China's government has told discos, karaoke bars and other entertainment venues to install windows in private rooms and ensure staff dress modestly from Oct 1.

According to rules released on the Ministry of Public Security's website (www.mps.gov.cn), entertainment venues must install transparent partitions between rooms that ensure the whole environment of the consumer's entertainment area in the room can be seen.

When open for business, the transparent part of rooms and windows to rooms at singing and dancing entertainment venues must not be obstructed, the rules say.

Discos, karaoke nightclubs and other bars in China frequently have private rooms for hire, and are a favourite places for businessmen to entertain guests, sometimes with prostitutes, which is illegal in China.

Staff clothing is also covered in the new rules. Staff members should dress tastefully, and not be too exposing.

Other rules demand closed circuit television cameras be installed and security guards placed at discos.

British adult video director John T. Bone was arrested June 12 in Bang-na, Bangkok after authorities received a tip that a group of foreigners were shooting porn in a local apartment complex.

Police arrested Bone (a.k.a. John Gilbert Bowen) and five others in the raid, including three Brazlian men, a Filipina woman and a Thai "katoey" or transsexual "bar girl," according to the Pattaya Daily News. The report states that officers caught Bowen and his crew in the act of shooting a group sex scene.

Police told the Daily News they found a fully equipped studio inside the apartment with lights, camera equipment, lube, DVDs, stills and boxes of condoms. The report identifies Bone as the ringleader of the group.

The production and sale of pornography is illegal in Thailand. Bowen and two associates were arrested in April 2007 on the same charges in Pattaya, Thailand, southeast of Bangkok.

According to the Daily News, Bowen and his associates will face 3 years in prison and fined up to 6,000 baht ($180) for the crime.

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.

An adult shop in East Dubbo will not be allowed signs visible from the road.

In 2006 the court ruled Passions adult shop should be able to open less than 200 metres away from the nearby Dubbo Presbyterian church. But it limited Passions’ signage.

Council staff recommended allowing a new sign facing north be agreed to. But at a recent council meeting councillors felt that was against the court ruling which said there should be no obvious sign or indication of Passions’ use, either from the road or a nearby church.

Instead they will allow Passions an extra sign on its front window, and one on the façade wall - both facing west and therefore not the road.

According to church nutters, Passions has in the past 12 to 18 months flouted the ruling allowing it only one sign by erecting other signs. When council requested Passions remove the signs, it did so but asked they be made legal.

The church nutters and some Dubbo councillors are also frustrated by the presence of Passions’ logo-painted van parked in the street. But councillors have noted they can do nothing about it.

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.