HOUSTON (Reuters) – Authorities in Texas have filed corpse-abuse charges against two men who allegedly removed a skull from a grave and used it as a bong.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office confirmed on Thursday that misdemeanor abuse of corpse charges have been filed in the case.

One of the men allegedly told police they dug up a grave in an abandoned cemetery in the woods, removed a head from a body and smoked marijuana using the skull as a bong.

Police found the cemetery and a grave that had been disturbed but are still investigating the rest of the story, officials said.

TORONTO (Reuters) – An attendant at a Canadian restaurant who was sacked for giving a bite-sized doughnut, worth 16 cents, to an agitated toddler was given her job back on Thursday after the case received wide media attention.

Nicole Lilliman, a single mother, said she was dismissed from a London, Ontario, outlet of the Tim Hortons coffee and dough nut chain after video cameras captured the 27-year-old giving a Timbit to a toddler.

“It was just out of my heart, she (the toddler) was pointing and going ‘ah, ah…’ I should have gone to my purse and got the change, but it was busy,” Lilliman told the Toronto Star newspaper.

Tim Hortons said on Thursday that the firing was a mistake.

“It was the unfortunate action of one manager who unfortunately made an overzealous decision, and thankfully we were able to rectify the situation,” said company spokeswoman Rachel Douglas.

Douglas said the company, a Canadian icon with stores on virtually every high street across the country, told Lilliman that she could have her job back, and Lilliman had accepted.

A single Timbit sells for 16 Canadian cents (16 U.S. cents), but most shoppers buy boxes of 10, 20 or 40 of the deep-fried goodies, which come in a variety of flavors.

Douglas said Tim Hortons had received a number of complaints. “Thankfully we’re able to go back to them and say we were able to fix the situation,” she said.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Cheerleaders are taking Indian cricket by storm, but some are wondering if this conservative South Asian nation is ready for dancers with bulging breasts and gyrating bellies parading in packed stadia.

Many foreign cheerleaders have been imported to India with this month’s inauguration of the India Premier League (IPL), a shortened form of traditional cricket that transforms the game into a more glitzy U.S.-style sponsored sport event.

But some outraged politicians say it is an affront to Indian culture while a few of the cheerleaders themselves complain lewd comment and insults from spectators is making their job a misery.

“It’s been horrendous,” Tabitha, a cheerleader from Uzbekistan, told the Hindustan Times. ”

“Wherever we go we do expect people to pass lewd, snide remarks but I’m shocked by the nature and magnitude of the comments people pass here.”

The IPL has caught the imagination of India, a nation of 1.1 billion and the world’s biggest cricket audience. TV rights sold for more than $900 million and players for eight teams, many imported from abroad, were auctioned for millions.

In contrast to the clinched cricket image of genteel spectators sipping tea while politely applauding their team, now scantily-clad dancers gyrate to Bollywood or Western-style dance music blaring out from loudspeakers in stadia.

Even well-known cheerleaders from the Washington Redskins flew to India to perform for the Bangalore Royal Challengers. Photos of the dancers graced the front pages of most newspapers.

MORE VULGAR

“What the cheerleaders are doing during cricket matches is ten times more vulgar than what used to happen in dance bars of Mumbai,” Nitin Gadkari, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Maharashtra state, home to the Mumbai Indians.

The BJP is India’s main opposition party, which was part of a coalition which banned popular bars in Mumbai where girls would dance on stage to Bollywood tunes.

“If we could ban dance bars, how can we allow such vulgar dance in a cricket field. I am getting huge complaints and cheerleaders must be banned immediately from entering a cricket field,” Gadkari said.

In the IT hub of Bangalore, Parvathi, a housewife, said U.S. cheerleaders were an affront to India.

“What is the purpose of this display? It is embarrassing,” said Parvathi.

But Charu Sharma, chief executive of Bangalore Royal Challengers defended the cheerleaders.

“Let us not play this high handed moral belief game. It is only small maverick groups that are making a noise,” Sharma told Reuters.

He told the Hindustan Times that security would be tightened for the dancers.

“We are aware of the concerns and can take nothing for granted. A security ring will be provided to them and everything that can be done will be done,” Sharma said.

Some Indians said critics were hypocritical in a nation well known for its sensual Bollywood musicals.

“Our stars wear skimpy dresses in movies but nobody seems to protest. Why this double standards?” said Mohan, a marketing executive from Bangalore.

