NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Nevada brothel is trying to stimulate business by offering free petrol.

Clients of the Shady Lady Ranch will get a $50 (25 pound) petrol voucher if they fork out $300 (152 pounds) — worth about one hour’s worth of services — at the brothel in Beatty, Nevada, 130 miles (209 km) northwest of Las Vegas.

Owner James Davis said he already has had to order another $1,000 set of petrol vouchers because the first $1,000 were spent in one week.

“It’s rocking along. We’re doing quite well. June and July historically are not big months,” said Davis, who is co-owner of the brothel along with his wife Bobbi, in a telephone interview.

The $50 rebate would roughly cover the cost of a round trip drive from Las Vegas to the ranch.

Davis said business at the ranch, which has been operating for 16 years, generally slows in the early summer. He said the brothel regularly offers specials to lure clients and his wife came up with the petrol vouchers for this month.

U.S. petrol prices hit a record $4.08 a gallon last week, up 38 percent from a year ago.

Brothels, illegal in most U.S. states, are legal in parts of Nevada.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Clients of prostitutes in the Netherlands may soon need to check for a sex license.

The Dutch cabinet said on Friday it wanted to crack down harder on the country’s sex industry, in particular unlicensed sex operators, as part of efforts to combat human trafficking.

“That is why the cabinet wants to make it an offense to use the services of a sex operator without a license or a non-registered independent prostitute,” the government said in a statement .

Prostitutes have plied their trade in the narrow alleys of the old centre of Amsterdam for centuries. While they used to attract sailors and merchants in the city’s heyday as the heart of a global trading empire, they are now a huge tourist draw.

The Dutch cabinet officially legalized prostitution in 2000.

JAKARTA (Reuters) - A bid by a local government in Indonesia’s East Java province to curb prostitution by asking masseuses to wear a padlock on their pants was an insult, a newspaper quoted the minister for women’s empowerment as saying.

The recently implemented policy in the tourist area of Batu was misguided, State Minister for Women’s Empowerment Meuthia Hatta told the Jakarta Post on Thursday.

“It is not the right way to prevent promiscuity. It insults women as if they are the ones in the wrong,” Hatta said.

The paper showed a photograph of a masseuse with a padlock on the waist band of her trousers and said the local administration’s move was aimed at curbing prostitution and maintaining Batu’s image as a popular tourist destination.

The best way to curb prostitution in massage parlours was to improve security systems including installing CCTV, Hatta said.

Batu, 75 km (46 miles) south of Indonesia’s second-biggest city, Surabaya, is a popular tourist destination for its cool climate, hot springs and mountain scenery.

Indonesia has a flourishing sex industry and massage parlours are frequently a front for prostitution. But there has been a vigorous debate over morality in recent years, exposing deep divisions in the Southeast Asian Muslim-majority nation.

Last month, Indonesia passed a bill to restrict access to pornographic and violent sites on the Internet, while parliament has yet to pass a controversial pornography bill that aims to shield the young from pornographic material and lewd acts.

Earlier draft versions contained provisions that could jail people for kissing in public and criminalise many forms of art or traditional culture that hinge on sensuality, sparking criticism it could curb freedoms and hurt Indonesia’s tolerant traditions.