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Porn star Marilyn Chambers dead at 56

1 hour, 23 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Porn star Marilyn Chambers, who made waves in the 1970s by having screen sex with an African-American, has been found dead at her Los Angeles home at the age of 56, coroner's officials said on Monday.

The Los Angeles coroner's office said an autopsy would be carried out to determine the cause of her death late on Sunday night.

Chambers, whose real name was Marilyn Taylor, broke into the adult film industry by appearing in the 1972 film "Behind the Green Door," which was among the first pornographic films released widely in the United States to attract mainstream attention.

The adult film caused a stir in part because Chambers was seen having sex with African-American porn star Johnny Keyes.

Chambers made more than 25 porn movies, trading on her earlier role as the blonde cover girl on the Ivory Snow soap box, where she posed holding a baby under the tag line "99 & 44/100% pure".

She also made several films with late porn star John Holmes, who died of AIDS complications in 1988, and she had flings with careers in music and politics. Chambers ran for U.S. vice president in 2004 on the Personal Choice Party ticket and released the disco single "Benihana" in 1976.

Chambers had a bit part in the 1970 Barbra Streisand film "The Owl and the Pussycat," and starred in the 1977 David Cronenberg horror movie "Rabid." But after establishing herself as a pornographic film star, she was never able to break into mainstream films.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

Gays killed in Baghdad as clerics urge clampdown

2 hours, 38 minutes ago

By Wisam Mohammed and Khalid al-Ansary

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two gay men were killed in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, a local official said on Saturday, and police said they had found the bodies of four more after clerics urged a crackdown on a perceived spread of homosexuality.

Homosexuality is prohibited almost everywhere in the Middle East, but conditions have become especially dangerous for gays and lesbians in Iraq since the rise of religious militias after U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein six years ago.

"Two young men were killed on Thursday. They were sexual deviants. Their tribes killed them to restore their family honor," a Sadr City official who declined to be named said.

The police source who declined to be named said the bodies of four gay men were unearthed in Sadr City on March 25, each bearing a sign reading "pervert" in Arabic on their chests.

Sermons condemning homosexuality were read at the last two Friday prayer gatherings in Sadr City, a sprawling Baghdad slum of some 2 million people. The slum is a bastion of support for fiery Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia.

The Mehdi Army has frozen its activities over the last year and government forces have wrested control of the slum.

Many young men who might have cut their hair short and grown beards when religious gangs controlled much of Iraq now dress in a more Western style as government forces take back control.

Some are now accused of being gay, and residents of Sadr City say at least one coffee shop has become a gay hangout.

A member of the slum's Sadrist office said the Mehdi Army was not involved in the killings, but said homosexuality was now more widespread since the Mehdi Army lost control of the slum.

"This (homosexuality) has spread because of the absence of the Mehdi Army, the spread of sexual films and satellite television and a lack of government surveillance," said the office's Sheikh Ibrahim al-Gharawi, a Shi'ite cleric.

Homosexual acts are punishable by up to seven years in prison in Iraq. A gay Iraqi man said any alleged crimes should be left to the law to deal with.

"If they've committed a crime, then there is the law. Killing is a big sin," he said, giving his name as Laith.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed, Writing by Mohammed Abbas: editing by Tim Pearce)

South African gangs use rape to "cure" lesbians

1 hour, 19 minutes ago

By Rebecca Harrison

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Gangs of South African men are raping lesbians in the belief it will "cure" the women's sexual orientation, an aid agency said Friday. NGO ActionAid said in a report titled "Hate Crimes: the rise of corrective rape in South Africa" lesbians were increasingly at risk of rape, particularly in South African townships where homosexuality is largely taboo.

South Africa has one of the world's most progressive constitutions and became the first country in Africa to allow gay marriage in 2006, but homosexuality is still widely frowned upon and same-sex unions are often decried as "un-African."

The brutal rape and murder last year of female soccer player Eudy Simelane, a lesbian, threw a spotlight on homophobic violence, particularly toward women.

"We get insults every day, beatings if we walk alone, you are constantly reminded that you deserve to be raped," ActionAid quoted one lesbian as saying. "They yell, 'if I rape you then you will go straight, you will buy skirts and start to cook because you will have learnt how to be a real woman'."

One lesbian and gay support group told ActionAid it was dealing with 10 new cases of lesbians being targeted for what it called "corrective rape" every week in Cape Town alone.

Thirty one lesbians have been reported murdered in homophobic attacks since 1998, but support groups say the actual number is probably much higher because crimes on the basis of sexual orientation are not recognized in the South African criminal justice system, ActionAid said.

