SAO PAULO (AFP) – Some 200 semi-nude bicycle riders snarled traffic Saturday in downtown Sao Paulo to protest car pollution and dangerous riding conditions in the city.
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The demonstration drew the attention of motorists and passersby alike with no incident reported other than the arrest of one of the riders who had decided to take all his clothes off, city traffic officials said.

“Our nakedness shows how we feel as cyclists riding in traffic next to motorists well protected inside their vehicles,” a demonstrator who preferred to remain anonymous told AFP.

The naked pedal pushers were part of the World Naked Bike Ride, an organization holding similar events in some 70 countries to protest “indecent exposure to cars.”

“We face automobile traffic with our naked bodies as the best way of defending our dignity and exposing the unique dangers faced by cyclists and pedestrians as well as the negative consequences we all face due to dependence on oil, and other forms of non-renewable energy,” the group said on its website.

MANILA, Philippines – Members of a fraternity at the University of the Philippines held their annual ritual of running naked on campus six months early on Wednesday — by official request — to celebrate the state-run school’s centennial anniversary.

Hundreds of cheering students lined the main campus avenue, jostling for positions with their digital and cell phone cameras.

The “Oblation Run” — named for the university’s iconic symbol of a naked man with outstretched arms that symbolizes his selfless offering of himself to the nation — started in 1977 as a gimmick by the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity to promote the screening of a movie about oppressed plantation workers called “Naked Hero.” The film had been banned by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Since then, the fraternity has used the stunt to make political statements, from raising AIDS awareness to demanding the resignation of the Philippine president, said Armand Padilla, a fraternity alumnus and organizer of the centennial run.

He said the university’s centennial committee requested the fraternity stage the annual nude demonstration as one of the activities to mark the school’s 100th foundation year.

The fraternity mustered 100 members and alumni — the largest number of naked runners ever — for the event, he said.

The naked runners, who wore golden masks and wrapped T-shirts around their heads to hide their identities, offered roses to scores of giggling female students who they took their pictures as they jogged about half a mile (1 kilometer) from the student center to the Oblation statue in front of the university’s administration building.

A student, who identified herself only as Bang, praised the runners’ grit.

“It is not just a show of bodies, but they even carry the principles on the placards they were holding,” she said.

Several runners carried placards saying “Serve the People,” a rallying call for students of the university, who are called “Scholars of the People” for the state subsidies to their education.

MELBOURNE (AFP) – Protesting pensioners brought traffic to a stand still in Australia’s second largest city on Friday when some stripped to demand more money from the government.

The scantily-clad seniors braved the autumn weather in a 150-strong protest against this week’s federal budget, which offered them little despite a 21.7 billion dollar (20 billion US) surplus.

Most at the “Fair Go for Pensioners” rally at the intersection of two major streets in downtown Melbourne kept their clothes on, but several threw convention to the wind and stripped to their underwear.

As bemused police looked on, a bespectacled man stripped to his briefs and socks, while a couple of lively ladies whipped off their tops and paraded in their bras.

Other women wore hot pink bras over their clothing.

The leader of the minority Family First party, Senator Steve Fielding, who took off his shirt in solidarity with the seniors, said the country’s 3.5 million pensioners were “overlooked Australians.”

“Pensioners have no voice and are left to survive on a meagre allowance each week that most people would never manage on,” he said. “They are buckling under the pressure of higher petrol and grocery prices.”

Patricia Reeve from the Fair Go for Pensioners Coalition said people wanted to make the point that it was impossible to live well on the pension.

“The country’s doing well, we want a fair share,” she said.

But the antics failed to move Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who said while he understood it was difficult to make ends meet living on a pension, no increases would be considered until a review was completed.

Last month, hundreds of Melbourne cabbies succeeded in winning safety concessions from the state government after a lengthy sit-in at the same intersection during which dozens threw off their shirts.

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Road workers in a small New Zealand town got their wish granted when a woman stripped saying she was fed up with their wolf-whistles.

The Israeli tourist was about to use an ATM in the main street of Kerikeri, in the far north of the country, when the men whistled, the New Zealand Press Association reported.

She calmly stripped off, used the cash machine, before getting dressed and walking away.

The woman told police she didn’t take too kindly to the whistling from the men repairing the road.

“She said she had thought ‘bugger them, I’ll show them what I’ve got’,” Police Sergeant Peter Masters told NZPA.

“She gave the explanation that she had been … pestered by New Zealand men. She’s not an unattractive looking lady,” Masters said.

“She was taken back to the police station and spoken to and told that was inappropriate in New Zealand.”

BERLIN (AFP) – Despite being fully booked by naturist s wanting to take off and strip off, a German travel company said Thursday it has decided to scrap a special nude flight that had been scheduled for this summer.
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The July 5 flight was due to be the first of many and was aimed at east Germans nostalgic for the naturism that was authorized and extremely popular under communist rule.

But OssiUrlaub.de, the firm organizing the service to a picturesque Baltic Sea island, said it has had second thoughts after “moral objections” in the media and from visitors to its Internet portal, a spokesman said.

The 50 people with tickets would have boarded the flight in the eastern city of Erfurt fully clothed, but once on the plane would have been free to undress and enjoy the rest of the journey as nature intended.

They will now receive a full refund as well as a voucher for other products offered by the company, whose core business caters to holidaymakers who keep their clothes on, it stressed.