PARIS (AFP) – A speech-writer for France’s foreign minister has penned a literary, lustful and possibly lecherous “Guide to the Pretty Women of Paris” which blows a loud raspberry at political correctness.

“Just as every region has its gastronomy, every quartier has its feminine specialty,” writes Pierre-Louis Colin, a dapper 34-year-old who co-authored Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner’s most recent book.

“You do not find in Menilmontant the sublime legs you see at the Madeleine. But you do find perfectly shameless cleavages, radiant breasts often uncluttered by a bra,” he said in his own book, which was published last month.

Paris is the most visited capital in the world and people come here to see city’s magnificent women as much as they come to admire the Mona Lisa and the Eiffel Tower, Colin told AFP.

He could find no guidebooks to the human wonders of Paris so he decided to produce his own. The result is the 190-page “Guide des jolies femmes de Paris,” which is more of a literary essay than a fact-packed guidebook.

Area by area, Colin notes the best observation posts — bars, supermarkets, parks, museums, metro trains — and the best times of day for the connoisseur to contemplate various Parisienne archetypes.

“Trendy youth,” characterized by the “generalization of the G-string and the near disappearance of the bra” is to be seen on rue Montorgueil, a pedestrian strip of cafes and upmarket food shops which the author hails as the “epicenter of the city’s erotic radiations.”

Luxury boutiques and elegant cafes terraces are the natural habitat of the leisured bourgeois, who is described as “the mother of all fantasies since the origins of literature”.

Women in the “saucy maturity” category, those aged between 40 and 60 whose appearance “bears witness to the meanders of an agitated or ambitious sex life which refuses to lay down its weapons,” are best observed in lingerie stores.

The author, a graduate of the elite Ecole Normale Superieure which has honed writers like Jean-Paul Sartre, sees his work as a “high mission” to counter the mood of a righteous America, but some extracts may raise eyebrows.

Colin regrets, for instance, it is no longer possible to loiter contemplatively outside high schools because “current legislation and a certain form of collective psychosis have created a climate of suspicion that makes every admirer of young girls a rapist of children”.

He also gives many tips such as where to position oneself so as to get an “unbeatable view” up women’s skirts as they climb a spiral staircase — singling out the Cafes Louis-Philippe in the fourth arrondissement, or district.

But it’s all in the best possible taste, insists Colin.

He rejected suggestions that an alternative title for his oeuvre might have been the “Voyeur’s Guide to the Pretty Women of Paris” — though concedes his girlfriend was at first perturbed by the idea of his book, but later came to like it.

The author points out that he has not included any suggestions on how to pick up women, nor provided the addresses of any of Paris’ numerous dens of iniquity.

“To contemplate is not to encounter,” he writes in his introduction. “Therein lies without doubt, the profound originality of the contemplator in these consumerist times: his aim is not possession.

“He is similar to those rare lovers of art who visit museums without feeling obliged to walk out loaded down with guidebooks or postcards,” wrote Colin.

During an interview in the Cafes de L’Esplanade — which the author said was of note more for its busty waitresses than for its sober clientele — Colin insisted his book was a celebration of women’s freedom.

“I oppose all those who want to restrict women — the priest, the man who pesters women, the censor,” he said.

He dismisses Anglo-Saxon political correctness and boldly states that the freedom to contemplate the beauty of women is a key part of French culture.

“In this troubled century, while from America come the echoes of another moral order, the responsibility of the contemplator is immense: in his respectful courtesy depends a part of the survival of our civilization of liberty, of gentleness, and of grace.

“May this guide contribute to the success of this high mission,” Colin wrote.

TOKYO (Reuters) – A city bureaucrat in western Japan was suspended from his job after officials discovered he visited porn websites at work almost every day, often spending hours gazing at nude photos, a city official said.

The 57-year-old man, who was working in the construction division of Kinokawa City in Wakayama, surfed porn sites from an office computer almost every day for eight months from June 2007, spending up to three hours a day on the websites, said Kazuhiko Ueyama, a Kinokawa City official.

Angered citizens called city hall all day on Friday, saying the suspension was not enough, he added.

The city only found out about his activities in February when it noticed that his computer had picked up the same virus repeatedly from the sites, Ueyama said.

“These were foreign ‘adult sites’ and they got through the security net” that the city had installed for its computers, he said.

“The man apologized each time we spoke to him, but we couldn’t quite get him to explain to us why he did this,” Ueyama added.