Of the 31 cases, only two cases were brought to South African courts and there has been only one conviction. South Africa has one of the world highest rates of rape but activists say very few cases end in conviction, and women's groups say police and the justice system have failed to tackle the problem.

ActionAid estimates there are 500,000 rapes in South Africa every year.

It said the police were particularly reluctant to investigate crimes against lesbians and said support for survivors was inadequate.

(Editing by Michael Georgy and Matthew Jones)

Prehistoric fish pioneered sex

Wed Feb 25, 2:40 PM

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON (Reuters) - Sex has been a fact of life for at least 380 million years, longer than previously thought. Internal fertilization was widespread among prehistoric fish living on ancient tropical coral reefs in the Devonian period, research published in the journal Nature on Wednesday showed.

The discovery sheds new light on the reproductive history of all jawed vertebrates, including humans.

"It shifts how we think about how reproduction evolved. You're a jawed vertebrate and I'm a jawed vertebrate, so this is our own history," said Zerina Johanson, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.

Johanson and colleagues in Australia, where the fossils were unearthed, deduced that copulation was common among armored placoderms, extinct shark-like species, after finding embryos inside Materpiscis, Austroptyctodus and Incisoscutum placoderms.

Finding fossil evidence of reproduction is rare and experts initially missed the signs in the case of one specimen, where a tiny embryo was at first thought to be a last meal.

It was thought that such ancient fish would show a more primitive type of reproduction, with sperm and eggs combining externally in the water, as still happens with many modern fish.

Adding to the evidence is the discovery of a modification in the pelvic fin on the belly of adult fish. The scientists believe this was used by the male to grip the female during mating, as happens with modern sharks.

Placoderms, thought to be the oldest jawed vertebrates, were fearsome predators with bony armor covering their head and forming the biting surfaces of their jaws, which could act like self-sharpening scissors.

The biggest were as large as a great white shark.

Teens in United States who 'sext' racy photos charged with porn
By Martha Irvine, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Teens in United States who 'sext' racy photos charged with porn

CHICAGO - Though youth is fleeting, images sent on a cellphone or posted online may not be, especially if they're naughty.

Teenagers' habit of distributing nude self-portraits electronically - often called "sexting" if it's done by cellphone - has parents and school administrators worried. Some prosecutors have begun charging teens who send and receive such images with child pornography and other serious felonies. But is that the best way to handle it?

"Hopefully we'll get the message out to these kids," says Michael McAlexander, a prosecutor in Allen County, Ind., which includes Fort Wayne. A teenage boy there is facing felony obscenity charges for allegedly sending a photo of his private parts to several female classmates. Another boy was recently charged with child pornography in a similar case.

In some cases, the photos are sent to harass other teens or to get attention. Other times, they're viewed as a high-tech way to flirt. Either way, law enforcement officials want it to stop, even if it means threatening to add "sex offender" to a juvenile's confidential record.

"We don't want to throw these kids in jail," McAlexander says. "But we want them to think."

This month in Greensburg, Pa., three high school girls who sent seminude photos and four male students who received them were all hit with child pornography charges. And in Newark, Ohio, a 15-year-old high school girl faced similar charges for sending her own racy cellphone photos to classmates. She eventually agreed to a curfew, no cellphone and no unsupervised Internet usage over the next few months. If she complies, the charges will be dropped.

In Pennsylvania, all but one of the students accepted a lesser misdemeanour charge, partly to avoid a trial and further embarrassment, a public defender in the case said. The mother of one boy is considering fighting all charges.

Whatever the outcome, the mere fact that child pornography charges were filed at all is stirring debate among students and adults.

At Greensburg-Salem High School in Pennsylvania, junior Jamie Bennish says she's not sure the boys in her school's case should've been charged.

"They did not necessarily choose to receive the pictures, although I find it questionable that they did not delete the photos from their cellphones after some period of time," she says. "As for the girls, there is no excuse for exposing yourself in that way, and any charges they receive they have brought upon themselves."

Dante Bertani, chief public defender in Westmoreland County, Pa., where the students went to court, called the felony charges "horrendous." He says such treatment should be reserved for sex offenders, not teenagers who might've used poor judgment, but meant nothing malicious.

"It should be an issue between the school, the parents and the kids - and primarily the parents and the kids," Bertani says. "It's not something that should be going through the criminal system."

