World Sex Sells News

Mainichi Newspapers in Japan has decided to shut down a section of its Mainichi Daily News English-language Web site.

The Mainichi said that some articles carried in the section, which was titled WaiWai, were found to be "too vulgar" and carried "inappropriate content."

It also decided to take punitive measures against the head of its Digital Media Division, which is responsible for overseeing the site, the manager responsible for the section, and the editor in charge.

The section in question was designed to introduce various aspects of Japanese society as well as its manners and customs by quoting reports in Japanese weekly magazines, the newspaper said. However, the corner reportedly began carrying 'sensationalized' stories on dubious topics containing 'seriously vulgar expressions' over at least the past six years, with headlines such as Fast food sends schoolgirls into sexual feeding frenzy.

Consequently, the section drew criticism from some readers, who complained its stories were too vulgar and debauching Japan by sending around the world information that could be misunderstood.

In late May, the Mainichi took measures to resolve the problem, withdrawing problematic stories from the site and changing WaiWai's editorial policy, the newspaper said. However, the newspaper eventually decided to shut down the column last Saturday, concluding that it would be necessary to fundamentally overhaul it with the goal of establishing a sound editorial structure.

The minimum age for a prostitute is the subject of a parliamentary debate in the Netherlands with parties divided on whether it should be raised to 21 years, says the Telegraaf.

Labour (PvdA) is not convinced it should be raised from 18 years and the right-wing liberals VVD and socialist SP are against the move.

Raising the minimum age is part of a package of possible measures to deal with illegal prostitution and abuses in the sex industry. Among them is criminalising punters who use illegal prostitutes.

Authorities in Cairo have banned a 92-year-old Gulf Arab man from marrying a 17-year-old Egyptian girl, under laws brought in to counter the increasing number of wealthy Gulf men travelling to the impoverished Egyptian countryside to find much younger, temporary brides.

The ministry of justice invoked a law that says the age gap between spouses should not exceed 25 years. The newspaper Al-Akhbar reported that 173 couples with more than 25 years between them wed last year, via a loophole in the law that allows a foreign man to take a much younger bride in exchange for depositing about $80,000 (£41,000) in the Egyptian national bank.

In Egypt, poverty is rife. Girls from rural Egyptian families might be sold to a wealthy Gulf man for between $500 and $1,500. Having returned to the Gulf state with her husband, most Egyptian girls find they are treated as servants in the family home and rejected by the man's existing wife or wives.

After a few months of such "marriage" the girl can be divorced and sent home, often with a settlement of up to $10,000, a sum it would take the average Egyptian 10 years or more to earn.

Of the ten sex cinemas Colombian capital Bogotá had a decade ago, only two are still open today. One of them, Novedades on calle 12, is expected to close its doors soon too. Internet porn has killed one of the city’s subcultures, El Tiempo reports.

The last remaining porn cinema is the Esmeralda Pussycat.

The possibility of watching movies at home has hurt all movie theaters, Carlos Sánchez, manager of the Esmeralda Pussycat says, confirming the decline of not just the industry, but his own theater as well.

Even the last standing of porn theaters is in decline. The metal entrance is spray painted black to conceal the rust. The letters of the name on the front look dirty and blackened and in the theater itself no more than ten people are enjoying a dirty movie. According to Mallory no more than 20 people per day come in for their dose of porn. Thirty years ago a porn flick would draw 3000 people on the day of the premiere, the manager says.

Nelly Sánchez has been managing Novedades for about ten years: Before there were many people, but now we only receive five or six people per day, mostly old men. Most of them come to watch bestiality flicks.

She will have to close down the place soon, despite having tried to turn the tide renting out sex videos on both dvd and vhs and offering private booths for those with more private needs. The customers simply refuse to come.

For six months they have endured worsening physical and sexual abuse at the hands of police over-zealously enforcing a new anti-trafficking law, but now Cambodian sex workers are fighting back.

More than 500 commercial sex workers rallied together on June 4 to protest the massive escalation of violent police raids on brothels and the criminalization of sex work due to new US-backed "model" anti-trafficking legislation, passed in February this year.

The day of action, held at the Women's Network for Unity (WNU) in Phnom Penh, called for the repeal of the new anti-trafficking law, which critics say conflates prostitution with trafficking and is so over-broad that even carrying condoms can now get you arrested.

Chanting "save us from saviors" and waving placards saying "condoms protect, police threaten," hundreds of red-shirted sex workers demanded their human rights be respected and asserted they did not need to be "saved" from their jobs in brothels, least of all by lecherous, avaricious police officers.