The bureaucrat was suspended from the office for three months and was demoted as of Thursday, Ueyama said.

SOUTH CHICAGO HEIGHTS, Ill. – Bill Bramanti will love Pabst Blue Ribbon eternally, and he’s got the custom-made beer-can casket to prove it. “I actually fit, because I got in here,” said Bramanti of South Chicago Heights.

The 67-year-old Glenwood village administrator doesn’t plan on needing it anytime soon, though.

He threw a party Saturday for friends and filled his silver coffin — designed in Pabst’s colors of red, white and blue — with ice and his favorite brew.

“Why put such a great novelty piece up on a shelf in storage when you could use it only the way Bill Bramanti would use it?” said Bramanti’s daughter, Cathy Bramanti, 42.

Bramanti ordered the casket from Panozzo Bros. Funeral Home in Chicago Heights, and Scott Sign Co. of Chicago Heights designed the beer can.

NEW YORK (AFP) – A businessman who sold Viagra-laced chocolate as a food supplement called “Boom” was indicted Wednesday for mail fraud by a federal judge, and faces 20 years in jail if found guilty.

Tibor Liska pleaded guilty of selling by mail some 12,000 packets a month of sildenafil — a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction sold under various names, including Viagra — mixed with chocolate and herbs, US Attorney Michael Garcia said.

The “Boom” food supplements were distributed between March 2006 and November 2007 through the Yoi Jin Sei company in the United States, Australia, Colombia, Switzerland, Russia, Argentina, Japan and Slovakia, Garcia added.

The publicity surrounding the product said it contained plant-based food supplements, without specifying that it contained a drug that requires a prescription and could have side effects.

Liska was charged with mail fraud and could be sentenced to a maximum of 20 years behind bars and fined up to 250,000 dollars if found guilty, Garcia said.

He is due for trial on July 25.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – They’re proudly displayed by any self-respecting bull, but dangling big metal ones on the back end of a truck could be banned in Florida.

Metal replicas of bull testicles have become trendy bumper ornaments in some parts of the Sunshine State, but state Sen. Carey Baker is campaigning to ban the orbs.

Baker acknowledged that Florida lawmakers have more pressing issues, including huge revenue shortfalls, but said the state needs to draw a line on what’s obscene before more objectionable adornments appear.

State Sen. Steve Geller argued against Baker’s bill.

“I find it shocking that we should be telling people that have the metallic bull testicles … you’re now going to have points on your license for this,” said Geller.

Geller was in the minority. Baker’s bill to fine drivers $60 for displaying the ornaments passed the Senate. It’s now up to the House, but there’s only a slim chance that members of that chamber would pass the measure before the session ends this coming Friday.

If it were to be passed, Gov. Charlie Crist has not indicated whether he would sign it, although he has not been too critical of this and other not-so-pressing issues.

“It’s good to have some things that maybe aren’t quite as serious. Got to have a little levity,” the governor said.

A similar bill in Virginia, aimed at rubber trailer hitch replicas of human genitalia, died in committee this year.

PITTSBURGH – A newlywed couple spent the night in separate jail cells — she in her wedding gown — after police said they brawled with each other, then members of another wedding party, at a suburban Pittsburgh hotel.

The fight started Saturday night after a reception when he knocked her to the floor with a karate kick in the seventh-floor hallway of a Holiday Inn — and escalated when she attacked two guests from another wedding party who came to her aid, police said.

The melee moved to an elevator and then to the lobby, where the couple threw metal planters at the two good Samaritans, causing minor injuries, police charged.

“It was pretty wild,” Ross police Sgt. Dave Syska said.

Dentist David W. Wielechowski, 32, of Shaler, and Christa Vattimo, 25, had married a month earlier in the Bahamas but repeated their vows Saturday at a reception for 150 guests. They were checking into their room when the argument began, police said.

Police arrived to find the dentist lying on the lobby floor and his bride, seemingly highly intoxicated, screaming.

Authorities charged each with simple assault, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct, and the bride with an additional count of public intoxication. They face a May 7 preliminary hearing.

A district judge considered issuing a restraining order against Wielechowski, but his new bride declined the measure.

The couple declined comment upon their release Sunday morning.

She left with her father, still dressed in her white gown.

Wielechowski left alone, sporting a swollen eye, tuxedo pants, a bloody T-shirt and one shoe.