These cases do pose a dilemma, concedes Wes Weaver, the principal at Licking Valley High School, where the Ohio girl attends school.

He agrees that pornography charges or other felonies are not appropriate, noting that "the laws have not caught up to technology."

But he says there has to be some way to educate students and their parents about the harm these photos can do - and the fact that, once they're out there, they often get widely circulated. Days before his staff discovered the girl's nude photos, the county prosecutor had been at the school to warn students against sexting.

"I don't think we're anywhere near having a handle on this," Weaver says. "It's beyond our scope as a school."

Parents are also often at a loss.

Some companies, such as WebSafety Inc., have developed software that parents can use to monitor certain activity on cellphones and computers. They can, for instance, block X-rated texting terms or be alerted when their child is using them, says Mike Adler, the company's CEO.

Photos are trickier, though, and often require a parent to manually check a child's phone.

And that's OK to do, says Dr. Terri Randall, an adolescent psychiatrist in Philadelphia.

"It could be part of the contract of having a cellphone, that you really don't get 100 per cent privacy. It's just one more way of keeping track, like knowing what your kid is doing and where they are," says Randall, who's also an instructor at Jefferson Medical College.

Randall says she's seeing more issues related to sexting, especially as cellphones with cameras have become standard. One mother brought her daughter in to be psychologically evaluated after finding provocative cellphone photos of the girl.

Other patients tell Randall how sexting and texting explicit messages has caused relationship problems, especially after a breakup, when photos might be distributed out of spite, for instance.

So she reminds her young patients: "Even though it seems like fun and so exciting right now, that person may not always feel the same way about you. And you may not feel the same way about that person either."

But is it porn? That's questionable, she and others say.

Certainly, technology makes it easier to do and say things we might not do in person, says Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher with the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

"But ultimately," she says, "I think this is merely another case of technology extending an activity or action that young people have engaged in for years, if not beyond that."

-

Martha Irvine is an AP national writer. She can be reached at mirvine(at)ap.org or via http://myspace.com/irvineap

Indonesian 'sex cult' leader arrested

2 hours, 14 minutes ago

JAKARTA (AFP) - An Indonesian cult head accused of leading his followers in wild orgies and giving sermons in his underpants was arrested Thursday and faces charges of "lewd acts" and insulting religion, police said.

Agus Noro, the head of the Satria Piningit Weteng Buwono sect, turned himself in early in the morning after a three-day hunt, Jakarta police spokesman Zulkarnain told AFP.

Noro, who is called Agus Imam Solihin or "leader of the faithful" by followers, is alleged to have had sex with his disciples and instructed them to have group sex while he watched in the sect's mansion outside Jakarta.

"We're investigating him based on a report made by a female follower named Kartiningsih on January 26. She complained that Noro had asked her to massage him and touch his genitals," Zulkarnain said.

"She was also made to have sex with him, while her husband and followers watched," he added.

"Lewd acts" and insulting religion carry jail terms of up to nine years and seven years respectively, Zulkarnain said.

"If our investigations prove that he carried out lewd acts, we'll name him a suspect and hand him over to the court," Zulkarnain said.

"He has about 40 followers, all adults. At the beginning, Noro told them to pray and carry out religious recitations. After several months, he told them he was God and that they didn't have to do that any more," Zulkarnain said.

Noro gave religious sermons wearing only his underpants and told his disciples they would be taught "Kamasutra" sex techniques to use in the afterlife, former follower Eko was quoted as saying by news website Okezone.

"We just obeyed like we'd been hypnotised," Eko said.

Police described the sex guru, believed to be in his 40s, as looking "cool... just like youngsters nowadays," with dyed brown hair and fair skin, the website reported.

Berlusconi says Italian women so beautiful they need protection from rapists

Sun Jan 25, 2:56 PM

By The Associated Press

ROME - Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is being criticized for suggesting that Italy's women are so beautiful they need military escorts to avoid being raped.

Berlusconi made the comments Sunday, responding to questions about a proposal to deploy 300,000 soldiers in the streets to fight crime.

A string of violent crimes, including a rape in Rome on New Year's Eve and another outside the capital this week, prompted the proposal for added security.

But Berlusconi said even with added police, such crimes can happen, and that Italy needs so many soldiers on the streets "because our women are so beautiful."

Opposition legislator Giovanna Melandri called Berlusconi's comments "profoundly offensive."

Berlusconi says he was just complimenting Italian women.

A Japanese producer of extreme pornography, Natural High, has embarked on a quest to save poor African orphans, by sending a porn star and a film crew to make “anthropological documentary” porn of the Japanese lady having sex with various tribesmen, with the proceeds earmarked for donation to the only aid organisation which would have anything to do with them.