During brothel raids the police beat sex workers with sticks, stones, or weapons, and take all their money and jewelry, said Pheng Phally, a sex worker and team leader of the WNU.

If any sex workers are pretty, the police gang rape them before sending them to the rehabilitation center where there is not enough food and very poor hygiene.

Video-taped evidence of the abuse of sex workers by Cambodian law-enforcement officials was presented at the event, which comes just one day before Minister of Interior Sar Kheng is due to make an announcement on the US State Department's annual assessment of the Kingdom’s anti-trafficking efforts.

WNU's Phally explained that after the new anti-trafficking legislation passed the police ramped-up brothel raids, began targeting street-based sex workers and closing down karaoke bars.

Not only does the new climate of fear and repression make it nearly impossible for the tens of thousands of women employed in the Kingdom's sex industry to earn a living, but they are being beaten and treated like animals during the raids, she said.

We have gathered today to ask the government to repeal the law and stop the violent raids on us, we have rights too and we need to be allowed to earn money for ourselves and our families – sex work is work, Phally said.

Cambodia’s Law on the Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation is based on US-style model anti-trafficking legislation that seeks to eliminate human trafficking by criminalizing the sex industry as a whole. Activists claim it was only passed in a misguided attempt to meet anti-trafficking standards imposed by the US State Department.

Is there really such a thing as an "online brothel," offering virtual sexual services for sale? Knesset member Zahava Gal-On of the Meretz party says there is, and has opened a new front in the battle against traders in women and sex services, who operate online. Not everybody agrees, though.

The Knesset Subcommittee on the Trafficking in Women will be convening to discuss Gal-On's legislative proposal, which would impose five years' hard time on any person managing an online brothel, or serving as a graphic artist or content editor for the Web site.

Dozens of brothers operate on the Internet, offering women for sale, says Galon, who chairs the subcommittee. The sites enable discretion and anonymity for customers, and enhance the demand for prostitutes. The police and prosecution hardly act at all against the online trafficking sites, she says, because the law hasn't given them the tools and authority. She means to amend that.

However, the Justice Ministry opposes her proposal on the grounds that there is no such thing as a "virtual brothel." Legally, the Internet is not the place where prostitution takes place, wrote Anat Hulta of the State Attorney's office: It is merely a means to advertise prostitution and to link between demand and supply.

In the opinion she penned ahead of the subcommittee meeting, Hulta argues that the existing law provides enough prohibition against engagement in prostitution: the problem is lack of enforcement, she says.

Gal-On's proposal adds the words "Web site" to the list of places where engaging in prostitution is forbidden. The law already includes apartments, clubs, cars and maritime vehicles.

The number of sex workers in New Zealand does not appear to have increased since legislation decriminalising prostitution became law, according to a new report.

The Prostitution Law Review Committee was set up to report on the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 three to five years after the Act came into force.

Its report, published today, was based on work carried out by the Christchurch School of Medicine and Victoria University's Crime and Justice Research Centre.

The committee, chaired by former Police Assistant Commissioner Paul Fitzharris, said an accurate count of the number of sex workers was difficult. However, a comparison between the number of sex workers in Christchurch in 1999, before decriminalisation, and 2006 - after the Act was passed - showed the total had stayed approximately the same.

Around 93% of sex workers cited money as the reason for getting into and staying in the sex industry. The most significant barriers to exiting are loss of income, reluctance to lose the flexible working hours available in the sex industry and the camaraderie and sense of belonging that some sex workers describe .

The committee said a Christchurch School of Medicine survey of sex workers found that more than 90% felt they had legal rights under the Act. More than 60% felt they were more able to refuse to provide commercial sexual services to a particular client since the enactment of the law.

Prior to the Act, the illicit status of the sex industry meant sex workers were open to coercion and exploitation by managers, pimps and clients. Research indicated there had been "some improvement" in employment conditions but this is by no means universal.

Generally, brothels which had treated their workers fairly before the Act continued to do so while those that did not continued to have unfair management practices, it said.

Other findings included that the majority of sex workers felt the Act could do little about violence that occurred, although a significant majority felt there had been an improvement since the passing of the Act.

Other recommendations included that the Government provide additional funding to the Ministry of Health to enable medical officers of health to carry out regular inspections of brothels.

It also said the Government should provide funding so that non-government organisations could provide services to the industry, including assistance with exiting for those that wanted to get out of sex work.