KINSHASA (Reuters) – Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

“You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We’ve had a number of attempted lynchings. … You see them covered in marks after being beaten,” Kinshasa’s police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

“I’m tempted to say it’s one huge joke,” Oleko said.

“But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it’s become tiny or that they’ve become impotent. To that I tell them, ‘How do you know if you haven’t gone home and tried it’,” he said.

Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.

“It’s real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny,” said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York woman filed suit against Limited Brands Inc Monday alleging the parent company of Victoria’s Secret stole her idea for its Very Sexy 100-way strapless convertible bra.

Katerina Plew sued in U.S. District Court in lower Manhattan, saying Victoria’s Secret infringed her May 2004 patent and knew about the patent since at least April 2006.

“I came up with the idea when I was trying to find a bra to go with one of the two dresses that I could wear to my triplets’ christening,” said Plew, 38. “I went crazy looking for a bra where the straps wouldn’t show and couldn’t find anything.”

Her triplets are now nine years old.

Plew, a single mother who works as a paralegal, said she researched her product visiting stores and looking through catalogues, and “that’s when I came up with the idea.”

She said she spent about $12,000 to patent the product and developed a prototype.

“When I realized how much it would cost to produce, I started contacting companies,” she said.

Plew had an appointment to meet with a Victoria’s Secret executive to whom she had mailed a copy of her patent, as well as a DVD with pictures of a model showing her bra, only to have the appointment abruptly canceled.

“A year later I walked into a Victoria’s Secret and there was my bra up on the wall,” she said.

The bra retails for between $50 and $56, according to the Victoria’s Secret website. Plew is seeking unspecified damages.

Limited Brands said it does not comment on pending litigation.

SANTIAGO (AFP) – For the first time in Chile, a mayor plans to give out free Viagra to men 60 and older in his town to improve their “quality of life” four times a month, according to media reports.

“This has to do with quality of life and it’s done responsibly. It’s not just like handing out candy at the corner,” Gonzalo Navarrete, a physician and mayor of the poor town of Lo Prado south of Santiago, told Las Ultimas Noticias daily.

He said any man 60 years and older who wants it can have up to four Viagra pills a month after undergoing a thorough medical exam to avoid potentially harmful side effects of the drug Sildenafil.

“We’ll give out four, 50 milligram pills, in other words, for four sexual relationships per month,” Navarrete said, adding that the program would have a starting cost of about 20,000 dollars.

The mayor said the idea for his unprecedented move came from hearing older men in his town complain about not getting enough sex.

He did have some advice, however, for the Viagra seekers: “Sildenafil doesn’t get you going without direct stimulation.”

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – The general manager of a Shanghai chemical company was jailed for two years on Thursday for selling fake tablets of the male impotence drug Viagra on the Internet, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Yu Bohuai made a profit of over 60,000 yuan ($8,585) in 2006 and 2007 by selling 14,030 fake tablets to clients abroad and in Shanghai. He was arrested last July.

Viagra is marketed by Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it to treat impotence in 1998.

CROWN POINT, Indiana – Indiana 55 has reopened after a truckload of human feces spilled onto the roadway in northwestern Indiana’s Crown Point.

The driver told police he was hauling treated human feces from a water recycling plant in Portage when the load spilled about 10:30 a.m. Thursday.

The Lake County hazardous materials response team came to clean up the mess, along with the Crown Point Fire Department and Indiana State Police.

The northbound and southbound lanes of the highway were closed during the cleanup.

The Indiana Department of Transportation cited the driver for an unsecured load.

BUCHAREST, Romania – A Romanian man has been fined for making 6,442 profane phone calls to an emergency number, police said Thursday. The 24-year-old man, who lives in a village in southern Romania, was identified in February and fined $223 in April after a checkup showed he was mentally sound, said Daniela Salaoru, police spokeswoman for Ialomita county police.

Police did not identify the caller. But the Evenimentul Zilei newspaper said he was a well-digger, and reported that he called the 112 emergency number from November to January to swear at the operators. He used a prepaid mobile phone, which does not immediately make it possible to identify the caller.

The newspaper said he denied he was the culprit. It reported that his mother said he was a loner and that she saw him talking on the phone a lot, but did not know with whom.

Romanian authorities say that over 90 percent of calls to 112 are hoaxes or non-emergencies. In November, the European Union, which Romania joined in 2007, threatened legal action against Romania for deficiencies in its 112 system, mainly the failure to locate callers who use mobile phones.

Romanian authorities say the system will begin to locate mobile callers this summer.

