sex – praag.org

China shuts down obscene dating sites

China’s Internet regulator has shut 65 dating and other match-making websites after accusing them of spreading obscene content and allowing registration with false names, Xinhua state news agency said on Tuesday.

Sites closed included ones with names like “Get a one-night stand” and “Playing with you net”, Xinhua said, citing the Cyberspace Administration of China.

“These websites allowed the use of false identities at will to register … or spread obscene and lascivious content,” the report said. “The circumstances were serious and the effects terrible.”

State media said last week that the regulator would target fraud on dating websites and other online match-making sites.

China exercises tight control over the Internet, saying that it is needed to ensure social stability and morality and to protect consumers, brushing off concerns of censorship from rights groups.

Source: Reuters

Pope pivots to Asia

Pope Francis’ real interest is geopolitics.

In less than two years in office, Francis has nudged the conversation away from sex to such as matters as Cuba-U.S. relations and climate change. In September, he will become the first religious leader who serves as a head of state to address a joint session of Congress.

Pope John Paul II was single-minded in the pursuit of ending Communism in the 1980s, while Pope Benedict XVI was a gaffe-prone bookworm fretting over relativism.

Francis, in contrast, is making his own pivot towards Asia. He already has been twice to the region shunned by his predecessor with a view not only to refilling pews, but also gaining traction with the rising powers.

The challenge for Francis — who is from a religious order that proselytized in China in the 16th century — is how to work with China today. The Vatican and the world’s most populous country have been at odds since 1951 over, among many things, the right to ordain bishops.

Francis, who says he would go to Beijing tomorrow, has a secret corridor with the new leadership for diplomatic messages. There have been small gestures on both sides: Francis didn’t see the Dalai Lama in Rome; doing so would have incensed Chinese authorities. President Xi Jinping allowed Francis to fly in China’s airspace, the first time a pope was granted that right.

China has about 12 million Catholics — three times the number in Ireland — compared with a mere 300,000 in Taiwan.

The gap between the pope’s knowledge and effectiveness may be large. Francis has dived into tough international conflicts including Korea, Cuba and Palestine and not all has gone well.

While he brought attention to the plight of Palestinians by praying in Bethlehem near graffiti that read “Free Palestine,” his visit was followed by violence against the Palestinians.

He was much more successful with Cuba, secretly hosting delegations from there and the U.S. and playing a vital role in the prisoner exchanges that led to renewed relations after half a century.

He has announced plans to shrink the bureaucracy that runs the church, removed executives at the mismanaged Vatican Bank and told cardinals to abandon their limousines and catch the bus.

At the bank, he’s brought a measure of transparency following allegations of illegal behavior and poor oversight. The bank now publishes an annual report, has closed 2,000 accounts and undertaken a review of 18,000 clients.

Source: Bloomberg

Sex could keep Ebola alive

Sex could keep the Ebola epidemic alive even after the World Health Organization (WHO) declares an area free of the disease, one of the discoverers of the deadly virus said on Tuesday.

The WHO is hoping to announce later this week that Nigeria and Senegal are free of Ebola after 42 days with no infections — the standard period for declaring an outbreak over, twice the maximum 21-day incubation period of the virus.

However, it appears the disease can last much longer in semen.

“In a convalescent male, the virus can persist in semen for at least 70 days; one study suggests persistence for more than 90 days,” the WHO said in an information note on Monday.

“Certainly, the advice has to be for survivors to use a condom, to not have unprotected sex, for 90 days,” said Peter Piot, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a discoverer of Ebola in 1976.

“If we would apply the rule for double the time, that would be 180 days — six months. I think it (90 days) is probably a compromise, for practicality,” he told a news conference in Geneva.

Ebola spreads via bodily fluids such as blood and saliva, but it has also been detected in breast milk and urine, as well as semen, the WHO says. The whole live virus has never been isolated from sweat, however.

More than 3,400 people are already known to have died in the world’s worst Ebola outbreak on record, the vast majority of them in three West African countries: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Source: Yahoo

Black rapist’s sentence reduced as his 11-year old victim seemed a ‘willing partner’

The life sentence of a man who repeatedly raped an 11-year-old girl he regarded as “a daughter” was reduced on appeal by the High Court in Pretoria because she seemed to be a willing partner, according to a report.

The Citizen reported on Saturday, that Molefe Joseph Mphanama’s life sentence was replaced with an effective sentence of 20 years imprisonment for his conviction on four rape charges.

Two judges said the girl had visited Mphanama out of her own free will after the first rape and her unwillingness to have sex was only shown when she closed her thighs, according to the report.

On one occasion the girl reportedly asked her mother to allow her to go to his house and spend the rest of the week with him.