Associate Justice Minister Lianne Dalziel said the report showed the Act had had a positive effect on the health and safety of sex workers and had not led to an increase in numbers of sex workers as predicted by critics of the law reform.

The owners of cafés in the centre of Amsterdam are again up in arms against what they say is the umpteenth attempt to turn the city into a prudish provincial backwater.

A majority of the Amsterdam district council ‘Amsterdam Centrum'
 have voted in favour of a measure that would forbid customers from sitting outside on a terrace past midnight. A Dutch newspaper says the centre of Amsterdam is moving another step towards becoming a ‘Staphorst on the Amstel'
. Staphorst is considered the most strict and devout Calvinist town in the Netherlands.

Previously the district council ruled that customers cannot drink while standing. The free newspaper De Pers quotes an owner of a pub in Amsterdam, who says with a deep sigh:

Now we'
ll have to hire an extra employee to act as a sort of police officer who will walk around seeing to it that customers don'
t drink while standing. They will also have to ensure that customers are gone (from the terrace) by midnight… when they'
d rather sit there until four. Earlier, the council ruled that outside terraces cannot be heated because it is a waste of energy and hence environmentally unfriendly.

The district council has also been criticised for ordering the closure of 150 terraces, banning the construction of new hotels and organising fewer events.

The Amsterdam City Council is also in the process of “cleaning up” the city. Permits for a large numbers of rooms in the Red Light District, where prostitutes stand behind windows, are being rescinded. Recently the town council ordered the closure of the famous sex club Yab Yum as well as the live-sex theatre Casa Rosso.

Prostitution in the Islamic nation of Pakistan, once relegated to dark alleys and small red-light districts, is now seeping into many neighborhoods of country's urban centers. Reports indicate that since the period of civilian rule ended in 1977, times have changed and now the sex industry is bustling.

Early military governments and religious groups sought to reform areas like the famous "Taxali Gate" district of Lahore by displacing prostitutes and their families in an effort to "reinvent" the neighborhood. While displacing the prostitutes might have temporarily made the once small red-light district a better neighborhood for a time, it did little to stop the now dispersed prostitutes from plying their trade. Now the tendrils of the sex trade have become omnipresent in cities like Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi and Lahore, not to mention towns, villages and rural outposts.

Chinese bordellos, often operating as "massage parlors" or beauty salons, are across Pakistan, even spread even to war-torn and restive locations such as the Afghan capital Kabul. Chinese in the sex industry have developed a cunning ability to recognize areas where the demand for sex far outstrips the supply.

The local sex industry comprised of Pakistani prostitutes has also grown in recent years. YouTube videos show house after house with colorfully lit entranceways always with a mamasan and at least one Pakistani woman in traditional dress. The women are available for in-house services for as little as 400 rupees (US$6) to take-away prices ranging 1,000 to 2,000 rupees. These districts are mostly for locals, but foreigners can indulge at higher prices.

More upscale areas like Lahore's Heera Mundi or "Diamond Market", cater to well-heeled locals and foreigners. At these places prettier, younger girls push their services for 5,000 to 10,000 rupees for an all-night visit, and the most exceptional can command 20,000 to 40,000 rupees for just short time.

Rumors abound online that female TV stars and actresses can be hired for sex. You can get film stars for 50,000 to 100,000 rupees but you need good contacts for that, one blogger wrote after a trip to Lahore.

Short-time hotels offering hourly rates can be found all over major cities, underscoring the profits being reaped by the sex industry.

The root causes of prostitution in Pakistan are poverty and a dearth of opportunities. Widows find themselves on the streets with mouths to feed, and for many prostitution offers a quick fix. A local Pakistani prostitute can earn 2,000 to 3,000 rupees per day compared to the average monthly income of 2,500 rupees.

Sashimi sex and nude casinos: It's hardly what you'd expect to witness after the sun goes down in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

But best-selling author Moammar Emka, known as Emka, knows otherwise. He's been tracking the steamy nightlife scene in Indonesia's capital city, Jakarta, for the last six years.

Today, as he continues prowling the seedy underground for its latest trends, the former reporter is most surprised by the basic concept of sex as entertainment. You can find anything at anytime here, the East Java native says.

His popular published trilogy is titled Jakarta Undercover . The first two novels have been translated into English and are visibly available at bookstores throughout the Jakarta region. A comic strip and movie have been based upon his work.

Clubs with sex menus, invite-only swingers parties and orgies at people's private homes are detailed in Emka's little black books.