ROME (Reuters) – She had no desire to be just another smiling face in Italian politics. So when porn star Milly D’Abbraccio designed her campaign posters, it was obvious she was going to show off her bottom.

Targeting her male fan base, the veteran of Italy’s adult entertainment industry has plastered images of her derriere all around the Eternal City in a bid to win a seat in Rome’s city hall.

If elected, D’Abbraccio wants to create a red light area with strip clubs, erotic discos and sex shops called “Love City” just kilometres away from the Vatican.

“It would be something cute, clean — nothing to do with prostitution,” said the actress whose films include “The Kiss of the Cobra” and “Paolina Borghese, Imperial Nymphomaniac”.

D’Abbraccio, in her 40s, isn’t the first adult entertainer to dip her painted toenails into Italian politics. Ilona Staller, known as “Cicciolina”, sat in parliament in the 1980s and was famous for her impromptu stripteases.

“It was simpler then,” D’Abbraccio said. Public nudity isn’t the guaranteed attention-grabber it once was, she noted.

D’Abbraccio hopes to capitalize on increasing disenchantment with Italian politics. The recession-prone nation votes on Sunday and Monday in elections to pick a prime minister as well as lawmakers, mayors and city councilors.

“People don’t want to see these politicians’ faces anymore,” she told Reuters in an interview from her Rome apartment.

She said she was tapping into her popularity among pornography fans as “an act of generosity” to help Italy’s socialists, who are fielding her in the municipal race.

“I am the derriere of the Socialist party,” she concluded.

Silvio Berlusconi, who leads in opinion polls to become prime minister for a third time, drew scorn recently for saying his party boasted the prettiest women in politics. Critics called him a chauvinist.

D’Abbraccio also objected, but for another reason.

If D’Abbraccio wins, she says she will represent Romans from the district that is home to Cinecitta studios, Italy’s version of Hollywood where classics like “La Dolce Vita” were filmed.

“I will reign over Cinecitta, if I get the votes,” she said, reclining on a gold-rimmed, chaise lounge in her living room.

As for experience, D’Abbraccio acknowledges she is a political novice but she did play a powerful lawmaker in an adult film called “L’Onorevole”.

“I played the part of the speaker of the lower house of parliament, who got very hot and then let herself go,” she said.

MILAN (Reuters Health) – Women with lower urinary tract symptoms, or LUTS, are more likely to have sexual problems than women without LUTS, researchers reported here at the annual meeting of the European Association of Urology.

Dr. Con Kelleher, at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospital Trusts in London, and colleagues examined the impact of LUTS on women’s sexual functioning using a database that contains records from 333 general practices.

The study included 1,377,000 women 18 years of age or older who had been seen at one of the practices from 2000 through 2006.

The rate of sexual dysfunction among women with LUTS was twice that of women with no LUTS, researchers found.

The data also showed that women between 30 and 60 years of age were significantly more likely to report sexual dysfunction than women outside this age range.

Overall, the occurrence of overactive bladder, incontinence, and voiding problems, as well as sexual difficulties, increased markedly during the study period.

“The data suggest that the relationship between sexual dysfunction and LUTS (including overactive bladder) should be considered in women when diagnosing and treating these conditions,” Kelleher said.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Thousands of Brazilians clamoured for a piece of gangster chic on Tuesday, jostling their way into a sale of goods ranging from flat-screen TVs to designer underwear confiscated from a convicted Colombian drug lord.

Police, overwhelmed by the size of the crowd at the gates of Sao Paulo’s posh Jockey Club, fired pepper spray and pushed some people to the ground as the first bargain-hunters snapped up items, including a collection of Hello Kitty toys, for as little as 1 real (30 pence).

“I’m interested in seeing various items and I’m curious to see what the life of a drug trafficker was like, how ostentatious it was,” said Thiana Souza, an interior designer who was waiting in line with about 5,000 others.

Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia, who the United States says was one of the most powerful leaders of Colombia’s cocaine cartels, was arrested in Brazil last year and last week received a 30-year prison sentence. His wife, a fan of the Japanese cartoon character Hello Kitty, was also jailed.

Washington wants Brazil to extradite the 44-year-old Ramirez Abadia, also known as “Lollipop,” to face racketeering and other charges.

Three luxurious houses belonging to Ramirez Abadia had already been sold off under a new initiative putting criminals’ goods up for sale and giving some of the proceeds to charity.