Charity Porn Saves African Orphans - The Naked Continent" AV

The producer, Sakkun, is said to have been travelling Africa during the production of “The Naked Continent” (see below for details), and was struck upon seeing the poverty of the African children there, thinking “Isn’t there anything an AV director can do to help?” (other than paying women to have sex with their men, or perhaps paying their men to have sex with their performer, Nana-chan, we might think).

The pornographer cum good Samaritan then hit upon the idea of porn for charity.

However, when he proposed his delightful idea to a variety of aid agencies, you may be heartened to know that none of them would give him so much as the time of day; however, one Kenyan charitable group was bankrupt enough to go along with him, the “Musona Self Help Group”.

The AV producer gave them a million yen (interesting interpretation of “self help”, but let us leave that aside), and then sent them a porn star to help with the aid efforts, doling out corn, stationary, and building materials, in the usual ineffective manner.

For more, read here with commentary here.

Ex-Congo leader accused of war crimes

2 hours, 23 minutes ago

THE HAGUE (AFP) - Jean-Pierre Bemba, the former vice-president of DR Congo, on Monday rejected accusations by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court that forces he led had used rape as a weapon of war.

Bemba rejected the war crimes charges during the pre-trial hearing at the court in The Hague after which the judges will decide if there are sufficient grounds for trial.

His lawyers argued that the claims were part of a political conspiracy against him.

Bemba had commanded a militia force in the Democratic Republic of Congo-based, said prosecutors.

Between October 2002 and March 2003, Bemba's Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) had waged a campaign of terror against civilians in neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR), they alleged.

Ange Felix Patasse, then president of CAR, had invited the force into the country to help put down a coup led by General Francois Bozize. It was Bozize, after he took power in 2003, who asked the ICC to probe the events.

"Jean-Pierre Bemba wanted to traumatise and to terrorise the population and to make them unwilling to support the rebels," prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told a panel of three judges.

"To do this, he chose rape as his main weapon ... rapes against mothers in the presence of their children and rapes of children as their parents were forced to watch.

Bemba, the 46-year-old Belgian-educated son of a rich businessman, sat far back in his chair with folded arms for much of the morning session, passing an occasional note to his lawyers.

Dressed in a blue suit and striped tie, he sat motionless for a media photo session before the start of the hearing, and afterwards curtly introduced himself to the judges by simply stating his name.

Bemba was arrested on an ICC warrant in Brussels last May. He faces five charges of war crimes and three of crimes against humanity for rape, torture, pillaging and murder committed by his MLC movement.

Bensouda told the court of the alleged ordeal of a man identified as "Witness 23", who was raped in front of his wife and children and told investigators that afterwards "they came to my wife, in front of my eyes they abused my wife. After they finished with my wife they came to my children."

His wife had later died.

"It is the responsibility of the office of the prosecutor to stand up for Witness 23, to stand up for his wife, to stand up for his children and the hundreds of victims in the Central African Republic who suffered the same fate," said Bensouda.

"Many of these victims have died, some killed outright and others by being raped and infected with HIV," she said.

Bemba's defence lawyer, Karim Khan, argued that Bemba's men were bona fide soldiers deployed to defend a democratically elected, neighbouring government.

As such, they were under the command and control of Patasse, and any criminal conduct "must fall squarely on the former head of state of the Central African Republic."

Patasse returned to the CAR only last December after five years' exile in Togo to take part in the country's peace talks.

Bemba sympathised with the lot of the people of the CAR, said Khan, "but the prosecution's difficulty lies in establishing a nexus beteen that suffering and my client.

"This case should not be confirmed."

Another defence lawyer, Nkwebe Liriss, argued that the case was a political plot, claiming some witnesses were historical adversaries of Bemba.

"Many Congolese and many Africans think this is a matter of brushing aside Mr Bemba for the next election."

After an eight-year war, the MLC became a partner and Bemba one of four vice-presidents in a transitional DR Congo government ahead of 2006 elections.

He was defeated for the presidency by Joseph Kabila.

He led opposition to Kabila, which turned violent when government forces tried to disarm his private militia in clashes that killed 300 in March 2007, and forced Bemba into exile.

The court will rule on whether the trial should go ahead within 60 days.

In Paris, the International Federation for Human Rights welcomed the proceedings and in a statement Monday called on the ICC to pursue other senior figures implicated in the atrocities.