Like the culture of the region, his tone is more discreet as he divulges the reality of Indonesia's sex industry. And, not wishing for his work to be mistaken for a tourist sex guide, he masks the names of venues and locations.

Thousands of Indian sex workers protested Thursday in West Bengal state, demanding better rights.

Around 3,000 sex workers in India, joined a pre-dawn May Day torchlight rally in the state capital Kolkata, saying they should be covered by labour laws.

Give us the legal status of entertainers, said banners carried by women in Kolkata'
s largest red light district, Sonagachi, city police commissioner Gautam Chakraborty said. Others carried candles and shouted: We want the right to work! and Sex workers need social justice.

Prostitution is illegal in India, with police turning a blind eye to the flourishing trade or demanding money from sex workers.

Sex workers will soon launch a campaign across India to press their demand for legal recognition as prostitutes, said Bharati De, who heads the Committee for Indomitable Women, a group for sex workers that spreads awareness about sexually transmitted diseases.

One month before Euro 2008 kicks off in Basel, the Swiss Aids Federation has launched "fairplay" guidelines for people who visit prostitutes.

Postcards have been handed out in Basel, Bern, Geneva, Zurich and Chur – the first four being tournament host cities – urging politeness, respect and cleanliness when paying for sex.

They also call on men to keep their word when paying the agreed amount and remind them that alcohol reduces staying power as well as inhibitions.

Punters can also consult the Don Juan advice centre for information on forced prostitution.

According to the Swiss Aids Federation 230,000 men aged 17-45 pay for sex. Prostitution is legal in Switzerland but prostitutes have to register with city authorities and health authorities and get regular health checks.

Quezon City Police District chief, Senior Supt. Magtanggol Gatdula has ordered a district-wide crackdown on lewd shows in bars.

Gatdula said the campaign would cover gay bars, KTV bars and discos that feature nude shows: I have ordered all station commanders in the district to conduct their respective raids on these nightclubs. I do not expect them to return with zero results, he told Standard Today.

Canadian retailer Good For Her held its 3rd annual Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto.

The winners of the 2008 Feminist Porn Awards are as follows:

• Boundary Breaker of the Year
  Buck Angel
• Smutty Schoolteacher of the Year (Educational Title)
  Tristan Taormino's Expert Guide to Oral Sex Part 1 Cunnilingus and Part 2 Fellatio
• Hottest Dyke Film
  Crash Pad Series Volume 1
• Sexiest Straight Film
  My Sex Therapist.com: The First Sessions
• Golden Beaver Award for Canadian Content
  Bren Ryder
• Best Bi Scene
  Female Fantasies
• Most Tantalizing Trans Film
  Trans Entities: The Nasty Love of Papi' and Wil
• Hottest Kink Film
  Bondage Boob Tube
• Deliciously Diverse Cast
  Trans Entities: The Nasty Love of Papi' and Wil
• Sexiest Short
  Want
• Indie Porn Pioneer
  Estelle Joseph
• Movie of the Year
  Five Hot Stories for Her

I suppose a hand or blow job is out of the question too?

Massage parlors in an Indonesian town are asking their female masseuses to padlock their skirts and pants to make it clear that sex is not on offer. But the move has been protested by the women's affairs minister of Indonesia, where massage parlors are often a front for prostitution.

It is not the right way to prevent promiscuity, Meutia Swasono was quoted as saying in Thursday's Jakarta Post. It insults women ... as if they are the ones in the wrong.

At least one parlor in the tourist town of Batu on Java island has required its masseuses to padlock their skirts or trousers to make it clear that the establishment does not tolerate prostitution.

Others in the town started following suit after local officials suggested it was a good idea at a recent meeting with parlor owners. TV footage and photos have shown several masseuses with small padlocks in the zip of their pants or skirts in recent days.

The padlocking phenomena has been seen at various parlors and it is something we like, said Imam Suryono, the head of the town's public order authority. He denied media reports that he had formally ordered them to wear padlocks.

Police have arrested 65 young women, aged 18-27, during raids in the past three days in five Quezon City establishments.

Seven male dancers were arrested at the Makisig gay bar on Timog Avenue, Barangay Sacred Heart.

At around 2:30 am, QCPD Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit (CIDU) operatives arrested 13 dancers from the Encounter KTV Bar on Quezon Avenue after receiving information that they were suuposedly forced to perform lewd acts. Policemen also arrested the bar's floor manager, four cashiers and checkers, and 20 male customers.

The QCPD had arrested or invited for questioning at least 120 persons since it started last week its crackdown on suspected prostitution dens in the city.