On Tuesday, it was the turn of the houses’ contents, ranging from vast collections of shoes and vintage port to plush sofas, fishing gear and brand-name clothes.

One room full of pink Hello Kitty items gave an insight into Ramirez Abadia’s methods. Brazilian media has said he hid messages about drug operations in e-mail images of the cute cat.

“Everyone wants to know why we are receiving from drug dealers,” said Lucien Belmonte, president of a foundation that helps poor children that was benefiting from the sale.

“It’s not from dealers, it’s from justice.”

For Brazilians already caught up in a consumer credit boom, it was too good a chance to miss. Several journalists for a local television network walked off with a huge plasma TV before the horde descended.

Karina Ferreira, a 21-year-old sales assistant, said she did not feel bad about taking over the possessions of a convicted drug runner, in her case about $80 worth of clothes.

“If you think about it, it’s going to a good cause so I don’t mind,” she said.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) – A Canadian man who claims he was discriminated against as a pagan who practices a form of sadomasochism will get to take his complaint to a human rights tribunal.

An appeals court rejected a bid by Vancouver police on Tuesday to block a hearing on whether Peter Hayes’ rights were violated when an officer refused to grant him the permit he needed to get a chauffeur’s job.

Hayes complained to British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal that he was discriminated against because he is a pagan who practices a “BDSM lifestyle” and deserves protection under the human rights code, based on sexual orientation.

BDSM refers to bondage, discipline and submission and sadism and masochism, according to the court documents.

Police went to the courts, arguing the tribunal and a lower court judge erred in agreeing to hear Hayes’ complaint because the laws designed to protect the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians did not extend to protecting types of sexual practices.

A B.C. Court of Appeal panel ruled unanimously that the police motion was premature since the tribunal’s hearing was to decide what, if any, sexual practices deserved legal protection, and even the tribunal’s chairwoman was unsure if the human rights code did that.

“How can the tribunal determine if BDSM falls within the meaning of ‘sexual orientation’ if it does not have a full understanding of what BDSM means?” Justice Anne Rowles wrote for the three-judge panel.

ROME (Reuters) – Silvio Berlusconi, who has been biting his tongue for most of the April 13-14 election campaign, said on Tuesday his opponents on the left had no taste in women.

“The left has no taste, not even when it comes to women,” he said. “As for our (women candidates) being more beautiful, I say that because in parliament they have no competition.”

The favorite to win the parliamentary election also promised women would occupy a third of cabinet posts if he won, but his sexist comments provoked an angry response.

“Running for parliament is not the same as competing in the Miss Italy beauty contest,” said parliamentarian Paola Balducci from the red/green Rainbow Alliance.

Berlusconi, the conservative People of Freedom party leader, cultivates a jocular image and told a television interviewer his background as a salesman had taught him that “you have to make a joke every 10-15 minutes. It’s a way of keeping up morale.”

In an unusually staid campaign that began when Romano Prodi resigned as premier in January after his coalition collapsed, Berlusconi has kept a poll lead of between 5-9 percent over his centre-left rival Walter Veltroni.

Berlusconi is Italy‘s third richest man and its first prime minister in 50 years to last the full term, from 2001-2006.

The 71-year-old delights in the company of glamorous women and has fielded some of the dancers who populate television shows on his Mediaset channels as candidates for parliament.

His long-suffering wife Veronica, 20 years his junior, got her revenge last year by reprimanding him for lechery in an open letter to a left-leaning newspaper. He publicly apologized.

His women supporters laughed when he called them the “menopause section” at a recent rally and urged them to bake cakes for campaigners, but Berlusconi infuriates others.

“Berlusconi continues to judge women only by their looks, the sign of a very backward, sexist mentality,” said Silvana Mura, member of parliament for the centrist Italy of Values, the main ally of Veltroni’s Democratic Party in the vote.

“In any other modern, democratic state one single comment like this would be enough to condemn a candidate for prime minister to certain defeat,” she said. “I hope Italian women — but not just women — give Berlusconi the answer he deserves.”

However, chauvinist behavior is unlikely to provoke widespread outrage in a country where elderly men dominate public life and women occupy only 2 percent of boardroom seats in state-owned firms.

Talk persists of Berlusconi and Veltroni forming a “Grand Coalition” if the vote is too close in the Senate, as expected.

They would share power long enough to reform electoral rules to change the system of broad alliances to a two-party system and then compete head-to-head in yet another vote.