Two Emirates Airline cabin crew in Dubai were given three-month jail terms for exchanging sexy text messages.

The then-married flight attendant and her male supervisor were convicted of coercion to commit sin, the National daily reported.

It said the pair -- both Indian -- were earlier sentenced to six months in prison to be followed by deportation, but an appeals court last week reduced the jail time and dropped the expulsion penalty. The court concluded there was not enough evidence to prove that the unidentified pair had actually been sexually involved.

The messages were exposed during a bitter divorce battle between the attendant and her husband that began in 2007, the daily said.

It said the divorce court had ordered Dubai's telecommunications company, Etisalat, to produce the text messages after the husband accused his wife of an affair. Etisalat provided copies of SMS messages in October 2008, allowing the husband to file a criminal complaint against his wife, the paper said.

Australian children engaged in sexting could be charged with child sex offences under laws set to pass federal parliament.

However, the attorney-general will have 'discretion' [as if politicians know the meaning of the word discretion] as to whether people under 18 are charged with child sex offences for sending sexual material via their mobile phone.

The federal government has accepted the recommendation of a parliamentary committee into the proposed Crimes Legislation Amendment (Sexual Offences Against Children) Bill 2010 which means a young person cannot be prosecuted for sexting without the consent of the attorney-general.

The committee is of the view that the extension of this safeguard may ensure that behaviour which is not exploitative of, or harmful to, children is not captured by the child sex offence regime, particularly where that behaviour involves children themselves, the committee said in a report tabled in the Senate.

A rare dose of government-issued sanity

Based on article from theregister.co.uk

A US federal appeals court rebuked a Pennsylvania district attorney who threatened to file felony child pornography charges against teens who were photographed semi-nude unless they attended an education program.

In a unanimous decision issued by the appeals court in Philadelphia, a three-judge panel said the threat amounted to a Hobson's Choice that would retaliate against one of the girls and her family for exercising their constitutional right to free speech. A rare dose of government-issued sanity in the prosecutorial crusade against teenage sexting, the ruling upheld a lower-court order issued last year in the case.

The case stems from inappropriate images of minors found by officials at Pennsylvania's Tunkhannock School District, that included, among other things, a girl posing in her bathing suit. In late 2008, Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick told an assembly of about 20 students and their parents he would bring felony child pornography charges against them unless they completed a six- to nine-month program. For female offenders, that meant attending classes designed to help the participants gain an understanding of what it means to be a girl in today's society, and require them to write a report on what the students did and why it was wrong.

The panel from the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said the education program requirement amounted to compelled speech, in violation of the Constitution's First Amendment. As such, Skumanick's threat to prosecute was retaliation.

A British man is facing jail in Dubai after he was accused of kissing a woman in public.

Ayman Najafi is expected in court today alongside a 25-year-old female British tourist to appeal against a one-month prison sentence.

The pair were allegedly seen kissing on the mouth in a restaurant, breaching Dubai's nasty decency laws. They were arrested by police in November last year and appeared in court last week.

A judge at Dubai's Misdemeanours Court heard written evidence from a woman who initially snitched to police about the alleged incident. She said she was 'offended' by their behaviour at the Jumeirah Beach Residence, where she was dining with her daughter.

The judge dismissed Najafi's claim that he had merely kissed the woman on the cheek and sentenced both defendants to a month in jail followed by deportation. The Britons were bailed pending the appeal against a custodial punishment.

The Dubai authorities are holding their passports so that they cannot leave the country.

A Saudi Arabian woman, Sawsan Salim, has been sentenced to 300 lashings and one and a half years in prison for filing harassment complaints about government officials and appearing in court without a male guardian present.

In 2007, Salim filed 118 harassment complaints against local officials, who allegedly mistreated her when she appeared in their offices unchaperoned, according to Business Week. Salim appeared without a male guardian because her husband, her sole male family member, was in prison at the time. She initially approached a local court in 2004, when she sought help to release her husband from prison.

The legal guardianship system in Saudi Arabia requires that women, both minors and adults, must be accompanied by a male guardian outside the home. If women wish to conduct themselves in public business, work, or to drive, they must obtain permission from or be accompanied by their male guardian, who may be her husband, father, brother, or even a minor son, according to Human Rights Watch.