaits Pang Jiayu is severe punishment,” the report said.

Chinese media said this week that 90 percent of the country’s most senior officials punished for “serious” graft in the last five years had kept mistresses.

Duan Yihe, former Party chief of Jinan city in the eastern province of Shandong, was executed on Wednesday for blowing up his mistress after growing tired of her constant money demands.

Hong Kong newspaper reports said former finance minister Jin Renqing was sacked last month in part for a dalliance with a local socialite. A government spokesman said he had resigned for “personal reasons”.

With a five-yearly Communist Party Congress due to open next month, and the fight against rampant corruption likely to loom large, official media these days are full of reports of venal officials meeting their comeuppance.

Top leaders have warned that the level of official corruption is so serious that it could threaten the Party’s continuing rule.