Truth is indeed stranger than fiction...
Alaskan Man Pleads Guilty To Sale Of Seal Penises
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - An Alaska man has pleaded guilty to selling more than 100 fur seal "oosiks" -- or penises -- to a local gift shop that intended to sell the items as an aphrodisiac.
Michael Richard Zacharof, an Aleut and former tribal president from the Bering Sea village of St. Paul, pleaded guilty this week to one count of violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Federal law forbids the sale of any raw marine mammal parts unless they have been crafted into pieces of Alaska Native artwork.
In Zacharof's case, the former tribal leader sold the raw seal penises to a gift shop catering to customers from Asia. The shop then sold the items for about $100 each, according to the Justice Department.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Steward said seal penis bones, also known as seal sticks, are believed to have properties similar to erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra.
Zacharof faces a possible one-year prison term and a $20,000 fine, the U.S. Attorney's office said.
Woman Wins Settlement In Breast-Feeding Case
Thu Jul 5, 2007 10:25AM EDT By Edith Honan
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Watch-maker and clothier Fossil Inc. agreed to pay $3,600 to a woman who was barred from breast-feeding her infant while visiting a company showroom, the New York Civil Liberties Union said on Tuesday.
Lass King, 37, a buyer for a Maine clothing store and a mother of two, said she received a letter of apology and the payment from Fossil after threatening the company with a lawsuit.
In its letter to King, Fossil also said it had issued a policy affirming that breast-feeding was permitted in all Fossil stores and showrooms, said Galen Sherwin, director of the NYCLU's Reproductive Rights Project.
Representatives of Fossil could not immediately confirm details of the settlement.
New York law states that women are permitted to breast-feed "in any location, public or private, where the mother is otherwise authorized to be."
The case follows another settlement, reached in September, when the Toys R Us toy store chain agreed to lift its restrictions on where a woman can breast-feed.
King called her experience humiliating.
In August 2006, while meeting with a salesperson in a Manhattan showroom, King was told she was making others feel uncomfortable by breast-feeding her 8-month-old son, Cody.
King was taken to another floor to finish feeding Cody but was then not allowed back into the showroom. In January, as she made plans to again visit a Fossil showroom, she was told by a Fossil representative that breast-feeding was forbidden.
"I wanted to be apologized to. I wanted not to be humiliated or for anybody else to be humiliated either," she told Reuters of her decision to contact the civil liberties organization.
Risque EU Defends Internet Orgasm Clip
Thu Jul 5, 2007 10:27AM EDT
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Talk of monetary union and wine quotas gave way to controversy over orgasms and innuendo at the European Commission on Wednesday as it defended a risque Internet video clip highlighting its backing for European cinema.
The EU executive's usually dry daily news briefing sprung to life with questions over whether a 44-second clip of 18 couples achieving ecstasy in a variety of positions and venues was the best way to show how Brussels uses taxpayers' money.
The raunchy clip is made up of snippets from various general release films that have been funded by the EU, including "Amelie" and "Good Bye Lenin!."
Some reporters also took a swipe at the title of the sequence, asking whether "Let's Come Together" was acceptable innuendo -- and if it was, whether the pun worked in the 27-member Union's other official languages.
A Commission spokesman insisted it had not received a single complaint in the 14 weeks since the clip first appeared on Internet site YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKFTfAWnYh8), suggesting the Brussels press corps should relax and get with the times.
"Let us for once also have a good sense of humor and let us not start the old wars of the fifties about what is sex, what is pornography and what is simply normal to watch on television," spokesman Martin Selmayr appealed.
Singer Draws Ire Of Religious Police
Fri Jul 6, 2007 9:43AM EDT
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia's religious police detained a Muslim singer at a popular club, saying too much of her back was exposed by a sleeveless blouse she wore while performing, media reported on Wednesday.
Siti Noor Idayu Abd Moin, 24, has been ordered to go before the sharia, or Islamic court, at Ipoh in the northern state of Perak, on Aug 6, to face charges of "revealing her body" and "promoting vice," the New Straits Times said.
"I was surprised when the officers told me this top was too revealing," Noor Idayu said after being released from a night's detention on a bond of 1,000 ringgit ($290).
"Sometimes I wear something similar when I go out in the day. This is sexy? I don't think so."
The singer was picked up along with four members of her band, and subjected to repeated breathalyzer tests by officials in futile attempts to prove she had drunk liquor, the paper said.
"
When I passed the test, the female officers seemed disappointed and asked me to do it again," Noor Idayu said. "I did so willingly as I knew that I did not drink. Not once in my three years of singing in clubs have I drunk liquor."
Alcohol is freely available in mainly Muslim Malaysia, which has sizeable non-Muslim minorities, although Islamic officials often frown on behavior they consider to deviate from strict Koranic injunctions.
"A Muslim woman is not allowed to serve or entertain a man who is not her husband in a place where immoral activities usually take place," Jamry Sury, chief of the Perak religious police who raided the club, told the Star newspaper.
($1 = 3.445 malaysian ringgit)
And finally…
Dinner Guest Finds Host's Wife, Son In Freezer
Fri Jul 6, 2007 9:42AM EDT
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A Belgian man appeared in court on Friday after a woman at his dinner party found the bodies of his wife and stepson in the freezer as she put away the leftovers, prosecutors said.
The woman went to the police after discovering the 46-year-old woman and her 11-year-old son and officers arrested the man in the town of Verviers, near Liege in east Belgium, on Wednesday.
"She went to the freezer and that is what she saw. She then alerted the police," said Georges Lahaye of the local public prosecutors' office. Prosecutors want the suspect, aged 43, to be remanded in custody to allow more time for an investigation into the deaths.
Lahaye said the suspect had not made a confession. He added that the couple argued a lot.