During the trial, the State argued that Mphanama groomed the girl over time. The court, at the time, dismissed the argument that the girl had consented to sex because she was only 11, which makes it statutory rape.

According to the report, there was reportedly no evidence that she had experienced any negative psychological symptoms for the rape.

Australian officers used army computers for home porn videos

The Australian military has sacked six male officers over their role in the so-called “Jedi Council”, a group which allegedly produced and shared videos of themselves having sex with women.

The Australian Defence Force said six officers and non-commissioned officers had been fired over the production or distribution of “highly inappropriate material demeaning women” on defence computers and the Internet.

“The standard of behaviour we expect of our serving members is clear,” chief of army Lieutenant-General David Morrison said in a statement received Friday.

“It is also clear that if you engage in misconduct, or you fail to uphold the army’s standards, then you will be held to account.”

Reports in June said the officers had allegedly filmed themselves having sex with women, including colleagues and civilians, and distributed the images to military personnel around the country without the women’s knowledge.

The revelations, which followed a government report detailing more than 1,000 claims of sexual or other abuse in the forces from the 1950s to the present day, prompted Morrison to tell troops to respect women or quit the military.

“I will be ruthless in ridding the army of people who cannot live up to its values,” he said at the time.

The six men sacked ranged in rank from sergeant to major and three of them have been investigated by New South Wales police. A further seven also face termination while four are subject to administrative sanctions.

Disciplinary and/or administrative action was also being considered against a further 172 people, predominately army personnel, who were identified as peripheral to the group’s email exchanges, defence said.

Morrison said a total of 122 regular army and reservists had had their service terminated so far this year due to serious misconduct or unacceptable behaviour, taking drugs and civilian offences.

The Australian Defence Force has been hit by a series of sex scandals, including the 2011 Skype incident in which a young male recruit had sex with a female classmate and streamed the encounter online to cadets in another room without her knowledge.

Last week the male cadet officer at the centre of that incident was kicked out of the army following his conviction in court. – AFP

More than 100 sex complaints against S. African teachers

Cartoon from the Sowetan, a black South African newspaper

More than 100 complaints of sexual misconduct were laid against teachers last year, according to the SA Council for Educators (SACE).

In its 2012/13 annual report, tabled at Parliament on Thursday, the council said it received a total of 556 complaints for various “alleged offences or breaches” between April 1 last year and March 30 this year.

Of these, 104 were for “sexual misconduct, including rape”.

The council was established in terms of the SACE Act. According to this legislation, no person is allowed to practise as a teacher in South Africa unless he or she is registered with the council.

Other categories of offences listed in the annual report, including the number of such complaints laid against teachers, are:

— Verbal abuse, victimisation, harassment and defamation: 83;

— Fraud, theft and financial mismanagement: 65;

— Racism: two;

— Corporal punishment and assault: 182;

— Unprofessional conduct, alcohol abuse, absenteeism and insubordination: 115;

— Negligence: nil; and,

— Murder: two.

The council said 319 of the total 556 cases were “finalised in forms other than disciplinary hearings”.

A total of 57 disciplinary cases were finalised over the 12-month period.

According to the report, 27 teachers were struck off the council’s roll of educators indefinitely.

Yet another was struck off, but may re-apply after a certain period, and a further 28 were struck off, but the striking off was suspended for a certain period.

On the number of appeals received from those struck off, eight were from those struck off the roll indefinitely for sexual offences.

Of the eight, five were finalised and the appeals dismissed. The other three appeals had been postponed.

On dealing with abuse of pupils by teachers, the council said one of the biggest problems was the general lack of co-operation by the parents of the abused children.

Parents had refused council officials access to the abused children.

“In some case, the abusers would end up being referred to ‘as sons-in-law’,” the report states.

This practice had negatively affected the council’s operations.

“[E]ach year we have a lot of sexual abuse cases that are being carried over into the next financial year because they could not be closed.”

It said the battle against the abuse of pupils would not be won “until such time that parents take the responsibility to protect their children and to support the SACE cause.” – Sapa

Fork stuck in man’s penis after bizarre sexual mishap

Canberra doctors removed a 10-centimetre fork from inside an elderly man’s penis after a bizarre sexual mishap.

The 70-year-old arrived at the Canberra Hospital emergency department with a bleeding sexual organ.

He told doctors he had inserted the 10cm dining fork into his urethra almost 12 hours earlier in an attempt to achieve sexual gratification.

But the utensil became stuck.

The fork was not visible but doctors were able to feel it from the outside and X-rays showed its position.

Doctors considered several retrieval options before deciding to pull the fork free using forceps and “copious lubrication” while the patient was under a general anaesthetic.