Chief Inspector Cherry Lou Donato, chief of QCPD-CIDU's Women and Children's Desk, said one of the women was caught dancing in the nude. Donato said the 19-year-old girl told them she and most of the women in the bar were forced by the club owner to do lewd acts on stage: But even if the women consented to what their manager said, it was still a violation of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, Donato told the Inquirer.

About 11 pm Saturday, QCPD-CIDU agents apprehended 22 guest relations officers (GROs) from the Flirt Disco Bar in Cubao. Arrested were floor manager, five waiters and two cashiers. The GROs were later released after presenting work permits from the city government.

Another group of policemen swooped down on Bartolina II KTV Bar, also in Cubao, and arrested 17 GROs and dancers.

Meanwhile, QCPD Station 10 members raided the Executive Spa on Quezon Avenue, Barangay Roxas, after an anonymous informant reported that massage attendants offered sex to clients for P1,500. Thirteen massage attendants were brought to the Kamuning police station but were later freed.

The Western Australia (WA) parliament has passed a controversial bill which will decriminalise brothels and give prostitutes basic working rights, including superannuation and workers compensation.

The bill will see the regulation of brothels and escort agencies in WA, where prostitution is legal but running a brothel is not. Nor is living off the earnings of prostitution.

WA's Liberal Opposition opposed the legislation but it passed with the support of independent MP Shelley Archer in exchange for the promise of drug, alcohol and sex education programs for Aboriginal children in the northern Kimberley region.

Madrid Ayuntamiento has announced it is going to inspect all the sex shops in the Spanish capital this month.

It comes after irregularities were detected in 72% of such establishments last year, and the new inspections will check the quality of the items on sale. Checks will also be made to ensure that children cannot gain access to the shops.

It will be the job of nine inspectors to visit all the sex shops in the city, checking on municipal licences, that each item is clearly priced and that the labelling of the products is correct, particularly in textile and industrial items.

After the inspections have been carried out, a series of fines are expected to be issued against those establishments which do not meet the correct legislation.

Councillors have torpedoed plans to build a sex shop in Berwick, a Melbourne suburb.

In February the Leader reported that traders were 'outraged' at Sextastic owners Scott and Jodie Gowans who planned to open a store in their commercial estate.

Councillors barred the sex shop because it was too close to children's gym Funtastic Gymnastics.

Mr Gowans said he was considering appealing the decision at the state planning tribunal: Our view is the proposal meets all the planning requirements. If the knockback is purely based on proximity to Funtastic Gymnastics, then we'll appeal at VCAT.

Funtastic Gymnastic owner Steven Smith said he would fight them all the way: It's too close to our name. We're worried people might think its an offshoot of our business because its virtually next door. We run a children's gymnastic centre. It's just not appropriate.

Beate Uhse, the publicly listed German sex-shop chain has posted a pretax loss of €7.9 million in 2007, owing to restructuring costs.

The European leader in its sector had made a pretax profit of €11.9 million in 2006. Last year however, it also plunged to a net loss of €13.2 million after business was significantly affected by restructuring expenses, the company said in a statement.

This medicine no doubt tasted a little bitter, but I am convinced that it will make Beate Uhse fit for the future, boss Otto Christian Lindemann was quoted as saying.

He has been reorganizing the group's distribution network, based on stores and mail order sales, which has suffered from a drop in its traditional clientele. Sales of pornographic movies in particular have been hit by Internet-based competition.

Beate Uhse now wants to attract more women and couples to redesigned stores that sell lingerie and sex toys, and said that a second shop concept - fun centers located in business parks and at motorway junctions - would target a predominantly male clientele interested in erotic entertainment in the form of films and cinemas.

Amsterdam's famous Yab Yum brothel has lost an appeal against the city's decision to close the sex club as part of a crackdown on supposed organised crime in the prostitution industry.

The city of Amsterdam said its complaints commission had upheld a decision to deny the brothel a new licence because of fears it would be used to commit crimes.

Calling itself the world's most exclusive men's club, the Yab Yum has denied allegations that it is in the hands of the Hells Angels biker gang and said it would seek damages from the city after it was forced to close in January.

Located in a grand house on an Amsterdam canal, Yab Yum charged visitors a 70 euro ($110) entry fee and much more for caviar, champagne and the services of its hostesses.

In December, the city of Amsterdam announced plans to clean up its "red light" district to fight forced prostitution, money laundering and drug abuse. It has withdrawn permits from dozens of sex businesses it accuses of links with organised crime.