The elderly patient was then sent home.

The medical emergency was so rare the team of three doctors published the case in The International Journal of Surgery last month.

The paper, titled “An Unusual Urethral Foreign Body”, said it was rare to see objects lodged in the lower urinary tract.

It went on to list strange objects found inside other parts of the body, including needles, pencils, wire, allen keys, toothbrushes, light bulbs, thermometers, plants and vegetables, leeches, snakes, cocaine and glue.

“It is apparent that the human mind is uninhibited let alone creative,” the authors wrote.

The medical team – Krishanth Naidu, Maurice Mulcahy and Amanda Chung – said the fork case was published to create discussion among the medical fraternity “given the great management challenge faced by the oddity and infrequency with which a fork is encountered in the penile urethra”.

The doctors said the motives for inserting objects into the sensitive region were difficult to comprehend.

“The practice manifests primarily during states of pathological masturbation, substance abuse and intoxication and as a result of psychological compounders.

“Autoerotic stimulation with the aid of self-inserted urethral foreign bodies has been existent since time immemorial and have presented an unusual but known presentation to urologists.”

They said embarrassed patients usually attempted to retrieve the item themselves, risking urethral injury and foreign body migration.

The real danger was infection leading to death, because ashamed patients often delay medical treatment, they said.

Doctors generally try to avoid surgery in such situations, instead choosing an option that would minimise urothelial trauma and preserve erectile function.

The authors said self-inserted male urethral foreign bodies are rare emergencies that urological and general surgeons face on occasion.

While the insertions are unusual, the paper said “any imaginable object is known to be implicated”. – Canberra Times

US teacher accused of having student’s baby

Police have arrested a Southern California high school teacher two weeks after she allegedly gave birth to a student’s baby.

Redlands police spokesman Carl Baker says 28-year-old Laura Elizabeth Whitehurst was arrested Monday night for allegedly having unlawful sex with a 16-year-old.

Officials at Citrus Valley High School in Redlands contacted police on Monday, acting on a tip from the boy’s mother.

Police say the sexual relationship began last summer and continued for nearly a year. The boy is now 17.

Whitehurst gave birth to a child June 18.

A telephone message left at the Whitehurst home was not immediately returned. – AP

JK Rowling surprises with sleaze in new novel

First reviews of Harry Potter author JK Rowling’s novel for adults on Thursday praised its Dickensian scope and social message, but warned the gritty, even obscene tale was a far cry from Hogwarts.

Shortly before the release of the hotly awaited “The Casual Vacancy”, several reviewers said they were taken aback to read grimy scenes of sex and drugs, but added the author’s most vivid writing was on the familiar ground of adolescence.

“I had just read a passage written by the world’s favourite children’s author in which a teenager is raped by her mother’s heroin dealer, a man who may well be the father of the girl’s own three-year-old stepbrother, although it’s hard to know for sure when the mum concerned is a prostitute,” wrote Allison Pearson in the Daily Telegraph.

She added that the novel, a story of poverty and politics in an English village — of which a million copies have been pre-ordered — was “sometimes funny, often startlingly well observed, and full of cruelty and despair”.

But the Mirror tabloid labelled it “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Filth”, warning the author famed for her stories of young wizards was “sure to face stern criticism for featuring the C-word and F-word hundreds of times”.

Set in the picturesque fictional village of Pagford in southwest England, the black comedy deals with the fight to fill a slot on the parish council after the incumbent’s sudden death, and hinges on the fate of a squalid housing estate.

Kept closely under wraps until publication, it hits bookshops on Thursday and is expected to be Britain’s top-selling fiction title this year.

In the Independent, Boyd Tonkin called it a “song of freedom” after Rowling’s seven children’s books, which made her the world’s first billionaire author.

While decrying the novel’s “clunkily satirical set-pieces”, he said it “picks up passion, verve and even magic” when dealing with its teenage characters.

“All the social and hormonal turbulence that the later Potter volumes had to veil in the euphemisms of fantasy appear in plain sight here,” he wrote. “The novel builds into a vividly melodramatic climax with these kids at its heart.”

But the Guardian’s reviewer Theo Tait labelled the edgier scenes “superficial excitements”, saying the novel created a sense of “slight anti-climax” despite its “richly peopled, densely imagined world”.

And writing in The Times, Erica Wagner said the book was founded on “the idea of the novel as a force for social good” but could be “a tiny bit dull”.

For the Telegraph’s reviewer, however, a top concern was the risk of the book falling into the wrong hands.

“In the coming days, along with thousands of parents around the world,” she wrote, “I will have to do something that offends our best instincts: I will try to stop my children reading a book.” – AFP